Part 44

"One very important observation is this--be pleased to remember, my dear, that 'yes,' in itself, always means 'yes,' and 'no' always means 'no.'

"I fancy you will smile at such a profound remark; nevertheless, many act as if they never knew it, both in uttering these monosyllables themselves and in interpreting them as uttered by others. Young ladies, for example, when the question, as it is called, par excellence (as if it were more important than the whole catechism together) is put to them, often say 'no' when they really mean 'yes.' It is a singular happiness for them that the young gentlemen to whom they reply in this contradictory sort of way have a similar incapacity of understanding 'yes' and 'no;' nay, a greater; for these last often persist in thinking 'no' means 'yes,' even when it really means what it says.

"'Pray, my dear,' said a mamma to her daughter of eighteen, 'what was your cousin saying to you when I met you blushing so in the garden?'

"'He told me that he loved me, mamma, and asked if I could love him.'

"'Upon my word! And what did you say to him, my dear?'

"'I said yes, mamma.'

"'My dear, how could you be so----'

"'Why, mamma, what else could I say? it was the--truth.'

"Now I consider this a model for all love-passages: and when it comes to your turn, my dear, pray follow this truth-loving young lady's example, and do not trust to your lover's powers of interpretation to translate a seeming 'no' into a genuine 'yes.' He might be one of those simple, worthy folk who are so foolish as to think that a negative is really a negative!

"I grant that there are a thousand conventional cases in which 'yes' means 'no,' and 'no' means 'yes;' and they are so ridiculously common that every one is supposed, in politeness, not to mean what he says, or, rather, is not doubted to mean the contrary of what he says. In fact, quite apart from positive lying--that is, any intention to deceive--the honest words are so often interchanged, that if 'no' were to prosecute 'yes,' and 'yes' 'no,' for trespass, I know not which would have most causes in court. Have nothing to do with these absurd conventionalisms, my dear. 'Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay.' If you are asked whether you are cold, hungry, tired, never, for fear of giving trouble, say the contrary of what you feel. Decline giving the trouble if you like, by all means; but do not assign any false reason for so doing. These are trifles, you will say; and so they are. But it is only by austere regard to truth, even in trifles, that we shall keep the love of it spotless and pure. 'Take care of the pence' of truth, 'and the pounds will take care of themselves.'

"Not only let your utterance be simple truth, as you apprehend it, but let it be decisive and unambiguous, according to those apprehensions. Some persons speak as falteringly as if they thought the text I have cited ran, 'Let your yea be nay, and your nay, yea.' And so they are apt to assent or dissent, according to the tenor of the last argument: 'Yes--no--yes--no.' It is just like listening to the pendulum of a clock.

"It is a great aggravation of the misuse of 'yes' and 'no,' that the young are apt to lose all true apprehension of their meaning, and think, in certain cases, that 'yes' cannot mean 'yes,' nor 'no' 'no.'

"I have known a lad, whose mother's 'no' had generally ended in 'yes,' completely ruined, because when his father said 'no' in reply to a request for unreasonable aid, and threatened to leave him to his own devices if he persisted in extravagance, could not believe that his father meant what he said, or could prevail on justice to turn nature out of doors. But his father meant 'no,' and stuck to it, and the lad was ruined, simply because, you see, he had not noticed that father and mother differed in their dialects--that his father's 'no' always meant 'no,' and nothing else. You have read 'Rob Roy,' and may recollect that that amiable young gentleman, Mr. F. Osbaldistone, with less reason, very nearly made an equally fatal mistake; for every word his father had ever uttered, and every muscle in his face, every gesture, every step, ought to have convinced him that his father always meant what he said.

"In fine, learn to apply these little words aright and honestly, and, little though they be, you will keep the love of truth pure and unsullied.

"Ah me! what worlds of joy and sorrow, what maddening griefs and ecstacies have these poor monosyllables conveyed! More than any other words in the whole dictionary have they enraptured or saddened the human heart; rung out the peal of joy, or sounded the knell of hope. And yet not so often as at first sight might appear, for these blunt and honest words are, both, kindly coy in scenes of agony.

"There are occasions--and those the most terrible in life--when the lips are fairly absolved from using them, and when, if the eye cannot express what the muffled tongue refuses to tell, the tongue seeks any stammering compassionate circumlocution rather than utter the dreaded syllable. 'Is there no hope?' says the mother, hanging over her dying child, to the physician, in whose looks are life and death. He dare not say 'yes;' but to such a question silence and dejection can alone say 'no.'"

XXXI.

A GROUP OF TALKERS.

I. THE MISANTHROPE.

He is sour and morose in disposition. He is a hater of his species. Whether he was born thus, or whether he has gradually acquired it through contact with mankind, will best be ascertained from himself. I think, however, that he too frequently and too readily inclines in his nature to run against the angles and rough edges of men's ways and tempers, by which he is made sore and irritable, until he loses patience with everybody, and thinks everybody is gone to the bad. He is happy with no one, and no one is happy with him.

His talk agrees with his temper. He says nothing good of anybody or anything. Society is rotten in every part. He cares for no one's thanks. He bows to no one's person. He courts no one's smiles. There is neither happiness nor worth anywhere or in any one. He says,--

"Only this is sure: In this world nought save misery can endure."

If you try to throw a more cheerful aspect upon things and breathe a more genial soul into his nature, he says to you,--

"Have I not suffered things to be forgiven? Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven, Hopes sapped, name blighted, life's life lied away? And only not to desperation driven, Because not altogether of such clay As rots into the souls of those whom I survey."

He is hard to cure, but worse to endure. Sunshine has no brightness for him. Love has no charms. Beauty has no smiles. Flowers have no fragrance. All is desert to him; and alas! he is desert to all.

II. THE STORY-TELLER.--He is ever and anon telling his anecdotes and stories, until they become as dull as an old newspaper handled for days together. He seldom enters your house or forms one of a company but you hear from him the same oft-repeated tales. He may sometimes begin on a new track, but he soon merges into the old. You are inclined to say, "You have told me that before;" but respect to the person who speaks, or a sense of good manners, restrains, so you are under the necessity of enduring the unwelcome repetition.

I have known this talker, again and again, rise from his seat with an intention of going because of a "pressing engagement," and yet he has stood, with hat in hand, for a further half-hour, telling the same stories which on similar occasions he had told before. I knew what was coming, and wished that he had left when he rose at first to do so, rather than afflict me with the same worn-out threadbare tales of three-times-three repetition in my ears.

I have thought, Whence this failing? Whether from loss of memory or from the fact that these things have been so often repeated that, when once begun, they instinctively and in the very order in which they are laid in the mind find an irresistible outlet from the mouth: like a musical-box, when wound up and set a-going, goes on and on, playing the same old tunes which one has heard a hundred times, and which it has played ever since a musical-box it has been.