Part 7

Only a large heart of quick understanding has this gift; but we help our heart wonderfully by keeping our mind keen. The heart is apt to be very blundering and stupid by itself; just as the mind is very apt to go off on a wrong scent about people, unless you have a warm heart to throw true light on their motives.

A quick-witted heart is what I should put as the first requisite for a good talker; and next a noble heart--a heart that cares for the best side of things and people, a heart which brings out the bearable side of circumstances, and the nobler side of people, and the interesting side of subjects.

Some people are like Kay, in Anderson's "Snow Queen," they have a bit of ice in their heart, and they see all the smallnesses and absurdities about them, instead of being alive to the pathos, or endurance, or good-nature of the apparently stupid lives round them. They are always in a critical, carping, superior frame of mind. These people can often talk brilliantly, but it is thin. You cannot have a large mind without a large heart. 'We live by admiration, hope, and love;' without these, we cease to live--we wither.

The best talk is kindly; any fool can point out flaws, said Goethe (who certainly had a great mind, whatever his heart was like),--it takes a clever man to discern excellencies. A good talker makes other people feel they are much cleverer than they had before realized; they are at their best, thanks to the listener who draws out the best side of them. It is delightful to be with some people--you are sure of hearing good talk--interesting subjects spring up wherever they are.

Perhaps you have a friend staying with you who is one of these delightful people, and you say: "Oh dear! I must go and pay a duty visit--it will be so dull, but do come with me." And, lo and behold! that visit is delightful, for your friend made that dull person into an interesting one by getting her to talk and show her real self. For the real self of every soul is interesting, only it often has such a "buried life" that we are not skilful enough to find it.

Now, does your way of talking bring out the best side of yourself and of those you talk to?

School gives you tremendous opportunities of adding to the kindliness and nice-mindedness of the world; for there you talk with a large number who, like yourself, are not yet made, and who are, therefore, more coloured by the person they talk to than older people would be.

There are people in the world who never hear unkind gossip or vulgar jokes, for no one would think of saying such things to them. I know girls who would never have such things said--who would never get a letter written to them that was not of a nice tone--because, instinctively, their friends would feel such things out of harmony with them.

When girls are silly, or spiteful, or not quite nice in what they say to you, it pays you a bad compliment; do not in your own mind merely condemn them. They would not say it to you if they felt you above talk of that kind. You may be above it in your own mind and may feel that your home surroundings are on a higher level than such talk; but either you have not had the courage to show your colours, or else you are like that in your heart, and they know it by instinct.

See to it that you keep at your best: for the danger of school is the temptation to follow a multitude to do, not evil, but folly.

Many, from indolence or thoughtlessness, or from yielding to the bad bit in them, join in silly school talk, silly mysteries, giggling, criticizing other people, boasting about home, loud, rough ways of talking, slang, cliques and exclusive friendships (every one of which is underbred, as well as silly or unkind), and are yet, three-quarters of them, fit for something better,--at home they would be better, and at school they could be better.

Many people dread schools for fear of wrong talk going on; now some of you may (through gossip, or newspapers, or servants, or novels) know of bad things or fast things; and it is perhaps not your fault that you know; but it is a very heavy sin on your conscience if you hand on your knowledge and make others dwell on wrong things which would never have been in their minds but for you. Books or friends which give us a knowledge of wickedness, do more harm than we know.

Never have the blood-guiltiness on your head of teaching evil to others, or leading their minds to dwell on it. Some find it much harder to get rid of such thoughts than others do--they may be more naturally inclined to it, and you may have woke up in them far more harm than you guess.

Your very first duty when you are thrown with others is to see that no one shall ever be less nice-minded because they knew you. See to it that no one learns anything about evil through your being with them. You can very easily soil a mind, and you can never wash it clean.

If you feel the least doubt about a thing, do not say it--do not tell the story; if you want to ask a question and feel in the very least uncomfortable about it, hold your tongue, or ask your mother instead.

There are many things which it is not wholesome to talk about among yourselves, but which it is quite right to ask your mother about, or any one in her place, if you find yourself dwelling on them. Of course this includes everything which makes you feel at all hot, with a sense of something not quite nice;--everything in books which it would make you hot to read out loud (an excellent test);--and I include all uncanny things such as ghosts and palmistry and fortune-telling:--these are not safe things to talk about, and I ask you as my particular wish not to do it, though you are quite welcome to unburden your mind to me if you wish to do so! I think your common sense will bear me out in not wanting them talked about among yourselves, because you never know who may take it seriously or what harm you may be doing, though as I have read "The Mysteries of Udolpho" to you, you will see that it is not the subject, but the indiscriminate talking which I object to!

