Culture by conversation

Front matter

.0^^ . ^'

A- oX''

O 9 V

Part I Educational And Literary Influences Of Conversation

CHAPTER

I What May Be Gained by Conversation 3 II Some Examples of the Influence

OF Conversation 13

III What Some Men Have Accomplished

by Conversation 24

IV Conversation among Different

Races 31

V Conversation as a Germinator and

Vehicle of Ideas 39

VI Whence Comes the Inspiration of

Literary Workers? 48

VII Something More about the Sources

OF Inspiration 54

VIII Conversation vs. Argument and Debate 67 IX Reporting Conversations. — A Group

OF Famous Talkers 76

VI

CHAPTER

Contents

X Repartee — ^Wit and Humoue XI Wit and Humour (Continued)

Part II Social And Intellectual Influences

87 101

XII

XIII XIV

XV

XVI XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

The Conduct and Conversation of A Gentleman. — How to Become a Good Talker Various Kinds of Talkers. — City

AND Country People Some Profitable Talkers. — Influence OF Women Talks at the Twilight Club The Conversation of Authors Something More about the Talk

OF Authors Conversations with Strangers Men of Address in Conversation A Specimen Conversation, Showing What May Be Learned in Half AN Hour's Talk

143 155 180

190 204 220

Part III Some Table-talk Notes.— Fun, Facts And

FANCIES.— THINGS WISE, WITTY

AND COMICAL

Table-Talk Index

257 333

A PREFATORY WORD FROM THE AUTHOR

It was the talks at the Twilight Club (New York City) — to which "institution" the author devotes an entire chapter — that first awakened him to the importance of Conversation as a means of Culture and intellectual development ; for by the talks at this club he had learned more of the living thoughts and movements of the day, more important and mind-quickening truths, than he had ever learned or could have learned in any other school. These talks created in him an intellectual life, an awakening to the true sources of knowledge, a desire to excel in speech and expression, which scarcely anything else could have produced ; and all this without any effort whatever on his part, except listening and occasionally speaking in the course of the discussions.

So he wrote for a New York journal several chapters on Conversation as a Means of Culture, which were so well received that he determined to complete the work when time and opportunity were afforded.

This volume is the result. Not more, however, than one-fifth of the book has ever appeared in print before. So that, with the exception of the chapter on the Conversation of Authors, that on the Twilight viii Frefatory JFord

Club (without the specimens), and a £ew others that have been remodelled, the work is entirely new and original.

The chapters are addressed chiefly to those younger and more progressive men and women who desire to make, in the exercise of their calling or profession, the most of all the means at their command for larger culture, wider knowledge, more numerous ideas, and greater efficienc}^ in the exercise of their powers. And as no other work exists, so far as the author knows, that shows the immense and many-sided advantages of Conversation, the author's hope is that it will afford many a useful suggestion, many a hint of practical value to that large class of people who are striving for culture while earning a living.

I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. William Heinemann, the London publisher, for an interesting passage from "Real Conversations," by Mr. William Archer.

R. W.

West Hoboken, N. J.

June, 1907

Introduction

CONVERSATION, CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP

It is a strange thing that although there have been written, within the last twenty-five years, more books on education, mental, moral and physical, than perhaps in all the 3"ears before, scarcely anything has been written on Conversation as an educational factor. And yet, as the writer proposes to show, no agency is more powerful in the development of the mind, in the gaining of culture, in the formation of character, in the creation of ideas, in the inspiration of literary workers, and in the achieving of professional and social success, than this little-prized intellectual exercise.

Some writers, indeed, have not only failed to see the importance of conversation as a factor in education, but have coolly spoken of it as a "lost art," without any regret whatever at the "loss." Their idea of education is mastering problems in mathematics, learning languages, and studying grammar, rhetoric and history. The study of these subjects is of course cultivating and beneficial ; but the study of books for a specific purpose never yet formed the mind of any man. Books are dead things compared with the living speech of men and women. The inner being, the

X Introduction

mind and heart, are nearly always shaped by intimate and familiar conversation, which, springing spontaneously and naturally among friends and acquaintances, operates unconsciously in forming the character, in inspiring thought, in shaping one's aims and ambitions, and in creating a desire for intellectual expansion. Now this is the highest kind of education ; it goes deeper, makes a more permanent impression, develops the mind more surely, than books ever do. If this be a "lost art" — and in some circles it certainly is — then the sooner it is recovered and restored, the better.

