Talk-Stoppers 1 Social Grievances: I. A Journey in Search of Nothing 22 Nooks and Corners of History: I. A Queen's Revenge 48 Social Grievances: II. A Petition to the Novel-Writers 72 Fragments of Personal Experience: I. Laid Up in Lodgings 90 Sketches of Character: II. A Shockingly Rude Article 135 Nooks and Corners of History: II. The Great (Forgotten) Invasion 152 Curiosities of Literature: I. The Unknown Public 169 Social Grievances: III. Give us Room! 192 Curiosities of Literature: II. Portrait of an Author, Painted by his Publisher 205 Fragments of Personal Experience: II. My Black Mirror 250 Sketches of Character: III. Mrs. Badgery 274 MY MISCELLANIES. SKETCHES OF CHARACTER.--I. TALK-STOPPERS. We hear a great deal of lamentation now-a-days, proceeding mostly from elderly people, on the decline of the Art of Conversation among us. Old ladies and gentlemen with vivid recollections of the charms of society fifty years ago, are constantly asking each other why the great talkers of their youthful days have found no successors in this inferior present time. Where--they inquire mournfully--where are the illustrious men and women gifted with a capacity for perpetual outpouring from the tongue, who used to keep enraptured audiences deluged in a flow of eloquent monologue for hours together? Where are the solo talkers, in this degenerate age of nothing but choral conversation?