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Book Excerpts:
How To Talk.
Here is a letter from my nephew
Tom, a spirited, modest boy of
seventeen, who is a student of the
Scientific School at New Limerick.
He is at home with his mother for
an eight weeks' vacation; and the
very first evening of his return he
went round with her to the
Vandermeyers', where was a little
gathering of some thirty or forty
people,--most of them, as he
confesses, his old schoolmates, a
few of them older than himself.
But poor Tom was mortified,
and thinks he was disgraced, because
he did not have anything to say,
could not say it if he had, and, in
short, because he does not talk
well. He hates talking parties, he
says, and never means to go to one
again.
Here is also a letter from Esther
W., who may speak for herself, and
the two may well enough be put upon
the same file, and be answered
together:--
"Please listen patiently to a
confession. I have what seems to me
very natural,--a strong desire to be
liked by those whom I meet around me
in society of my own age; but,
unfortunately, when with them my
manners have often been unnatural
and constrained, and I have found
myself thinking of myself, and what
others were thinking of me, instead
of entering into the enjoyment of
the moment as others did.
I seem to have naturally very
little independence, and to be very
much afraid of other people, and of
their opinion. And when, as you
might naturally infer from the
above, I often have not been
successful in gaining the favor of
those around me, then I have spent a
great deal of time in the selfish
indulgence of 'the blues,' and in
philosophizing on the why and the
wherefore of some persons'
agreeableness and popularity and
others' unpopularity."
There, is not that a good letter
from a nice girl?
Will you please to see, dear Tom,
and you also, dear Esther, that both
of you, after the fashion of your
age, are confounding the method with
the thing. You see how charmingly
Mrs. Pallas sits back and goes on
with her crochet while Dr. Volta
talks to her; and then, at the right
moment, she says just the right
thing, and makes him laugh, or makes
him cry, or makes him defend
himself, or makes him explain
himself; and you think that there is
a particular knack or rule for doing
this so glibly, or that she has a
particular genius for it which you
are not born to, and therefore you
both propose hermitages for
yourselves because you cannot do as
she does.
Dear children, it would be a very
stupid world if anybody in it did
just as anybody else does. There is
no particular method about talking
or talking well. It is one of the
things in life which "does itself."
And the only reason why you do
not talk as easily and quite as
pleasantly as Mrs. Pallas is, that
you are thinking of the method, and
coming to me to inquire how to do
that which ought to do itself
perfectly, simply, and without any
rules at all.
It is just as foolish girls at
school think that there is some
particular method of drawing with
which they shall succeed, while with
all other methods they have failed.
"No, I can't draw in india-ink
[pronounced in-jink], 'n' I can't do
anything with crayons,--I hate
crayons,--'n' I can't draw
pencil-drawings, 'n' I won't try any
more; but if this tiresome old Mr.
Apelles was not so obstinate, 'n'
would only let me try the
'monochromatic drawing,' I know I
could do that. 'T so easy. Julia
Ann, she drew a beautiful piece in
only six lessons."
My poor Pauline, if you cannot
see right when you have a crayon in
your hand, and will not draw what
you see then, no "monochromatic
system" is going to help you. But if
you will put down on the paper what
you see, as you see it, whether you
do it with a cat's tail, as Benjamin
West did it, or with a glove turned
inside out, as Mr. Hunt bids you do
it, you will draw well. The
method is of no use, unless the
thing is there; and when you have
the thing, the method will follow.
So there is no particular method
for talking which will not also
apply to swimming or skating, or
reading or dancing, or in general to
living. And if you fail in
talking, it is because you have not
yet applied in talking the simple
master-rules of life.
For instance, the first of these
rules is,
Tell the Truth.
