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Miscellaneous thoughts on men, manners, and things
Miscellaneous thoughts on men manners and things Author:David Hoffman Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Talkers classified.—Silent men classified.—Arbitrary selection of a child's profession.—Modern Jesuitism.—An alchemical theory.— Aversion to makin... more »g a Will.—The easy promiser.—Holding fast till you die.—Domestic and public faces,—How to gain, and preserve many friends at small expense.—The discontented man.—Penny wise, pound foolish. T1IKEKS CLASSIFIED. xxxiv. All must have observed in society, those who talk, and those who are mainly silent. Some little philosophy may be extracted from a more careful inspection of them, and an attempt to classify them. And first of them who talk, or attempt so to do. Some men fail in conversation, having neither ideas nor facts: others, by force of memory alone, treasure up facts in great abundance, but still make a sorry display of them, from the want of ideas; whilst a third class, instinct with mind, live in regions of their own creation, spurn facts, and lose thereby the charms of illustration, and the logical force of induction. When individuals of these three classes happen to grow ambitious in conversation, observant philosophy could tell, almost with unerring certainty, a priori, how the so called argument of each would be conducted, and how brought to an end. Lisander belongs to the firstclass, and consequently is extremely chary and almost taciturn,—for, what can a man do who has neither facts nor ideas ? and yet it certainly requires still something more to keep his mouth hermetically sealed—he must also be devoid of feelings. Lisander has some, and therefore has but one resort—he assumes to cut the knot, the intricacies of which he does not understand, and cannot hope to disengage. He flies to a pun—to some cant term or phrase, to some wise saw; and with wonderful alacrity and self-complacency, speaks, as the ca...« less