ardent journalists. But at once to stimulate and gratify curiosity, and
to give a quiet circle the sense of being admitted to the inmost
penetralia of affairs, is a triumph of conversational art.

Dr. Johnson used to say that he loved to stretch his legs and have his
talk out; and the fact remains that the best conversation one gets is
the conversation that one does not scheme for, and even on occasions
from which one has expected but little. The talks that remain in my
mind as of pre-eminent interest are long leisurely tete-a-tete talks,
oftenest perhaps of all in the course of a walk, when exercise sends
the blood coursing through the brain, when a pleasant countryside tunes
the spirit to a serene harmony of mood, and when the mind, stimulated
into a joyful readiness by association with some quiet, just, and
perceptive companion, visits its dusty warehouse, and turns over its
fantastic stores. Then is the time to penetrate into the inmost
labyrinths of a subject, to indulge in pleasing discursiveness, as the
fancy leads one, and yet to return again and again with renewed relish
to the central theme. Such talks as these, with no overshadowing
anxiety upon the mind, held on breezy uplands or in pleasant country
lanes, make the moments, indeed, to which the mind, in the sad mood
which remembers the days that are gone, turns with that sorrowful
desolation of which Dante speaks, as to a treasure lightly spent and
ungratefully regarded. How such hours rise up before the mind! Even now
as I write I think of such a scene, when I walked with a friend, long
dead, on the broad yellow sands beside a western sea. I can recall the
sharp hiss of the shoreward wind, the wholesome savours of the brine,
the soft clap of small waves, the sand-dunes behind the shore, pricked
with green tufts of grass, the ships moving slowly on the sea's rim,
and the shadowy headland to which we hardly seemed to draw more near,
while we spoke of all that was in our hearts, and all that we meant to
do and be. That day was a great gift from God; and yet, as I received
it, I did not know how fair a jewel of memory it would be. I like to
think that there are many such jewels of recollection clasped close in
the heart's casket, even in the minds of men and women that I meet,
that seem so commonplace to me, so interesting to themselves!

It is strange, in reflecting about the memorable talks I have held with
different people, to find that I remember best the