Conversation: Its Faults and Its Graces Part 1

Conversation.

by Andrew P. Peabody.

PART I.

AN ADDRESS

DELIVERED BEFORE THE

NEWBURYPORT FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL,

DECEMBER 19, 1846,

BY ANDREW P. PEABODY.

YOUNG LADIES,

You have made me happy by your kind invitation to meet you, and to address you on this anniversary. A day spent in this room at your annual examination, nearly two years ago, was a season of privilege and enjoyment not readily to be forgotten. I had previously entertained a high regard for your instructor. I then learned to know him by his work; and, were he not here, I should be glad to extend beyond a single sentence my congratulations with you that you are his pupils.

I have said that I accepted your invitation with gladness. Yet, in preparing myself to meet you, I find a degree of embarra.s.sment. This is for you a season of recreation,--a high festival; and I am accustomed to use my pen and voice only on grave occasions, and for solemn services. I know not how to add to your amus.e.m.e.nt. Should I undertake to make sport for you, my awkwardness would give you more mirth than my wit. The best that I can do is to select some subject that is or ought to be interesting to you, and to endeavor to blend a little instruction with the gayer and more lively notes of the occasion. The lesson shall be neither tediously long nor needlessly grave.

I propose to offer you a few hints on _conversation_. How large a portion of life does it fill up! How innumerable are its ministries and its uses! It is the most refined species of recreation,--the most sparkling source of merriment. It interweaves with a never-resting shuttle the bonds of domestic sympathy. It fastens the ties of friends.h.i.+p, and runs along the golden links of the chain of love. It enriches charity, and makes the gift twice blessed. There is, perhaps, a peculiar appropriateness in the selection of this topic for an address to young ladies; for they do more than any other cla.s.s in the community towards establis.h.i.+ng the general tone and standard of social intercourse. The voices of many of you already, I doubt not, strike the key-note of home conversation; and you are fast approaching an age when you will take prominent places in general society; will be the objects of peculiar regard; and will, in a great measure, determine whether the social converse in your respective circles shall be vulgar or refined, censorious or kindly, frivolous or dignified. It was said by a wise man of antiquity,--"Only give me the making of songs for the people, and I care not who makes the laws." In our unmusical age and land, talking occupies the place which songs did among the melody-loving Greeks; and he who could tune the many-voiced harp of the social party, need crave no higher office or more potent sway.

Permit me now to enumerate some of the characteristics of graceful, elegant, and profitable conversation, commencing with the lower graces, and pa.s.sing on to the higher.

Let me first beg you, if you would be good talkers, to form and fix now, (for you can do this only now,) habits of correct and easy p.r.o.nunciation. The words which you now miscall, it will cost you great pains in after life to p.r.o.nounce aright, and you will always be in danger of returning inadvertently to your old p.r.o.nunciation. There are two extremes which you ought equally to shun. One is that of carelessness; the other, that of extreme precision, as if the sound of the words uttered were constantly uppermost in the mind. This last fault always suggests the idea of vanity and pedantry, and is of itself enough to add a deep indigo hue to a young lady's reputation.

One great fault of New England p.r.o.nunciation is, that the work is performed too much by the outer organs of speech. The tones of the voice have but little depth. Instead of a generous play of the throat and lungs, the throat almost closes, and the voice seems to be formed in the mouth. It is this that gives what is called a _nasal_ tone to the voice, which, when denied free range through its lawful avenues, rushes in part through the nose. We notice the nasal p.r.o.nunciation in excess here and there in an individual, while Englishmen and Southerners observe it as a prevailing characteristic of all cla.s.ses of people in the Northern States. Southerners in general are much less careful and accurate in p.r.o.nunciation than we are; but they more than compensate for this deficiency by the full, round tones in which they utter themselves. In our superficial use of the organs of speech, there are some consonants which we are p.r.o.ne to omit altogether. This is especially the case with _g_ in words that end with _ing_. Nine persons out of ten say _singin_ instead of _singing_. I know some public speakers, and many private ones, who never p.r.o.nounce the _t_ in such words as _object_ and _prospect_. Very few persons give the right sound to _r_ final. _Far_ is generally p.r.o.nounced as if it were written _fah_. Now, I would not have the full Hibernian roll of the _r_; but I would have the presence of the letter more distinctly recognized, than it often is, even by persons of refined and fastidious taste.

