It is not
applied judiciously, when you seem to assume by it that your
interlocutor is _limited_ to these topics, and that "the cobbler must
stick to his last," in word as well as deed. Or, again, if your
questions shall have the air of "pumping" him, you will not make much
progress towards friendly communication; for that seems an unfair
advantage to take of your position, besides that it is making of him a
mere convenience, not treating him as an equal. No one likes to be
catechized after he has grown to man's estate. I advise you, therefore,
to use this rule simply as a convenient introduction to conversation
where other methods fail, and to rely more upon a rule which is in some
respects the reverse of this: Begin by talking about those things which
interest yourself, assuming that your interlocutor is interested in them
also. But I must warn you that here even more tact and discretion are
required than in the other case. Follow such a rule literally and
everywhere, and you would often have no hearer left. Fancy some student,
fresh from his Greek or Sanscrit, endeavoring to impart his enthusiasm
to a crowd of rustics! It is plain that I must add to my rule,
_provided_ your interest does not lie in things too remote from common
apprehension and sympathy. Remember what I have already said about our
"common humanity." Do not be so absorbed in your favorite study that you
shall not also have an eye and a heart for matters pertaining to the
general welfare. Then there will be no company in which you need be
wholly silent, though there will always be preference for a company
which sympathizes with your more decided tastes and pursuits. I cannot,
indeed, understand how one should ever arrive at that state in which he
has no preference for any particular class or society. Yet the more one
cultivates acquaintance with a variety of characters, the more one will
enjoy conversation in the favorite circle. Looking upon society simply
as the means of developing the power of speech in man, the wider and
more intimate our acquaintance with it, the more varied and attractive
will be that power. I have somewhere read of two prisoners of state in
Europe, who, entire strangers to each other before, were thrown into the
same prison-cell to pass years together. One of them, after his release,
relates, that, for the first year, they told each other all that they
ever did,--every incident that memory could possibly rake up out of
their past