Miss Brown: "Yes."
Mr. Cook: "The New York drive is one of the joys of life; it gives more unalloyed pleasure than anything I know of."
Miss Brown: "Yes."
Unless under conditions suitable to listening and not to talking, Mr. Cook might feel like saying to Miss Brown, as a bright young man once said to a quiet, beautiful girl: "For heaven's sake, Miss Mary, say something, even if you have to take it back." While it is true that listening attentively is as valuable and necessary to thoroughly good conversation as is talking one's self, good listening demands the same discretion and discrimination that good talking requires. It is the business of any supposedly good conversationalist to discern when and why one must give one's companion over to soliloquy, and when and why one must not do so.
The dining-room is both an arena in which talkers fight with words upon a field of white damask, and a love-feast of discussion. If guests are neither hatefully disputatious, nor hypocritically humble, if they are generous, frank, natural, and wholly honest in word and mind, the impression they make cannot help being agreeable.
CHAPTER V
TALK OF HOST AND HOSTESS AT DINNER
The Amalgam for Combining Guests—Hosts' Talk During the Quarter of an Hour before Dinner—Seating Guests to Enhance Conversation—Number of Guests for the Best Conversation—Directing the Conversation at Dinner—Drawing Guests Out—Signaling for Conversation—General and Tête-à-tête Conversation—Putting Strangers at Ease—Steering Talk Away from Offensive Topics—The Gracious Host and Hostess—An Ideal Dinner Party.