he tone of their intercourse; as
they write, so will be the standard of their habits of thought; and as
they read so will be the atmosphere of their life, and the preparation
of their judgment for those critical moments of choice which are the
pivots upon which its whole action moves.

If practice alone would develop it to perfection, speaking ought to be
easy to learn, but it does not prove so, and especially when children
are together in schools the weeds grow faster than the crop, and the
crop is apt to be thin. The language of the majority holds its own;
children among children can express with a very small vocabulary what
they want to say to each other, whereas an only child who lives with its
elders has usually a larger vocabulary than it can manage, which makes
the sayings of only children quaint and almost weird, as the perfection
of the instrument persuades us that there is a full-grown thought within
it, and a child's fancy suddenly laughs at us from under the disguise.

There is general lamentation at present because the art of conversation
has fallen to a very low ebb; there is, in particular, much complaint of
the conversation of girls whose education is supposed to have been
careful. The subjects they care to talk of are found to be few and poor,
their power of expressing themselves very imperfect, the scanty words at
their command worked to death in supplying for all kinds of things to
which they are not appropriate. We know that we have a great deal of
minted gold in the English language, but little of it finds its way into
our general conversation, most of our intercourse is carried on with
small change, a good deal of it even in coppers, and the worst trouble
of all is that so few seem to care or to regret it. Perhaps the young
generation will do so later in life, but unless something is done for
them during the years of their education it does not seem probable,
except in the case of the few who are driven by their professional work
to think of it, or drawn to it by some influence that compels them to
exert themselves in earnest.

Listening to the conversation of girls whose thoughts and language are
still in a fluid state, say from the age of 17 to 25, gives a great deal
of matter for thought to those who are interested in education, and this
point of language is of particular interest. There are the new
catch-words of each year; they had probably a great _piquancy_ in the
mouth of the originator b