Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1910-03-11
ART OF CONVERSATION
SOMETHING MORE THAN SUAvITY
AND STYLE DEMANDED.
Those Who Accept Hospitality Should
Be Prepared to Contribute Some
thing Pleasing in Exchange.

In discussing the art of conversation,
Mrs. Barry Pain, wife Of the celebrated
English author, says the mere fact that
man or woman has polished manner
a well-groomed figure and close in
timacy with the little conventionalities
laid down under the laws of etiquette,
does not justify the assumption that he
or she is a valuable addition 70 the So
cial circle.
Persons thus equipped find the doors
of society open to them, but once inside,
something more than suavity and style
is demanded if they wish to hold any po-
sltlon of prominence or to feel an atm0s-
phere of welcome as they mingle with
the other guests.
This additional something is the art
of conversation. The man who is dressed
sufficiently de rigeur" to pose for f9sh-
ion plates finds himself III the suburbs of
soclety's good pleasure if he has not the
faculty of expressing himself in a facile
manner and is not competent to venture
an original idea now and then.
Everyone who accepts hospitality
should be prepared to bring in exchange
some small share of pleasantness to the
feast. If one cannot be brilliant or in
tereStlng, one can at any rate be pleas
ant. One can do ones share of sma 4
talking and smiling. TO remain silent is
not to play the game. 1t produces. more
over, an indetinable discomfort i'm every
body preSent-an uneasy suspicion that
the silent one is inwardly criticising and
probably disappearing
1T the cause, as in some instances be
really shyness or diffidence, then all
blame be to the parents of the sufferer.
who failed to move heaven and earth
in the effort to cure so heavy a social
a n=Rt
gwen confidence in oneself. to be spar
ingly reproved and lavisnly encouraged.
10 be made to mix with ones kind from
the nursery UPWARDS, to be uutiringlV
impressed with the fact that shyness is
u disability to be combined even as it
, We're drink or the smallpox, all these
things must surely have proved good
antidotes. Shyness has no advantages.
1t has every disadvantage 1t puts the
victim continually in the wrong without
power of appeal. II makes him do things
which he writhes to remember, say
things for which he could cut his tongue
out. look brazen where he should be diff
dent and trembie where he should be
confident. sit on the edges of chairs thar
were obviously designed for ease, stam-
mer at the moment when he should be
most eloduent-in fact place him eternal
ly in false light.
say ''him," because the average of
shy men is greater than that of shy
women. owing, no doubt, to their lesser
social training Also shyness does not
sit quite so painfully on the woman as
on the man-eSpecally in her youth.
In the man it clashes with every attri-
butte that the woman woald like to rec
ognize in him. 1t murders romance. 1t
cripples chivalFy.
One knows, OF course. that many great
and intellectual people have been cursed
with shynesS No argument in its fa-
vor. Great people have had bald heads
and depiorabe compilations. and shock
ing tempers: but their greatness has not
glorihed or even condOned these defects
Ii has marvelously survived them.
Let those who swell the ranks of the
silent. from whatever cause, reflect on all
that they f0rego. good talker wields a
power. the power TO attract his fellow
creatures, to charm the opposite sex. inn
medlately to warm any social atmosphere
| in which he may find himself. and even
to earn the gratitude of his host.
An American woman is rarely shy, If
she is often too much the reverse. /
maintain that she errs on the more
amusing side. However much she may
babble. her babbling is seldom without
salt. Quite apart from her slang (which
/ is In itself an entertainment and a lib
eral education. she viii serve MP her
sentences more spiclly than the avera &c