the best talk, the want of leisure among the present generation of Dons
is a serious bar to interesting talk. By the evening the majority of
Dons are apt to be tired. They have been hard at work most of the day,
and they look upon the sociable evening hours as a time to be given up
to what the Scotch call "daffing"; that is to say, a sort of nimble
interchange of humorous or interesting gossip; a man who pursues a
subject intently is apt to be thought a bore. I think that the
middle-aged Don is apt to be less interesting than either the elderly
or the youthful Don. The middle-aged Don is, like all successful
professional men, full to the brim of affairs. He has little time for
general reading. He lectures, he attends meetings, his table is covered
with papers, and his leisure hours are full of interviews. But the
younger Don is generally less occupied and more enthusiastic; and best
of all is the elderly Don, who is beginning to take things more easily,
has a knowledge of men, a philosophy and a good-humoured tolerance
which makes him more accessible. He is not in a hurry, he is not
preoccupied. He studies the daily papers with deliberation, and he has
just enough duties to make him feel wholesomely busy. His ambitions are
things of the past, and he is gratified by attention and deference.

I suppose the same is the case, in a certain degree, all the world
over. But the truth about conversation is that, to make anything of it,
people must realize it as a definite mental occupation, and not merely
a dribbling into words of casual thoughts. To do it well implies a
certain deliberate intention, a certain unselfishness, a certain zest.
The difficulty is that it demands a catholicity of interests, a full
mind. Yet it does not do to have a subject on the brain, and to
introduce it into all companies. The pity is that conversation is not
more recognized as a definite accomplishment. People who care about the
success of social gatherings are apt to invite an instrumentalist or a
singer, or a man with what may be called parlour tricks; but few people
are equally careful to plant out two or three conversationalists among
their parties, or to take care that their conversationalists are
provided with a sympathetic background.

For the fact remains that conversation is a real art, and depends like
all other arts upon congenial circumstances and suitable surroundings.
People are too apt to believe that, because they have interests