Let me next beg you to shun all the ungrammatical vulgarisms which are often heard, but which never fail to grate harshly on a well-tuned ear.

If you permit yourselves to use them now, you will never get rid of them. I know a venerable and accomplished lawyer, who has stood at the head of his profession in this State, and has moved in the most refined society for half a century, who to this day says _haint_ for _has not_, having acquired the habit when a schoolboy. I have known persons who have for years tried unsuccessfully to break themselves of saying _done_ for _did_, and _you and I_ for _you and me_. Many well-educated persons, through the power of long habit, persist in saying _shew_ for _showed_, while they know perfectly well that they might, with equal propriety, subst.i.tute _snew_ for _snowed_; and there is not far hence a clergyman, marvellously precise and fastidious in his choice of words, who is very apt to commence his sermon by saying, "I _shew_ you in a recent discourse." A false delicacy has very generally introduced _drank_ as the perfect participle of _drink_, instead of _drunk_, which alone has any respectable authority in its favor; and the imperfect tense and perfect participle have been similarly confounded in many other cases. I know not what grammar you use in this school. I trust that it is an old one; for some of the new grammars sanction these vulgarisms, and in looking over their tables of irregular verbs, I have sometimes half expected to have the book dashed from my hand by the indignant ghost of Lindley Murray. Great care and discretion should be employed in the use of the common abbreviations of the negative forms of the substantive and auxiliary verbs. _Can't_, _don't_, and _haven't_, are admissible in rapid conversation on trivial subjects. _Isn't_ and _hasn't_ are more harsh, yet tolerated by respectable usage. _Didn't_, _couldn't_, _wouldn't_, and _shouldn't_, make as unpleasant combinations of consonants as can well be uttered, and fall short but by one remove of those unutterable names of Polish gentlemen which sometimes excite our wonder in the columns of a newspaper. _Won't_ for _will not_, and _aint_ for _is not_ or _are not_, are absolutely vulgar; and _aint_, for _has not_ or _have not_, is utterly intolerable.

Nearly akin to these offences against good grammar is another untasteful practice, into which you are probably more in danger of falling, and which is a crying sin among young ladies,--I mean the use of exaggerated, extravagant forms of speech,--saying _splendid_ for _pretty_, _magnificent_ for _handsome_, _horrid_ for _very_, _horrible_ for _unpleasant_, _immense_ for _large_, _thousands_ or _myriads_ for any number greater than _two_. Were I to write down, for one day, the conversation of some young ladies of my acquaintance, and then to interpret it literally, it would imply that, within the compa.s.s of twelve or fourteen hours, they had met with more marvellous adventures and hair-breadth escapes, had pa.s.sed through more distressing experiences, had seen more imposing spectacles, had endured more fright, and enjoyed more rapture, than would suffice for half a dozen common lives. This habit is attended with many inconveniences. It deprives you of the intelligible use of strong expressions when you need them. If you use them all the time, n.o.body understands or believes you when you use them in earnest. You are in the same predicament with the boy who cried WOLF so often, when there was no wolf, that n.o.body would go to his relief when the wolf came. This habit has also a very bad moral bearing. Our words have a reflex influence upon our characters.

Exaggerated speech makes one careless of the truth. The habit of using words without regard to their rightful meaning, often leads one to distort facts, to misreport conversations, and to magnify statements, in matters in which the literal truth is important to be told. You can never trust the testimony of one who in common conversation is indifferent to the import, and regardless of the power, of words. I am acquainted with persons whose representations of facts always need translation and correction, and who have utterly lost their reputation for veracity, solely through this habit of overstrained and extravagant speech. They do not mean to lie; but they have a dialect of their own, in which words bear an entirely different sense from that given to them in the daily intercourse of discreet and sober people.

In this connection, it may not be amiss to notice a certain cla.s.s of phrases, often employed to fill out and dilute sentences, such as, _I'm sure_,--_I declare_,--_That's a fact_,--_You know_,--_I want to know_,--_Did you ever?_--_Well! I never_,--and the like. All these forms of speech disfigure conversation, weaken the force of the a.s.sertions or statements with which they are connected, and give unfavorable impressions as to the good breeding of the person that uses them.

