ring, sweltering New York street to the maddening
silence of an overworked farmer's table. She stands it as long as she
can, then cries out, "For Gawd's sake, _talk_!"

One secret of the attraction for the young of the city over the
country or small town is contact with those who talk. They are
conscious of the exercise of a freedom they have never known--the
freedom to say what rises to the lips. They experience the unknown joy
of play of mind. According to their observation the tongue and mind
are used only when needed for serious service: to keep them active, to
allow them to perform whatever nimble feats their owners fancy--this
is a revelation!

Free family talk is sometimes ruined by a mistaken effort to direct it
according to some artificial notions of what conversation means.
Conversation means free giving of what is uppermost in the mind. The
more spontaneous it is the more interesting and genuine it is. It is
this freedom which gives to the talk of the child its surprises and
often its startling power to set one thinking. Holding talk to some
severe standard of consistency, dignity, or subject is sure to stiffen
and hamper it. There could have been nothing very free or joyful
about talking according to a program as the ladies of the
eighteenth-century salons were more or less inclined. Good
conversation runs like water; nothing is foreign to it. "Farming is
such an unintellectual subject," I heard a critical young woman say to
her husband, whose tastes were bucolic. The young woman did not
realize that one of the masterpieces of the greatest of the world's
writers was on farming--most practical farming, too! That which
relates to the life of each, interests each, concerns each--that is
the material for conversation, if it is to be enjoyable or productive.

One of a woman's real difficulties in creating a free-speaking
household is her natural tendency to regard opinions as personal. To
differ is something she finds it difficult to tolerate. To her mind it
is to be unfriendly. This propensity to give a personal turn to
things is an expression of that intensity of nature which makes her,
as Mr. Kipling has truthfully put it, "more deadly than the male!" She
_must_ be that--were she not, the race would dwindle. _He_ would never
sacrifice himself as she does for the preservation of the young! This
necessity of concentrating her whole being on a little group makes her
personal. The wise woman is she who recogniz