Part 10

He.--I have always hesitated to interpolate my conversation or letters with quotations, for fear that I might seem to be airing my familiarity with classical literature.

She.--Of course, one does not wish to appear pedantic; and one will not, if one will use the quotation for the occasion, instead of making an occasion for the quotation. The proportions, too, of a conversation or a letter must be preserved. If one is talking about a commonplace subject, the quotation, if one is made, should be in keeping with the thought. As a clever writer has said, "A dull face invites a dull fate," and so with a commonplace subject; the treatment should be in accordance with it.

He.--Some persons are never able to quote a passage or tell an anecdote without perverting the meaning. In fact, I have long been interested in noticing how inexact the majority of people are in making statements of all kinds. I can recall several friends who are unreliable in what they say. Their statements should be "checked up"--verified, as we say in business.

She.--As some one has said: "A garbled quotation may be the most effectual perversion of an author's meaning; and a partial representation of an incident in a man's life may be the most malignant of all calumnies."

He.--How very relevant that quotation is. You have certainly just exemplified your own suggestion, namely, that the quotation should be used to suit the occasion.

Shall we make this Golden Rule Number XI.: OCCASIONALLY INDULGE IN A RELEVANT QUOTATION, BUT DO NOT GARBLE IT?

She.--Certainly; a Golden Rule that it is well occasionally to observe.

GOLDEN RULE NUMBER XII

Cultivate tact.

He.--"Consider the significance of SILENCE: it is boundless, never by meditating to be exhausted, unspeakably profitable to thee. Cease that chaotic hubbub, wherein thy own soul runs to waste to confused suicidal dislocation and stupor; out of SILENCE comes thy strength. Speech is silvern, silence is golden; speech is human, silence is divine."

She.--And what suggested the lines from Carlyle?

He.--Oh! I was thinking of one of the extracts in my list of quotations relevant to our subject, "The Art of Conversation." "It is when you come close to a man in conversation that you discover what his real abilities are." One might add, and what they are not.

She.--And I suppose that the line suggested the thought that, in many instances, to quote Carlyle again, "Speech is silvern, silence is golden; speech is human, silence is divine."

He.--Undoubtedly, in many instances, it would be better to preserve a discreet silence than to say that which is disagreeable or untruthful. Of course the tactful person can frequently so turn the conversation as to be obliged to adopt neither alternative.

She.--One should always be truthful, and one should never say that which would be displeasing to the listener,--of course, we must except those semi-disagreeable things which we sometimes feel privileged to say to our relatives or our best friends, on the ground that we are champions on the side of truth.

He.--I have always maintained that it is only a true friend who will tell the unpleasant home truths.

She.--Yes; we can all remember occasions when our expressed resentment at some well-meant criticism offered by a member of the family, for example, was met by the rejoinder that it was the truth.

He.--The "truth" is not always pleasing to the ear, and I agree with you that, except in the case of the privileged few, only the pleasing things should be told.

She.--That is all--provided, of course, that they are at the same time truthful.

He.--And if they are not?

She.--Then they should be left unsaid, for one's speech should never be insincere or flippant.

He.--To be told that one is not looking well, or is looking ill, or older, as the case may be, is certainly not conducive to pleasant feelings on the part of the listener.

She.--Frequently, the person who would not be guilty of offenses of this kind, will arrive at the same results in an indirect way. For example, A, who may be too polite to tell B that he is getting "along in years," will ask him whether the handsome young lady seen in his company at the theater the previous evening is his daughter, thinking thus to compliment him as being the proud parent of so beautiful a maiden; whereas, A, who prides himself upon his youthful appearance, and thinks that he is "holding his own" against Father Time, fails to appreciate the "would-be" compliment. Mrs. C informs Mrs. D that she looks ten years younger since becoming so stout, while Mrs. E. advises Mrs. F. to buy a hat, as up-to-date elderly women no longer wear bonnets; and so on through the alphabet.

He.--Oh! I suppose it is impossible for people who are so obtuse as these to go through the world without blundering at every step.

She.--I don't know. It seems to me that these unthinking people might be taught to think. Surely, we can all learn by observation and experience; and it would seem that persons fairly introspective might discover that it is not direct speech alone that wounds or offends. We all know that the prettiest compliments are often those which are implied; and, conversely, sometimes it is the suggestive criticism or censure that wounds the most.

He.--Then we must remember that we should keep our minds alert; that we must not be found napping; that it is not sufficient that we refrain from giving pointed home thrusts, but that we should never, even by indirect speech, leave with our listener an unpleasant memory.

She.--Yes; we meet some people,--often only for a moment,--only once, perhaps, in a lifetime; but it is possible, in many instances, to make that moment linger forever as a pleasant memory to that other. We can all remember some occasion when there was merely a handclasp, when but few words were spoken, but the memory is ours forever. Something that was said, perhaps, seemingly trivial, but glorified by the speaker's smile, by the sincerity of his heart.

He.--After all, to sum it up, it is the word T-A-C-T, or the lack of it, that makes a person correspondingly agreeable or disagreeable in his social intercourse with another. Someone has defined tact as the art of pleasing, and so I should think we might add this mandate to our golden rules--Cultivate the art of pleasing,--say the right thing or say nothing.