the agility of a sleight-of-hand
performer, to the ever increasing rapture of his listeners.

But as a rule the man who has been led to believe that he is a brilliant
and interesting talker has been led to make himself a rapacious pest. No
conversation is possible between others whose ears are within reach of his
ponderous voice; anecdotes, long-winded stories, dramatic and pathetic,
stock his repertoire; but worst of all are his humorous yarns at which he
laughs uproariously though every one else grows solemn and more solemn.

There is a simple rule, by which if one is a voluble chatterer (to be a
good talker necessitates a good mind) one can at least refrain from being
a pest or a bore. And the rule is merely, to stop and think.

="THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK"=

Nearly all the faults or mistakes in conversation are caused by not
thinking. For instance, a first rule for behavior in society is: "Try to
do and say those things only which will be agreeable to others." Yet how
many people, who really know better, people who are perfectly capable of
intelligent understanding if they didn't let their brains remain asleep
or locked tight, go night after night to dinner parties, day after day to
other social gatherings, and absent-mindedly prate about this or that
without ever taking the trouble to _think_ what they are saying and to
whom they are saying it! Would a young mother describe twenty or thirty
cunning tricks and sayings of the baby to a bachelor who has been
helplessly put beside her at dinner if she _thought_? She would know very
well, alas! that not even a very dear friend would really care for more
than a _hors d'oeuvre_ of the subject, at the board of general
conversation.

The older woman is even worse, unless something occurs (often when it is
too late) to make her wake up and realize that she not only bores her
hearers but prejudices everyone against her children by the unrestraint of
her own praise. The daughter who is continually lauded as the most
captivating and beautiful girl in the world, seems to the wearied
perceptions of enforced listeners annoying and plain. In the same way the
"magnificent" son is handicapped by his mother's--or his
father's--overweening pride and love in exact proportion to its displayed
intensity. On the other hand, the neglected wife, the unappreciated
husband, the misunderstood child, takes on a glamor in the eyes of others
equally out of proportion. That great love has seldom