or your own life, and make these the subject of your talk. But in general
society you have no right to do this. For the rule of life is, that men
and women must not think of themselves, but of others: they must live for
others, and then they will live rightly for themselves. So the second rule
for talk would express itself thus:--


Do Not Talk About Your Own Affairs.

I remember how I was mortified last summer, up at the Tiptop House, though
I was not in the least to blame, by a display Emma Fortinbras made of
herself. There had gathered round the fire in the sitting-room quite a
group of the different parties who had come up from the different houses,
and we all felt warm and comfortable and social; and, to my real delight,
Emma and her father and her cousin came in,--they had been belated
somewhere. She is a sweet pretty little thing, really the belle of the
village, if we had such things, and we are all quite proud of her in one
way; but I am sorry to say that she is a little goose, and sometimes she
manages to show this just when you don't want her to. Of course she shows
this, as all other geese show themselves, by cackling about things that
interest no one but herself. When she came into the room, Alice ran to her
and kissed her, and took her to the warmest seat, and took her little cold
hands to rub them, and began to ask her how it had all happened, and
where they had been, and all the other questions. Now, you see, this was
a very dangerous position. Poor Emma was not equal to it. The subject was
given her, and so far she was not to blame. But when, from the misfortunes
of the party, she rushed immediately to detail individual misfortunes of
her own, resting principally on the history of a pair of boots which she
had thought would be strong enough to last all through the expedition, and
which she had meant to send to Sparhawk's before she left home to have