their meal, and perform the actual process of deglutition with silent
attention, and only such suckings, lappings, and crunchings, as
illustrate their industry and content. It is the distinctive privilege of
man to exert his voice during his repast, and to indulge also in those
specially human cachinnations which no lower creature, except that
disreputable Australian biped known as the 'laughing jackass,' presumes
to imitate; and to these vocal exercises of the feasters respond the
endless ring and tinkle of knife and fork on china plate, and the
ministering angels in white chokers behind the chairs, those murmured
solicitations which hum round and round the ears of the revellers.

Of course, when great guns are present, and people talk _pro bono
publico_, one at a time, with parliamentary regularity, things are
different; but at an ordinary symposium, when the garrulous and diffident
make merry together, and people break into twos or threes and talk across
the table, or into their neighbours' ears, and all together, the noise is
not only exhilarating and peculiar, but sometimes perfectly
unaccountable.

The talk, of course, has its paroxysms and its subsidences. I have once
or twice found myself on a sudden in total silence in the middle of a
somewhat prolix, though humorous story, commenced in an uproar for the
sole recreation of my pretty neighbour, and ended--patched up,
_renounced_--a faltering failure, under the converging gaze of a sternly
attentive audience.

On the other hand, there are moments when the uproar whirls up in a
crescendo to a pitch and volume perfectly amazing; and at such times, I
believe that anyone might say anything to the reveller at his elbow,
without the smallest risk of being overheard by mortal. You may plan with