I do not think we believe things because considerable people say them, on
personal authority, that is, as intelligent listeners very commonly did a
century ago. The newspapers have lied that belief out of us. Any man
who has a pretty gift of talk may hold his company a little while when
there is nothing better stirring. Every now and then a man who may be
dull enough prevailingly has a passion of talk come over him which makes
him eloquent and silences the rest. I have a great respect for these
divine paroxysms, these half-inspired moments of influx when they seize
one whom we had not counted among the luminaries of the social sphere.
But the man who can--give us a fresh experience on anything that
interests us overrides everybody else. A great peril escaped makes a
great story-teller of a common person enough. I remember when a certain
vessel was wrecked long ago, that one of the survivors told the story as
well as Defoe could have told it. Never a word from him before; never a
word from him since. But when it comes to talking one's common
thoughts,--those that come and go as the breath does; those that tread
the mental areas and corridors with steady, even foot-fall, an
interminable procession of every hue and garb,--there are few, indeed,
that can dare to lift the curtain which hangs before the window in the
breast and throw open the window, and let us look and listen.
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