There is no occasion upon which this precious element of talkability
comes out stronger than when we are on a journey.  Travel with a
cheerless and easily discouraged companion is an unadulterated
misery.  But a cheerful comrade is better than a waterproof coat and
a foot-warmer.

I remember riding once with my lady Graygown fifteen miles through a
cold rainstorm, in an open buckboard, over the worst road in the
world, from LAC A LA BELLE RIVIERE to the Metabetchouan River.  Such
was the cheerfulness of her ejaculations (the only possible form of
talk) that we arrived at our destination as warm and merry as if we
had been sitting beside a roaring camp-fire.

But after all, the very best thing in good talk, and the thing that
helps it most, is FRIENDSHIP.  How it dissolves the barriers that
divide us, and loosens all constraint, and diffuses itself like some
fine old cordial through all the veins of life--this feeling that we
understand and trust each other, and wish each other heartily well!
Everything into which it really comes is good.  It transforms
letter-writing from a task into a pleasure.  It makes music a
thousand times more sweet.  The people who play and sing not at us,
but TO us,--how delightful it is to listen to them!  Yes, there is a
talkability that can express itself even without words.  There is an
exchange of thought and feeling which is happy alike in speech and
in silence.  It is quietness pervaded with friendship.

Having come thus far in the exposition of Montaigne, I shall
conclude with an opinion of my own, even though I cannot quote a
sentence of his to back it.

The one person of all the world in whom talkability is most
desirable, and talkativeness least endurable, is a wife.