There is no sadder disappointment than to realize that a conversation
has been a complete failure. By which we mean that it has failed in
blending or isolating for contrast the ideas, opinions and surmises of
two eager minds. So often a conversation is shipwrecked by the very
eagerness of one member to contribute. There must be give and take,
parry and thrust, patience to hear and judgment to utter. How uneasy is
the qualm as one looks back on an hour's talk and sees that the
opportunity was wasted; the precious instant of intercourse gone
forever: the secrets of the heart still incommunicate! Perhaps we were
too anxious to hurry the moment, to enforce our own theory, to adduce
instance from our own experience. Perhaps we were not patient enough to
wait until our friend could express himself with ease and happiness.
Perhaps we squandered the dialogue in tangent topics, in a multitude of
irrelevances.

[Illustration]

How few, how few are those gifted for real talk! There are fine merry
fellows, full of mirth and shrewdly minted observation, who will not
abide by one topic, who must always be lashing out upon some new byroad,
snatching at every bush they pass. They are too excitable, too
ungoverned for the joys of patient intercourse. Talk is so solemn a rite
it should be approached with prayer and must be conducted with nicety
and forbearance. What steadiness and sympathy are needed if the thread
of thought is to be unwound without tangles or snapping! What
forbearance, while each of the pair, after tentative gropings here and
yonder, feels his way toward truth as he sees it. So often two in talk
are like men standing back to back, each trying to describe to the other
what he sees and disputing because their visions do not tally. It takes