TACT IN TALKING.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Volume 2, Issue 90, 21 June 1879, Page 2

TACT IN TALKING.

Conservation is the latest Bower of culture. It needs, iu order to como to anything near perfection, a consensus-of inward and outward conditions, the absence of any one of which is fatal. 'l'he delicate exchange and alternation which it implies is impossible not only if thereis not some purity of valuo in the thoughts exchanged, but also the tact and art of selection among them. It requires, above all things, a light hand,. the power of taking up a subject easily and readily, of holding it not too tightly, of adapting the treatment of it to the interlocutor's need or point of view, of loosing it when it has ceased to servo as a mental stimulus, and of taking up. another with the same readiness, to be dropped, in its turn, as soon as it has served its purpose. A thorough discussion of a subject is always out of placo in a conversation—you want hints, and guesses, glimpses," the suggestion of varied points of view, sido-ligbts, the play of fancy ami humour, oven tho ironical treatment of one's own serious interests, all coloured by a direct reference to the individual mind to which you are for the moment brought near, i'o dull natures a good conversationist always looks inconsistent. His nianysideness seems contradictory; his instinct and need to be all things to all men lias an air of insincerity about it, while in fact it is only a sublimated veracity ; his sense of the relativity of truths and of their multitudinous phases, sides, shapes, and reference, wears to the narrow, plodding understanding a look of sophistry and frivolity. ~The homely wit, which stays where it grew m its own little plot of earth, is puzzled tho vagabond instinct which wnds other minds soaring and wheeling and circling in search of fresh and d -tant prospectf. There is a trick which at first sight looks like conversational dexterity, but which is in fact its enemy. The true conversationist touches lightly on his subject and thou passes on, but ho has touched some interesting or characteristic feature in it; the pseudo-conver-satiouist nibble and pecks at any tag or oomor of it which may bo for tho moment prominent, whether or no tho point touched on stand in any vital connection will, tf, o w i, o i„ -vyhilo handling a theme easily, it is'still. puMsibleto put your mind to it. It is also possil.le, as Dr. Johnson litis it, to P'it yjuv mind f u i r ] v to the ruiud cf

your companion. And this is just what the pseudo-conversationist cannot do. They are common among the women, ore introduced to one at a party as " such a ranarkably intelligent Jwrson ! So much to aay on all subjects'' And they certainly have a false air of intelligence, and may originally havo darted with a good deal of mind. A life incessantly passed in company-, without the balaming eifects of study and frequent solitude always betrays itself in this peculiar quality of_ the talk, which we notice with most disappointment in thoso the externals of whose minds, so to speak, give at first sight a promise of intelligence and mental comradeship.

And in these two things—intelligence and comradeship—all the higher interest of society lies. The nVutral interest in all that appeals to tho intellect, and the personal interest of Social fellowship, each feeding and supporting the other —personal sympathy forbidding the intellect to be pedantic or absolute, and the intellect giving a ground and a charm to personal sympathy—are the main conditions of conversation at its best.—Homo Journal.