III

The best talk is that which escapes up the open chimney and cannot berepeated. The finest woods make the best fire and pass away with theleast residuum. I hope the next generation will not accept thereports of "interviews" as specimens of the conversations of theseyears of grace.

But do we talk as well as our fathers and mothers did? We hearwonderful stories of the bright generation that sat about the widefireplaces of New England. Good talk has so much short-hand that itcannot be reported,--the inflection, the change of voice, the shrug,cannot be caught on paper. The best of it is when the subjectunexpectedly goes cross-lots, by a flash of short-cut, to aconclusion so suddenly revealed that it has the effect of wit. Itneeds the highest culture and the finest breeding to prevent theconversation from running into mere persiflage on the one hand--itscommon fate--or monologue on the other. 0ur conversation is largelychaff. I am not sure but the former generation preached a good deal,but it had great practice in fireside talk, and must have talkedwell. There were narrators in those days who could charm a circleall the evening long with stories. When each day broughtcomparatively little recent to read, there was leisure for talk, and therare book and the in-frequent magazine were thoroughly discussed.Families now are swamped by the printed matter that comes daily uponthe center-table. There must be a division of labor, one readingthis, and another that, to make any impression on it. The telegraphbrings the only common food, and works this daily miracle, that everymind in Christendom is excited by one topic simultaneously with everyother mind; it enables a concurrent mental action, a burst ofsympathy, or a universal prayer to be made, which must be, if we haveany faith in the immaterial left, one of the chief forces in modernlife. It is fit that an agent so subtle as electricity should be theminister of it.