The great ages in the world's history, the intellectual \ ages, are those in which conversation was most highly prized and assiduously cultivated. Every scholar knows that the age of Pericles, when Aspasia formed that brilliant circle which included Socrates and his friends, when the plays of ^schylus, Sophocles and Euripides were being put on the stage, and Phidias was chiselling his immortal works in the Parthenon, was unmatched for conversation. The age of Queen Elisabeth, that of Queen Anne, and that of Louis XIV. are distinguished as ages of conversation, and consequently of high culture and great literary activity. In fact, the age of Elisabeth, the greatest in literature, is generally spoken of as "the age of

(conversation" — the first, perhaps, in which people met expressly for conversation — for who has forgotten the gatherings at the Mermaid, where Shakespeare

Introduction xi

and Ben Jonson had tlicir "wit combats," and among whose members were Raleigh, Beaumont and Fletcher, John Selden and several other famous men? Of the talk of these men it has been said that when they departed they "left an air behind them which alone was able to make the next two companies right witty." The age of Queen Anne, when Swift, Addison, Pope and Steele lived, is famous for the clubs and conversation of the time ; and as for the age of Louis XIV., when Racine, Moliere, Corneille, Madame de Sevigne and a host of other celebrated people lived, it is well known that this age of fine conversationists and eminent writers is the most distinguished in the annals of France. And in our ow^n American history, what period excels in intellectual activity, in great writers — poets, novelists, philosophers and orators — that in which those famous conversers, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Channings lived? Was not this a period when men and women lived who, by their conversations, stirred and filled the minds of their contemporaries with new ideas, high thoughts, noble conceptions, and philosophic theories, such as were never heard before? Was it not a time of intense intellectual activity?

Those were the times, ancient and modem, when intellectual fires burned brightly, when noble minds were forging new and grand conceptions into masterpieces of art and literature, which have fed the world ever xii Introduction

since, and when the things of the mind were more highly esteemed and carefully studied than those of the body. Conversation is indeed the greatest of all sources of inspiration, the most stirring and impressive of all influences, and thousands of people owe all their success in life to their power of grasping new conceptions or new suggestions thrown out in conversation.

The great teachers of modern times, too — those men who became masters in their art, like Arnold of Rugby, Thring of Uppingham, and Horace Mann of Massachusetts — were men who knew the value of conversation as an educational factor; men who, by familiar talks with their teachers and scholars, impressed new and vital truths on their minds, and inspired them to high thinking and noble living. The conversation of these men formed a protest against the rule-mongering, machine-teaching of their time, and it was they who introduced those new views and better methods in the art of teaching which, though old as the time of Socrates, have since been called the "new education."

Mr. Thring's definition of education — "the transmission of life from the living, through the living, to the living," is perhaps the best possible definition of true conversation. "Tutors," said Mr. Buckle, the historian of civilisation, "generally teach too much from books and too little by word of mouth; hence the tendency is to overwork children ; hence the great

Introduction xiii

proportion of weak-minded adults. I teach these boys in conversation," said he, speaking of the sons of his friend, Mr. Huth, "in a quarter of an hour more than they would otherwise learn in a week."

It must be borne in mind that culture and scholarship are two distinct things, and that the one does not necessarily include the other. A man may be a profound scholar with very little culture; or he may be a highly cultured man with very little scholarship. A man of culture must be a man of the world, accustomed to mingle in good society, and familiar with good literature. A profound scholar may be a man apart from the world, a closet student, a recluse, unaccustomed to society, not caring for it. Such a man, with all his knowledge, may be awkward and uncouth in manner, shy and oppressed in the presence of strangers, and unable to express himself with any degree of force or fluency in conversation. The man of culture is at home in any society, is universally esteemed, and nearly always successful ; while the mere scholar, devoid of culture, is seldom much esteemed and rarely quite successful. High culture and profound scholarship are indeed sometimes combined in the same person ; and where this is found, perfection is nearly attained. But how few are the examples of such perfection !

At the present day, too much stress is laid upon scholarship and too little upon culture; too much upon knowledge derived from books and too little xiv Introduction

upon knowledge derived from intercourse with the world; so that conversation as a means of culture is hardly ever thought of, while scholarship or bookstudy is over prized and over done. The latter may fill the mind, but it does not necessarily form either the head or the heart.