You will be surprised, young ladies, to hear me add to these counsels,--"Above all things, swear not at all." Yet there is a great deal of swearing among those who would shudder at the very thought of being profane. The Jews, who were afraid to use the most sacred names in common speech, were accustomed to swear by the temple, by the altar, and by their own heads; and these oaths were rebuked and forbidden by divine authority. I know not why the rebuke and prohibition apply not with full force to the numerous oaths by _goodness_, _faith_, _patience_, and _mercy_, which we hear from lips that mean to be neither coa.r.s.e nor irreverent, in the schoolroom, street, and parlor; and a moment's reflection will convince any well-disposed person, that, in the exclamation _Lor_, the cutting off of a single letter from a consecrated word can hardly save one from the censure and the penalty written in the third commandment. I do not regard these expressions as harmless. I believe them inconsistent with Christian laws of speech. Nor do they accord with the simple, quiet habit of mind and tone of feeling which are the most favorable to happiness and usefulness, and which sit as gracefully on gay and buoyant youth as on the sedateness of maturer years. The frame of mind in which a young lady says, in reply to a question, _Mercy! no_, is very different from that which prompts the simple, modest _no_. Were there any room for doubt, I should have some doubt of the truth of the former answer; for the unnatural, excited, fluttered state of mind implied in the use of the oath, might indicate either an unfitness to weigh the truth, or an unwillingness to acknowledge it.

In fine, transparency is an essential attribute of all graceful and becoming speech. Language ought to represent the speaker's ideas, and neither more nor less. Exclamations, needless expletives, unmeaning extravagances, are as untasteful as the streamers of tattered finery which you sometimes see fluttering about the person of a dilapidated belle. Let your thoughts be as strong, as witty, as brilliant, as you can make them; but never seek to atone for feeble thought by large words, or to rig out foolish conceits in the spangled robe of genuine wit. Speak as you think and feel; and let the tongue always be an honest interpreter to the heart.

But it is time that we pa.s.sed to higher considerations. There are great laws of duty and religion which should govern our conversation; and the divine Teacher a.s.sures us that even for our idle words we are accountable to Him who has given us the power of speech. Now, I by no means believe that there is any principle of our religion which frowns upon wit or merriment, or forbids playful speech at fit seasons and within due limits. The very fact that the Almighty has created the muscles which produce the smile and the laugh, is a perpetual rebuke to those who would call all laughter madness, and all mirth folly.

Amus.e.m.e.nt, in its time and place, is a great good; and I know of no amus.e.m.e.nt so refined, so worthy an intellectual being, as that conversation which is witty and still kind, playful, yet always reverent, which recreates from toil and care, but leaves no sting, and violates no principle of brotherly love or religious duty.

Evil speaking, slander, detraction, gossip, scandal, are different names for one of the chief dangers to be guarded against in conversation; and you are doing much towards defending yourselves against it by the generous mental culture which you enjoy in this seminary. The demon of slander loves an empty house. A taste for scandal betrays a vacant mind.

Furnish your minds, then, by useful reading and study, and by habits of reflection and mental industry, that you may be able to talk about subjects as well as about people,--about events too long past or too remote to be interwoven with slander. But, if you must talk about people, why not about their good traits and deeds? The truest ingenuity is that which brings hidden excellences to light; for virtue is in her very nature modest and retiring, while faults lie on the surface and are detected with half an eye.

You will undoubtedly be careful to have your words always just and kind, if you will only take a sufficiently thorough view of the influence of your habits of conversation, both in the formation of your own characters and in determining the happiness of others. But how low an estimate do many of us make of the power of the tongue! How little account we are apt to take of our words! Have we not all at times said to ourselves, "Oh! it is only a word!" when it may have been sharp as a drawn sword, have given more pain than a score of blows, and done more harm than our hands could have wrought in a month? Why is it that the slanderer and the tale-bearer regard themselves as honest and worthy people, instead of feeling that they are accursed of G.o.d and man? It is because they deal in evil words only, and they consider words as mere nought. Why is it that the carping tongue, which filches a little from everybody's good name, can hardly utter itself without a sneer, and makes every fair character its prey, thinks better of itself than a petty pilferer would? It is because by long, though baseless prescription, the tongue has claimed for itself a license denied to every other member and faculty.

