a little time for minds to turn face to face.

Very often conversations are better among three than between two, for
the reason that then one of the trio is always, unconsciously, acting as
umpire, interposing fair play, recalling wandering wits to the nub of
the argument, seeing that the aggressiveness of one does no foul to the
reticence of another. Talk in twos may, alas! fall into speaker and
listener: talk in threes rarely does so.

It is little realized how slowly, how painfully, we approach the
expression of truth. We are so variable, so anxious to be polite, and
alternately swayed by caution or anger. Our mind oscillates like a
pendulum: it takes some time for it to come to rest. And then, the
proper allowance and correction has to be made for our individual
vibrations that prevent accuracy. Even the compass needle doesn't point
the true north, but only the magnetic north. Similarly our minds at best
can but indicate magnetic truth, and are distorted by many things that
act as iron filings do on the compass. The necessity of holding one's
job: what an iron filing that is on the compass card of a man's brain!

We are all afraid of truth: we keep a battalion of our pet prejudices
and precautions ready to throw into the argument as shock troops,
rather than let our fortress of Truth be stormed. We have smoke bombs
and decoy ships and all manner of cunning colorizations by which we
conceal our innards from our friends, and even from ourselves. How we
fume and fidget, how we bustle and dodge rather than commit ourselves.

In days of hurry and complication, in the incessant pressure of human
problems that thrust our days behind us, does one never dream of a way
of life in which talk would be honored and exalted to its proper place