In the best circles of Europe, the value of conversation, not only as a means of recreation but of education as well, has long been known and appreciated. Most Europeans of the better class cultivate and practise conversation much more than Americans do. They look upon it as a means of polish and refinement ; as an accomplishment more necessary than book-learning; as the means of perfection in culture. So that the art of conversation forms a more important branch of education among them than it does with us. They regard it as one of the chief things in the formation of character, in the making of a lady or a gentleman, and as the crowning achievement in social intercourse. They find leisure for it, time to cultivate it, and inclination to practise it; in fact, they would hardly think life worth living without acquiring some skill and power in the delightful art of conversation.

In America, we are so intent on work, on rapidity and despatch in business, on post-haste in all our affairs, so impressed with the idea that "time is money,'* that we can hardly afford to spend any of it in mere conversation. Even in social, as well as in business circles, conversation has become among us as much of

Inti^oduction xv

a "lost art" as letter-writing is said to be, which is, in reality, when properly practised, a species of conversation.

In this book the writer endeavours to show, first, how much may be learned and how much pleasure and profit may be derived by listening to and partaking in conversation with cultivated people ; and, secondly, how a fairly intelligent man or woman may become a good converser and an entertaining companion by conversing with people of good sense ; and, as correlated and incidental to these two important points, the writer tries to point out what an important factor conversation forms in creating and suggesting new ideas, and how ability to keep one's end up in conversation is of value to any one, even in a purely business or professional point of view, by enabling him to make and strengthen business relations, and, if so inclined, in impressing his personality upon others, and thus advancing his political or professional fortunes.

That these are not purely pedantic and pedagogic ideas is shown by numerous examples from the experience of good conversers in various walks of life, whose conversational powers aided them materially in achieving the success or the eminence they attained in their profession or in their aims and objects in life.

This, therefore, is the aim of the present writer: to show by precept and example what a mighty factor in education and culture the practice of conversation xvi Introduction

may be made ; and to point out to the teacher and the student, the professional man and the merchant, the literary aspirant and the budding statesman, what golden opportunities for culture, for knowledge and wisdom, for a successful and beneficent career, lie within his grasp ; and to indicate to all others what crowning advantages may be gained by this littlethought-of and little-cared-f or practice of sincere and frank outpouring of the mind in familiar conversation, not only with well-educated people, but with men and women of all ranks and classes.

Sure, He that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unused.* — Shakespeare.

* Recently an awakening seems to have taken place among educators on this subject. President Woodrow Wilson of Princeton University has appointed a considerable number of preceptors and tutors, whose duty it is to instruct and inform the new students separately in familiar conversation, and aid them in all that they can do. "This," says President Wilson, "wiU be less burdensome to both teacher and pupil, more normal, less like a body of tasks, and more like a natural enjoyment of science and letters."

And Mr. Charles Francis Adams has lately made nearly the same contention. "Could I have my way," he said in an address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Columbia University (June, 1906), "I would break our traditional academic system into fragments, as something which has long since done its work, and is now quite outgrown. I would get back to the close contact of mind on mind, and do away with this arm's length lecture system. I would develop an elective system based on scientific principles and the study of the individual.'*

Part 1 Educational And Literary Influences Of Con- Versation

"Literature is the expression of the thoughts of society. Books are specimens of the conversations of an age, preserved in the spirit of taste and of genius." — Thomas Henry Huxley.

"Of all the arts which make existence desirable, the art of graceful and delightful conversation is the chief." — Correspondent N. Y. Sun.

Chapter I What May Be Gained By Conversation

** What we do not call education is often more precious than that which we call such." — Emerson.

Few persons have any adequate conception of the measureless influence of famihar conversation on young minds. For good or ill, this is the one thing, above all others, that forms the minds and moulds the hearts of young people. For it is well known that in youth the mind is as wax to receive impressions and as steel to retain them. Young men at college, and even children at school, are more profoundly influenced by the familiar talk of their classmates than by the lectures or lessons of their teachers. This is why some wise men send their sons to a school or college where they know the influences of their associates are good, and from which they expect more than from their professors. "You send your boy to the schoolmaster," says Emerson, "but it is the schoolboys who educate him." His school companions come closer to him, speak their minds more freely, use plainer and simpler language, appeal to him more directly, than his teachers or professors ; and the fact that each one participates in the talk has much to do with its interest and influence.

"Why is it," says Sam Slick, "that if you read to a man, you put him to sleep? Because it's a book, and the language ain't common. Why is it, if you talk to him, he will sit up all night with you? Because it's talk, the language of nature."

