The Signature of All Things

thriving in the Missouri Territory?”
    The pale little English mite in question blinked, and seemed to have lost his capacity for speech. But Alma pushed on, asking the guest with mounting eagerness, “Do you think the plant you’re discussing might be the same one that Dioscorides mentions, sir, in Materia medica ?That would be a thrill, wouldn’t it? We have a splendid early volume of Dioscorides in our library. If you’d like, I could show it to you after dinner!”
    Here, Beatrix finally chimed in, admonishing her fourteen-year-old daughter, “I do wonder, Alma, whether it is absolutely necessary for you to put the entire world in possession of your every thought. Why not let your poor guest attempt to answer one question before you assault him withanother? Please, young man, try again. What was it you were attempting to say?”
    But now Henry was speaking again. “You didn’t even bring me cuttings, did you?” he asked the overwhelmed fellow—who by this point did not know which Whittaker he should answer first, and therefore made the grave mistake of answering nobody. In the long silence that ensued, everyone stared at him. Still, the young man could not manage to emit a single word.
    Disgusted, Henry broke the silence, turning to Alma and saying, “Ah, put it to rest, Alma. I’m not interested in this one. He hasn’t thought things through. And yet look at him! Still he sits there, eating my dinner, drinking my claret, and hoping to get my money!”
    So Alma did indeed put it to rest, pursuing no further questions on the subject of ammoniacum gum, or Dioscorides, or the tribal customs of Persia. Instead, she turned brightly to another gentleman at the table—not noticing that this second young fellow had himself turned rather pale—and asked, “So, I see by your marvelous paper that you have found some quite extraordinary fossils! Have you been able yet to compare the bone to modern samples? Do you really think those are hyena teeth? And do you still believe that the cave was flooded? Have you read Mr. Winston’s recent article on primeval flooding?”
    Meanwhile, Prudence—without anyone’s noticing—turned coolly to the stricken young Englishman beside her, the one who had just been so firmly shut down, and murmured, “Do go on.”
----
    T hat night, before bedtime, and after evening accounting and prayers, Beatrix corrected the girls, as per daily custom.
    “Alma,” she began, “polite discourse should not be a race to the finish line. You may find it both beneficial and civilized, on rare occasions, to permit your victim to actually finish a thought. Your worth as a hostess consists in displaying the talents of your guests, not crowing about your own.”
    Alma began to protest, “But—”
    Beatrix cut her off, and continued, “Moreover, it is not necessary to overlaugh at jests, once they have done their duty and caused amusement. I findlately that you are carrying on with laughter altogether too long. I never met a truly honorable woman who honked like a goose.”
    Then Beatrix turned to Prudence.
    “As for you, Prudence, while I admire that you do not engage in idle and irritating chatter, it is another thing altogether to retreat from conversation entirely. Visitors will think you are a dunce, which you are not. It would be an unfortunate stamp of discredit upon this family if people believed that only one of my daughters had the capacity to speak. Shyness, as I have told you many times, is simply another species of vanity. Banish it.”
    “My apologies, Mother,” Prudence said. “I felt unwell this evening.”
    “I believe that you think you felt unwell this evening. But I saw you with a book of light verse in your hands just before dinner, idling away quite happily as you read. Anyone who can read a book of light verse just before dinner cannot be that unwell a mere hour later.”
    “My apologies, Mother,” Prudence repeated.
    “I also wish to speak to you, Prudence, about Mr. Edward Porter’s behavior this evening at the dinner table. You should not have let that man stare at you for quite so long as you did. Engrossment of this sort is demeaning to all. You must learn how to abort this sort of behavior in men by speaking to them with intelligence and firmness about serious topics. Perhaps Mr. Porter might have awoken from his infatuated stupor sooner, had you discussed with him the Russian Campaign, for instance. It is not sufficient to be merely good, Prudence;