Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1880 — Story-Telling. [ARTICLE]

Story-Telling.

The question of story-telling is rather a nice one. Swift regards it as not altogether a contemptible talent, “considering how low conversation now runs among us,” but he justly remarks that the story-teller should change his company very often, “that he may not discover the weakness of his fund.” And, indeed, this is the very melancholy part of the story-teller’s life, that, however agreeable he may be as an acquaintance, no man in his senses will consent to become intimate with him and stand the fire of his eternal repetitions. We believe he never marries; even a woman’s devotion has limits. Such are the pitfalls that, according to Swift, beset the art of conversation, and his remarks apply with undiminished force to us. The list, although a long one, is still not exhaustive, as we find in Cowper some new classes of talk-spoilers. Such are the grimacers, who “assent with shrug and contradict with a twisting of the neck, are angry with a wry mouth and pleased in a caper or minuet step;” the emphatical, “who ram down every syllable with excessive vehemence and energy;” the half-swearers, “who split, and mince, and fritter their oaths into gadsbut, adsfish, and demme,” and “those who nickname God’s creatures, and call a man a cabbage, a crab, a queer cub, an odd fish, and an unaccountable muskin.” —Saturday Review.