They can talk of literature, of politics, and even of religion, though in the last case seldom with any freedom; but speculations on "fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute," the subjects of the best kind of conversation, are not to their taste, while from the discussion of some of the most interesting topics connected with human nature they are of necessity debarred. A better and wiser adviser of a young man in social matters is not to be found than in some ancient lady of wealth and position, whose very voice has persuasion in it, and who speaks from the fulness of her own knowledge. "I am an old woman, you know. Tell me your trouble." But that is only a duet, though one of exquisite sympathy; the talk of two. As a rule women's talk, like that of the aristocracy, is almost always personal.

The flippancies and cynicism of the smoking room are very naturally in ill odor; yet the brightest conversations within my own somewhat extensive experience have been held under the benign influence of tobacco. It nourishes quiet thought and does away with ill-humor; smokers do not talk unless they have something to say, and are careful to say it not at too great length, or their pipe would go out. Thus anecdote is restrained within proper limits, and monologue is rendered impossible.

It is rather invidious to pronounce which profession produces the best conversationalists, and such a judgment must be open to many exceptions; it can be at most but a general impression; but on the whole-there is nothing like leather-I think men of letters are the best talkers. It is true they are sometimes the worst from a negative point of view, since some of them can not talk at all. The sole channel of their intelligence is their pen. But the higher class of literary men have generally something interesting to say, because they are students of human nature, and adapt their experiences of it to their com pany. They never talk of their own books, nor very much even of litera

ture. One of the many gifts of Dickens is known to be that of public speaking; but his conversation with his intimates was still more delightful, not at all witty, but intensely humorous, though combined with great earnestness, however slight might be the subject. He disliked general society, chiefly, I think, from the fear that some foolish person would compliment him to his face, a stroke of vulgarity that requires a master of fence indeed to parry.

Lever was a raconteur of the first sparkle, but after an hour or two one had enough of him. The best conversationalist I ever knew (that is among the departed) was a man of letters, W. G. Clark; he was one of the editors of the Cambridge Shakespeare, and the author of "Summer Months in Spain," but had a higher reputation as a classical scholar. He "wore his weight of learning like a flower," which is by no means usually the case with learned persons: they have no "buttonhole" themselves, but they buttonhole other people, and their perception of humor is generally confined to a false quantity. I can never understand why this error should be SO mirth-provoking in a dead language, and so devoid of amusement in a living

one.

Small literary folks are seldom good company; they talk literature too much, and though it is the best "shop" to talk about, "shop" is always better left alone. Observe how a soldier with

a record of distinguished service avoids it; from a certain fine sense of modesty no less than good taste. He is as difficult to draw as a badger, but when drawn gives excellent sport. I am not one of those literary persons who seem to take a pleasure (for it is always affected) in contrasting to his disparagement Captain Pen with Captain Sword (for it is something, as now happens, "to have at one's back a million men"), but I must admit that there are few kinds of talk so attractive as that of the unwilling warrior making light of experiences, which if they had happened to me, I feel with

nor

The talk of barristers is often very clever, but too inclined to be shoppy; they remind one of public school men, who, after they have ceased to be boys for half a century, will still retail the reminiscences of that far-back time to one another, without much consideration for that portion of the company who have neither been at Eton are Harrow. The men of the gown bright enough, but even when good natured are too apt to affect cynicism, blow both which destroys at one geniality and naturalness. "The lower branch of the profession" are generally silent and severe (where fore know not, and Heaven forbid that I should draw the secret from its "dread abode"), but now and then we get an admirable specimen from this collection. There is nothing like your "family lawyer" as a receptacle of secrets, matters of real human interest; and sometimes he will open a closet without divulging its abouts, and show you a skeleton. I had once a friend who had no rival as an exhibitor of this description-the happiest mixture of grave and gay conceivable, and who possessed quite an anatomical museum. Some of the heads of the families he had to deal with deserved a fuller portraiture at

where

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of them-he would ride alone. "No," said my friend, who had great influence over him (as indeed he had over most people with whom he was brought into contact). "You must not good reasons do that." There were why he should not have gone alone. "If you will not go with your relatives with the clergyman." you must go "The clergyman! Well, if I must, I must, but it will quite spoil my day."

