mena to the nervous system in man, it is not
safe to do anything to the nervous system that will--"

"Hang the nervous system! Herbert, we can agree in one thing: old
memories, reveries, friendships, center about that:--is n't an open
wood-fire good?"

"Yes," says Herbert, combatively, "if you don't sit before it too long."

III

The best talk is that which escapes up the open chimney and cannot be
repeated. The finest woods make the best fire and pass away with the
least residuum. I hope the next generation will not accept the reports
of "interviews" as specimens of the conversations of these years of
grace.

But do we talk as well as our fathers and mothers did? We hear wonderful
stories of the bright generation that sat about the wide fireplaces
of New England. Good talk has so much short-hand that it cannot be
reported,--the inflection, the change of voice, the shrug, cannot be
caught on paper. The best of it is when the subject unexpectedly
goes cross-lots, by a flash of short-cut, to a conclusion so suddenly
revealed that it has the effect of wit. It needs the highest culture and
the finest breeding to prevent the conversation from running into mere
persiflage on the one hand--its common fate--or monologue on the
other. Our conversation is largely chaff. I am not sure but the former
generation preached a good deal, but it had great practice in fireside
talk, and must have talked well. There were narrators in those days who
could charm a circle all the evening long with stories. When each day
brought comparatively little new to read, there was leisure for
talk, and the rare book and the in-frequent magazine were thoroughly
discussed. Families now are swamped by the printed matter that comes
daily upon the center-table. There must be a division of labor, one
reading this, and another that, to make any impression on it. The
telegraph brings the only common food, and works this daily miracle,
that every mind in Christendom is excited by one topic simultaneously
with every other mind; it enables a concurrent mental action, a burst
of sympathy, or a universal prayer to be made, which must be, if we
have any faith in the immaterial left, one of the chief forces in modern
life. It is fit that an agent so subtle as electricity should be the
minister of it.

When there is so much to read, there is little time for conversation;
nor is there leisure for another pastime of the ancient firesides,
called reading