At nine o'clock the little bar parlour of Tregarthen's was nearly full. It is a very little room, low as well as little, therefore it is easily filled. And though it is the principal club-room of Hugh Town, where the better sort and the notables meet, it can easily accommodate them all. They do not, however, meet every evening, and they do not all come at once. There is a wooden settle along the wall, beautifully polished by constant use, which holds four: a smaller one beside the fire, where at a pinch two might sit; there is a seat in the window which also might hold two, but is only comfortable for one. A small round table only leaves room for one chair. This makes sitting accommodation for nine, and when all are present, and all nine are smoking tobacco like one, the atmosphere is convivially pungent. This evening there were only seven. They consisted of the two young men whose perils on the deep you have just witnessed; a Justice of the Peace--but his office is a sinecure, because on the Scilly Isles virtue reigns in every heart; a flower-farmer of the highest standing; two other gentlemen weighed down with the mercantile anxieties and interests of the place--they ought to have been in wigs and square brown coats, with silver buckles to their shoes; and one who held office and exercised authority. The art of conversation cannot be successfully cultivated on a small island, on board ship, or in a small country town. Conversation requires a continual change of company, and a great variety of topics. Your great talker, when he inconsiderately remains too long among the same set, becomes a bore. After a little, unless he goes away, or dies, or becomes silent, they kill him, or lock him up in an asylum. At Tregarthen's he would be made to understand that either he or the rest of the population must leave the archipelago and go elsewhere. In some colonial circles they play whist, which is an excellent method, perhaps the best ever invented, for disguising the poverty or the absence of conversation. At Tregarthen's they do not feel this necessity--they are contented with their conversation; they are so happily contented that they do not repine even though they get no more than an observation dropped every ten minutes or so. They are not anxious to reply hurriedly; they are even contented to sit silently enjoying the proximity of each other--the thing, in fact, which lies at the root of all society. The evening is not felt to be dull, though there are no fireworks of wit and repartee. Indeed, if Douglas Jerrold himself were to appear with a bag full of the most sparkling epigrams and repartees, nobody would laugh, even when he was kicked out into the cold and unappreciative night--the stars have no sense of humour--as a punishment for impudence.