Another funeral story, but against himself, he told with inimitable humor. I say "told," not "used to tell," for I never heard him repeat the same experience. The measures he took with his clients were represented as so successful that I requested him on one occasion to tell me one of his failures. For one instant he looked confused, but immediately resumed his serenity.

were

ย was

Well, I have been young like everybody else. When junior partner in my firm, I went down to the funeral of a client, very rich but not respected. He had no relatives and no friends, but there great many mourning coaches. It winter, and the burial-place was five miles from the Hall. I was in the last coach with the doctor, a young man like myself. We went at a good pace over the snow, and the whole proceeding was tedious and disagreeable. "Do you think," said the doctor, "there would be any harm in our having a cigar?" Of course it was wrong and very unprofessional in both of us, but we lit up. It was a great relief, and, as wo flattered ourselves, unaccompanied by danger. Presently, however, the whole line-about five and twenty carriagescame to a dead stop. The undertaker and one of his men ran wildly to our window. "Gentlemen, your carriage is on fire!" It cost us a couple of sovereigns, but we escaped detection.

ever

full of information, and are too often anxious to impart it. Sometimes it is not even true. Frederic Locker used to tell of how an unscrupulous traveller narrating his adventures among the Red Indians was cleverly stopped by Lord Barrymore. "Did you see anything of the Chick-Chows?" "Oh! a good deal," said Sir Arthur, "a very eruel tribe, the Chick-Chows." "And the Cherry-Chows, eh?” “Oh, very much among the Cherry-Chows," continued Sir Arthur, "the CherryChows were singularly kind to my fellows." "And pray, Sir Arthur, did you see much of the Tol-de-roddy-bowwows?"

This was too much for even Sir

Arthur. He was rather put out, but the company was relieved. Nevertheless, there are modest travellers. I had once a great friend who had trav

elled all round the world. When almost on his death-bed, he spoke to me on the subject for the first time, with humorous pathos. "My dear fellow, you will do me the justice, when I am gone, to say that I never told you one word about it." But he was a noble exception.

As to the clergy, they are a good deal weighted as regards conversation. Coleridge once observed that Nature was the Devil in a strait-waistcoat. Clergymen are angels similarly attired. There are, and have been, however, great exceptions: Sydney Smith, for example, whom no layman, except perhaps Douglas Jerrold, has ever excelled for brightness, and none have equalled for geniality. How much conversation has to do with manners may be gathered from the biographies of witty persons. How dull they are!

Folks talk of "the art of conversation," and of course there are some rules which need to be observed by all who would excel in it: to be brief, without curtness; to avoid any "talking to the gallery" (but indeed in the sort of company I have in my mind there is no gallery); to give and take. But the fact is conversation is a gift of nature; when artificial it is never

THE BUSHMAN'S FORTUNE. Kwaneet, the Bushman, had lost his wife Nakeesa, and was just now a little puzzled what to do with himself. Nakeesa, poor thing, had been slain by a lion on the Tamalakan River in an attempt to rescue her man. The attempt was successful so far as Kwaneet was concerned, but Nakeesa and the babe she carried had fallen victims. Kwaneet had quickly got rid of Nakeesa's child by her first husband, Sinikwe. It was a useless encumbrance to him, and he had sold it for a new assegai to some Batauana people near Lake Ngami.

