by your display of learning.

Do not make a point of exhibiting your learning aggressively anywhere.
"Classical quotation is the literary man's parole the world over,"
says Dr. Samuel Johnson, but he savored somewhat of the pedant, and
his imitators, by too frequent an indulgence in this habit, may run
the risk of aping his pedantry without possessing his genius. Neither
is it well to interlard conversation with too frequent quotations from
English authors, no matter how well they may fit the occasion. This is
a habit that easily becomes tiresome.

"Small Talk."

The current change of society is the light coin of "small talk" that
breaks with chink and shimmer the heavy bills of large denomination,
that else would overwhelm social conversation with their size.

Wiseacres may meet and learnedly discourse on all manner of sage
subjects, but that is discussion, debate, argument, what you will, not
conversation. Conversation is light, brilliant, and tossed back and
forth from one to another with the grace and ease of the feathered
shuttlecock.

A lady of high literary attainments was seen in a gay gathering
sitting quietly by herself in a corner, and, being questioned by a
friend as to her silence, replied, half bitterly, "I have no 'small
change,' and my bank bills are all of too large denomination for the
occasion." This is a difficulty that one should strive to overcome,
for, after all, it is small change, rather than bank bills, that
society in general requires.

Given the foundation of even a moderate education, the aspirant for
social success will gain more ideas from modern fiction than from any
other source whatever. No historian presents the social manners and
customs of his time with half the accuracy displayed by our best
fiction writers. A well known society woman, familiar with its usages
both at home and abroad, declares that "a course of Anthony Trollope
is as good as a London season," and we all know that Howells and James
and other authors of that ilk have lifted the _portieres_ of our own
drawing rooms and shown us what is transpiring therein. Gail Hamilton
says that to be "well-smattered" is next best to being deeply learned,
and nowhere can a smattering of almost everything be better gained
than from the modern works of fiction.

A Valuable Source of Knowledge.

A friend of the writer, a talented elocutionist, and socially
brilliant, once said with reference to her quiet country home and h