Sheer, nervous inability to listen is responsible for one phase of interruption to conversation. It is the interruption of the wandering eye which tells that one's words have not been heard. "The person next to you must be bored by my conversation, for it is going into one of your ears and out of the other," said a talker rather testily to his inattentive dinner-companion whose absent-minded and tardy replies had been snapping the thread of the thought until it grew intolerable. She was perhaps only a little less irritating than the man who became so unconscious in the habit of inattention that on one occasion his converser had scarcely finished when he began abstractedly: "Yes, very odd, very odd," and told the identical anecdote all over again.

There is another phase of interrupting which proceeds from the jerky talker whose remarks are not provoked by what his conversational partner is saying, with observation and answer, affirmation and rejoinder, but who waits breathlessly for a pause to jump in and tell some thought of his own. Of this sort of talker Dean Swift wrote: "There are people whose manners will not suffer them to interrupt you directly, but what is almost as bad, will discover abundance of impatience, and lie upon the watch until you have done, because they have started something in their own thoughts, which they long to be delivered of. Meantime, they are so far from regarding what passes that their imaginations are wholly turned upon what they have in reserve, for fear it should slip out of their memory; and thus they confine their invention, which might otherwise range over a hundred things full as good, and that might be much more naturally introduced." An anecdote or a remark will keep. We are not under the necessity of begrudging every moment that shortens our own innings; of interrupting our companion by our looks and voting him an impediment to our own much better remarks.

A less objectionable phase of interrupting, because it as often springs from kind thought as from arrogance, is that of the conversationalist so anxious to prove his quickness of perception that he assumes to know what you are going to say before you have finished your sentence in your own mind, and to put an interpretation on your arguments before you are done stating them. His interpretation is as often exactly the opposite of your own as it is identical; and, right or wrong, the foisted-in explanation serves only to interrupt the sequence of thought. As early as 1832 a writer in the New England Magazine waxed wroth to pugilistic outburst against this form of interruption: "I have heard individuals praised for this, as indicating a rapidity of mind which arrived at the end before the other was half through. But I should feel as much disposed to knock a man down who took my words out of my mouth, as one who stole my money out of my pocket. Such a habit may be a credit to one's powers, but not to one's modesty or good feeling. What is it but saying, 'My dear sir, you are making a very bungling piece of work with that sentence of yours; allow me to finish it for you in proper style.'" Tho one is inclined to feel that this author could well have reserved his verbal scourging for more irritating forms of impertinent interruption, it is nevertheless true that people are more entirely considerate who allow their conversational partners to finish their statements without fear of being tript up.

It is only lack of discrimination on the part of glib talkers to suppose that those who express themselves more deliberately are less interesting in conversation. The pig is one of the most rapidly loquacious of animals, yet no one would say that the pig is an attractive conversationalist. Pope may have been slow in forming the mosaic of symbols which express so superbly the fact that

"Words are like leaves; and where they most abound Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found,"

but his deliberateness did not dim the wisdom, or interest, or beauty, of his lines. Slow talkers, if allowed to express themselves in their own way, only add to the attractiveness of any group. Why should we enjoy characterization more in literature and in drama than in life? "Good talking," says Stevenson, "is declarative of the man; it is dramatic like an impromptu piece of acting where each should represent himself to the greatest advantage; and that is the best kind of talk where each speaker is most fully and candidly himself, and where, if you should shift the speeches round from one to another, there would be the greatest loss in significance and perspicuity."

The Gradgrinds of society who are always coming down upon us with some horrible and unnecessary piece of fact are another form of interruption to good conversation. They stop you to remind you that the accident happened in Tremont Street, not in Boylston; and they suspend a pertinent point in the air to inform you that it was Mr. Jones's eldest sister, not his youngest, who was abroad at the time of the San Francisco earthquake. If some one refers to an incident as having occurred on the tenth of the month, they deem it necessary to stop the talker because they happen to know that it was on the ninth. People are often their own Gradgrinds, interrupting themselves in the midst of a narration to correct some trivial mistake which has no bearing one way or the other on what they are saying.

