"How do you like Mr. Theophilus Tennant's new novel?" asked one lady of another. "Well, if you want my honest opinion," replied the latter, "I consider it a shallow, egotistical, inflated affair, whatever paid critics may assert to the contrary." "Possible?" exclaimed the querist; "why, I was so delighted with it that I had serious thoughts of addressing a letter of thanks to the owner for the pleasure he had afforded me, although I never saw or spoke to him."
"What a splendid specimen of a man!" exclaimed Miss Twenty to Mrs. Thirty-five. "It makes one feel stronger and better to be in the same room with him." "Heavens!" exclaimed the matron; "I can think of nothing when I see him but a great, lumbering, overgrown, Newfoundland dog. A man with so much surplus body to look after can't have much time for anything else."
And so we might multiply instances ad infinitum (which is about all the Latin I know). For my own part I don't quarrel with that diversity of taste which finds pretty wives for ugly husbands, fine, smart husbands for silly women, full congregations for prosy ministers, overflowing audiences for flat lecturers, and a reading parish, notwithstanding her faults, for Fanny Fern.
MY NOTION OF A WALKING COMPANION.
Of all small miseries, an uncongenial walking companion is the most annoying. Some people take a walk as they would study the multiplication table. It is a necessary performance, to be got over as soon as possible. I am not alluding to that class of human oyster, but to those who, after close application, or the exhausting wear and fret of everyday life, feel as though the four walls about them were gradually contracting, and their chance for breath growing fainter and fainter; to whom fresh air and the blue sky are as necessary as is dew and sunshine to flowers; and like them, without which, they as certainly droop and die;—such will understand what I mean by that misused term—a walk. Not a dawdle, not a feminine "calling" tour; nor an errand of any sort, for any purpose under heaven, that can be construed into business; but a dreamy lounge, irrespective of anything but the cool feel of the air on the heated temples, and the great, ceaseless, murmuring wave of life beating against the shore of time, bearing you and others on its bosom wheresoever God willeth. People pass you like moving shadows, you hear the pleasant hum of their voices, but do not know in your somnambulistic mood whether they are familiar faces or not. You only thank God for unfettered limbs, and fresh air, and motion; beyond that, for the time being, you desire to know nothing. Ah, then—to be unexpectedly linked to some human fidget! Whose limbs jerk this way and that, as if they were pulled by invisible wires; who goes first fast, then slow; then pulls you up with a short jerk to look at something; who bothers you with infinitesimal small talk; who ceaselessly interlards inquiries which chain you remorselessly to the tug-boat of his or her ideas, without leave of mental absence for one reprieving moment; and all this very likely accompanied with the most friendly and amiable intentions on the part of your entertainer (?). To say "No" and "Yes" recklessly—and laugh in the wrong place, and go home a million times more weary than when you started, beside feeling that you have hopelessly excluded yourself from the list of sane human beings—that's what I call misery.
But, ah! the ecstatic bliss of walking with one who thinks with you, as he moves dreamily on without speech—to be free to utter or to be silent, and no offence given or taken. To be allowed to wander leagues off, without fear of being rudely jerked back to time, at any unpropitious moment.
To turn this corner and that, by some mutual magnetic understanding, that you smile at afterward, when you come to think of it, as strangely funny and agreeable. To reach your own door-step as rested and refreshed, and with as cool and tranquil a brow, as if your own mother had sung you to sleep with the old-time nursery lullaby. To go back with fresh heart and spirit, to take up your burden of duty where weary nature had lain it hopelessly down. That's my kind of "walk."