In disputes upon moral or scientific points, ever let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent. So you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery.
What may be very entertaining in company with ignorant people, may be tiresome to those who know more of the matter than yourself.
There is a sort of accidental and altogether equivocal type of city women, who never get into the country, but they employ their time in trying to astonish the country people with narrations of the fine things they left behind them in the city. If they have a dirty little closet, with ten valueless books in it, they will call it their library. If they have some small room, that is used as kitchen, parlor, and dining-room, they will magnify it into a drawing-room. And a hundred other little signs of their great vulgarity they will constantly insist on exhibiting to their country auditors.
Put yourself on the same level as the person to whom you speak, and under penalty of being considered a pedantic idiot, refrain from explaining any expression or word that you may use.
If you are really a wit, remember that in conversation its true office consists more in finding it in others, than showing off a great deal of it yourself. He who goes out of your company pleased with himself is sure to be pleased with you. Even as great a man as Dr. Johnson once retired from a party where everybody had spent the evening in listening to him, and remarked, as he went out, "We have had a pleasant evening, and much excellent conversation."
If you happen to fall into company where the talk runs into party, obscenity, scandal, folly, or vice of any kind, you had better pass for morose or unsocial, among people whose good opinion is not worth having, than shock your own conscience by joining in conversation which you must disapprove of.
If you would have a right account of things from illiterate people, let them tell their story in their own way. If you put them upon talking according to logical rules, you will quite confound them.
I was much pleased with the saying of a gentleman, who was engaged in a friendly argument with another upon a point in morals. "You and I [says he to his antagonist] seem, as far as I hitherto understand, to differ considerably in our opinions. Let us, if you please, try wherein we can agree." The scheme in most disputes is to try who shall conquer, or confound the other. It is therefore no wonder that so little light is struck out in conversation, where a candid inquiry after truth is the least thing thought of.
By all means, shun the vulgar habit of joking at the expense of women. All such tricks as refusing a lady a piece of tongue, because "women already have tongue enough," are as vulgar as they are old and stale. The man who does not respect woman, exposes himself to the suspicion of associating generally with the fallen portion of the sex. And besides, he has no right to make a respectable parlor or drawing-room the theater of such vulgar jokes and railing against the sex as go down in low society.
If a man complains to you of his wife, a woman of her husband, a parent of a child, or a child of a parent, be very cautious how you meddle between such near relations, to blame the behavior of one to the other. You will only have the hatred of both parties, and do no good with either. But this does not hinder your giving both parties, or either, your best advice in a prudent manner.