Many otherwise good talkers are at times afflicted with aphasia and lose the simplest and most familiar word at just the crucial moment—the very word which is necessary to the point they wish to make. This happens more often with elderly people; and it was on such an occasion that I heard a catchword fiend, a moderately young person, use her pet phrase as a red lantern to stop better, if more halting, talk. "Mr. Black was telling me to-day about Mr. White's being appointed to —— what do you call that office?" implored the dignified matron. "Just call it anything, Mrs. Gray, a bandersnatch, or a buttonhook, or a battering-ram," impertinently suggested the glib undergraduate who had been applying these words to everybody and everything, and who continued to do so until she had found a new catchword as the main substance of her conversation. The infirmities of age, as well as the mellowed wisdom of it, deserve the utmost consideration, especially from youth; and in this instance deference in aiding the elderly woman to find her word would have been more graceful than pleasantry, even if the pleasantry were of a less spurious kind.

Conversation suffers from outside interruptions as much as from interrupting directly within the conversational group. Bringing very little children into grown-up company led Charles Lamb to propose the health of Herod, King of the Jews! Society is no place for young children; and if older children are permitted to be present they should be led to listen attentively and to join the conversation modestly. If a child ventures an opinion or asks a question concerning the topic he is hearing discust, he should be welcomed into the conversation. His views should, in this case, be given the same consideration, no matter how immature, as the riper views of his elders; he should be made a legitimate part of the conversational group. Either this, or he should be sent entirely away. There are no half measures in a matter of this sort. The parent's reiterated commands to "keep quiet," or "to be seen and not heard," interrupt as much as the child's prattle. Furthermore, many a child's natural aptitude for talking well has been crusht by older people stifling every thought the youngster attempted to utter. A bright young girl of my acquaintance was so supprest by her parents from the age of seven to fifteen that she early acquired the habit of never opening her mouth without first getting the consent of father's eyebrow, or mother's. A child thus treated in youth grows up to be timid and halting in speech; his individuality and spontaneity are smothered. Either let the children talk, meanwhile teaching them how to converse, or send them off to themselves where they may at least express their thoughts to citizens of their own age. The very best conversational lesson that a child can be given is imparted when he is taught not to interrupt; when he is made to understand that he must either talk according to the niceties of thoroughly good conversation or must be sent away.

It is often contended that children are out of place at a dining-table where even tolerable conversation is supposed to be carried on. This view is no doubt well taken regarding formal dinners; but round the family board is the best place in the world to implant in children the principles of good conversation and interesting table-talk. To this end family differences and unpleasantnesses should be left behind when the family goes to the table. Parents should insist, as far as possible, that their children discuss at the dining-table only the pleasant and interesting happenings of the day. "First of all," says Mr. Mahaffy, "let me warn those who think it is not worth while taking trouble to talk in their family circle, or who read the newspaper at meals, that they are making a mistake which has far-reaching consequences. It is nearly as bad as those convent schools or ladies' academies, where either silence or a foreign tongue is imposed at meals. Whatever people may think of the value of theory, there is no doubt whatever that practise is necessary for conversation; and it is at home among those who are intimate, and free in expressing their thoughts, that this practise must be sought. It is thus, and thus only, that young people can go out into the world properly provided with the only universal introduction to society—agreeable speech and manner."

Trampling on the social and conversational rights of the young was some time ago so well commented upon in The Outlook that I transfer part of the article to these pages. The editorial emphasized also the educational advantages of good table-talk in the home: "There is no educational opportunity in the home more important than the talk at table. Children who have grown up in homes in which the talk ran on large lines and touched all the great interests of life will agree that nothing gave them greater pleasure or more genuine education.... Perhaps one reason why some American children are aggressive and lacking in respect is the frivolity of the talk that goes on in some American families. If children are in the right atmosphere they will not be intrusive or impertinent. Make place for their interests, their questions, the problems of their experience; for there are young as well as old perplexities. Encourage them to talk, and meet them more than half-way by the utmost hospitality to the subjects that interest and puzzle them. Give them serious attention; do not ridicule their confusion of statement nor belittle their troubles.... Do not limit the talk at table to the topics of childhood, but make it intelligible to children. Some people make the mistake of 'talking down' to their children; of turning the conversation at table into a kind of elaborate 'baby-talk'; not realizing that they are robbing their children of hearing older people talk about the world in which they live. The child is always looking ahead, peering curiously into the mysterious world round him, hearing strange voices from it, getting wonderful glimpses into it. At night when the murmur of voices comes upstairs, he hears in it the sounds of a future full of great things.... It is not, therefore, the child of six who sits at the table and listens; it is a human spirit, eager, curious, wondering, surrounded by mysteries, silently taking in what it does not understand to-day, but which will take possession of it next year and become a torch to light it on its way. It is through association with older people that these fructifying ideas come to the child; it is through such talk that he finds the world he is to possess.... The talk of the family ought not, therefore, to be directed at him or shaped for him; but it ought never to forget him; it ought to make a place for him."

