SILENCE, PLEASE!

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 276, 11 February 1928, Page 19

SILENCE, PLEASE!

THE NEED FOR A NEW CONVENTION Reluctance to talk at meal times, on a railway journey, between the acts of a play, should not be judged as discourteous. It sho-.M not be, but it is. Hundreds of people desire conversation with such earnestness that they feel real disappointment when it is denied them. In their disappointment they label the silent person as surly, selfish, rude. Selfish, it may be, she is a little. But her side of the question is rarely con-: sidered. She. may be very tired, very anxious, very conscious of that running short of mental energy which all workers know; she may have more to think of, to “turn over in her mind” during that brief lunch-time than the would-be talker has to cope with in a month. Our burdens of responsibility vary so much. Usually it is the pleasant, comfortably-placed, idle woman who wants to talk. Our feelings toward her are of the kindliest, if only she would let us be, or if only we knew her well enough to say frankly and courageously, “I don’t want to talk just now.” When Talk Languishes By the time we know anyone well enough to tell them we don’t want to talk, they know us well enough to know we don’t. There is no need to tell them. Our friends do not force our attention. They wait till it is spontaneous. And, of course, our attention does not easily wander from a friend, nor do we often find speech difficult with one, though the test of friendship, no doubt, is in th© ease with which we can be silent. That is the trouble with tactless acquaintances; once they have drawn us into conversation it is so difficult to break off. When we do obviously allow the talk to languish they think us lacking in courtesy. There is no social code which condemns the woman who begins the aimless chatter. In other days, when life was simpler and less wearing, was this conventipn of compulsory conversation passed and approved by society? We need a new code to meet our modern needs. Silence should be quite possible without offence. Quiet grows more and more rare. Cannot we ensure a measure of peacefulness by creating a new convention on the lines of “Silence allowed here.” It is not compulsory silence, as in reading rooms, that we want, but permitted silence. To permit silence, to refrain from enforcing trivial conversation,- should be a sign of good breeding.