But, in point of fact, your words not only express, but help create, your characters. Speech gives definiteness and permanence to your thoughts and feelings. The unuttered thought may fade from the memory,--may be chased away by better thoughts,--may, indeed, hardly be a part of your own mind; for, if suggested from without, and met without a welcome, and with disapproval and resistance, it is not yours. But by speech you adopt thoughts, and the voice that utters them is as a pen that engraves them indelibly on the soul. If you can suppress unkind thoughts, so that, when they rise in your breast, and mount to your very lips, you leave them unuttered, you are not on the whole unkind,--your better nature has the supremacy. But if these wrong feelings often find utterance, though you call it hasty utterance, there is reason to fear that they flow from a bitter fountain within.

Consider, also, how large a portion speech makes up of the lives of all.

It occupies the greater part of the waking hours of many of us; while express acts of a moral bearing, compared with our words, are rare and few. Indeed, in many departments of duty, words are our only possible deeds,--it is by words alone that we can perform or violate our duty.

Many of the most important forms of charity are those of speech.

Alms-giving is almost the only expression of charity of which the voice is not the chief minister; and alms, conferred in silent coldness, or with chiding or disdainful speech, freeze the spirit, though they may warm the body. Speech, too, is the sole medium of a countless host of domestic duties and observances. There are, indeed, in every community many whose only activity seems to be in words. There are many young ladies, released from the restraints of school, and many older ladies, with few or no domestic burdens, with no worldly avocation and no taste for reading, whose whole waking life, either at their own homes or from house to house, is given to the exercise, for good or evil, of the tongue,--that unruly member. And how blessed might they make that exercise,--for how many holy ministries of love, sympathy, and charity might it suffice,--how many wounds might it prevent or heal,--did they only believe and feel that they were writing out their own characters in their daily speech! But too many of them forget this. So long as they do not knowingly and absolutely lie, they feel no responsibility for their words. They deem themselves virtuous, because they refrain from vices to which they have not the shadow of a temptation; but carp, backbite, and carry ill reports from house to house, with an apostle's zeal and a martyr's devotedness. To say nothing of the social effect of such a life, is not the tongue thus employed working out spiritual death for the soul in whose service it is busy? I know of no images too vile to portray such a character. The dissection of a slanderer's or talebearer's heart would present the most loathsome specimen of morbid anatomy conceivable. It is full of the most malignant poison. Its life is all mean, low, serpent-like,--a life that cannot bear the light, but finds all its nourishment and growth in darkness. Were these foul and odious forms of speech incapable of harming others,--did human reptiles of this cla.s.s creep about in some outward guise, in which they could be recognized by all, and their words be taken for what they are worth, and no more,--still I would beg them, for their own sakes, not to degrade G.o.d's image, in which they were created, into the likeness of a creeping thing; I would entreat them not to be guilty of the meanest and most miserable of all forms of spiritual suicide; I would beseech them, if they are determined to sell their souls, to get some better price for them than the scorn and dread of all whose esteem is worth having.

In this connection, we ought to take into account the very large cla.s.s of literally idle words. How many talk on unthinkingly and heedlessly, as if the swift exercise of the organs of speech were the great end of life! The most trivial news of the day, the concerns of the neighborhood, the floating gossip, whether good-natured or malignant, dress, food, frivolous surmises, paltry plans, vanities too light to remain an hour upon the memory,--these are the sole staple of what too many call conversation; and many are the young people who are training themselves in the use of speech for no higher or better purpose. But such persons have the threatened judgment visibly following their idle speech. Their minds grow superficial and shallow. They constantly lose ground, if they ever had any, as intellectual and moral beings. Such speech makes a person, of however genteel training, coa.r.s.e and vulgar, and that not only in character, but even in voice and manners, and with sad frequency it obliterates traits of rich loveliness and promise. The merely idle tongue is also very readily betrayed into overt guilt. One cannot indulge in idle, reckless talk, without being implicated in all the current slander and calumny, and acquiring gradually the envious and malignant traits of a hackneyed tale-bearer. And the person who, in youth, can attract the attention and win the favor of those of little reflection by flippant and voluble discourse, will encounter in the very same circles neglect, disesteem, and dislike, before the meridian of life is pa.s.sed; for it takes all the charms that youth, sprightliness, and high animal spirits can furnish, to make an idle tongue fascinating or even endurable.

