“I have dwelt at some length on this subject, because it seems to me of great importance. The whole tone of society would be raised if we could raise its conversational standard; if we could lift it from very small talk to small talk and thence to conversation. Women especially may help toward a satisfactory result, for at present women are the great manufacturers of very small talk. Let them rise to the measure of their duties; men will soon follow their example, and we shall live to see the end of the very small-talk era.
“In certain ‘Hints upon Etiquette,’ by Αγωγος, published nearly half a century ago, but characterized by a good sense that must always render them valuable, I find a wise caution in reference to ‘talking shop,’ which I may add to my own emphatic warning against this particularly disagreeable custom. ‘There are few things,’ he says, ‘that display worse taste than the introduction of professional topics in general conversation, especially if there be ladies present; the minds of those men must be miserably ill-stored who cannot find other subjects for conversation than their own professions. Who has not felt this on having been compelled to listen to “clerical slang,” musty college jokes, and anecdotes divested of all interest beyond the atmosphere of a university; or “law-jokes,” with “good stories” of “learned counsel;” “long yarns,” or the equally tiresome muster-roll of “our regiment”--colonels _dead_, maimed majors retired on pensions, subs lost or “exchanged,” gravitating between Boulogne and the “Bankruptcy Court”?
“‘All such exclusive topics are signs either of a limited intellect or the most lamentable ignorance.’ They are signs, too, of exceedingly bad breeding; for the introduction of a topic on which no one can discourse but the speaker necessarily chokes out the life of a conversation, and for the lively talk of the many substitutes a dreary monologue. They imply an almost supernatural egotism, as if the speaker believed that all the world must perforce be interested in whatever concerns _him_. Needless to say that these remarks do not apply to the case of an acknowledged ‘expert’ whose opinion has been invited on the questions that of right fall within his special province. Now, as a rule, society cares nothing for the individual; and there can be no greater error than for a man to put forward in conversation his individual tastes, opinions, views, unless he has attained to a position that entitles him to speak as one having authority. And even then what he says should be general in tone and application, with as little allusion as possible to himself. Nor should he suffer his remarks to assume the form and proportions of an oration, lest his hearers, in spite of themselves, betray their weariness. A St. Paul may preach, and yet Eutychus fall asleep! In spite of his reputation as the Aristarchus of his day, Samuel Johnson could irritate his hearers into administering a rebuke to his verbosity.