LEARNING TO TALK WELL
To learn to talk well and to listen well and to do either with grace as the conversational situation demands is a real accomplishment. One writer on the subject of conversation has given excellent advice: “Socialize every thought before you utter it.” In other words, one should bear in mind as vividly as possible the probable direction and extent of the sympathies and interests of the person to whom one is speaking and endeavor not to let his words go far afield from those sympathies and interests. Conversation is essentially a partnership game and, as in playing golf, the one who is talking should not get too far away from his listener. There have been people like Coleridge who did not converse but who spoke habitually in monologues and spoke so brilliantly that society was glad to listen. With ordinary men and women, however, there should be give and take. In listening, try to catch plumply a ball tossed to you and in return try to pitch your own ball neither too high nor too low, too soft nor too hard.
USING THE QUESTION FORM
It is not necessary, in order to be pleasant, to make one’s self what Emerson has happily called “a mush of concession.” Do not be afraid to have convictions of your own and at the proper moment to express them clearly. At the same time, one should avoid a dogmatic manner and any assumption that one’s own view is the only view worth having. The saying “Stick your opinions in nobody’s sleeve” is to the point. Utter your own ideas frankly but do not force their acceptance on any one. Even a good idea is likely to lose by any suggestion of insistence. It is well to make frequent use of the question form in beginning a new topic of discussion, to ask, “Do you admire Forbes-Robertson?” rather than “I admire Forbes-Robertson because, etc.” In the one case, you courteously include in your talk the one whom you are addressing, and, in the other, you simply use him as an audience for your own benefit. People who are given to the latter form are usually those who are fond of talking constantly which—it may be remarked—is a dangerous thing to do. The man or woman who says a great deal at one time is pretty sure to say something he will be sorry for. Besides, from a strategic point of view, the man who is always talking himself does not learn; he has no chance to be finding where the other person stands, while, all the time, he is setting himself up as a target. A great teacher once said, “A wise man will hear and will increase learning.”
A LOVE OF HARMONY
Not to talk constantly of one’s self and one’s affairs is, of course, a fundamental rule of good breeding and yet there are persons who know how to talk about themselves—on occasions when it is proper to do so—in a delightful way, because they have the instinct for speaking simply and without conceit. To speak of one’s ills of any sort is ordinarily a mistake. “Consume your own smoke.” “To walk gently, humbly, and, if possible, gaily with other men” is a charming rule for social conduct. One should be a lover of harmony. To differ abruptly from the one who is speaking may, in rare instances, be necessary, but only then. After all, the person who is “agreeable” is one who agrees. While one may not share one’s neighbor’s views in the whole, one may often seize on some point of it with which to sympathize and on which to set the seal of one’s approval. The clergyman who, at an evening party where a well-known woman had read a paper on Sir Oliver Lodge and his experiments in the occult, vehemently denounced all occultism, doubtless felt that his office demanded this attitude, but he made his hostess and the other guests exceedingly uncomfortable.