Middletown transcript., 1896-02-15
THE ART OF CONVERSATION.

Juoe CApLcooiOu, THAI IhHtcllOu Oh LII
, voice which shall be eloquent withou
being exaggerated. People drawl ou
4 their words into long tails or eli
them into docked stumps; they loo
them on to the other with a runnin,
chain Of "ers," or they bite them OF
short, each word falling plumb an,
isolated, disconnected from all the rest
they let their labials go by the board
and they bury their RS In the recesse
| OF their larynx; they throw the accen,
on the wrong syllable, and transform
their vowels according to their liking
they say "wuz' for "was," "onnibus'
for "omnibus," and "y' are, for "yor
are;" they shoulder out all the middle
aspirates and some of the initial, and
forget that words ending in ting, >
have a final g which is neither to be
burked out of existence nor hardened
into a ringing k. All which lingual
misdemeanors they commit with a
clear conscience and light heart, be-
cause ignorant that they have COM
mitted any misdemeanor at all.
Even people Of birth and breeding,
who should be without offence in
those matters, fail in their grammar,
and say the queerest things in the
world. "These sort of things" "Who
haye you asked2" every one of them
know you;'' Between you and ~
"Neither men or women;' "No one"
as the antecedent and "they" as the
relatiye-these are just a few of the
commonest errors of daily speech of
which no one is ashamed and to which,
were you to make formal objection,
you would be thought pedant for
your pains, and laughed at when your
back was turned. If these things are
done in the green tree Of method, what
may not be looked for In the
dry of substanceP And sure it is that
we find very queer things indeed in
that dry of substance. and prove for
ourselves how the art of conversation
is reduced to its primitive elements,
which few give themselves the trouble
to embellish, and few Ito perfect.
To begin at the beginning. how sell
dom people pay undivided attention
to the conversation on hand, and how
often their thoughts wander and stray
everywhere but where they should bel
The most absurd, the most trivial
things distract them. The spider on
the wall breaks the thread of an in
thralling narrative, and the butterfly
on the lawn breaks into the gravest or
the most poetic talk, as ruthlessly as
the proverbial bull smashes into the
pr0verbial china shop. Another alum |
nus in the same school, though of a
different class, will not let you speak |
without interruption. Like a cock
erel, squirting and springing at its
brother, this kind dashes at you with
an answer before you have half stated
your case. "You mean this?" he says
performing that feat called stalking,
The words out of your mouth.n And
forthwith he begins his refutation of
that which you have not said and prob
ably had no intention cf saying. An
other will not wait until yOu have fin
shed. His words cross and intermin-
gle with yours in hopeless confusion of
both sound aud sense. You both speak
together, and neither listen to the
,ther-you, because you ''have the
ioor,o and he, because lie wishes to
have it. Conversation with such is
impossible. 1t is battle Of words
mere words-lke heap of loose stones
'hot pell-mell out of cart; and not
hat orderly interchange of ideas which
$ what true con.ersat i II should be.
Others. cousins .ermane to these,
interfere in talk with which they have
10 business. Tiny do hot join in, thus
i larging the basis and enrichi.g the
uperstruci ure, but hey break in with
omel hing qui'e irrelevant, destroying :
be most iii teresting discussion on the
hest peuiile pretense, as feather c
which might knock down Seyres
ase. This form of bad breeding is =
luch in use among women when they t
re jealous, and want to make them Q
Elves unpleasant TO each other. The :
oct or the lord, the bishop or the gen. b
raj, that gland nalne Or this great t
man who is the feminine :,
gnosure and whose attention confers 81
istinction lis talking to some one cl
ngled out from the rest. He has to be
stached and made to transfer himself.
ccordingly, one of the buldest of the
scontented outsiders goes up to the II
large, and, in the midst Of a talk on n
terature, art. politics, on his travels
her expe rience, cuts in with 4 ques. | fr
On about the next fower-show or the K,
st murder; with Who2 Whatp When?
ow9 no nearer to the subject on
md than the moon is near the earth.
lis is an offence Of daily occurrence, W
en- among well-bred people. fo
Others yawn in your face with frank or
d undisguised weariness; and some fe'
t up the transparent screen Of q fan ne
two fingers; Others, again. make - 6,
1t constrained grimace which ac- - s
The eating and the swallow tIa
! of the yawn, and think that their asI
iden gulp and hesitation will pass an
observed. Some give wrong an -
eres, with their eyes fixed on yours,