Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-11-08

The startling inability of most per-
| sons to talk about anything except
their own work will remain source
of some wonder to those who are in
| terested in such matters.
! There is old Bill Hayseed. VINO WORKS
in the aviation line. Morning. NOON 3i,
| and night he talks airplaneS. He Will
pop out on you suddenly with plans
! for a new transcontinental airway. as
If the two of YOU had been working
| away at it for many months.
1t is the first time that you nave
ever heard of the thing, but that makes
| no difference to Bill. With eyes gleam-
| ing he strips the heavens OF mystery
and pulls it down to a plain matter
of dollars and cents.
Hayseed doesn't catch you entirely
unprepared, of course. You nave
watched his vagaries for long time
| and know that nothing except ava
| ton is to be expected of him.
| What a blessing it must be to nave
| but one interest in life, and that the
one which brings in the old standard
| bread and butterl
1t must give man a care.Iree
feeling, right up to the point where
he can sing, with Miss Pippa, Gods
in his heaven, alls right with the
| world" Maybe Hayseed might thlnk
the wCrd "airplane" would go well
after the mention of Deity; we don't
know about that.
* X + 4
Think, for a moment. what a man
is saved who has only one Big Sub
ject to talk about!
The affairs of nations do not worry
him a bit. He does not have to try
to understand why Germany does one
thing, why Italy does another, why
the Balkans are the Balkans and
where the reparations are coming
from, If any.
He worries his head not at all over
Prof. Einstein'S theories. 1t is no dlt-
ference to him whether time and
space are outworn concepts, now re-
garded as manifestations of energy, or
something along that line.
Musicians labor over "modernistic"
compositions, but he has other things
to do besides comparing them with
Beethoven, and rejecting or praising,
as the case may be. What is it to
him If H. G. Wells or Bernard Shaw
brings out two more books? Those
fellows are always writing books,
aren't they?
One may as well admit that the at
temptS of the average man to Under
stand world politics are about on q par
with his real understanding of the stock
market. He does not grasp either one,
although he loves to talk about both.
Il X 4 X
Yet there is a certain satisfaction in
a wide latitude of conversational topics
Concentration on the one to the e1-
clusion of the many makes Jack dull
boy, indeed.
He who has nothing to talk about
except his work is bore to others.
whether he realizes it or not. Luckily
for him. he seldom does realize it, but
goes right ahead boring his associates
The wonder of it is that he must
think he is entertaining them. Human
conversation seems to have been born
into the world primarily for conveying
ideas, secondly for entertainment pur-
poses.
The desire to convert some one to
something lies at the bottom of much
talk, in some instances, but it would be
crediting the average man or woman
with something they do not possess to
say that when they talked they desired
to make converts.
The amiable truth is, we believe, that
most human beings talk to hear them
selves talk. They like the sound of their
own voices best of all. When that