“There is no society without interchange of thought, and since the best society is that in which the best thoughts are interchanged in the best and most comprehensible manner, it follows that A PROPER MODE OF EXPRESSING OURSELVES IS INDISPENSABLE IN GOOD SOCIETY.”
“The commonest thought well put,” says another English writer, “is more useful, in a social point of view, than the most brilliant idea jumbled out. What is well expressed is easily seized, and therefore readily responded to; the most poetic fancy may be lost to the hearer if the language that conveys it is obscure. Speech is the gift that distinguishes man from the lower animals and makes society possible. He has but a poor appreciation of his privilege as a human being who neglects to cultivate ‘God’s great gift of speech.’”
“The manner in which things are said,” says a French philosopher, “is almost as important as the things themselves. For one man that judges you by your thought there are twenty that judge you by the manner in which your thought is presented. Not only should your words be well chosen, but your bearing should be self-possessed and the tones of your voice agreeable.”
M. L. H., in _Lippincott’s Magazine_ for February, 1883, writes very instructively on the art of conversation as follows: “How seldom it is that one enjoys the pleasure of a real conversation, taking the word to mean something more than the casual chat of calling acquaintances, and something different from the confidential intercourse of familiar friends!
“There is no pastime more delightful in its way than the leisurely talk of a company of congenial persons met for the simple enjoyment of one another’s society, the agreeable interchange of ideas and sentiments, and it would seem that this pleasure should be an easily attainable one. As a matter of fact, however, the entertainment is not so cheap and easy to be had as might be supposed.
“It is a privilege restricted mostly to the dwellers in our larger cities, where, although social life may have a tendency to form itself into separate circles, yet each of these has a circumference great enough to include a sufficient number of persons disposed to draw together by natural affinities. In our smaller provincial cities and towns there is, generally speaking, nothing that can be called society, and conversation is not a lost art, but an art unknown. In such places as these the hostess who should offer her guests no other entertainment than the conversation of their equals would, I fear, be thought to provide for them but badly. If this be true, it certainly is a reflection upon those who compose this provincial society so called: it seems to argue a lack of brains, culture, and social tact, when the result of their gathering together is only a common boredom.