Los Angeles herald. [volume] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1890-1893, 1891-11-08
THE ART OF CONVERSATION.


The man who thoroughly understands
the art of conversation, all it means and
demands, may be considered to have
mastered one of the most important
departments of the great art of living.
As conversation is the most common
and frequent form of intercourse be-
tween man and his fellows, to have
grasped its significance and its princi-
Piles, is to have grasped just theory of
all the ordinary human relations.
Superficial people who are content to
take words very much as they find
them, think that conversation is the art
of talking. There could not be greater
blunder. 1t would be much more truly
expressed by defining it "a the art of
being silent. Any blockhead is able to
talk. To know when and how to be
silent is the gift of the wise.
The common phrase, good talker, is
more usually than notapplied to one who
is profoundly ignorant of what it is that
conversation means. AS a rule, the
persons with the most universal reputa-
| ton for good talk are its sworn foes.
lhCy hotO tAO AuOAO ho W NO SOU up Do
patterns OF conversation than a popular
preacher, or temperance lecturer, or a
public reciter. Preaching or lecturing
is, in it's way, just as little conversation
as is the utterance of the protested
talker. Among other evils, the talker
is pretty sure to be aware of his reputa-
ton, and therefore to be constantly on
the strain in order to maintain it.
Effort may beget talk, but the charms
of conversation are spontaneity and free
dom from self-consciousness. 1t is here
as it is with literary style. Style is the
unaffected and unconscious outcome
of the authors habitual way of
thinking and feeling about things.
The moment he begins to study style
for styles sake, he inevitably becomes
stilted, rhetorical, and to wholesome
taste intensely disagreeable.
The protested stylist is a creature as
little to be endured in literature, as the
clipping of lockwood into peacocks, is to
be endured in landscape gardening.
The only way to arrive at lucid or a
sympathetic style is to acquire lucid
habits of thought, and to cultivate hui
man moods. If an author thinks little
OF his style and much of his subject,
and what is due to his own mind and
character, his style will take care OF
itself. 1t is the same with converse
ton. The same qualities which make a
man right-living person will of them
selves make him good in conversing.
To live we'll one must have a
lively intellect and right feeling;
to converse we'll you want no more.
Special training for conversational pur-
poses is a superfuity; nay, is worse
than a superfluity, just as washes and
cosmetics are superhuous for the skin or
hair.
1t is provoking perhaps, to suppose
that there is any field in which advice
is impotent, though some philosophers
profess to find it surprising that in any
field it should have any power. 1t is an
unspeakable comfort to the mediocre
mind to hold fast to faith, through be-
Lief in the efficacy of precepts. III the
world could only receive an impulse
from the multitude of precepts and con-
victlons which abound on every subject,
from making the best OF both worlds,
down to playing at croquet, we
should all get on with exquisite ease
and rapidity combined.
There is no subject under the sun in
which one is not sure to excel, provided
excellence were the certain results of
skilfull codes OF rules. The theory is
that if we want to do anything, we need
no more than to buy and ponder the
green handbook. Do you desire to
swim, for example? Then buy hand
book on swimming. The water may be
dispensed with until you have mastered
the art. Is man ambitious OF shining
in conversation? Let him mediate the
precepts contained in the hand
book of conversation. The truth
is that handbook for CONVEX
sation, to be complete, must also
be perfect handbook of morals,
manners, literature and most other SUBJ
iects. AS the whole of a mans thinking
and feeling shines through his de-
meanor in society and through his con-
versation, complete manual of CONVEX
sation would be indirectly a complete
manual of conduct. People write and
talk as II conversation were apart from
man himself, like his garments; as if
he could choose its cut and material
quite irrespective of the rest of him
self. They think that rules for talking
will make man successful in converse
ton, just as rules of etiquette will warn
| him not to eat peas with knife, and
not to bite his bread. They forget that
etiquette is an affair of conversation.
There is nothing in the nature
of things which makes it any
more proper to break bread
than to bite it, or, if you are sdroit
enough not to cut yourself, there is no
eternal principle infringed by using
knife instead of fork. These are
things which anybody may learn by
rule. To say to man, Do not bite thy
bread, is one thing; to say to him, Do
not be dull, is another and very differ
ent thing.
To comply with the first precept, it is
only necessary THAT he, should be at
tentive for timefwhile he is eating his
dinner. To comply with the second, he
must dig down to the very foundation
of his nature, which is obviously
rather serious and lengthy process.
| Excusable.
| Young Mother-HOrrOrSl Hara'a an ar