The Masarwa was now at a loose end. The companionship of Nakeesa during their year and a half of union-married life it could scarcely be called among these nomads-had been very pleasant. Nakeesa was always industrious, and had saved him an infinity of trouble in providing water, digging up roots and ground nuts and picking the wild fruit when game was scarce, and a score of other occupations pertaining to the Bushman's life. Now she was gone, and he must shift for himself again, which was a nuisance. But, chiefly, his mind was just now exercised, as he squatted by himself at a small desert fountain, as to what he should do with himself in the immediate future. Suddenly an old and long-cherished plan flashed across his mind. Years before, as a young lad, his father had taken him on a long hunting expedition to a distant corner of that vast desert of the Kalahari, in which the Masarwa Bushmen make their home. He remembered

the stalking of many ostriches, and the acquisition of great store of feathers; he remembered a long, long piece of thirst country through which they had toiled; and he remembered most of all coming presently to the solitary abode of a white man, planted in that distant and inaccessible spot, an abode almost unknown even to the wild Masarwa of the desert. From this white man his father had obtained for his feathers, amongst other things, a good hunting knife-a treasured possession which he himself carried. That white man, his waggon-there were no oxen, he remembered, nor horses-the house he had built for himself, and its fascinating contents; the strong fountain of sweet water which welled from the limestone hard by; all these things he remembered well. But most of all he recalled an air of mystery which enveloped everything. When he and his father had approached the white man's dwelling, they had seen him, before he set eyes on them, digging in a depression of the open plain a mile from the house. Much of the grass had been removed, and piles of sand and stones were heaped here and there, and there were heaps, too, he remembered, near the house. Kwaneet's father had, when they left that secret and unknown place, strongly impressed upon his son the absolute necessity of silence concerning the white man and his abode. The white man gave value for feathers -good value in a Bushman's eyeswhich the harsh and bullying Batauana people of Chief Moremi at Nghabe (Lake Ngami) never did. On the contrary, the Batauana robbed the poor Bushman of all his spoils of the desert whenever they got a chance, which happily was not often.

Now Kwaneet had plenty of time upon his hands and no settled plan. The mystery of the lone white man had always fascinated him. He would go now and see if he still lived. It was some winters ago, but he might still be there. So Kwaneet filled three ostrich eggs and a calabash with water, made fresh snuff against the journey, and next morning, long before the clear star of dawn had leaped above the horizon, started upon his quest. He was well equipped for a Masarwa. His giraffe

hide sandals, not needed till the thorns were traversed, and his little skin cloak, neatly folded, were fastened to one end of his assegai. At the other end hung the full calabash of water. His tiny bow, quiver of reed arrows, bone-tipped and strongly poisoned, and a rude net of fibre containing three ostrich eggs of water were slung over his back. Some meat and a supply of ground-nuts, the latter skewered up in the dried crops of guinea fowls, completed his outfit.

It was a long, long journey, but Kwaneet, travelling leisurely at the rate of twenty or thirty miles a day-he was in no violent hurry-steadily progressed. He had not been through that part of the Kalahari since, as a lad, he had accompanied his father; yet, thanks to the wonderful Bushman instinct, the way through the flat and pathless wilderness seemed as plain to him as the white man's wagon road from Khama's to Lake Ngami. Despite the thirst, it was not an unpleasant journey. The various acacias, hook thorn, wait-a-bit, hook-and-stick thorn, and the common thorny acacia, with its long, smooth ivory needles, were all putting forth their round, sweet-scented blooms, some greenish, some yellow, against the coming of the rains. Leagues upon leagues of forest of spreading giraffe-acacia (mokaala) were in flower, and their big, round, plush-like pompons of rich orange-yellow blossom scented the veldt for miles with a delicious perfume. Even to the dulled senses of the Bushman these symptoms of renewed life at the end of a long drought were very pleasant. As the Masarwa plunged further and further into the heart of the wilderness, game was very plentiful. Great troops of giraffe wandered and fed among the mokaala forests; steinbuck and duiker were everywhere amid grass and bush. Upon the great grass plains, or in the more open forest glades, herds of magnificent gemsbok and of brilliant bay hartebeests grazed peacefully in an undisturbed freedom; not seldom fifty or sixty noble elands were encountered in a single troop. All these animals were almost entirely independent of water, and found here a welcome sanctuary. The country was absolutely