54 THE HOME. FAKM AXJ> BUSINESS CYCLOPEDIA. 



}>\\ed. The slow talker usually has something very good to say, and the 

 word which he is trying to find is worth waiting for. The fast and flip- 

 pant talker sweeps all before him witli his weak diaphanous discourse. 

 one is much the wiser for his deluge of words ; the better thought is 

 however, washed away, and the slow talker is driven from the field. 



Brilliant talkers have very great temptations in this way. Not only is 

 the thought pressing for utterance, and the word dancing on the end of 

 the tongue, but the talker also knows that a laugh will follow and his 

 mot will be appreciated. There is no such immediate and dear applause 

 as that which follows a ready talker, and no wonder that he finds it hard 

 to be a good listener. 



However, to be a good listener is a most graceful gift particularly to 

 a good talker. It is such an act of self-sacrifice ! Those brilliant "flashes 

 of silence" how much they cost the ready-witted talker ! Yet it is to 

 him a greater art than to talk well, for it calls on hina to repress his own 

 seething speech, and to hear somebody say badly what he would say so 

 well. 



The good listeners are very popular. They can, even if they have 

 nothing to say, still promote conversation; and a good listener who looks 

 amused seems to carry on the conversation. He knows the specialty of 

 his friend, and can wind him up and set him going; and if he is an un- 

 selfish good listener, he will put in, here and there, the necessary short 

 speech which is just what the talker needed. 



Many families have wit and the "give-and-take" of conversation, and 

 supplement each other admirably. Many families of brothers and 

 sisters keep the table in a roar by their felicitous remarks, their happy 

 quotations, and their delicate and spicy remarks on current events. 

 They agree as well in conversation and are as harmonious as when they 

 are singing. But there are others where a disregard for the rights of 

 conversation spoils the amenities of the dinner-table, and where one 

 over-argumentative brother, or one disputatious sister, or a father who 

 overrides all his children and talks while they are talking, or a mother 

 who has no talent for listening, will destroy the pleasure of the table, 

 of the evening fireside talk, and make home a place to be deliberately 

 avoided. 



"I wish our home would burn up," said an unhappy boy, who could not 

 any other way out of his domestic misery, and who perhaps intended 

 by the light of that corrective fire to run away to parts unknown. 



