The passage through the babbler’s ears leads, apparently, not to his mind, but to his tongue. Consequently, while others [Sidenote: E] retain what is said, the loquacious person lets it all leak away, and goes about like a vessel full of noise but void of sense. Nevertheless, if we are resolved to leave no stone unturned, let us say to the babbler: _Hush, boy: in silence many a virtue lies_, and, first and foremost, the two virtues of hearing and being heard. The garrulous person can get the benefit of neither, and makes a miserable failure of the very thing he is aiming at. In other mental maladies—love of money, love of glory, love of pleasure—there is at least a chance of gaining the object pursued. But with the babbler that result can hardly happen. [Sidenote: F] What he desires is listeners, and listeners he cannot get, for they all run headlong away. If, when they are sitting in a lounge or taking a walk together, they catch sight of him approaching, they promptly pass each other the word to shift camp. When a silence occurs at some meeting, it is said that _Hermes has appeared upon the scene_. Similarly, when a chatterer comes in to a wine-party or a social circle, everybody grows mum, for [Sidenote: 503] fear of giving him an opportunity. And if he begins of his own accord to open his lips, then _As ere the storm, when the North wind blows By the headland that juts to the deep_, the prospect of being tossed and seasick is so distressing that up they get and out they go. For the same reason he finds no welcome from neighbours at a dinner or from messmates on a journey or a voyage. They merely tolerate him because they must. For he sticks to you anywhere and everywhere, seizing you by the clothes or the beard, and slapping you in the ribs. _Then are your feet most precious_, as Archilochus would say—and not only Archilochus, but that wise man Aristotle. When the latter was himself once worried [Sidenote: B] by a chatterer, who bored him with a number of silly stories and kept repeating, ‘Isn’t it wonderful, Aristotle?’ he retorted, ‘The wonder is not at that, but at any one tolerating you, when he owns a pair of legs.’ To another person of the kind, who, after a great deal of talk, remarked, ‘Master, I have wearied you with my chatter,’ he replied, ‘Not at all; I was not listening.’ Precisely so. If a chatterer insists on talking, the mind surrenders the ears to him and lets the stream pour over them on the outside, while inwardly it goes its own way, opening [Sidenote: C] and reading to itself a book of quite different thoughts. It follows that he can get no hearer either to attend to him or to believe him. A babbler’s talk is as barren of effect as the seed of a person over-prone to sexualities is said to be.