Conversation by Mary Greer Conklin (best book club books of all time .TXT) 📕

It is often contended that children are out of place at a dining-table where even tolerable conversation is supposed to be carried on. This view is no doubt well taken regarding formal dinners; but round the family board is the best place in the world to implant in children the principles of good conversation and interesting table-talk. To this end family differences and unpleasantnesses should be left behind when the family goes to the table. Parents should insist, as far as possible, that their children discuss at the dining-table only the pleasant and interesting happenings of the day. "First of all," says Mr. Mahaffy, "let me warn those who think it is not worth while taking trouble to talk in their family circle, or who read the newspaper at meals, that they are making a mistake which has far-reaching consequences. It is nearly as bad as those convent schools or ladies' academies, where either silence or a foreign tongue is imposed at meals. Whatever people may think of the value of theory, there is no doubt whatever that practise is necessary for conversation; and it is at home among those who are intimate, and free in expressing their thoughts, that this practise must be sought. It is thus, and thus only, that young people can go out into the world properly provided with the only universal introduction to society—agreeable speech and manner."

Trampling on the social and conversational rights of the young was some time ago so well commented upon in The Outlook that I transfer part of the article to these pages. The editorial emphasized also the educational advantages of good table-talk in the home: "There is no educational opportunity in the home more important than the talk at table. Children who have grown up in homes in which the talk ran on large lines and touched all the great interests of life will agree that nothing gave them greater pleasure or more genuine education.... Perhaps one reason why some American children are aggressive and lacking in respect is the frivolity of the talk that goes on in some American families. If children are in the right atmosphere they will not be intrusive or impertinent. Make place for their interests, their questions, the problems of their experience; for there are young as well as old perplexities. Encourage them to talk, and meet them more than half-way by the utmost hospitality to the subjects that interest and puzzle them. Give them serious attention; do not ridicule their confusion of statement nor belittle their troubles.... Do not limit the talk at table to the topics of childhood, but make it intelligible to children. Some people make the mistake of 'talking down' to their children; of turning the conversation at table into a kind of elaborate 'baby-talk'; not realizing that they are robbing their children of hearing older people talk about the world in which they live. The child is always looking ahead, peering curiously into the mysterious world round him, hearing strange voices from it, getting wonderful glimpses into it. At night when the murmur of voices comes upstairs, he hears in it the sounds of a future full of great things.... It is not, therefore, the child of six who sits at the table and listens; it is a human spirit, eager, curious, wondering, surrounded by mysteries, silently taking in what it does not understand to-day, but which will take possession of it next year and become a torch to light it on its way. It is through association with older people that these fructifying ideas come to the child; it is through such talk that he finds the world he is to possess.... The talk of the family ought not, therefore, to be directed at him or shaped for him; but it ought never to forget him; it ought to make a place for him."

Apropos of children's appreciation of good talk, this story is told of a young son of one of the clever men of Chicago: Guests were present and the boy sat quietly listening to the brilliant conversation of his elders, when his father suggested to Paul that it was late and perhaps he had better go to bed. "Please, father, let me stay," pleaded the youngster, "I do so enjoy interesting conversation." Another and as deep a childlike appreciation comes from the classic city of our American Cambridge. The little daughter of one of its representative families had lain awake for hours upstairs straining her ears to hear the conversation from below. When her mother came into the little one's room after her guests had gone, the tiny lady said plaintively, "Mother dear, while I've been lying here all alone you were having such a liberal time downstairs." Unconscious recognition of his just right to converse occasionally with older people was exprest naïvely by the little son of a prominent Atlanta family when visiting friends on a plantation. "I like to stay here because you let me talk every day at the table," answered John, when his host asked him why he was pleased in the country. "Don't they let you talk every day at home, John?" "Oh, when father says 'give the kiddo a chance,' then they let me talk." This appreciation of his host's welcoming him into the conversation was a rare compliment from little John to his older friends and to their interest in child-life.

Another external and demoralizing interruption to talk is poor table-service. There can be no good conversation at table where the talk is constantly interrupted by wordy instructions to servants. A hostess who takes pride in the table-talk of her guests assures herself in advance that the maid or the butler serving the table is well trained, in order that no questions of servants can jeopardize the flow of conversation. If anything makes it necessary for serving maid or butler to confer with host or hostess, it should be done in an undertone so that conversation is not interrupted. But no matter how quietly the servant does this, the conversation is interrupted by the mere fact that the attention of the host or hostess is diverted for even a moment from the subject being discust. In the home, as in the business office, efficient help means efficient management. It is a reflection on any hostess to have her table served so badly three hundred and sixty-five days in the year that the service is an interruption to table-talk. If she were capable herself, she would have a capable, well-trained maid or butler. If a maid or butler could not be trained properly, her capability would show itself in dismissing that servant and getting one who could be trained. To the end that conversation will not be interrupted, the "Russian" method of dining-table service is preferable to all others, and is becoming as popular in America as in the rest of the world.[A]

A host and hostess can themselves, by the very atmosphere they create, become an unconscious element of interruption to table-talk. To insure fluent conversation at table, hosts must be free from worry; they must cultivate imperturbability; they must be able to ignore or smile at any accident which might happen "in the best regulated family." There is nothing more distasteful to guests than to observe that their host is anxious lest the arrangements of the hostess miscarry, or that their hostess is making herself quite wretched by a fear that the dishes will not be prepared to perfection, or over the breaking of some choice bit of crystal. At a dinner recently I saw the hostess nervous enough to weep over an accident which demolished a treasured salad bowl; and the result was that it took strong effort on the part of a self-sacrificing and friendly guest to keep up the pleasant flow of talk. How much more tactful and delightful was the manner in which another hostess treated a similar situation. The guests were startled by a crash in the butler's pantry, and every one knew from the tinkling sound that it was cut glass. After a few words of instruction quietly given, the hostess laughingly said, "I hope there is enough glass in reserve so that none of you dear people will have to drink champagne from teacups." This was not only a charming, informal way of smoothing out an awkward situation, but it gave the poor butler the necessary confidence to finish serving the dinner. Had the hostess been upset over the affair her agitation would have been communicated to the servants; and instead of one mishap there might have been several. A hostess should still "be mistress of herself tho China fall." In dinner-giving, as in life, it is the part of genius to turn disaster into advantage. "I was once at a dinner-party," said an accomplisht diner-out, "apparently of undertakers hired to mourn for the joints and birds in the dishes, when part of the ceiling fell. From that moment the guests were as merry as crickets."

Interrupting within the conversational group is perhaps the most insufferable of all impediments to rippling talk; and interruptions from without are quite as intolerable. What pleasure is there in conversation between two people, or among three or four, when the thought is interrupted every other remark? Frequent references to subjects entirely foreign to the topic under discussion give conversation much the same jerky, sputtering ineffectualness as sticking a spigot momentarily in a faucet prevents an even flow of water from a tank. People who have any feeling for really good conversation do not allow needless hindrances to destroy the continuity and joy of their intercourse with friends and acquaintances. And people who do permit these interruptions are not conversationalists; they are mere drivelers.