I have often noticed, however, that a hopelessly dull discourse acts INDUCTIVELY, as electricians would say, in developing strong mental currents.

I am ashamed to think with what accompaniments and variations and fioriture I have sometimes followed the droning of a heavy speaker,--not willingly,--for my habit is reverential,--but as a necessary result of a slight continuous impression on the senses and the mind, which kept both in action without furnishing the food they required to work upon.
If you ever saw a crow with a king-bird after him, you will get an image of a dull speaker and a lively listener.

The bird in sable plumage flaps heavily along his straight-forward course, while the other sails round him, over him, under him, leaves him, comes back again, tweaks out a black feather, shoots away once more, never losing sight of him, and finally reaches the crow's perch at the same time the crow does, having cut a perfect labyrinth of loops and knots and spirals while the slow fowl was painfully working from one end of his straight line to the other.
[I think these remarks were received rather coolly.

A temporary boarder from the country, consisting of a somewhat more than middle-aged female, with a parchment forehead and a dry little "frisette" shingling it, a sallow neck with a necklace of gold beads, a black dress too rusty for recent grief and contours in basso-rilievo, left the table prematurely, and was reported to have been very virulent about what I said.

So I went to my good old minister, and repeated the remarks, as nearly as I could remember them, to him.