up_ which, as Mr.
Mahaffy remarks elsewhere, 'many pious people have actually thought a
decent introduction to a conversation.'

As for the moral qualifications of a good talker, Mr. Mahaffy, following
the example of his great master, warns us against any disproportionate
excess of virtue. Modesty, for instance, may easily become a social
vice, and to be continually apologizing for one's ignorance or stupidity
is a grave injury to conversation, for, 'what we want to learn from each
member is his free opinion on the subject in hand, not his own estimate
of the value of that opinion.' Simplicity, too, is not without its
dangers. The _enfant terrible_, with his shameless love of truth, the
raw country-bred girl who always says what she means, and the plain,
blunt man who makes a point of speaking his mind on every possible
occasion, without ever considering whether he has a mind at all, are the
fatal examples of what simplicity leads to. Shyness may be a form of
vanity, and reserve a development of pride, and as for sympathy, what can
be more detestable than the man, or woman, who insists on agreeing with
everybody, and so makes 'a discussion, which implies differences in
opinion,' absolutely impossible? Even the unselfish listener is apt to
become a bore. 'These silent people,' says Mr. Mahaffy, 'not only take
all they can get in Society for nothing, but they take it without the
smallest gratitude, and have the audacity afterwards to censure those who
have laboured for their amusement.' Tact, which is an exquisite sense of
the symmetry of things, is, according to Mr. Mahaffy, the highest and
best of all the moral conditions for conversation. The man of tact, he
most wisely remarks, 'will instinctively avoid jokes about Blue Beard' in
the company of a woman who is a man's third wife; he will never be guilty
of talking like a book, but will rather avoid too careful an attention to
grammar and the rounding of periods; he will cultivate the art of
graceful interruption, so as to prevent a subject being worn threadbare
by the aged or the inexperienced; and should he be desirous of telling a
story, he will look round and consider each member of the party, and if
there be a single stranger present will forgo the pleasure of anecdotage
rather than make the social mistake of hurting even one of the guests.
As for prepared or premeditated art, Mr. Mahaffy has a great contempt for
it and tells us of a certain college don (let