OF SPECIALISED CONVERSATION 179 



of Knurr and Spell has no superiority to others 

 which I have heard. 



I fancy that all kinds prove equally exasperating 

 to those who cannot join the talk, equally delight- 

 ful to those who can. 



But there is one kind of special conversation 

 which, I submit, has a peculiarly atrocious flavour 

 for the uninstructed, than which I can imagine no 

 mere game shop that can more deplorably affect 

 the enforced listener. For as no kind of talk is 

 more absorbing to the majority of people 

 than the discussion, the praise, the censure of 

 their common acquaintances, so no kind can be 

 more odious when the persons discussed are 

 unknown to the victim of this shop. For to the 

 ordinary annoyances of other people's special 

 conversation is added the keen desire to join in, 

 with which no other kind afflicts the listener. 

 Nobody wants to enter a discussion of stamp 

 collectors if he be not himself a philatelist. He 

 is bored, and there is an end of it. But if these 

 stamp collectors turn from their water-marks and 

 their errors to the idiosyncrasies of some un- 

 known James, then does the bored become the 

 frantic, for he thinks, " Did I but know this 

 James, with what point and venom could I 

 criticise him! How humorously I could take 

 him off! With what lively exaggerations could 