Apropos of children's appreciation of good talk, this story is told of a young son of one of the clever men of Chicago: Guests were present and the boy sat quietly listening to the brilliant conversation of his elders, when his father suggested to Paul that it was late and perhaps he had better go to bed. "Please, father, let me stay," pleaded the youngster, "I do so enjoy interesting conversation." Another and as deep a childlike appreciation comes from the classic city of our American Cambridge. The little daughter of one of its representative families had lain awake for hours upstairs straining her ears to hear the conversation from below. When her mother came into the little one's room after her guests had gone, the tiny lady said plaintively, "Mother dear, while I've been lying here all alone you were having such a liberal time downstairs." Unconscious recognition of his just right to converse occasionally with older people was exprest naively by the little son of a prominent Atlanta family when visiting friends on a plantation. "I like to stay here because you let me talk every day at the table," answered John, when his host asked him why he was pleased in the country. "Don't they let you talk every day at home, John?" "Oh, when father says 'give the kiddo a chance,' then they let me talk." This appreciation of his host's welcoming him into the conversation was a rare compliment from little John to his older friends and to their interest in child-life.

Another external and demoralizing interruption to talk is poor table-service. There can be no good conversation at table where the talk is constantly interrupted by wordy instructions to servants. A hostess who takes pride in the table-talk of her guests assures herself in advance that the maid or the butler serving the table is well trained, in order that no questions of servants can jeopardize the flow of conversation. If anything makes it necessary for serving maid or butler to confer with host or hostess, it should be done in an undertone so that conversation is not interrupted. But no matter how quietly the servant does this, the conversation is interrupted by the mere fact that the attention of the host or hostess is diverted for even a moment from the subject being discust. In the home, as in the business office, efficient help means efficient management. It is a reflection on any hostess to have her table served so badly three hundred and sixty-five days in the year that the service is an interruption to table-talk. If she were capable herself, she would have a capable, well-trained maid or butler. If a maid or butler could not be trained properly, her capability would show itself in dismissing that servant and getting one who could be trained. To the end that conversation will not be interrupted, the "Russian" method of dining-table service is preferable to all others, and is becoming as popular in America as in the rest of the world.[A]

A host and hostess can themselves, by the very atmosphere they create, become an unconscious element of interruption to table-talk. To insure fluent conversation at table, hosts must be free from worry; they must cultivate imperturbability; they must be able to ignore or smile at any accident which might happen "in the best regulated family." There is nothing more distasteful to guests than to observe that their host is anxious lest the arrangements of the hostess miscarry, or that their hostess is making herself quite wretched by a fear that the dishes will not be prepared to perfection, or over the breaking of some choice bit of crystal. At a dinner recently I saw the hostess nervous enough to weep over an accident which demolished a treasured salad bowl; and the result was that it took strong effort on the part of a self-sacrificing and friendly guest to keep up the pleasant flow of talk. How much more tactful and delightful was the manner in which another hostess treated a similar situation. The guests were startled by a crash in the butler's pantry, and every one knew from the tinkling sound that it was cut glass. After a few words of instruction quietly given, the hostess laughingly said, "I hope there is enough glass in reserve so that none of you dear people will have to drink champagne from teacups." This was not only a charming, informal way of smoothing out an awkward situation, but it gave the poor butler the necessary confidence to finish serving the dinner. Had the hostess been upset over the affair her agitation would have been communicated to the servants; and instead of one mishap there might have been several. A hostess should still "be mistress of herself tho China fall." In dinner-giving, as in life, it is the part of genius to turn disaster into advantage. "I was once at a dinner-party," said an accomplisht diner-out, "apparently of undertakers hired to mourn for the joints and birds in the dishes, when part of the ceiling fell. From that moment the guests were as merry as crickets."