Let me ask you now to consider for a moment the influence which we exert in conversation upon the happiness or misery of others. It is not too much to say, that most of us do more good or harm in this way than in all other forms beside. Look around you,--take a survey of whatever there is of social or domestic unhappiness in the families to which you belong, or among your kindred and acquaintance. Nine tenths of it can be traced to no other cause than untrue, unkind, or ungoverned speech. A mere harsh word, repented of the next moment,--how great a fire can it kindle! The carrying back and forth of an idle tale, not worth an hour's thought, will often break up the closest intimacies. From every slanderous tongue you may trace numerous rills of bitterness, winding round from house to house, and separating those who ought to be united in the closest friends.h.i.+p. Could persons, who, with kind hearts, are yet hasty in speech, number up, at the close of a day, the feelings that they had wounded, and the uncomfortable sensations that they had caused, they would need no other motive to study suavity of manner, and to seek for their words the rich unction of a truly charitable spirit. Then, too, how many are the traits of suspicion, jealousy, and heart-burning, which go forth from every day's merely idle words, vain and vague surmises, uncharitable inferences and conjectures!

These thoughts point to the necessity of religion as the guiding, controlling element in conversation. All conversation ought to be religious. Not that I would have persons always talking on what are commonly called religious subjects. Let these be talked of at fitting times and places, but never obtrusively brought forward or thrust in.

But cannot common subjects be talked of religiously? Cannot we converse about our plans, our amus.e.m.e.nts, our reading, nay, and our neighbors too, and no sacred name be introduced, and yet the conversation be strictly religious? Yes,--if throughout the conversation we own the laws of honesty, frankness, kind construction, and sincere benevolence,--if our speech be pure, true, gentle, dignified,--if it seek or impart information that either party needs,--if it cherish friendly feeling,--if it give us kinder affections towards others,--if it bring our minds into vigorous exercise,--nay, if it barely amuse us, but not too long, and if the wit be free from coa.r.s.eness and at no one's expense. But we should ever bear it in mind, that our words are all uttered in the hearing of an unseen Listener and Judge. Could we keep this in remembrance, there would be little in our speech that need give us shame or pain. But that half hour spent in holding up to ridicule one who has done you no harm,--that breathless haste to tell the last piece of slander,--you would not want to remember in your evening prayer. From the flippant, irresponsible, wasteful gossip, in which so much time is daily lost, you could not with a safe conscience look up and own an Almighty presence.

Young ladies, my subject is a large one, and branches out into so many heads, that, were I to say all that I should be glad to say, the setting sun would stop me midway. But it is time for me to relieve your patience. Accept, with these fragmentary hints, my cordial congratulations and good wishes. Life now smiles before you, and beckons you onward. Heaven grant that your coming days may be even happier than you hope! To make them so is within your own power. They will not be cloudless. If you live long, disappointments and sorrows must come.

There will be steep and rough pa.s.sages in the way of life. But there is a Guide, in whose footprints you may climb the steep places without weariness, and tread the rough ground without stumbling. Add to your mental culture faith in Him, and the self-consecration of the Christian heart. Then even trials will make you happier. When clouds are over your way, rays from Heaven will struggle through their fissures, and fringe their edges. Your path will be onward and upward, ever easier, ever brighter. On that path may your early footsteps be planted, that the beautiful bloom of your youth may not wither and perish, but may ripen for a heavenly harvest!

PART II.

A LECTURE

DELIVERED AT READING, ENGLAND, DECEMBER 19, 1854,

BY FRANCIS TRENCH.

