I caught the imp that time, but what started him was more than I could guess. It is rather hard that this spoiled child should spoil such a sentence as that was going to be; but the wind shifted all at once, and the talk had to come round on another tack, or at least fall off a point or two from its course.
—I'll tell you who I think are the best talkers in all probability, —said I to the Master, who, as I mentioned, was developing interesting talent as a listener,—poets who never write verses. And there are a good many more of these than it would seem at first sight. I think you may say every young lover is a poet, to begin with. I don't mean either that all young lovers are good talkers,—they have an eloquence all their own when they are with the beloved object, no doubt, emphasized after the fashion the solemn bard of Paradise refers to with such delicious humor in the passage we just heard,—but a little talk goes a good way in most of these cooing matches, and it wouldn't do to report them too literally. What I mean is, that a man with the gift of musical and impassioned phrase (and love often deeds that to a young person for a while), who “wreaks” it, to borrow Byron's word, on conversation as the natural outlet of his sensibilities and spiritual activities, is likely to talk better than the poet, who plays on the instrument of verse. A great pianist or violinist is rarely a great singer. To write a poem is to expend the vital force which would have made one brilliant for an hour or two, and to expend it on an instrument with more pipes, reeds, keys, stops, and pedals than the Great Organ that shakes New England every time it is played in full blast.
Do you mean that it is hard work to write a poem?—said the old Master.—I had an idea that a poem wrote itself, as it were, very often; that it came by influx, without voluntary effort; indeed, you have spoken of it as an inspiration rather than a result of volition.
—Did you ever see a great ballet-dancer?—I asked him.
—I have seen Taglioni,—he answered.—She used to take her steps rather prettily. I have seen the woman that danced the capstone on to Bunker Hill Monument, as Orpheus moved the rocks by music, the Elssler woman,—Fanny Elssler. She would dance you a rigadoon or cut a pigeon's wing for you very respectably.
(Confound this old college book-worm,—-he has seen everything!)
Well, did these two ladies dance as if it was hard work to them?
—Why no, I should say they danced as if they liked it and couldn't help dancing; they looked as if they felt so “corky” it was hard to keep them down.
—And yet they had been through such work to get their limbs strong and flexible and obedient, that a cart-horse lives an easy life compared to theirs while they were in training.
—The Master cut in just here—I had sprung the trap of a reminiscence.