But apart from wrong talk, what sort of silly talk are you likely to be infected with at school? It is not unlikely that among a number of girls there will be one with a hawk's eye for dress, who knows exactly how a trimming went, and how long this or that has been worn; in fact, she takes in every detail of the dress of each person she sees for a minute, and can talk of it by the hour! She may have no harm in her, but she is first cousin to a milliner's apprentice (and is mentally the poor relation of the two, since the milliner notices these things as a part of business, and very likely has other interests in life for her spare time). If the girl wishes to prove herself of different family, she needs to put to sleep the side of her that belongs to the keen-eyed young lady behind the counter, by feeding other sides of her mind, and turning her powers of observation on to other things.

I should like you to be faultlessly dressed outside, and I should like you to be perfectly well inside; but I should not admire you if your chief subject of conversation was the devices by which you arrived at the dress, or the decoctions you took to arrive at the health.

Copy the flowers of the field, not only in prettiness, but in giving an impression that you grow as naturally as they do! Make us feel that you could not have anything ugly or awkward or unbecoming about you. Your dress and your rooms and your dinners should be perfect, but do not entertain your guest with the mere mechanism of how you arrive at any one of them. Give time and thought to this machinery of life--enough to produce the right result, and then go on to the real interests, for which they are only the stage. I do not want a sloven, but I want a girl who is a real person and not a mere poupée modèle to show off dresses.

Petty gossip is the prevailing danger of any small community such as a girls' school. Provincial gossip, Matthew Arnold would call it--provincial being one of his severest adjectives for the Philistines whom his soul abhors,--by which he means that their talk is limited to their narrow-minded local gossip, so that when a stranger comes from a larger world, they have nothing in common. I think his use of that word marks his French turn of mind;--parochial would be the better expression in England, where the talk is very often literally parochial,--besides deserving the word in its wider meaning, as describing talk which is full of unimportant, local, and personal facts, instead of belonging to the larger world of ideas.

English girls, as a whole, are supposed to be bad at talking--to giggle among themselves, and to have nothing to say on general subjects. But, besides this, there is a certain love of silly mysteries and secrets in some girls, which is apt to be too much for their common sense.

Some girls are so keen to chatter, and make themselves interesting at any cost, that they tell their family's private affairs or discuss the faults of their nearest relations. I am sure you would all remember that any one, with a grain of decent family pride, washes every bit of dirty linen at home, and holds their tongue about family news till they are sure it is public property, and to the family credit! If you ever want to talk about such things for real reasons, always go to an older friend and not to one of your own age; for an older friend would know enough of the world to take it up by the right handle and to hold her tongue.

Again, some girls fancy that a little theatre gossip marks them out as women of the world. To talk about a play and about the good and bad strokes of acting is one thing:--the petty personal gossip about the actors and actresses is on the same level, to my mind, as the talking about dukes and duchesses by those who read of them in a society paper, without ever expecting to meet them.

Again, there is some school talk which is undesirable, though not wrong. I mean talk about the things which belong to your future life, but which are just the sides of it that you want your education to help you to keep in proper proportion. There are interests, such as hunting and dancing, which are all right in their own time and place, but which make a silly, empty mind when they are your chief mental food. You come to school to take an interest in work, and in bookish things generally. It is not so easy to do this when you are in the full swing of home amusements, and so you come away for a sort of mental retreat, during which it will be easier to you to let your bookish and thoughtful side grow. Here you are, and your home amusements are left behind. Would it not be a pity to let your mind keep running on the very things from which you have come away? Do not let your tongue or your mind run on the amusements of home--they prevent your taking real interest in your work.

Also there should be no talk about religious differences. Of course, you all come from different homes and have somewhat different teaching, and I do not wish you ever to discuss those differences. Every one should keep to her home ways, and try to live up to them. Religious controversy never yet made any into better Christians, and it generally makes them worse!

Avoid Religious gossip about the services and the clergy. Make it a rule for yourself, wherever you are, never to criticize the clergyman or the sermon. Very likely you might say something to the point--it might do him good if he heard it! That will not happen, and what will happen is, that you will do yourself harm by being critical or amused, instead of making your mind devout. If your "mind" knows that, whatever it may notice in church, your "will" is not going to allow it to speak of, then your critical part goes to sleep. A joke loses its amusingness if one is not going to tell it, and you are then able to think only of your Prayers and Resolutions.

Purity and Reverence are the two main things in talk, but how about Sense?

There is one class of girl I have sometimes noticed with amused regret--I dare say you have too--though she is by no means so objectionable as the other kind I spoke of. She is a would-be child of nature. She has no thoughtfulness or weight about her; she is an engaging kitten who exists on the rather inadequate stock-in-trade of nice eyes; she is quite irresponsible and useless, and tells you so, in an ingenuous way, for which her nearest and dearest long to box her ears! I would call her "The Artless Japanese," remembering the princess in the Mikado, who says, "I sit and wonder, in my artless Japanese way, why I am so charming."