y dress? It was immensely admired yesterday at the B----s;
how badly your cravat is tied! Did you know that ---- lost heavily by
the crash of Thursday? That dear man's death gave me a good fit of
crying; do you travel this summer? Is Blank really a man of genius? It
is incomprehensible; they married only two years ago." This sort of
nimble talk is all very well; but because one likes sillibub
occasionally is no proof that one is willing to discard meat entirely.
Conversational topics can be too trivial for recreation as well as too
serious; and even important subjects can be handled in a light way if
necessary. "Clever people are the best encyclopedias," said Goethe; and
the great premier Gladstone was a charming man in society, though he
never talked on any but serious subjects. He was noted for his ability
to pump people dry without seeming in the least to probe. "True
conversation is not content with thrust and parry, with mere sword-play
of any kind, but should lay mind to mind and show the real lines of
agreement and the real lines of divergence. Yet this is the very kind of
conversation which seems to me so very rare." In order that a great
subject shall be a good topic of conversation, it must provoke an
enthusiasm of belief or disbelief; people must have decided opinions one
way or the other. I believe with Stevenson that theology, of all
subjects, is a suitable topic for conversational discussion, and for the
reason he gives: that religion is the medium through which all the world
considers life, and the dialect in which people express their
judgments. Try to talk for any length of time with people to whom you
must not mention creeds, morals, politics, or any other vital interest
in life, and see how inane and fettered talk becomes.

The tranquil and yet spirited discussion of great subjects is the most
stimulating of all talk. The thing to be desired is not the avoidance of
discussion but the encouragement of it according to its unwritten codes
and precepts. "The first condition of any conversation at all," says
Professor Mahaffy of Dublin, "is that people should have their minds so
far in sympathy that they are willing to talk upon the same subject, and
to hear what each member of the company thinks about it. The higher
condition which now comes before us is, that the speaker, apart from the
matter of the conversation, feels an interest in his hearers as distinct
persons, whose opinions and feelings he desires