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 in that unmeaning gabble which it would be profanation to call language: and which even those, whom long experience in "the dreary intercourse of daily life" has screwed up to such a pitch of stoical endurance that they can listen to it by the hour, have branded with the ignominious appellation of "small talk." Small indeed!—the absolute minimum of the infinitely little.

Go on. I have said all I intended to say on the favourable side. I shall have great pleasure in hearing you balance the argument.

I expect you to confess that I shall have more than balanced it. A ball-room is an epitome of all that is most worthless and unamiable in the great sphere of human life.