To listen well, is almost as great an art as to talk well. It is not enough only to listen. You must endeavour to seem interested in the conversation of others.
It is considered extremely ill-bred when two persons whisper in society, or converse in a language with which all present are not familiar. If you have private matters to discuss, you should appoint a proper time and place to do so, without paying others the ill compliment of excluding them from your conversation.
If a foreigner be one of the guests at a small party, and does not understand English sufficiently to follow what is said, good-breeding demands that conversation shall be carried on in his own language. If at a dinner-party, the same rule applies to those at his end of the table.
If upon the entrance of a visitor you carry on the thread of a previous conversation, you should briefly recapitulate to him what has been said before he arrived.
Do not be always witty, even though you should be so happily gifted as to need the caution. To outshine others on every occasion is the surest road to unpopularity.
Always look, but never stare, at those with whom you converse.
In order to meet the general needs of conversation in society, it is necessary that a man should be well acquainted with the current news and historical events of at least the last few years.
Never talk upon subjects of which you know nothing, unless it be for the purpose of acquiring information. Many young men imagine that because they frequent exhibitions and operas they are qualified judges of art. No mistake is more egregious or universal.
Those who introduce anecdotes into their conversation are warned that these should invariably be "short, witty, eloquent, new, and not far-fetched."
Scandal is the least excusable of all conversational vulgarities.