How to Do It

by Edward Everett Hale

Did you notice how badly I violated this rule when Dr. Ollapod talked to me of the Gorges land-grants, at Mrs. Pollexfen's? I got very badly punished, and I deserved what I got, for I had behaved very ill. I ought not to have known what Edmeston said, or what Will Hackmatack said. I ought to have been listening, and learning about the Lords sitting in Equity. Only the next day Dr. Ollapod left town without calling on me, he was so much displeased. And when, the next week, I was lecturing in Naguadavick, and the mayor of the town asked me a very simple question about the titles in the third range, I knew nothing about it and was disgraced. So much for being rude, and not attending to the man who was talking to me.

Now do not tell me that you cannot attend to stupid people, or long-winded people, or vulgar people. You can attend to anybody, if you will remember who he is. How do you suppose that Horace Felltham attends to these old ladies, and these shy boys? Why, he remembers that they are all of the blood-royal. To speak very seriously, he remembers whose children they are,--who is their Father. And that is worth remembering. It is not of much consequence, when you think of that, who made their clothes, or what sort of grammar they speak in. This rule of talk, indeed, leads to our next rule, which, as I said of the others, is as essential in conversation as it is in war, in business, in criticism, or in any other affairs of men. It is based on the principle of rightly honoring all men. For talk, it may be stated thus:--

Never Underrate Your Interlocutor.

In the conceit of early life, talking to a man of thrice my age, and of immense experience, I said, a little too flippantly, "Was it not the King of Wurtemberg whose people declined a constitution when he had offered it to them?"

"Yes," said my friend, "the King told me the story himself."

Observe what a rebuke this would have been to me, had I presumed to tell him the fact which he knew ten times as accurately as I. I was just saved from sinking into the earth by having couched my statement in the form of a question. The truth is, that we are all dealing with angels unawares, and we had best make up our minds to that, early in our interviews. One of the first of preachers once laid down the law of preaching thus: "Preach as if you were preaching to archangels." This means, "Say the very best thing you know, and never condescend to your audience." And I once heard Mr. William Hunt, who is one of the first artists, say to a class of teachers, "I shall not try to adapt myself to your various lines of teaching. I will tell you the best things I know, and you may make the adaptations." If you will boldly try the experiment of entering, with anybody you have to talk with, on the thing which at the moment interests you most, you will find out that other people's hearts are much like your heart, other people's experiences much like yours, and even, my dear Justin, that some other people know as much as you know. In short, never talk down to people; but talk to them from your best thought and your best feeling, without trying for it on the one hand, but without rejecting it on the other.

You will be amazed, every time you try this experiment, to find how often the man or the woman whom you first happen to speak to is the very person who can tell you just what you want to know. My friend Ingham, who is a working minister in a large town, says that when he comes from a house where everything is in a tangle, and all wrong, he knows no way of righting things but by telling the whole story, without the names, in the next house he happens to call at in his afternoon walk. He says that if the Windermeres are all in tears because little Polly lost their grandmother's miniature when she was out picking blueberries, and if he tells of their loss at the Ashteroths' where he calls next, it will be sure that the daughter of the gardener of the Ashteroths will have found the picture of the Windermeres. Remember what I have taught you,--that conversation is the providential arrangement for the relief of ignorance. Only, as in all medicine, the patient must admit that he is ill, or he can never be cured. It is only in "Patronage,"--which I am so sorry you boys and girls will not read,--and in other poorer novels, that the leech cures, at a distance, patients who say they need no physician. Find out your ignorance, first; admit it frankly, second; be ready to recognize with true honor the next man you meet, third; and then, presto!--although it were needed that the floor of the parlor should open, and a little black-bearded Merlin be shot up like Jack in a box, as you saw in Humpty-Dumpty,--the right person, who knows the right thing, will appear, and your ignorance will be solved.

What happened to me last week when I was trying to find the History of Yankee Doodle? Did it come to me without my asking? Not a bit of it. Nothing that was true came without my asking. Without my asking, there came that stuff you saw in the newspapers, which said Yankee Doodle was a Spanish air. That was not true. This was the way I found out what was true. I confessed my ignorance; and, as Lewis at Bellombre said of that ill-mannered Power, I had a great deal to confess. What I knew was, that in "American Anecdotes" an anonymous writer said a friend of his had seen the air among some Roundhead songs in the collection of a friend of his at Cheltenham, and that this air was the basis of Yankee Doodle. What was more, there was the old air printed. But then that story was good for nothing till you could prove it. A Methodist minister came to Jeremiah Mason, and said, "I have seen an angel from heaven who told me that your client was innocent." "Yes," said Mr. Mason, "and did he tell you how to prove it?" Unfortunately, in the dear old "American Anecdotes," there was not the name of any person, from one cover to the other, who would be responsible for one syllable of its charming stories. So there I was! And I went through library after library looking for that Roundhead song, and I could not find it. But when the time came that it was necessary I should know, I confessed ignorance. Well, after that, the first man I spoke to said, "No, I don't know anything about it. It is not in my line. But our old friend Watson knew something about it, or said he did." "Who is Watson?" said I. "O, he's dead ten years ago. But there's a letter by him in the Historical Proceedings, which tells what he knew." So, indeed, there was a letter by Watson. Oddly enough it left out all that was of direct importance; but it left in this statement, that he, an authentic person, wrote the dear old "American Anecdote" story. That was something. So then I gratefully confessed ignorance again, and again, and again. And I have many friends, so that there were many brave men, and many fair women, who were extending the various tentacula of their feeling processes into the different realms of the known and the unknown, to find that lost scrap of a Roundhead song for me. And so, at last, it was a girl--as old, say, as the youngest who will struggle as far as this page in the Cleveland High School--who said, "Why, there is something about it in that funny English book, 'Gleanings for the Curious,' I found in the Boston Library." And sure enough, in an article perfectly worthless in itself, there were the two words which named the printed collection of music which the other people had forgotten to name. These three books were each useless alone; but, when brought together, they established a fact. It took three people in talk to bring the three books together. And if I had been such a fool that I could not confess ignorance, or such another fool as to have distrusted the people I met with, I should never have had the pleasure of my discovery.

Now I must not go into any more such stories as this, because you will say I am violating the sixth great rule of talk, which is

Be Short.