companions should tend
strongly to the humorous, to the light, to the small change of ideas.
There should be an adroit intermixing of light and serious talk. I noted
once with keen interest a shrewd mingling of serious talk and small talk
at a dinner given to a distinguished German scientist.

A clever woman of my acquaintance found herself the one selected to
entertain at table this foreigner and scholar. When she was presented in
the drawing-room to the eminent man who was to take her in to dinner,
her hostess opened the conversation by informing the noted guest that
his new acquaintance, just that morning, had had conferred upon her the
degree of doctor of philosophy, which was the reason she had been
assigned as dinner-companion to so profound a man. The foreigner
followed the conversational cue, recounting to his companion his
observations on the number of American women seeking higher education,
_et cetera_. Such a conversational situation was little conducive to
small talk; but on the way from the drawing-room to the dining-table,
this clever woman directed the talk into light vein by assuring the
scholar and diplomat that there was nothing dangerous about her even if
she did possess a university degree; that she would neither bite nor
philosophize on all occasions; that she was quite as full of life and
frolic as if she had never seen a university. You can imagine the effect
of this vivacity upon the profoundest of men, and you can see how this
clever woman's ability at small talk made a comrade of a notable
academician. As the dinner progressed the talk between these two wavered
from jest to earnest in a most charming manner. Apropos of a late book
on some serious subject not expurgated for babes and sucklings, but
written for thinking men and women, the German scientist asked if he
might present his companion with a copy, provided he promised to glue
carefully together the pages unfit for frolicking feminine minds. Two
days later she received the book with some of the margins pasted--which
pages, of course, were the first ones she read.

When making an attempt to sparkle in small talk, dinner-guests should
remember that the line of demarcation between light talk and buffoonery
may become dangerously delicate. One can talk lightly, but nicely; while
buffoonery is just what the lexicographers define it to be: "Amusing
others by clownish tricks and by commonplace pleasantries." Gentle
dulness ever loved a joke;