hy. We are
too selfish, too busily engaged in our own welfare, and wrapped up in
our own little world, too intent upon our own self-promotion to be
interested in others. No one can make a good conversationalist who is
not sympathetic. You must be able to enter into another's life, to
live it with the other person, to be a good listener or a good talker.

Walter Besant used to tell of a clever woman who had a great reputation
as a conversationalist, though she talked very little. She had such a
cordial, sympathetic manner that she helped the timid and the shy to
say their best things, and made them feel at home. She dissipated
their fears, and they could say things to her which they could not say
to anyone else. People thought her an interesting conversationalist
because she had this ability to call out the best in others.

If you would make yourself agreeable you must be able to enter into the
life of the people you are conversing with, and you must touch them
along the lines of their interest. No matter how much you may know
about a subject, if it does not happen to interest those to whom you
are talking your efforts will be largely lost.

It is pitiable, sometimes, to see men standing around at the average
reception or club gathering, dumb, almost helpless, and powerless to
enter heartily into the conversation because they are in a subjective
mood. They are thinking, thinking, thinking business, business,
business; thinking how they can get on a little faster--get more
business, more clients, more patients, or more readers for their
books--or a better house to live in; how they can make more show. They
do not enter heartily into the lives of others, or abandon themselves
to the occasion enough to make good talkers. They are cold and
reserved, distant, because their minds are somewhere else, their
affections on themselves and their own affairs. There are only two
things that interest them; business and their own little world. If you
talk about these things, they are interested at once; but they do not
care a snap about your affairs, how you get on, or what your ambition
is, or how they can help you. Our conversation will never reach a high
standard while we live in such a feverish, selfish, and unsympathetic
state.

Great conversationalists have always been very tactful--interesting
without offending. It does not do to stab people if you would interest
them, nor to drag out their family skeletons. So