Make your own share in conversation as modest and brief as is consistent with the subject under consideration, and avoid long speeches and tedious stories. If, however, another, particularly an old man, tells a long story, or one that is not new to you, listen respectfully until he has finished, before you speak again.
Speak of yourself but little. Your friends will find out your virtues without forcing you to tell them, and you may feel confident that it is equally unnecessary to expose your faults yourself.
If you submit to flattery, you must also submit to the imputation of folly and self-conceit.
In speaking of your friends, do not compare them, one with another. Speak of the merits of each one, but do not try to heighten the virtues of one by contrasting them with the vices of another.
No matter how absurd are the anecdotes that may be told in your presence, you must never give any sign of incredulity. They may be true; and even if false, good breeding forces you to hear them with polite attention, and the appearance of belief. To show by word or sign any token of incredulity, is to give the lie to the narrator, and that is an unpardonable insult.
Avoid, in conversation all subjects which can injure the absent. A gentleman will never calumniate or listen to calumny.
Need I say that no gentleman will ever soil his mouth with an oath. Above all, to swear in a drawing-room or before ladies is not only indelicate and vulgar in the extreme, but evinces a shocking ignorance of the rules of polite society and good breeding.
For a long time the world has adopted a certain form of speech which is used in good society, and which changing often, is yet one of the distinctive marks of a gentleman. A word or even a phrase which has been used among the most refined circles, will, sometimes, by a sudden freak of fashion, from being caricatured in a farce or song, or from some other cause, go entirely out of use. Nothing but habitual intercourse with people of refinement and education, and mingling in general society, will teach a gentleman what words to use and what to avoid. Yet there are some words which are now entirely out of place in a parlor.
Avoid a declamatory style; some men, before speaking, will wave their hands as if commanding silence, and, having succeeded in obtaining the attention of the company, will speak in a tone, and style, perfectly suitable for the theatre or lecture room, but entirely out of place in a parlor. Such men entirely defeat the object of society, for they resent interruption, and, as their talk flows in a constant stream, no one else can speak without interrupting the pompous idiot who thus endeavors to engross the entire attention of the circle around him.
This character will be met with constantly, and generally joins to the other disagreeable traits an egotism as tiresome as it is ill-bred.