The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table | Page 3

nobody ever supposed it was from
admiration; it was simply a contract between themselves and a publisher or dealer.
If the Mutuals have really nothing among them worth admiring, that alters the question.
But if they are men with noble powers and qualities, let me tell you, that, next to youthful
love and family affections, there is no human sentiment better than that which unites the
Societies of Mutual Admiration. And what would literature or art be without such
associations? Who can tell what we owe to the Mutual Admiration Society of which
Shakspeare, and Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher were members? Or to that of
which Addison and Steele formed the centre, and which gave us the Spectator? Or to that
where Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Burke, and Reynolds, and Beauclerk, and Boswell,
most admiring among all admirers, met together? Was there any great harm in the fact
that the Irvings and Paulding wrote in company? or any unpardonable cabal in the literary
union of Verplanck and Bryant and Sands, and as many more as they chose to associate
with them?
The poor creature does not know what he is talking about, when he abuses this noblest of
institutions. Let him inspect its mysteries through the knot-hole he has secured, but not
use that orifice as a medium for his popgun. Such a society is the crown of a literary
metropolis; if a town has not material for it, and spirit and good feeling enough to
organize it, it is a mere caravansary, fit for a man of genius to lodge in, but not to live in.
Foolish people hate and dread and envy such an association of men of varied powers and
influence, because it is lofty, serene, impregnable, and, by the necessity of the case,
exclusive. Wise ones are prouder of the title M. S. M. A. than of all their other honors put
together.
- All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called "facts." They are the
brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who does not know fellows that always have an
ill-conditioned fact or two which they lead after them into decent company like so many
bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient
generalization, or pleasant fancy? I allow no "facts" at this table. What! Because bread is
good and wholesome and necessary and nourishing, shall you thrust a crumb into my
windpipe while I am talking? Do not these muscles of mine represent a hundred loaves of
bread? and is not my thought the abstract of ten thousand of these crumbs of truth with
which you would choke off my speech?
[The above remark must be conditioned and qualified for the vulgar mind. The reader
will of course understand the precise amount of seasoning which must be added to it
before he adopts it as one of the axioms of his life. The speaker disclaims all
responsibility for its abuse in incompetent hands.]
This business of conversation is a very serious matter. There are men that it weakens one

to talk with an hour more than a day's fasting would do. Mark this that I am going to say,
for it is as good as a working professional man's advice, and costs you nothing: It is better
to lose a pint of blood from your veins than to have a nerve tapped. Nobody measures
your nervous force as it runs away, nor bandages your brain and marrow after the
operation.
There are men of esprit who are excessively exhausting to some people. They are the
talkers who have what may be called JERKY minds. Their thoughts do not run in the
natural order of sequence. They say bright things on all possible subjects, but their
zigzags rack you to death. After a jolting half-hour with one of these jerky companions,
talking with a dull friend affords great relief. It is like taking the cat in your lap after
holding a squirrel.
What a comfort a dull but kindly person is, to be sure, at times! A ground-glass shade
over a gas-lamp does not bring more solace to our dazzled eyes than such a one to our
minds.
"Do not dull people bore you?" said one of the lady-boarders,--the same that sent me her
autograph-book last week with a request for a few original stanzas, not remembering that
"The Pactolian" pays me five dollars a line for every thing I write in its columns.
"Madam," said I, (she and the century were in their teens together,) "all men are bores,
except when we want them. There never was but one man whom I would trust with my
latch-key."
"Who might that favored person be?"
"Zimmermann."
- The men of genius that I fancy most have erectile heads