Interrupting within the conversational group is perhaps the most insufferable of all impediments to rippling talk; and interruptions from without are quite as intolerable. What pleasure is there in conversation between two people, or among three or four, when the thought is interrupted every other remark? Frequent references to subjects entirely foreign to the topic under discussion give conversation much the same jerky, sputtering ineffectualness as sticking a spigot momentarily in a faucet prevents an even flow of water from a tank. People who have any feeling for really good conversation do not allow needless hindrances to destroy the continuity and joy of their intercourse with friends and acquaintances. And people who do permit these interruptions are not conversationalists; they are mere drivelers.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote A: The author, if addrest "Secretary for Mary Lavinia Greer Conklin, Post Office Box 1239, Boston, Massachusetts," would be glad to give information about the Russian method of serving, and would be pleased, also, to answer questions and to correspond with readers regarding any individual conversational situation in which they may find themselves, provided a self-addrest and stamped envelop is enclosed for reply.]



CHAPTER VII

POWER OF FITNESS, TACT, AND NICETY IN BUSINESS WORDS

Why Cultivating the Social Instinct Adds Strength to Business Persuasion—Secret of the Ability to Use Tactful and Vivid Words in Business—Essential Training Necessary to the Nice Use of Words—Business Success Depends upon Nicety and Tact More Than on Any Quality of Force.



CHAPTER VII

POWER OF FITNESS, TACT, AND NICETY IN BUSINESS WORDS

There is an aspect of business words which has to do with social tact. "The social tact of business words" sounds incongruous on first thought. Business is largely force, to be sure; but a pleasing mien is often powerful where force would fail. Training in social instinct and nicety is more essential to a man's commercial interests than is visible on the face of things. For instance:

Customer (entering store)—"I wish a tin of 'Cobra' boot polish, black."

Dealer—"Sorry, madam, we do not stock 'Cobra,' as we are seldom asked for it. Do you wish polish for the class of shoes you are wearing?"

To tell a customer abruptly, "We do not carry such-and-such a brand in stock" has the effect of leading her immediately to turn to go. This is not cordial, nor gracious, nor diplomatic; hence it is unbusiness-like. Furthermore, to tell a customer that the brand she mentions is seldom asked for is immediately to question her judgment. The dealer, in this case, lost a chance to get attention on the part of his customer by failing to infer, the moment he mentioned her shoes, that she wore a good quality, had good taste, or common sense, or some such thing. His reply could have been vastly improved by an exercise of the social instinct. To answer her with some non-committal, tactful response would open up cordial relations at once and afford the chance easily and gracefully to lead the talk to another brand of polish.

Dealer—"Do you prefer 'Cobra' polish, madam? For high-grade shoes such as you wear we find this brand more generally serviceable and liked."

Telling expression, whether in business or in the drawing-room, depends as much upon how one says a thing as upon what one says; as much upon what one refrains from saying as upon what one does say.

What is the secret of the ability to put thought into tactful as well as vivid words? Or is there a secret? There are those who invariably say the right word in the right way. The question is: how have they found it possible to do this; how have they learned; how have they brought the faculty of expression to a perfected art? Or was this ability born in them? Or, if there is a secret of proficiency, do the adroit managers of words guard their secret carefully? And if so, why?

Piano artists, and violin artists, and canvas artists, and singing artists, are uniformly proud of the persevering practise by which they win success. Why should not ready writers and ready talkers be just as proud of honest endeavor? Are they so vain of the praise of "natural facility for expression" that they seldom acknowledge the steps of progression by which they falteringly but tenaciously climb the ladder of their attainment? A few great souls and masters of words have been very honest about the ways and means by which they became skilful phrase-builders. Robert Louis Stevenson, as perfect in his talk as in his written expression, said of himself: "Tho considered an idler at school, I was always busy on my own private ends, which was to learn to use words. I kept two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. As I walked my mind was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words. As I sat by the roadside a penny version book would be in my hand, to note down the features of the scene. Thus I lived with words. And what I thus wrote was written consciously for practise. I had vowed that I would learn to write; it was a proficiency that tempted me, and I practised to acquire it. I worked in other ways also; often accompanied my walks with dialogs and often exercised myself in writing down conversations from memory. This was excellent, no doubt; but there was perhaps more profit, as there was certainly more effort, in my secret labors at home.[B] That is the way to learn expression. It was so Keats learned, and there was never a finer temperament for literature than Keats's; it was so, if we could trace it out, that all men have learned."