Only last night I saw poor Bob
Edmeston, who has got to pull
through a deal of drift-wood before
he gets into clear water, break down
completely in the very beginning of
his acquaintance with one of the
nicest girls I know, because he
would not tell the truth, or did
not. I was standing right behind
them, listening to Dr. Ollapod, who
was explaining to me the history of
the second land-grant made to
Gorges, and between the sentences I
had a chance to hear every word poor
Bob said to Laura. Mark now, Laura
is a nice clever girl, who has come
to make the Watsons a visit through
her whole vacation at Poughkeepsie;
and all the young people are
delighted with her pleasant ways,
and all of them would be glad to
know more of her than they do. Bob
really wants to know her, and he was
really glad to be introduced to her.
Mrs. Pollexfen presented him to her,
and he asked her to dance, and they
stood on the side of the cotillon
behind me and in front of Dr.
Ollapod. After they had taken their
places, Bob said: "Jew go to the
opera last week, Miss Walter?" He
meant, "Did you go to the opera last
week?"
"No," said Laura, "I did not."
"O, 't was charming!" said Bob.
And there this effort at talk
stopped, as it should have done,
being founded on nothing but a lie;
which is to say, not founded at all.
For, in fact, Bob did not care two
straws about the opera. He had never
been to it but once, and then he was
tired before it was over. But he
pretended he cared for it. He
thought that at an evening party he
must talk about the opera, and the
lecture season, and the assemblies,
and a lot of other trash, about
which in fact he cared nothing, and
so knew nothing. Not caring and not
knowing, he could not carry on his
conversation a step. The mere fact
that Miss Walter had shown that she
was in real sympathy with him in an
indifference to the opera threw him
off the track which he never should
have been on, and brought his
untimely conversation to an end.
Now, as it happened, Laura's next
partner brought her to the very same
place, or rather she never left it,
but Will Hackmatack came and claimed
her dance as soon as Bob's was done.
Dr. Ollapod had only got down to the
appeal made to the lords sitting in
equity, when I noticed Will's
beginning. He spoke right out of the
thing he was thinking of.
"I saw you riding this
afternoon," he said.
"Yes," said Laura, "we went out
by the red mills, and drove up the
hill by Mr. Pond's."
"Did you?" said Will, eagerly.
"Did you see the beehives?"
"Beehives? no;--are there
beehives?"
"Why, yes, did not you know that
Mr. Pond knows more about bees than
all the world beside? At least, I
believe so. He has a gold medal from
Paris for his honey or for
something. And his arrangements
there are very curious."
"I wish I had known it," said
Laura. "I kept bees last summer, and
they always puzzled me. I tried to
get books; but the books are all
written for Switzerland, or England,
or anywhere but Orange County."
"Well," said the eager Will, "I
do not think Mr. Pond has written
any book, but I really guess he
knows a great deal about it. Why, he
told me--" &c., &c., &c.
It was hard for Will to keep the
run of the dance; and before it was
over he had promised to ask Mr. Pond
when a party of them might come up
to the hill and see the
establishment; and he felt as well
acquainted with Laura as if he had
known her a month. All this ease
came from Will's not pretending an
interest where he did not feel any,
but opening simply where he was sure
of his ground, and was really
interested. More simply, Will did
not tell a lie, as poor Bob had done
in that remark about the opera, but
told the truth.
If I were permitted to write more
than thirty-five pages of this
note-paper (of which this is the
nineteenth), I would tell you twenty
stories to the same point. And
please observe that the distinction
between the two systems of talk is
the eternal distinction between the
people whom Thackeray calls snobs
and the people who are gentlemen and
ladies. Gentlemen and ladies are
sure of their ground. They
pretend to nothing that they are
not. They have no occasion to act
one or another part. It is not
possible for them, even in the
choice of subjects, to tell
lies.
The principle of selecting a
subject which thoroughly interests
you requires only one qualification.
You may be very intensely interested
in some affairs of your own; but in
general society you have no right to
talk of them, simply because they
are not of equal interest to other
people. Of course you may come to me
for advice, or go to your master, or
to your father or mother, or to any
friend, and in form lay open your
own troubles or your own life, and
make these the subject of your talk.
But in general society you have no
right to do this. For the rule of
life is, that men and women must not
think of themselves, but of others:
they must live for others, and then
they will live rightly for
themselves. So the second rule for
talk would express itself thus:--
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