WE are all of us more or less apt to overlook that which is continually going on around us. We omit to make it a matter of inquiry, and reserve our attention for that which is more rare, although of far less importance. What is it, for instance, which, after a course of long, sultry heat,--when the sun, day by day, has blazed in the sky above,--what is it, I ask, which has still preserved the verdure and freshness of all vegetable life? Surely it has been nothing else than the dew of heaven, gently, regularly, plenteously falling, as each evening closed in. Nevertheless, how little is it thought of,--how little are its benefits acknowledged! But when the clouds gather speedily and darkly, and perhaps unexpectedly, when the sense of coolness spreads once more through the parched atmosphere, when abundance of rain all at once descends, then all observe the change, all notice the beneficial results; yet perhaps they are trifling indeed compared with those of the nightly and forgotten dew, which has never ceased to fall, week by week, or even month by month, during the course of the drought. I feel no doubt that it will be acknowledged how it is the same, the very same, in all things calling for our observation. So, therefore, it is regarding conversation, as a thing of every day. We flock to hear and admire some mighty orator's address, but we think little of and little appreciate that daily, hourly thing which is our subject now,--I mean conversation. But I leave you to judge which has the most effect on our general interest, as social creatures,--which, in the long run, has most to do with the pleasure and the profit of all human intercourse.

Having made this claim on your attention, I would now observe that the subject is one of so wide a scope that I can do little more than present you with a few thoughts, which I have noted down as they have risen to my own mind, upon it. And I trust that they will prove not entirely unacceptable, though well indeed aware that the topic is one to which it must be very difficult indeed to do any justice.

But I must first try to meet one objection, for which I am quite prepared, namely, that conversation is not a fit subject for a lecture at all, but should be considered as too independent and free to have any rules, principles, or guidance applied to it. This, however, is indeed a fallacy, and may briefly be exposed by a few such questions as those I am about to ask. What should be more free than the sword of the soldier in the battle-day?--than the pencil of the artist at the mountain side?--or than the poet's song in its upward flight? Yet who would condemn the use of the drill, or the study of perspective, or the rules of poetic art? No less untenable is it to maintain that conversation can be subject to no principle, rule, or review, without checking its free and unfettered range. Cowper has simply summed up the whole truth:--

"Though conversation in its better part May be esteemed a gift, and not an art; Yet much depends, as in the tiller's toil, On culture and the sowing of the soil."

Nor shall I venture to suggest any measures which I do not believe already well sanctioned, well honored, and well practised too, even by many who have never yet thought of cla.s.sifying them at all. But these I shall freely give, as my duty is, at your summons this night.

Conversation may be termed or defined as "the exchange and communication, by word, of that which is pa.s.sing in the inward mind and heart." And none of all known creatures, except man, has this peculiar gift. The animal tribes approach us and even surpa.s.s us in many of their physical powers and capacities. As to their capacities in the five senses of the body, I conceive that, generally speaking, it is so; but none of them converse, like man, in expressive words, however they may and do comprehend one another through inferior means. Homer has therefore defined our race as "word-dividing men." And surely such a capacity or power is not bestowed on us unaccompanied by an obligation and a claim to give due diligence how we do and how we may employ it.

Never to act thus is surely an undue disregard of our endowment,--a virtual depreciation and contempt of that which is at once among the most needful, the most useful, and, at the same time, most ornamental gifts of G.o.d to mankind.

As, then, it is said of real wisdom, that first "it is pure," or free from error and wrong, so too, first of all, right and proper conversation must be free from everything evidently and positively inconsistent with our duty towards G.o.d and man. It has ever been well said that we must be just before we are generous. The one attribute is essential and indispensable in every transaction of life. The acts and deeds connected with the other are comparatively undefined and indefinable. So it is essential, it is indispensable, that our conversation, from our own choice and deliberate aim, should be utterly free from all things irreverent to G.o.d and injurious to our fellow-creatures. G.o.d's name must never be taken in vain. G.o.d's Word, and divine things generally, must never be treated with any levity. No sentence must come forth from our lips having any tendency to undermine or subvert the principles and practices of true religion. These are among the mere dues and obligations to Him who gives us the faculty of speech, and enables us to interchange conversation with our fellows; and, beyond all doubt, hour after hour of silence and reserve would be infinitely better--more to be desired by any Christian--than the most entertaining and most captivating talk of a witty but unprincipled man.

And so too, exactly, with regard to our fellow-creatures. They too have an absolute claim on us, that we should resolutely keep to the grand rule of speaking to them only such things as will do them no hurt,--no hurt to their minds, no hurt to their feelings, no hurt to their best and true and everlasting interest. As the words of one lead many to heaven and joy, so too the words of another lead many to h.e.l.l and woe.