, 1888-11-07
NATIONS AS TAKERS.
LEADING CONVERSATIONAL cHARAc-
TERIsTICS OF DIFFERENT PEOPLE.


Chattrr,ng Nations of Europc--5Iling-
uaI Raccs-The Jew-Teutonic Peoples.
The Scot, even If he will not converse,
will usually argue, and the LOndoner viii
tell anecdotes; but the English peasant is,
as a rule, Il person with 1t gift for empty
mCd!EItIOn. The irish PU8sGUr,- UT the
other hand, talks readily and pleasantly,
in short sentences usually full of express
sion; so does the Italian, who knows less
than the Englishman; and SO does the
Bengalee, who knows hardly more than
the animals aroun him. The latter, in
deed, talks frequently and with auima-
ton, though almost always ON n single
subject-mouey. II has been said by one
who wrote after years of observation,
that if tyye Bengalees talk for five minutes
the word paisa pence will always be
heard; but talk they do, with remark,
answer, rejoindcr and repartee. What is
the cause of that difference?
Professor Mahatry suggests al answer
which seems to us to SAVIOR of artificial
~profundity, and therefore to be very I'M
like Professor MahafTy, who usually says
his true thought, even if it is n little out
of place: II fancy the causes of these So
cial differences are rather recent than
primeval; they do not depend directly
tHNA 1890 "a AAAA II L ma
quote the opinion of a wise friend on this
large question, i should say that one chief
cause of the talking or social ability of
some peasantries over others, is the fact
that their proXimate ancestors were a
bilingual people. Thus the great major
iy of west Irish and north Scotch peas
ants are descended from grandfathers
whose talk oscillated between Celtic and
English, and who were, therefore, CON
stantly educated in intelligence by the
problem of translating ideas from one
language into another, not to mention the
distinct inheritance of the special ideas
peculiar to each and every language.
This is an education in expression, in
thinking, and therefore in conversation.
wholly foreign to the English midland
boor, who has never heard more thai 200
or 300 words of a very rude provincial
dialect of English, and therefore COM
mands neither the words nor the ideas of
the outlying provinces"
\ theory of that kind should explain the
facts, and this does not EXPLAIN them. II
it were true, the women would be as 81
lent us the men, having even less of cul-
ture, but they are not. On the contrary,
the wives of those silent rural folk can
often chat a~greeably, and give and take in
conversation. They do not only narrate;
they discuss and are capable even of
rough b~adinage, which helps the argument
directly on. Moreover, the chattering
peoples-the N~eapohtans, for instance
are not b%ilingual; and the best takers in
the world, the born Parisians, spring of
ancestors who knew no language but their
own. The border peoples, too, are not
exceptionally ~talkative, MS we see in
Wales; and the Swiss peasantry, for all
their linguistic requirements, are ex-
ceptionally taciturn. Nobody would say
that an Alsatian, accustomed from child
hood to two languages, and those among
the richest in the world, was more CON
versatile than a Lyonnais, who hardly
knows of the existence of two, while a
Partisan seems nimble in talk by the side
Of n BruXellois, who is never for an in
slant out of the hearing Of two tongues.
The man who is bilingual, either in fact
or by tradition, has no doubt Il larger
command of words; but is the command
of words the key to the secret? If so, why
DO the women, as we said before, talk bet
ter than the men, and why are not all the
cultivated equally capable of CONVERSE
ton? How often can a professors COM
pGratively ignorant wife talk well, while
the learned husband is incapable of con-
vcrsation! And, finally, if the difference
is "A question of knowledge of any sort,
why does wine so often, and up to n point,
brighten talk and takers? 1t cannot add
thoughts, or increase a limited repertoire
of words. At most, alcohol, in any
form, can but impart courage, and per-
haps n little speed to the movements of
the brain. We should say that the power
of talk, in the sense of conversing, came
first of all from the wish to talk, the de-
sire to manifest one's self to others, and
that this was in the first instance exactly
what the professor says it is not-a race
popularity. Nothing runs more CON-
pletely in families than the habit of con
versing much, and a race is nothing but n
big family. Did Mr.. MahafTy, in his
whole life, ever meet a jew who could not
talk, or who did not wish to talk, or who, if
circumstances favored him, did not talk a
little too readily? Persians and Arabs,
who know nothing, chat twice as readily
rs Scotch farmers, who know much; and
the populace of Naples, men as ignorant
as the fishes of their bay, talk, and talk
well all day. The Greeks have been chat
terboXes for 5000 years, and have lived
for 800 of them side by side with Turks,
who in the lower classes scarcely converse
Mt all. 1t is not even true, so far as our
observation goes, that, outside the Teu-
tonic race, class makes any perceptible
difference, an Italian or Greek or French
workman talking quite as readily as his
superisrs, and enjoying talk quite as
much.
We fear that the truth is one which
Professor Mahaffy's courtesy induces him
only to hint, viz, that the Teuton of all
three branches-German, Englishman and
American-though he is filling the world,
and may possibly master it, is n slow
witted being, who does not by nature
enjoy talk, but rather feels it a worry to
be called on to understand words and
make n response to them so quickly. He
does not take in readily, and therefore
has little pleasure in hearing talk; and he
cannot give out quickly, and therefore
suffers in uttering it. AS to the cause of
such a popularity of race it is tiresome,
or ut all events useless, even to speculate.
Spectator.
Peculiarities of ichens.
The lichen is remarkable for the great