If you have read "Nicholas Nickleby," you remember Mrs. Nickleby tells how remarkable Smike was as a converser. She entertained poor Smike for several hours with a genealogical account of her family, including biographical sketches, while he sat looking at her and wondering what it was all about, and whether she learned it from a book or said it from her own head.
Said a writer in the Chicago Herald: "What is there, indeed, more colloquial than an intelligent countenance, eagerly intent upon one while telling a story? What language can be compared to the speaking blush or flashing eye of an earnest listener? It was Desdemona, with greedy ear devouring his discourse, who won Othello's heart. He told his wondrous story, and she listened—that only was the witchcraft he had used."
It is said of Sir Walter Scott that, although one of the best talkers in the world, he was also the best listener. With the same bland look he would watch, throughout an entire evening, the lips of his garrulous tormentor ignorantly discoursing on Greek epigrams, or crassly dilating on the intricacies of a parliamentary debate.
It was said of Madame Récamier that she listened most winningly, and this was one secret of her wonderful power to charm.
We have all heard the story of Madame de Staël, who, by a clever stratagem, was introduced to a deaf mute at a party. She talked to him the whole evening, and afterward declared that never before had she met so intelligent a listener and so fine a conversationalist.
Do you remember the story told by Sterne in "The Sentimental Journey"?
He had been represented to a French lady as a great wit and an engaging converser, and the lady was impatient for an introduction that she might hear him talk.
They met, and, writes Sterne: "I had not taken my seat before I saw she did not care a sou whether I had any wit or no. I was to be convinced that she had. I call heaven to witness I never once opened the door of my lips."
The lady afterward said she never in her life had a more improving conversation with a man.
Many other instances might be mentioned derived from both fact and fiction, to show how attentive listening may enhance the delights of conversation, and that one may sometimes gain a reputation for conversational powers by exercising one's ear instead of one's tongue.