"No, Miss Bunting, he was not deep. You remind me of an occasion some time past when reading a book of an altiloquent style. A friend of mine asked, 'Is it not deep?' I answered, 'Not deep, but drumlie.' The drumlie often looks deep, and is liable to deceive; but it is shallow, as shallow as a babbling brook, as shallow as the beauty of the rose or the human countenance. Sometimes you may think you have a pearl; but it is only a dewdrop into which a ray of light has happened to fall. Such kind of talk, wherever it may be, is only like the aurora-borealis, or like dissolving views which for the moment please. But you know, Miss Bunting, it is the light of the sun that makes the day, and it is substantial food that feeds and strengthens. "Balloons are very good things for rising in the air and floating over people's heads; but they are worthless for practical use in the stirring and necessary activities of life. Gew-gaws are pretty things to call forth the wonder of children and ignorant gazers; but the judicious pass them with an askant look and careless demeanour. A table well spread with fine-looking artificial flowers and viands may be nice for the eye, but who can satisfy his hunger and thirst with them? Thus it is with your altiloquent talkers, Miss Bunting. They give you, as a rule, only the tinsel, the varnish, the superficial, which vanishes into thin nothing under your analysis of thought or your reflection of intelligent light." XXVI. _THE DOUBLE-TONGUED._ "Think'st thou there are no serpents in the world But those who slide along the glassy sod, And sting the luckless foot that presses them? There are who in the path of social life Do bask their spotted skins in fortune's sun, And sting the soul." JOANNA BAILLIE. He is so called because he carries two tongues in one--one for your presence and one for your absence; one sweet as honey, the other bitter as gall; one with which he oils you, the other with which he stings you. In talking _with_ you he is bland and affable; but in talking _about_ you he detracts or slanders. The other night, when at your hospitable board, he was complimentary and friendly; the night after, at the hospitable board of your neighbour, in your absence, he had no good word to say of you.