Most people look upon conversation as a thing of course, of no particular importance, scarcely deserving of any particular attention ; whereas it is the one thing that deserves the most careful attention. Some one has remarked that he could not understand how James Russell Lowell, who was not noted for hard study at college, should have acquired such an immense stock of knowledge and such a marvellous power of expression as he subsequently displayed, not only in his writings, but in his conversation and speeches. The remark was natural enough, but the gentleman who made it seems to have been unaware or to have forgotten that Mr. Lowell belonged to a family which had for generations been noted for culture. He doubtless learned more and was more profoundly impressed by the conversation of his friends and kinsfolk than he could have been by his teachers or college professors. Even Daniel Webster declared that in his education, conversation had done more for him than books had ever done; and that he had learned more from the writers of books in conversations with them than he could possibly have learned from their writings. "Their minds in conversation," said he, "came into intimate contact with my own, and I absorbed cer-

What May be Gained by Conversation 5

tain secrets of their power, whatever might be its quality, which I could not have detected in their books."

And this, mind you, was said by a man familiar with the best literature of his time. How much did Shakespeare owe to a college education? How much did Moliere? Or Robert Burns? Or John Bunyan? Or Patrick Henry? Or Henry Clay? These men, as shown in their lives, owed more to conversation than to any other means of culture. It was such men that Robert Ingersoll had in mind when he said that "a college is a place that dims diamonds and polishes pebbles." Everything depends, however, on the character of the college in which one studies ; for a college professor may have a thorough knowledge of mathematics, or Greek and Latin, and yet have very little inspiration or intellectual life about him; while in every-day life we frequently meet with people without much learning who are brimming over with new ideas and inspiring thoughts. Many professors and schoolmasters, after acquiring a certain skill in their profession and a certain quantum of knowledge, stop there, having reached the acme of their ambition.

Look into the lives of those men and women who have attained eminence in some art or profession — the only lives of which we have any adequate record — and you will almost invariably find that the course their minds took, the professions they followed, and the motives that animated them through life, sprang from the conversation of some intelligent companion, of some able thinker or speaker, among their early associates. We may see this frequently exemplified, too, in our best works of fiction.

No man who cares at all for intellectual development can afford to live in seclusion. He must, if he will not become a fossil, keep in touch with the bright men and women of his environment, and go forward with them in the progressive ideas of his time. Isolation leads to f ossilisation ; disuse to decay; for those powers left unused become finally, like the eyes of the fish in cavernous rivers, lost altogether. Conversation makes a man acquainted not only with the powers of others, but with his own, and with human nature generally. Robert Burns declared he never knew his own powers until he had measured them with those of others ; and Moliere said that when he had got Into the Hotel de Rambouillet — a brilliant Court coterie of the day — he no longer needed to study classic authors; he had an abundance of real comedies and tragedies before his eyes, and needed no other material for his comedies.

What we learn by conversation Is more than we ourselves are aware of. Let a reporter come and have a talk with you, and let him print it, and you will be astonished at the quantity of printed matter it makes. One can tell more in five minutes than one can write In an hour; and one can often, in a ten-minute talk with a friend, get the sum and substance of a tencolumn article in the newspapers. I remember hear-

What May he Gained by Conversation 7

ing the whole of the celebrated Tichborne case, which filled many columns in the newspapers of the time, narrated to me so completely in a few minutes that I felt, on reading about it the next day, as if I were reading an old story.

"Society," says Oliver Wendell Holmes, "is a strong solution of books. It draws the virtue out of what is best worth reading, as hot water draws the strength of leaves." So that if you have a considerable acquaintance among intelligent reading people, you may learn much of that which is worth knowing in books without the trouble of reading them. Even of good books, no man attempts to read all; for the main things are contained in the few. Coleridge used to say that he could count on his fingers the books that are really worth reading. Of course this is an exaggeration, reminding one of the remark of a well-known society leader who declared that good society could be reduced to "four hundred." But there is a certain degree of truth in it. It is not necessary to read even the "one hundred best books" to be a well-informed man.

The thoughts of the world, of all literature, are running through the heads of the people you meet. Some men have a way of putting things that gives you a whole history in a few words. "Clever people," says Goethe, "are the best encyclopaedias." What you have to do, when you talk with them, is to learn to draw them out. You can, if you are an adept in this way, learn more, and get more fresh thought in conversation, than if you should read forty columns a day. Lord Palmerston declared, at a dinner in Paris, that he never read a printed book. How did he get his information? He got it all from the people he talked with and the documents he read. The great English premier, Gladstone, was noted for his ability to "pump people dry" of all they knew of the subjects they were familiar with. Socrates said that "a wise questioning is the half of knowledge."

