ANOTHER DIALOGUE OF THE NIGHT.
Scene—The Shades at Nightfall. Swiftian Interlocutors as before.
Mr. Neverout (reading). "I cannot but with some pride, and much pleasure, congratulate with my dear country, which has outdone all the nations of Europe, in advancing the whole art of conversation to the greatest height it is capable of reaching."
Colonel Alwit. Ha! ha! ha! So wrote the Dean in the Eighteenth Century. I wonder what he would say now!
Mr. Neverout (continuing). "The whole genius, humour, politeness, and eloquence of England are summed up in it."
Miss Notable. Oh la! Let anyone now take a matron down to dinner, or sit out a dance with a pretty girl!
Lord Sparkish. "The whole genius, humour, politeness, and eloquence of England" must have gone out with full-bottomed wigs and hooped petticoats.
Lady Answerall. I protest that a neat repartee, or a "smart turn of wit or humour," is the rarest of things nowadays.
Lord Smart. Save among cabmen and costers.
Sir John Linger. Faith, my Lord, your street Arabs and gutter-snipes have a smack of it. They are the true Neverouts and Notables of the time.
Miss Notable. Sir John, you do me proud!
Mr. Neverout. Out on this pestilent, levelling democracy, which brings even wit to its last refuge, the gutter!
Colonel Alwit. Better lie, like Sheridan, with Wit in the gutter, than perch, like H——y, with Dulness on the Woolsack!
Mr. Neverout. Egad! Miss Notable has wit at will.
Miss Notable. And Mr. Neverout would be Echo, were he not Narcissus.
Lady Smart. Humph! We've had the "humour" and the "politeness," now for the eloquence.
Mr. Neverout.
"Chloe, of every coxcomb jealous,
Admires how girls can talk with fellows."
Miss Notable.
In dinner's blanks, in dancing's whirls,
The fellows cannot talk with girls.
Lord Sparkish. Well capped, i' faith!
Sir John Linger. Will the New Woman talk, I wonder?
Lady Answerall. Nay; as she claims all Man's special privileges, from votes to cigarettes, from bicycles to latch-keys, she will hardly forego his most cherished and distinctive one—taciturnity!
Mr. Neverout. There was a travelling fellow awhile ago who hung himself up in a cage in the tropical forests, to study the language of—monkeys. Why did not he turn his attention to the equally scanty, inarticulate, and unintelligible utterance of that Society Simian, the haw-haw "Masher"—is not that the term for an up-to-date dandy, my Lord?—of the banquet and the ball-room?
Lady Smart. Ah! now the eloquence-tap is turned on!
Mr. Neverout. But not like the Mulberry One's, at the main, your Ladyship!
Miss Notable. Ah! if they had but companies to turn on talk at pleasure, as they do gas and water!
Colonel Alwit. As it is, it comes like fountains in the desert or Trafalgar Square—only in intermittent spurts and squirts, not like the water company's never-failing service, on the "constant supply" system.
Sir John Linger. Humph! An East-end fishmonger's comment might throw some light on that subject, Colonel.
Lady Sparkish. Well, Sir John, we must admit that the growth of Science keeps pace with the spread of Stupidity. So doubtless the time will soon come when pocket-phonographs will obviate the necessity of individual vocal efforts, and leave men to give undivided attention to their dinners, matrons to their daughters' marriage-chances, maidens to the marriageable men, and marriageable men to their—moustaches!
Mr. Neverout. Unless, indeed, when we know all we shall be silent about everything.
Lord Sparkish. Quite likely, my dear Neverout. Already talk—except in spurts and spasms—is confined mainly to childhood—first or second. Of the Seven Ages of Man—I say nought about Woman, ladies!—why, the first and last only are loquacious.
Lady Smart. In which of the two garrulous stages would you place Parliament, my Lord?
Lord Sparkish. The Commons in the former; the Lords in the latter.
Colonel Alwit. And the Hibernian Members?
Lord Sparkish. Oh, faith! an "iligant" blend of both!!!
Lady Answerall. Well, I agree with sweet William's Gratiano, that—
"Silence is only commendable
In a neat's tongue dried, and a maid not vendible."
Mr. Neverout. While your Ladyship speaks, speech will ever be silvern!
Miss Notable. And silence is not yet golden—in the Shades.