But I maintain, that I, the Professor, am a good listener.
If a man can tell me a fact which subtends an appreciable angle in the
horizon of thought, I am as receptive as the contribution-box in a
congregation of colored brethren. If, when I am exposing my
intellectual dry-goods, a man will begin a good story, I will have them
all in, and my shutters up, before he has got to the fifth "says he,"
and listen like a three-years' child, as the author of the "Old Sailor"
says. I had rather hear one of those grand elemental laughs from either
of our two Georges, (fictitious names, Sir or Madam,) or listen to one
of those old playbills of our College days, in which "Tom and Jerry"
("Thomas and Jeremiah," as the old Greek Professor was said to call it)
was announced to be brought on the stage with the whole force of the
Faculty, read by our Frederick, (no such person, of course,) than say
the best things I might by any chance find myself capable of saying. Of
course, if I come across a real thinker, a suggestive, acute,
illuminating, informing talker, I enjoy the luxury of sitting still for
a while as much as another.
Nobody talks much that doesn't say unwise things,--things he did not
mean to say; as no person plays much without striking a false note
sometimes.
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