We have said he was an adept in listening: indeed it was averred that he obtained a large estate by the quiet attention with which he listened to the toothless twaddle of a senile Dowager--age's garrulity--the echo of an empty hall which thought has quitted. He rarely, however, in any case interrupts the driest drawler, for he has tutored attendants who understand not only whom to admit, but also a hint as to the proper duration of a conference, and these with ready message cut short the intruder's dull delay. If, also, in public or private he be himself interrupted, he never loses his temper or the point; resumes the thread just where it was broken, and with polite, yet unswerving pertinacity, directs the minds of all to the wished-for end, in spite of every purposed or involuntary attempt to distract them into devious channels. Some men, like jackdaws, proclaim with noisy loquaciousness their most private matters, alarming the public horizon with egotistical chatter about their own nests: "tact," as the master of it, Cromwell, knew, acknowledges the "safety of silence," and like the rat,--a subtle politician!--saps vast fabrics by an insidious, unheard gnawing underground!
Briefly, this man listens much, speaks little--mostly the latter when he would conceal his thoughts--keeps his eyes and ears open, his mouth and his heart closed. With numerous admirers, he has many enemies--the latter's hostility is however repressed by fear, and the regard of the other, somehow, never ripens into love; it may be that selfishness, the concomitant of tact, forbids affection. We have shown the fair side of the portrait hitherto drawn from the respectable sphere (as it is called) of life; but it has its evil counterpart or reverse to be seen in a notorious receiver of stolen property, ever watched by, yet ever baffling the police,--one, who, having helped many to the hulks, has by sheer cunning (tact in motley!) himself escaped. The consciences of both are similarly guided by the law of public not private morality--interest is the ruling principle of both; even the drudgery of each assimilates, for a life of dissimulation is a very hard one. What actor would be _always_ on the stage? Both are commercial men in a sense, though one lives at the west-end, the other near Seven-dials; sometimes they meet,--the rich, upon--the poor, before, the bench--"the Justice" in silk "frowns" on the speciously "simple thief" in rags; yet nature has cut the countenances of both from the same piece, and true it is that her "one touch," the prevalence of tact, successful here,--in hard confronting there--renders both "akin."