TACT IN CONVERSATION.
"Ask only the well about their health."
Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.
Bacon.
Brilliancy in conversation is to the company what a lighted candle is to a dark room—it lightens the whole of it. But every now and then some unskilful person, in attempting to clip the wick to make it brighter, snuffs it out.
James C. Beeks.
Seldom does there occur in society any lapse so astonishing as the uncomfortable remarks innocently made by men and women to each other. Some persons who are careful and considerate in other respects, seem to have a woeful lack of that quality which we call tact. They wish to be pleasing; they would not for the world intentionally say or do anything to injure or wound the sensitiveness of a friend; yet they are continually saying those "things that would better have been left unsaid."
Harper's Bazar mentions some of these speeches which have no excuse for being.
"What a dear little fellow that is!" said a caller to the mother of a three-year-old.