not surrounded by glory and worship! I'm
interested in most things, and have learnt more or less how to talk--you
look out for ingenious and kindly elderly men, who haven't been too
successful, and haven't frozen into Tories, and yet have had some
experience;--men of humour and liveliness, who have a rather more extended
horizon than yourself, and who will listen to what you say instead of
shutting you up, and saying 'Very likely' as Newman did--after which you
were expected to go into a corner and think over your sins! Or clever,
sympathetic, interesting women--not too young. Those are the people whom it
is worth taking a little trouble to see."

"But what about the young people!" said Vincent.

"Oh, that will look after itself," said Father Payne. "There's no
difficulty about that! You asked me whom it was worth while taking some
trouble to see, and I prescribe a very occasional great man, and a good
many well-bred, cultivated, experienced, civil men and women. It isn't very
easy to find, that sort of society, for a young man; but it is worth trying
for."

"But do you mean that you should pursue good talk?" said Vincent.

"A little, I think," said Father Payne; "there's a good deal of art in
it--unconscious art in England, probably--but much of our life is spent in
talking, and there's no reason why we shouldn't learn how to get the best
and the most out of talk--how to start a subject, and when to drop it--how
to say the sort of things which make other people want to join in, and so
on. Of course you can't learn to talk unless you have a lot to say, but you
can learn _how_ to do it, and better still how _not_ to do it. I
used to feel in the old days, when I met a clever man--it was rare enough,
alas!--how much more I could have got out of him if I had known how to do
the trick. It's a great pleasure, good talk; and the fact that it is so
tiring shows what a real pleasure it must be. But a man with whom you can
only talk _hard_ isn't a companion--he's an adversary in a game. There
have been times in my life when I have had a real tough talker staying here
with me, when I have suffered from crushing intellectual fatigue, and felt
inclined to say, like Elijah, 'Take away my life, for I am not better than
my fathers.' That is the strange thing to me about most human beings--the
extent to which they seem able to talk without being tired. I agree with
Walter Scott, when he said, 'If the question was eternal company with