as though one were prepared to attend a lecture. There are plenty
of useful talkers at a University, men whom it is a pleasure to
meet occasionally, men with whom one tries, so to speak, a variety
of conversational flies, and who will give one fine sport when they
are fairly hooked. But though a University is a place where one
ought to expect to find abundance of the best talk, the want of
leisure among the present generation of Dons is a serious bar to
interesting talk. By the evening the majority of Dons are apt to be
tired. They have been hard at work most of the day, and they look
upon the sociable evening hours as a time to be given up to what
the Scotch call "daffing"; that is to say, a sort of nimble
interchange of humorous or interesting gossip; a man who pursues a
subject intently is apt to be thought a bore. I think that the
middle-aged Don is apt to be less interesting than either the
elderly or the youthful Don. The middle-aged Don is, like all
successful professional men, full to the brim of affairs. He has
little time for general reading. He lectures, he attends meetings,
his table is covered with papers, and his leisure hours are full of
interviews. But the younger Don is generally less occupied and more
enthusiastic; and best of all is the elderly Don, who is beginning
to take things more easily, has a knowledge of men, a philosophy
and a good-humoured tolerance which makes him more accessible. He
is not in a hurry, he is not preoccupied. He studies the daily
papers with deliberation, and he has just enough duties to make him
feel wholesomely busy. His ambitions are things of the past, and he
is gratified by attention and deference.

I suppose the same is the case, in a certain degree, all the world
over. But the truth about conversation is that, to make anything of
it, people must realize it as a definite mental occupation, and not