What, then, is the essential training necessary to the nice handling of words? The idea is quite general that an extensive vocabulary alone makes thought flow exactly off the tip of one's tongue or pen. But is this true? One should have a command of words, to be sure; one should know more descriptive words than "awful, fierce, fine, charming"—terms used in an unthinking way by people who do not concern themselves with specific adjectives. But to know how to use a vocabulary is of even more importance than to possess one. Indeed, merely to possess a vocabulary without the ability to weave the words into accurate, characterized designs on an effective background is ruinous to the success of any talker or writer. To employ an extensive vocabulary riotously is worse than to own none.

When the poet Keats wrote those well-known lines,

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever Its loveliness increases,"

the first line stood originally:

"A thing of beauty is a constant joy."

The poet knew that this was the thought he wanted, but he felt that it had not the simple, virile swing he coveted. And so the line remained for many months, "A thing of beauty is a constant joy," in spite of the author's many attempted phrasings to improve it. Finally the simple word "forever" came to him, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." Then he had it, and he knew he had it—the essential note, the exact word. Certainly the word "forever" was a part of Keats's vocabulary; he undoubtedly knew this simple word. It was not the word, but adroitness in using it, which made Keats's lines complete in their polished and natural perfection.

One of the world's worshiped piano virtuosi, who has quite as intellectual a comprehension of words as of music, was asked by the editor of a magazine to contribute biographical data and photographs for an article on musical composers. The pianiste had published no compositions, and the gracious answer swung readily into line: "If your article is to deal exclusively with musical composers, I cannot be included. I have never published any of my compositions because I feel that they cannot add anything to my reputation as a pianiste, of which I am——" Just here, as with Keats's line, vocabulary could not serve the purpose. The pianiste could have said "of which I am proud." No, a modest phrase must express honest pride—"my reputation as a pianiste which I guard sedulously," or "defend zealously." No, this the exactness and simplicity of true art rejected. Then came the simple, perfect phrasing—"my reputation as a pianiste, of which I am somewhat jealous." Unquestionably, as with Keats's word "forever," the word "jealous" was perfectly familiar. It was not any one exceptional word which was necessary, but a weaving of simple words—if I may be permitted the expression. Here, in order to get the effect desired this master-mind refrained from using a vocabulary. Words came readily enough; but the tongue was in command of silence because pretentious words failed the end. This perfection of expression is not a matter of vocabulary alone. It is more than vocabulary; it is a grappling after the really subtle and intellectual elements of the art of expression and persuasion.

Of what use all the delicately tinted tapestry threads in the world, spread out before a tapestry-worker, if he does not possess the ability to weave them into faultless designs, employing his colors sparingly here, and lavishly there?

"One's tongue and pen should be in absolute command, whether for silence or attack," says Stevenson again; and, more than on any quality of force, business success depends upon that same nicety in the use of words which selects the tactful expression, the modest and simple phrase, in the drawing-room; the sort of nicety which is unobtrusive exactness and delicacy; an artistry which in no way labels itself skilful. But underneath all, the woof of the process is social skill—that skill which is the ability to go back to unadorned first principles with the dexterity of one who has acquired the power to do the simple thing perfectly by having mastered the entire gamut of the complex.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote B: Even Stevenson acknowledged secrecy in his earlier climbings.]



CHAPTER VIII

CONCLUSION

Conversation Is Reciprocal—Good Conversationalists Cannot Talk to the Best Advantage without Confederates—As in Whist, It Is the Combination Which Effects What a Single Whist-playing Genius Cannot Accomplish—Good Conversation Does not Mark a Distinction among Subjects; It Denotes a Difference in Talkability—The Different Degrees of Talkability—Imperturbable Glibness Impedes Good Conversation—Ease with Which One May Improve One's Conversational Powers.



