A certain gentleman was once speaking to a few friends on the subject of happiness, and in giving his experience as to where it could not be found, he is said have spoken thus,-- "I sought for happiness where it could not be found; I looked for felicity where it could not be discovered; I enquired after bliss in those places, situations, and circumstances which neither bliss, nor felicity, nor happiness ever visited. Thus it remained with little change, and continued without much alteration, all through the days of my youth, the years of my juvenility, and the period of my adolescence." "Is that really your experience?" said one who was listening; "and do you intend that as a caution to us against seeking happiness in the same way?" "Most positively and assuredly I do. Profoundly impressed with the veracity of these sentiments, deeply sensible of their correctness, and heartily persuaded, and assured, and convinced of their consonance with truth, I urge and press upon your attention what I have above and before couched and expressed in such simple, and plain, and intelligible language, and language easily to be understood withal." A Pleonast, once speaking of a man who was found drowned in a canal in the neighbourhood where he lived, said,-- "He is supposed to have perpetrated, committed, and done, voluntary, willing, and of himself, destruction, suicide, and drowning, while in a mood of mental aberration, superinduced, brought about, and effected, by long indulgence in and continued habits of inhaling, drinking, and swallowing, to inebriation and drunkenness, intoxicating liquids." At one time, complaining of the effect of the air upon his lungs, which were rather delicate, the Pleonast said,-- "The ponderosity, the pressure of the ethereal elements, the regions of the atmosphere, the circumambient world, will not give me or allow me the full, the free, the unrestrained extent of liberty to exercise myself in the respiratory, functional faculties of my earthly human existence." The above illustrations may suffice to show how the Pleonast transgresses the propriety of speech in his conversation. A person in talking should endeavour to use such words as will convey his meaning, and no more. Words are only the clothing of thought, and when too numerous they encumber instead of adorn. When improperly connected, as sometimes they are by the Pleonast, they amuse and entertain rather than instruct and edify. Given thoughts clear and simple, it will not be difficult to find words which will be simple and clear also. Language and thought thus harmonised will render the one that uses them an acceptable talker to be heard, rather than a Pleonast to be ridiculed. VII. _THE SELF-DISPARAGER._