received from the other. Were there no other advantage to be
sought from the power of general conversation, this alone should be
enough to induce us to cultivate it: that so many uncomfortable social
distinctions would thereby be removed. Have you not heard it often said,
that, if certain classes only "knew each other better," they would be
better friends, no longer separated by mutual envies, jealousies, and
contempt? Now conversation is the readiest way to this mutual
acquaintance, and it specially behooves one of the educated class to
make the first advances in conversation. I have in my mind an instance
of a man of natural reserve and diffidence, and of scholastic habits,
who greatly to his grief had the reputation among some uneducated people
of being "proud." But having occasion to do some little service to a
woman of this class, he entered her plain dwelling, seated himself at
once as if at home, and had no sooner uttered a few words of sympathy,
such as the occasion called for, than all that suspicion of pride was
most thoroughly dissipated, leaving only the wonder that it could ever
have been entertained. My friend, will you not, in this world of
frequent misunderstanding, do your part, by _word_ as well as deed, to
show others, whom society classes below you, that you are not divided
from them in respect to all those great interests which make the true
dignity of human nature? Talk of the virtue of silence! I will tell you
from my own experience of a thousand cases where the simple failure to
speak has kept up a coolness and alienation which one little word would
have dispersed forever. Among the many sins and weaknesses which I have
to lay at my own door, few give me greater compunction than the
cowardice--or whatever else it was--which kept back the timely words
that ought to have been uttered, but were not.

Can I make this letter more practically useful by a few rules? It would
seem, that, if conversation is an art, like other arts, there must be
rules and methods to attain to it. This is true; but I must first remind
you that mere facility, propriety, or elegance of speech is but a small
part of the discipline required to make an agreeable and profitable
talker. You must have something to express, something that you long to
utter, something that you feel it would be for the advantage of others
to hear. For the furnishing of mind and heart comes before any special
power to _bring out_ of one's treasury thin