CHAPTER VIII

CONCLUSION

Good conversation, then, is like a well-played game of whist. Each has to give and take; each has to deal regularly round to all the players; to signal and respond to signals; to follow suit or to trump with pleasantry or jest. And neither you yourself, nor any other of the players, can win the game if even one refuses to be guided by its rules. It is the combination which effects what a single whist-playing genius could not accomplish. Good conversation, therefore, consists no more in the thing communicated than in the manner of communicating; no more than good whist consists entirely in playing the cards without recognizing even one of the rules of the game. One cannot talk well about either cabbages or kings with one whose attention wanders; with one who delivers a sustained soliloquy, or lecture, and calls it conversation; with one who refuses to enter into amicable discussion; or, when in, does nothing but contradict flatly; with one who makes abrupt transitions of thought every time he opens his mouth; with one, in short, who has never attempted to discover even a few of the thousand and one essential hindrances and aids to conversation. As David could not walk as well when sheathed in Saul's armor, so even nimble minds cannot do themselves justice when surrounded by people whose every utterance is demoralizing to any orderly and stimulating exchange of ideas.

"For wit is like a rest Held up at tennis, which men do the best With the best players,"

said Sir Foppling Flutter; and few would refuse to admit that fortunate circumstances of companionship are as much a factor of good conversation as is native cleverness. Satisfactory conversation does not depend upon whether it is between those intellectually superior or inferior, or between strangers or acquaintances; but upon whether, mentally superior or inferior, known or unknown, each party to the conversation talks with due recognition of its first principles. There are, to be sure, different classes of talkers. There are those of the glory of the sun and others of the glory of the moon. It is easy enough to catch the note of the company in which one finds one's self; but the most entertaining and captivating person in the world is petrified when he can not put his finger on one confederate who understands the simplest mandates of his art, whether talking badinage or wisdom. Without intelligent listeners, the best talker is at sea; and any good conversationalist is defeated when he is the only member of a crowd of interrupters who scream each other down.

Conversation is essentially reciprocal, and when a good converser flings out his ball of thought he knows just how the ball should come back to him, and feels balked and defrauded if his partner is not even watching to catch it, much less showing any intention of tossing it back on precisely the right curve. "The habit of interruption," says Bagehot, "is a symptom of mental deficiency; it proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds." It is impossible for a good talker to talk to any advantage with a companion who does not concern himself in the least with anybody's mental processes—not even his own.

Given conversation which is marked by conformity to all its unwritten precepts, "Men and women then range themselves," says Henry Thomas Buckle, "into three classes or orders of intelligence. You can tell the lowest class by their habit of talking about nothing else but persons; the next by the fact that their habit is always to talk about things; the highest by their preference for the discussion of ideas." Discussion is the most delightful of all conversation, if the company are up to it; it is the highest type of talk, but suited only to the highest type of individuals. Therefore, a person who in one circle might observe a prudent silence may in another very properly be the chief talker. Highly bred and cultured people have attained a certain unity of type, and are interested in the same sort of conversation. "Talk depends so wholly on our company," says Stevenson. "We should like to introduce Falstaff and Mercutio, or Falstaff and Sir Toby; but Falstaff in talk with Cordelia seems even painful. Most of us, by the Protean quality of man, can talk to some degree with all; but the true talk that strikes out all the slumbering best of us comes only with the peculiar brethren of our spirits.... And hence, I suppose, it is that good talk most commonly arises among friends. Talk is, indeed, both the scene and the instrument of friendship."

On the whole, then, the very best social intercourse is possible only when there is equality. Hazlitt in one of his delightful essays has said that, "In general, wit shines only by reflection. You must take your cue from your company—must rise as they rise, and sink as they fall. You must see that your good things, your knowing allusions, are not flung away, like the pearls in the adage. What a check it is to be asked a foolish question; to find that the first principles are not understood! You are thrown on your back immediately; the conversation is stopt like a country-dance by those who do not know the figure. But when a set of adepts, of illuminati, get about a question, it is worth while to hear them talk."

If we are to have a rising generation of good talkers, by our own choice and deliberate aim social intercourse should be freed from the barbarisms which so often hamper it. Conversation at its highest is the most delightful of intellectual stimulants; at its lowest the most deadening to intellect. Better be as silent as a deaf-mute than to indulge carelessly in imperturbable glibness which impedes rather than encourages good conversation. Really clever people dislike to compete in a race with talkers who rarely speak from the abundance of their hearts and often from the emptiness of their heads. On the other hand, one can easily imagine a sage like Emerson the victim of conceited prigs, listening to their vapid conversational performances, and can readily understand why he considered conversation between two congenial souls the only really good talk.

