The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1881-11-11
Social Non-C Conductors.
[Harper,s Bazar.l

The brilliant Madame De Chevreuse declared
that she had no disnclination to die, for the
reason that she should have the delight of con
versing with all her acquaintances in the other
world. This saying of the famous duchess
fairly illustrates that esprit de sociabilite which
is so marked characteristic of the French
people. They talk instinctively at all times on
all subjects and not with voice alone, but with
feature, gesture and eloquent emphasis of the
body The English, on the other hand, both
in the native and the transplanted stock, are
taciturn and inexpensive. We Americans may
not deserve the sarcasm of the traveller who
averred that can Englishman refuses to speak
just in proportion as he has anything to say"
But the keen and urgent atmosphere in which
we live has by no means driven out of us that
English slowness and social reluctance which
we inherited with our speech.
Certain cultivated English observers, indeed,
think they perceive that the American side OF
the house tends to develop French characters
tics. But even these polite critics have not
limited that the French genius for conversation
is among our present or possible acquisitions.
One of the best English takers of the day gives
it as his deliberate conclusion that in the Eng
lishman, and by implication in the American,
neither habit nor temperament lnclines to that
sympathetic intercourse in which the pleasure
does not so much consist in the thing commu-
nicated as in the act of communication, and
that throughout our branch of the human fam
lily ''there is a solid disinclination to value and
cultivate that true art of conversation, that
rapid counter play and vivid exercise Of COM
bined intelligences, which bears to the best or
binary speech the relation which serious whist
bears to playing cards, and which presuppoSeS
not previous study, but the long and due prep
aration of the Imagination and the intellect"
This conclusion seems borne out by the fact
that so many clever and cultivated Englishmen
have been the least interesting of takers. Dry
den was saturnine and reserved; Pope, taci-
turn and timid; Cowper, absolutely silent; Ad-
olson could talk with two or three intimates,
but was dumb in general society; Hume talked
so confusedly that Horace Walpole declared he
understood nothing until he had written upon
it; Goldsmith was commonplace in the ex-
treme- Charles III. insisted on an introduction
to "Hudibras'' Butler, whose poem he thought
a masterpiece of satiric humor, and found him
so like the character he describes
"Although hehad much wit,
He was very shy of using it,
As being loath to wear it out,
And therefore bore it not about
Unless on holidays or so,
AS men THEIR pest apparel 10 -
that the disappointed king declared so great
Ounce incapable of having written the book.
Among the ablest Engishmen of our own
time the good takers can easily be numbered.
And how we'll does an American hostess sDow
the difficulty of making unfamiliar persons
conversel The raw material OF talk certainly
exists in profusion. The guests of an average
evening party have sense and sensibility. They
are well-bred and amiable. They have infor-
nation and intelligence to use it. They have
read and travelled, with candid minds and an
eagerness for knowledge. They feel, they
think, they act, wits forcible readiness. Some
of them are eminent in their callings Yet out
of these promising atoms the cleverest hostess
fails to produce that chemical combination
whose consequence is airy and brilliant talk.
A mere mechanical juxtaposition OF particles,
barren of conversational results, is too often
her best success.
These social delinquents know their short
comings and lament them, struggle to reform
and fail No sooner do they essay to entertain
some festive fellow being with amusing chat
than they fall into a we'll of silence from which
no rope of commonplaces proves long enough
to pull them up, or they find themselves utter
ing the most solemn platitudes in the manner
of Pallas Minerva, or they blunder upon the
very subject which ought not to have been
mentioned to that special interlocutor, or they
cannot invent the felicitous phrase which shall
grscefullv dismiss their bored companion to
happier fields.
by heroic will and patient endeavor, oy
courage which deserves success and a study
which commands it, some of these incapables
do become good if not brilliant takers. But
the most of them go home self abased from ev-
cry social gathering. Yet this nobest and fin
est art of social life depends far more or edu-
cation than on any extraordinary mental re-
sources or natural gifts. 1t must be cultivated
at home in the daily intercourse of the family.
Coed takers do not come out of the households
wnere tue father Is absorbed in his newspaper,
the mother lost i'll her sewing or her novel, and
the children remembered only to be rebuked
for their credtable restlessness and noise
Children trained to observe and to tell the re-
suits of their observation freely and graphical