In a play which we once read, there is a physician introduced, who comes to prescribe to a querulous, nervous old gentleman. His advice and directions as to what he is to do, &c., greatly annoy the excitable old man; but his prescriptions set him half crazy. He calls to the servant in a voice like a Stentor—although a moment before he had described that organ as “all gone, doctor—a mere penny-whistle”—and ordered him to “kick the doctor down stairs, and pay him at the street-door!” “Calls himself one of the ‘faculty?’ ” growled the old invalid, after the physician had left in high dudgeon, and vowing vengeance; “calls himself one of the faculty; stupid old ass! with his white choker and gold-headed cane, and shrugs, and sighs, and solemn looks: ‘faculty!’—why he hasn't got a faculty! never had a faculty!” We thought, at the time of reading this, of an anecdote which had lain for years in our “Drawer,” of the British actress, in one of the provincial towns of England, who was preparing to enact the solemnly tragic character of “Jane Shore,” in the historical and instructive drama of that name, which is richly worth perusal, for the lesson which it teaches of the ultimate punishment of vice, even in its most seductive form. The actress was in her dressing-room, preparing for the part, when her attendant, an ignorant country girl, informed her that a woman had called to request of her two orders for admission, to witness the performance of the play, her daughter and herself having walked four miles on purpose to see it.
“Does she know me?” inquired the lady.
“Not at all; leastways she said she didn't,” replied the girl.
“It is very strange!” said the lady—“a most extraordinary request! Has the good woman got her faculties about her?”
“I think she have, ma'am,” responded the girl, “for I see her have summat tied up in a red silk handkercher!”
One seldom meets with a truer thing than the following observations by a quaint and witty author upon what are termed, less by way of “eminence,” perhaps, rather than “notoriety,” Great Talkers:—“Great Talkers not only do the least, but generally say the least, if their words be weighed instead of reckoned.” He who labors under an incontinence of speech seldom gets the better of his complaint; for he must prescribe for himself, and is very sure of having a fool for his physician. Many a chatterbox might pass for a shrewd man, if he would keep his own secret, and put a drag-chain now and then upon his tongue. The largest minds have the smallest opinion of themselves; for their knowledge impresses them with humility, by showing them the extent of their ignorance, and the discovery makes them taciturn. Deep waters are still. Wise men generally talk little, because they think much. Feeling the annoyance of idle loquacity in others, they are cautious of falling into the same error, and keep their mouths shut when they can not open them to the purpose. The smaller the calibre of the mind, the greater the bore of a perpetually open mouth. Human heads are like hogsheads—the emptier they are, the louder report they give of themselves. I know human specimens who never think; they only think they think. The clack of their word-mill is heard, even when there is no wind to set it going, and no grist to come from it. A distinguished Frenchman, of the time of Cardinal Richelieu, being in the antechamber of that wily statesman, on one occasion, at the time that a great talker was loudly and incessantly babbling, entreated him to be silent, lest he might annoy the cardinal.
“Why do you wish me not to speak?” asked the chatterbox; “I talk a good deal, certainly, but then I talk well.”
“Half of that is true!” retorted the sarcastic Frenchman.