Marked conversational powers are in some measure natural and in some acquired; "and to maintain," says Mr. Mahaffy, "that they depend entirely upon natural gifts is one of the commonest and most widely-spread popular errors.... It is based on the mistake that art is opposed to nature; that natural means merely what is spontaneous and unprepared, and artistic what is manifestly studied and artificial.... Ask any child of five or six years old, anywhere over Europe, to draw you the figure of a man, and it will always produce very much the same kind of thing. You might therefore assert that this was the natural way for a child to draw a man, and yet how remote from nature it is. If one or two children out of a thousand made a fair attempt, you would attribute this either to special genius or special training—and why? because the child had really approached nature." Just as a child, either with talent for drawing or without it, can draw a better picture of a man after he has been trained, than before, so can those not endowed by nature with ready speech polish and amend their natural defects. Neither need there be artificiality or affectation in talk that is consciously cultivated; no more indeed than it is affectation to eat with a fork because one knows that it is preferable to eating with a knife.

The faculty of talking is too seldom regarded in the light of a talent to be polished and variously improved. It is so freely employed in all sorts of trivialities that, like the dyer's hand, it becomes subdued to that it works in. Canon Ainger has declared positively that "Conversation might be improved if only people would take pains and have a few lessons." Nearly two hundred years before Canon Ainger came to this decision, Dean Swift contended that "Conversation might be reduced to perfection; for here we are only to avoid a multitude of errors, which, altho a matter of some difficulty, may be in every man's power. Therefore it seems that the truest way to understand conversation is to know the faults and errors to which it is subject, and from thence every man to form maxims to himself whereby it may be regulated, because it requires few talents to which most men are not born, or at least may not acquire, without any great genius or study. For nature has left every man a capacity for being agreeable, tho not of shining in company; and there are hundreds of people sufficiently qualified for both, who, by a very few faults that they might correct in half an hour, are not so much as tolerable." It is recorded of Lady Blessington by Lord Lennox in his Drafts on My Memory that in youth she did not give any promise of the charms for which she was afterwards so conspicuous, and which, in the first half of the nineteenth century, made Gore House in London famous for its hospitality. A marriage at an early age to a man subject to hereditary insanity was terminated by her husband's sudden death, and in 1818 she married the Earl of Blessington. Everything goes to prove that, in those few years during her first husband's life, she set herself earnestly to cultivating charm of manner and the art of conversation.

Talking well is given so little serious consideration that the average person, when he probes even slightly into the art, is as surprized as was Moliere's bourgeois gentilhomme upon discovering that he had spoken prose for forty years. Plato says: "Whosoever seeketh must know that which he seeketh for in a general notion, else how shall he know it when he hath found it?" And if what I write on this subject enables readers to know for what they seek in good conversation, even in abstract fashion, I shall be grateful. When all people cultivate the art of conversation as assiduously as the notably good talkers of the world have done, there will be a general feast of reason and flow of soul; each will then say to the other, in Milton's words,

"With thee conversing, I forget all time."



IN PREPARATION:

The Art of Drawing Others Out

Conversation versus Mere Talk

Following the Trend of the Conversation; Abrupt Transitions of Thought

Listening in Conversation

Some Common Errors in Making Introductions

Raconteurs and Their Anecdotes

Commonplaces of Conversation

Subjects for Conversation; Book Talk

The Give and Take of Talk

Distinction Between Inquisitive Questioning and "Interest Questions"

Justifiable Limits of Wit, Raillery, and Humor

The Use and Abuse of Slang

Small Talk: Glib Talkers

Adjusting "Shop" to the Time, the Place, and the Situation

Giving and Accepting Compliments

Joking and Jesting; Difference Between Pleasantry and Buffoonery

A Softened Mode of Speech

Brutal Frankness and Intellectual Honesty

Thrusting and Parrying in Conversation

The Value in Conversation of Knowing "Who's Who"

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Transcriber's note

The following changes have been made to the text:

Page 41: "it isn't so" changed to "It isn't so".

Page 65: "Tannhaueser" changed to "Tannhaeuser".

THE END