f the art of
conversation, which is in danger of being lost in the confused babel of
the reception and the chatter of the dinner-party--the art of listening
and the art of talking both being lost. Society is taking alarm at this,
and the women as usual are leaders in a reform. Already, by reason of
clubs-literary, scientific, economic--woman is the well-informed part of
our society. In the "Conversation Lunch" this information is now brought
into use. The lunch, and perhaps the dinner, will no longer be the
occasion of satisfying the appetite or of gossip, but of improving talk.
The giver of the lunch will furnish the topic of conversation. Two
persons may not speak at once; two persons may not talk with each other;
all talk is to be general and on the topic assigned, and while one is
speaking, the others must listen. Perhaps each lady on taking her seat
may find in her napkin a written slip of paper which shall be the guide
to her remarks. Thus no time is to be wasted on frivolous topics. The
ordinary natural flow of rejoinder and repartee, the swirling of talk
around one obstacle and another, its winding and rippling here and there
as individual whim suggests, will not be allowed, but all will be
improving, and tend to that general culture of which we have been
speaking. The ladies' lunch is not to be exactly a debating society, but
an open occasion for the delivery of matured thought and the acquisition
of information.

The object is not to talk each other down, but to improve the mind,
which, unguided, is apt to get frivolous at the convivial board. It is
notorious that men by themselves at lunch or dinner usually shun grave
topics and indulge in persiflage, and even descend to talk about wine and
the made dishes. The women's lunch of this summer takes higher ground. It
will give Mr. Browning his final estimate; it will settle Mr. Ibsen; it
will determine the suffrage question; it will adjudicate between the
total abstainers and the halfway covenant of high license; it will not
hesitate to cut down the tariff.

The Drawer anticipates a period of repose in all our feverish social
life. We shall live more by rule and less by impulse. When we meet we
shall talk on set topics, determined beforehand. By this concentration we
shall be able as one man or one woman to reach the human limit of
cultivation, and get rid of all the aberrations of individual assertion
and feeling. By studying together in clubs, by conversing in