It beats the Tariff, or Roosevelt,
or Bryan, or when this war is going to end, if ever, if you are a
man talking to other men; and it is more exciting even than the
question of how Mrs. Vernon Castle will wear her hair this season,
if you are a woman talking to other women.
For mixed companies a whale is one of the best and the easiest
things to talk about that I know of. In regard to whales and
their peculiarities you can make almost any assertion without fear
of successful contradiction. Nobody ever knows any more about
them than you do. You are not hampered by facts. If someone
mentions the blubber of the whale and you chime in and say it may
be noticed for miles on a still day when the large but emotional
creature has been moved to tears by some great sorrow coming into
its life, everybody is bound to accept the statement. For after
all how few among us really know whether a distressed whale sobs
aloud or does so under its breath? Who, with any certainty, can
tell whether a mother whale hatches her own egg her own self or
leaves it on the sheltered bosom of a fjord to be incubated by
the gentle warmth of the midnight sun? The possibilities of the
proposition for purposes of informal debate, pro and con, are
apparent at a glance.
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