t to be conducted? Think of the
weary hours you have given to a rite that should be the highest social
pleasure! How often when a topic is started that promises well, and might
come to something in a general exchange of wit and fancy, and some one
begins to speak on it, and speak very well, too, have you not had a lady
at your side cut in and give you her views on it--views that might be
amusing if thrown out into the discussion, but which are simply
impertinent as an interruption! How often when you have tried to get a
"rise" out of somebody opposite have you not had your neighbor cut in
across you with some private depressing observation to your next
neighbor! Private talk at a dinner-table is like private chat at a parlor
musicale, only it is more fatal to the general enjoyment. There is a
notion that the art of conversation, the ability to talk well, has gone
out. That is a great mistake. Opportunity is all that is needed. There
must be the inspiration of the clash of minds and the encouragement of
good listening. In an evening round the fire, when couples begin, to
whisper or talk low to each other, it is time to put out the lights.
Inspiring interest is gone. The most brilliant talker in the world is
dumb. People whose idea of a dinner is private talk between
seat-neighbors should limit the company to two. They have no right to
spoil what can be the most agreeable social institution that civilization
has evolved.

NATURALIZATION

Is it possible for a person to be entirely naturalized?--that is, to be
denationalized, to cast off the prejudice and traditions of one country
and take up those of another; to give up what may be called the
instinctive tendencies of one race and take up those of another. It is
easy enough to swear off allegiance to a sovereign or a government, and
to take on in intention new political obligations, but to separate one's
self from the sympathies into which he was born is quite another affair.
One is likely to remain in the inmost recesses of his heart an alien, and
as a final expression of his feeling to hoist the green flag, or the
dragon, or the cross of St. George. Probably no other sentiment is, so
strong in a man as that of attachment to his own soil and people, a
sub-sentiment always remaining, whatever new and unbreakable attachments
he may form. One can be very proud of his adopted country, and brag for
it, and fight for it; but lying deep in a man's nature is something, no