here they will not be
intrusive or impertinent. Make place for their interests, their
questions, the problems of their experience; for there are young as well
as old perplexities. Encourage them to talk, and meet them more than
half-way by the utmost hospitality to the subjects that interest and
puzzle them. Give them serious attention; do not ridicule their
confusion of statement nor belittle their troubles.... Do not limit the
talk at table to the topics of childhood, but make it intelligible to
children. Some people make the mistake of 'talking down' to their
children; of turning the conversation at table into a kind of elaborate
'baby-talk'; not realizing that they are robbing their children of
hearing older people talk about the world in which they live. The child
is always looking ahead, peering curiously into the mysterious world
round him, hearing strange voices from it, getting wonderful glimpses
into it. At night when the murmur of voices comes upstairs, he hears in
it the sounds of a future full of great things.... It is not, therefore,
the child of six who sits at the table and listens; it is a human
spirit, eager, curious, wondering, surrounded by mysteries, silently
taking in what it does not understand to-day, but which will take
possession of it next year and become a torch to light it on its way.
It is through association with older people that these fructifying ideas
come to the child; it is through such talk that he finds the world he is
to possess.... The talk of the family ought not, therefore, to be
directed at him or shaped for him; but it ought never to forget him; it
ought to make a place for him."

Apropos of children's appreciation of good talk, this story is told of a
young son of one of the clever men of Chicago: Guests were present and
the boy sat quietly listening to the brilliant conversation of his
elders, when his father suggested to Paul that it was late and perhaps
he had better go to bed. "Please, father, let me stay," pleaded the
youngster, "I do so enjoy interesting conversation." Another and as deep
a childlike appreciation comes from the classic city of our American
Cambridge. The little daughter of one of its representative families
had lain awake for hours upstairs straining her ears to hear the
conversation from below. When her mother came into the little one's room
after her guests had gone, the tiny lady said plaintively, "Mother dear,
while I've been lying here all alone yo