Page:Romance & Reality 2.pdf/227

Rh will refer quite as much to the author as to his work. But, while on the subject of this "silent hour," what an unanswerable answer it is to those who calumniate the sex as possessing the preponderance of loquacity! Men do talk much more than women. What woman ever stood and talked seven hours at or about a schoolmaster, as has been done? What woman ever goes to charities, to vestries, &c. for the mere sake, it seems to me, of speaking? But "If lions were painters" is as true now as in the days of Æsop. Goëthe said of talking, what Cowper said of domestic felicity, that it was Mrs. Trefusis was quite of this opinion. The present quiet was as dreadful to her as to a patriot. She moved from place to place, from person to person. To one lady she spoke of her children—hinted that the measles were very much about—and mentioned an infallible remedy for the toothache. The blonde of one lady threw her into raptures—the bérêt of another. She endeavoured to animate one of her more juvenile friends by mentioning a conquest she had made the evening before, which