Attempt > Volume 1 and Select writings

140
THE ATTEMPT
^ CJjattg §apr. •
The gift ■which man enjoys of communicating his sentiments to his fellow is one
not sufficiently prized, possibly because the commoner a thing becomes, the less is its
value appreciated. And yet, if we would only think of the inestimable benefits
resulting from the gift of speech, we might value them more highly in case of their
being taken from us. If this planet had been filled with a race gifted the same as its
present inhabitants, with the exception of the capabilities of speech, they would have
been deprived of their chief solace in the trials and difficulties of their strange position
here. Even gifted with reason, the inward workings of a great mind would devour its
tenement unless allowed some audible vent. Hence springs the rehef afforded by
soliloquy, when no one can be the recipient of an aching confidence. Hot that I would
recommend my readers to indulge in the bad habit of thinking aloud, which, as
admirably shown in Miss Edgeworth’s story of “ L’Amie Inconnue,” as well as a stupid
is a dangerous practice. A young lady talking nonsense,'as most certainly if she talk to
herself she will do, is almost sure to be overheard, and then, good lack! she may mourn
for her departed dignity. Eather reserve soliloquy for the private solace of Eobinson
Crusoe in his desert island, where nobody would hear him but his dog and his parrot,
or, for the ghost of Cowper in the shade of his much-wished for “ vast wilderness,”
where he may preach aloud his thoughts to the great edification of the chick-a-dees
or the peaseweeps. This advice I merely offer 'par parenthese, my main point being
to show that the tendency to soliloquy, when no other mode of unburdening the mind
is at hand, forms good evidence that the sympathies feel greatly indebted to the
interpretation afforded them by speech, though that may be colder than its source,
as feeling is much warmer in expression than any tongue, however well oiled.
Seeing the fine use to which the organ of speech is so admirably adapted, what a
pity it is that it should so often be so deplorably misapplied as the channel through
which are conveyed the expression of thoughts and feelings which no more exist in the
mind of the person by whom they are spoken than they do in the head of one of
M. Chaillu’s gorillas. It is this perversion of its uses which makes the tongue a thing
looked upon as so worthy of suspicion and distrust, that people are always anxious to
peer behind the screen of civility, and get a glimpse of the real state of matters;—
hence, a mind that finds a true interpreter in the tongue has grown so rare, that its
language is often compared with that of the eye, in which the least shade of untruth
is duly reflected, though few are gifted with the power of reading that reflection aright.