And what you learn by conversation does not fatigue you as reading does; for you get tired of reading, but rarely of conversation. Men generally talk of what is uppermost in their minds. They are eager to tell you about some remarkable experience they have had, or some remarkable book or story they have read. And most men, when fairly dealt with, are ready for an exchange of wares. Nearly every one reads some special kind of books or periodicals. I have never known but one man in the course of a lifetime who had read the same books I had. And yet even from him I continually learned something new, because he had drawn from the same books quite a different nutriment from that which I had. He had, moreover, one quality in which I was deficient, the power of stating in a few words the substance of any book he had read. He had the knack of "tearing out the heart of a book" and laying it before you. Sometimes one gets in a single sentence a characterisation

TThat May be Gained by Conversation 9

of a whole book, or a whole convention of people. When a gentleman who had attended a dentist's convention was asked what he had learned there, he replied : "Well, of one thing I became firmly convinced, which is, that nearly all the ills that flesh is heir to come from neglect of the teeth !"

Sometimes in a single sentence one gets an excellent suggestion for a whole discourse. A clergyman who was passing through a village, in which were several of his parishioners, happened to speak to one, a woman, who was bleaching linen on the grass. Among other things he asked if she were at church last Sunday. "Oh, yes." "Do you remember the text?" "No." "Do you remember any of the points of the sermon?" She could not recall any of them. "Then what good did the discourse do you?" asked the clergyman. "Ah, doctor," she replied, "do you see that linen on the green? It does not look very well now ; but by watering it from time to time it finally becomes white as snow !" He departed, feeling that he had got a lesson from that woman better than any he had taught her.

Coleridge says that "a good reader is like a worker in diamond mines ; he casts aside all that is worthless, and retains only pure gems." My friend, above mentioned, was one of these diamond workers ; he could give you the pure ore of any book in half an hour's talk.

For many books are nothing but the amplification and exposition of a single idea. Where this is the case, a statement of its contents is comparatively easy. I heard a gentleman lately give, in two sentences, the sum and substance of Mr. Henry George's famous "Progress and Poverty." "You know," said he, "that nearly all the coal-producing land in Pennsylvania is owned by a dozen men, who, in order to keep up the price of coal, allow only a limited quantity to be dug out every year, and they will not sell an land.? Why, about seventeen cents an acre; that is utilised. What do you suppose is the tax on this land.'* Why, about seventeen cents an acre; that is all. Now, clap on this land, say $10 or $20 an acre, and you will compel them to sell part of it to others, who will mine it, and thus reduce, perhaps by onehalf, the price of coal ; and when the labouring man pays half as much as he now pays for fuel, are not his wages increased.''"

I think it may be safely affirmed that any article or essay, speech, or address, whose contents will not lend itself to a condensed verbal statement, or of which one cannot grasp its leading thoughts so as to state them in a few words, is of no great value. It is one of those plants that have more leaves than fruit.

Take, for instance, Herbert Spencer's "Essays on Education," a work of great value. You would think it difficult to state in a few words the substance of these essays ; but it is not. The essence of the whole book lies in the statement that we devote too much

What May he Gained by Conversation 11

time to the study of the ancient languages and literature, and too little to modern languages and scientific knowledge; too much time to dead grammatical forms, and too little to living scientific truths. These truths are illustrated, exemplified, and amplified in a hundred ways; so that the reader is profoundly impressed with them.

Take, again, Ignatius Donnelly's vast "Cryptogram," which contains over one thousand closely printed octavo pages, and which was heralded as the great revolution-making book of our times. This huge book is but the amplification of this one idea, that as we have no record whatever of Shakespeare's having received any school education, and as the plays attributed to him abound with evidences that the writer was a highly educated man, Shakespeare could not have written said plays ; and that as many of the expressions and thoughts found in these plays are found also in the writings of his contemporary, Lord Bacon, who was a highly educated man, said Bacon must have written these plays. And to confirm this theory, a cipher is invented to suit the theory. This is positively all there is in that huge volume. How much time, trouble, and temper I might have saved had I learned all this from my book-condensing friend !

It is a good thing to have great readers among your friends, not only on account of the interesting things they may tell you, but also because they draw your attention to the best books they have read, of which you would probably never otherwise have heard. At a time when so much poor stuff is printed, such information is exceedingly valuable. The press is now a Niagara, pouring forth vast streams of printed matter, most of which gradually finds its way back into the paper-mill, but the contents of which may generally be discovered in conversation with different classes of people.