How many a time an energetic man, society-bound, must long to kick over a few afternoon tea-tables, and smash his way out through bric-à-brac and chit-chat to freedom and power!

I could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton; but I would not call that man my friend who should be offended with the "divine chit-chat of Cowper."

I am jealous of your fraternizing with Bowles, when I think you relish him more than Burns or my old favorite, Cowper, But you conciliate matters when you talk of the "divine chit-chat" of the latter; by the expression I see you thoroughly relish him.

"Launched on the bosom of the silver Thames," one glides to Hampton Court amid youth and gayety and melting music; and for the nonce this realm of "airs, flounces, and furbelows," of merry chit-chat, and of pleasurable excitement, seems as important as it is to those exquisite creatures of fancy that hover about the heroine, assiduous guardians of her "graceful ease and sweetness void of pride."

He joins in all the chit-chat, is one of the domestic circle, and tells funny little anecdotes.

I must have books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, scandal, jokes, ambiguities, and a thousand whim-whams, which their simpler taste can do without.

It was served upstairs, and there, adds the same writer, 'he would pass about five o'clock, and generally resuming his place on the sofa, would sit till two in the morning, in miscellaneous chit-chat, full of singular anecdotes, strokes of wit, and acute observations, occasionally sending for books, or curiosities, or passing to the library, as any reference happened to arise in conversation.

This Auspex was the cleverest imaginable man for jokes and chit-chat, for despising all mankind, gratifying his friends, and making reprisals upon his enemy.

"An American carries his civility one step further; if he meets you afterwards, in other company, the fact that he has seen you at this friend's and had an agreeable chit-chat is introduction enough, and, unless there is something peculiar in your case, he will ever after know you and be your friend.

It welcomed also the homely, simple sweetness, what Coleridge and Lamb called the "divine chit-chat," of Cowper, whose "Task" appeared in the preceding year.

In a few minutes, wine and cigars were ordered, and the three spent an hour or so, in drinking, smoking, and chit-chat of no elevating or refined character.

Quinby favoured me with a narrow though a sidelong look; the room was very full, and in the general chit-chat, punctuated by the constant clicking of the heavy balls, there was very little danger of our being overheard.

Not with rioters and noisy drunkards, but with parties at separate tables, often consisting of a man, his wife and children, all sipping their pot of beer poured into very small glasses to prolong the pleasure, and the gratification of drinking seeming less than that of the cheerful chit-chat, which is the main object of the whole assemblage.

I could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton, but I would not call that man my friend, who should be offended with the 'divine chit-chat of Cowper.'"

But I must reserve chit-chat to the end of my letter, and first give you a minute account of all your friends.

Such scraps of silly gossip are not biography; they may do for tea-table chit-chat, but show very feebly in the place where one looks for something like a philosophical criticism on the mind of so extraordinary a man as Shelley.

(From Chit-chat, in the Magazine of Natural History, by Dovaston and Von Osdat.) Dov.

The style, indeed, is mere chit-chat.

For the rest, he is delightful company, light-hearted as a boy, full of autobiographical chit-chat about Harrow and Trinity, and India and Holly Lodge, eagerly interested in his friends' concerns, brimming over with enthusiasm, never bored, never flat, never stale.

If any one wishes to know what the late Master of Balliol was really like in his social aspect, I should refer him, not to the two volumes of his Biography, nor even to the amusing chit-chat of Mr. Lionel Tollemache's Recollections, but to the cleverest work of a very clever Balliol manMr.

How much happier should we live if the time, so often wasted in chit-chat, were occupied in prayer.

With reference to a party of friends, who were invited to meet her, she says, 'After tea the females being left alone, each of us prayed; this is a blessed way to cut off religious chit-chat.' "Quarterly Fast.

He for a considerable time used to visit the green room, and seemed to take delight in dissipating his gloom by mixing in the sprightly chit-chat of the motley circle then to be found there.

Steele was responsible for many more periodicals, such as the Englishman, the Lover, the Reader, Town Talk, the Tea-Table, Chit-Chat, the Plebeian, and the Theatre, most of which had a rather ephemeral existence.

Horace writes for Figaro and the Petit Journal pour RireThéophile does feuilleton workromances, chit-chat, and political squibsrubbish, of course; but clever rubbish, and wonderful when one considers what boys they both are, and what dissipated lives they lead.