|I DO not, as a rule, thirst for the blood of my fellow-man. I am
willing that the law should in all ordinary cases take its course, but
when we begin to discuss the man who breaks into a conversation and
ruins it with his own irrelevant ideas, regardless of the feelings
of humanity, I am not a law and order man. The spirit of the "Red
Vigilanter" is roused in my breast and I hunger for the blood of that
man.
Interrupters are of two classes: First, the common plug who thinks
aloud, and whose conversation wanders with his so-called mind. He breaks
into the saddest and sweetest of sentiment, and the choicest and
most tearful of pathos, with the remorseless ignorance that marks a
stump-tail cow in a dahlia bed. He is the bull in my china shop,
the wormwood in my wine, and the kerosene in my maple syrup. I am shy in
conversation, and my unfettered flights of poesy and sentiment are rare,
but this man is always near to mar all with a remark, or a marginal
note, or a story or a bit of politics, ready to bust my beautiful dream
and make me wish that his name might be carved on a marble slab in some
quiet cemetery, far away.
Dear reader, did you ever meet this man--or his wife? Did you ever
strike some beautiful thought and begin to reel it off to your friends
only to be shut off in the middle of a sentence by this choice and
banner idiot of conversation? If so, come and sit by me, and you may
pour your woes into my ear, and I in turn will pour a few gallons into
your listening ear.
I do not care to talk more than my share of the time, but I would be
glad to arrive at a conclusion just to see how it would seem. I would be
so pleased and so joyous to follow up an anecdote till I had reached the
"nub," as it were, to chase argument home to conviction, and to clinch
assertion with authority and evidence.
The second class of interrupters is even worse. It consists of the
man--and, I am pained to state, his wife also--who see the general drift
of your remarks and finish out your story, your gem of thought or
your argument. It is very seldom that they do this as you would do it
yourself, but they are kind and thoughtful and their services are always
at hand. No matter how busy they may be, they will leave their own work
and fly to your aid. With the light of sympathy in their eyes, they
rush into the conversation, and, partaking of your own zeal, they take
the words from your mouth, and cheerfully suck the juice out of your
joke, handing back the rind and hoping for reward. That is where they
get left, so far as I am concerned. I am almost always ready to repay
rudeness with rudeness, and cold preserved gall with such acrid sarcasm
as I may be able to secure at the moment. No one will ever know how I
yearn for the blood of the interrupter. At night I camp on his trail,
and all the day I thirst for his warm life's current. In my dreams I am
cutting his scalp loose with a case-knife, while my fingers are twined
in his clustering hair. I walk over him and promenade across his abdomen
as I slumber. I hear his ribs crack, and I see his tongue hang over his
shoulder as he smiles death's mirthful smile.
I do not interrupt a man no more than I would tell him he lied. I give
him a chance to win applause or decomposed eggs from the audience,
according to what he has to say, and according to the profundity of
his profund. All I want is a similar chance and room according to my
strength. Common decency ought to govern conversation without its being
necessary to hire an umpire armed with a four-foot club, to announce who
is at the bat and who is on deck.
It is only once in a week or two that the angel troubles the waters and
stirs up the depths of my conversational powers, and then the chances
are that some leprous old nasty toad who has been hanging on the brink
of decent society for two weeks, slides in with a low kerplunk, and my
fair blossom of thought that has been trying for weeks to bloom,
withers and goes to seed, while the man with the chilled steel and
copper-riveted brow, and a wad of self-esteem on his intellectual
balcony as big as an inkstand, walks slowly away to think of some other
dazzling gem, and thus be ready to bust my beautiful phantom, and tear
out my high-priced bulbs of fancy the next time I open my mouth.