pleasure of anecdotage rather than make the social mistake of hurting even one of the guests.  As for prepared or premeditated art, Mr. Mahaffy has a great contempt for it and tells us of a certain college don (let us hope not at Oxford or Cambridge) who always carried a jest-book in his pocket and had to refer to it when he wished to make a repartee.  Great wits, too, are often very cruel, and great humourists often very vulgar, so it will be better to try and ’make good conversation without any large help from these brilliant but dangerous gifts.’

In a tete-a-tete one should talk about persons, and in general Society about things.  The state of the weather is always an excusable exordium, but it is convenient to have a paradox or heresy on the subject always ready so as to direct the conversation into other channels.  Really domestic people are almost invariably bad talkers as their very virtues in home life have dulled their interest in outer things.  The very best mothers will insist on chattering of their babies and prattling about infant education.  In fact, most women do not take sufficient interest in politics, just as most men are deficient in general reading.  Still, anybody can be made to talk, except the very obstinate, and even a commercial traveller may be drawn out and become quite interesting.  As for Society small talk, it is impossible, Mr. Mahaffy tells us, for any sound theory of conversation to depreciate gossip, ’which is perhaps the main factor in agreeable talk throughout Society.’  The retailing of small personal points about great people always gives pleasure, and if one is not fortunate enough to be an Arctic traveller or an escaped Nihilist, the best thing one can do is to relate some anecdote of ’Prince Bismarck, or King Victor Emmanuel, or Mr. Gladstone.’  In the case of meeting a genius and a Duke at dinner, the good talker will try to raise himself to the level of the former and to bring the latter down to his own level.  To succeed among one’s social superiors one must have no hesitation in contradicting them.  Indeed, one should make bold criticisms and introduce a bright and free tone into a Society whose grandeur and extreme respectability make it, Mr. Mahaffy remarks, as pathetically as inaccurately, ‘perhaps somewhat dull.’  The best conversationalists are those whose ancestors have been bilingual, like the French and Irish, but the art of conversation is really within the reach of almost every one, except those who are morbidly truthful, or whose high moral worth requires to be sustained by a permanent gravity of demeanour and a general dulness of mind.