Conversation At The Dinner-table

Talking is one of the best of all recreations, and a woman who undersands the art possesses a most useful and eujoyable accomplishment, writes Amelia E. Barr in the September Ladies' Home Journal. No dinner-table is well-appointed without good talkers ; and the basis of interesting conversation is reality. After acourse of London dinners, Sir Walter Scott said, "The bishopa and the lawyers talked better than the wits," that is, the wits talked for the sake of talking, and the Church and the Law had sometliing to talk about. Yet specialties and hobbies are not admissible at a dinner-table, and who can only talk on her own fad has no business in society. She ought to write a pamphlet, or go to the lecture-platform, for any conversation at the dinner-table that is a strain on the attention or the patience soon becomes a bore; indeed one of the cliief elements of pleasant company isa readiness to talk, or to be talked to, on any rational subject.