Chapter 2

The Mechanics and Rhetoric of Conversation

Language is the instrument of conversation. Grammar is the correct use of language; rhetoric the wise and effective use of it; diction the choice and range of words. These are large and complicated subjects, which cannot be treated comprehensively in a chapter on conversation. Fortunately they do not need to be. Everybody who has had some schooling has had a good deal of training in the elements of all three. What is needed here is their mobilization for good conversation.

The importance of these merely mechanical aspects of conversation were impressed upon me very painfully at an early age. When I was six, during a Sunday school class which many parents witnessed, the pastor, alluding to our Lord's being lost in the temple, asked if anyone could tell about it. When none responded, I ventured to raise my hand uncertainly, and before I realized the full enormity of my presumption, I was on my feet telling this incident. The pastor warmly commended me, then, smilingly turning to the adults in the back, added somewhat apologetically, as if in a postscript, "Of course, it was rather much a string of and, and, and and then, but the story nevertheless."

This observation jolted me with an impact that, I like to think, knocked the most common rhetorical fault of most talkers out of me for good and all, and made me conscious of it in others. Since conversation should be a pleasurable and wholesome exchange of sentiments, facts, and ideas, anything that unnecessarily mars this pleasure must be avoided, and everything that furthers it should be utilized. All the books written and courses given, devoted to grammar, rhetoric, and diction have at the bottom no other purpose than to facilitate this pleasant and wholesome exchange among people of feelings, information, and opinions in writing and in talking. Most persons would do well if now, in the light of more experience, they would review some of their school texts that dealt with these topics.

Good usage, a phase of grammar, is the etiquette of language. It is the linguistic manners of the best speakers everywhere. A good conversationalist will as a matter of course try to conform to this good usage. As long as most refined and respected people avoid it ain't, between you and I, bursted, hadn't ought, should of paid, nowheres, busted, it don't, a person who wants to fulfill St. Paul's precept of graciousness, liveliness, and readiness will avoid them too. Such solecisms or illiteracies are to good conversation what notes slightly sharp or flat are to good music. And just as people who are used to poor music nevertheless enjoy good music when they get it, so people whose own speech is not free of usage faults find correct speech refreshingly pleasant and look for it in those whom they respect and want to look up to. All human beings want to improve, want to become more refined; they value a talker who shows them the good example, who without obtruding or parading it, simply talks correctly.

If you want to improve your conversation, you will make matters of good usage something of a hobby. Occasionally, in library or bookstore, you will leaf through a list of "Common Usage Errors" appended to most college composition books or rhetorics. In your own talk you will make it a point, informally as well as formally, to avoid these errors. You will say, He's lying (not laying) down. It doesn't (not don't) matter. He is unlucky like me (not like I).

But, though you recognize such errors and avoid them, you will daily include among your morning prayers a renewed resolve never to embarrass others for making them. You will resolve to be careful not to "rub in" the error even indirectly. If, for example, someone said, "It's different than anything else," you will not acquiesce with, "Yes, it's different from anything else," putting just enough emphasis on the from to make the whole company conscious of your implied correction. You will, however, resolve to help others and promote correct conversation — whenever, and if, you can do so charitably and unobtrusively. When someone, for example, grossly misuses a word, so that sooner or later it may cause him to be held up to ridicule, you will seek a tactful way of setting him right. If, meaning bolshevik sympathizer he says bolshevik baiter, you might, after a sentence or two, say, "It's curious that bolshevik sympathizers so often are church baiters." This will tip him off to the correct usage without calling attention to his now past misuse.

A good conversationalist will make it a point to be correct in his pronunciations. One phase of pronunciation is its level of refinement and culture. This is largely a result of background and social strata. Further discussion of it will occur in the chapter on voice. But there is also the more obvious phase of pronouncing words correctly, according to the dictionary. This, too, is important, for a flagrant error can divert a whole conversation, and arouse pity or ridicule for the speaker. Once in class a student offered a most interesting comment on a topic, when toward the end he mispronounced EuropEan as European. This one blunder nullified his whole talk and stood out as the proverbial sore thumb. Sometimes a doubtful pronunciation will throw a good conversation into a verbal quibble. If, saying, "Data pointing to Shakespeare's Catholic background is piling up," you pronounce the first a of data as in hat, instead of as in gate, someone devoid of St. Paul's graciousness can be so disturbed by the faulty pronunciation as to ruin the whole conversation by questioning it. It is, therefore, a good avocation to keep up on the accepted pronunciations of words which are frequent stumbling blocks. It takes little time, and pays good conversational dividends, now and then to glance through lists of ''Words Often Mispronounced."

Perhaps it is well to suggest here that, without disrespect to the dictionary, it remains as true of speech as of everything else: When in Rome do as the Romans do. In any locality or situation that speech, that turn of expression and pronunciation, is best which is most like that of everyone else, which calls least attention to itself. What, for example, is one to do with aunt} Conscious that the dictionary's preference is for aunt as in arm, you also realize that if "way out west in Kansas" you pronounced it that way, you would provoke a dubious whistle. In such a case, what will you do? The following story is told of an Irishman at a University of Pennsylvania public-speaking class:

He went to the podium, shrugged his shoulders once or twice, and began with, "There ain't no place in dis here union for guys who don't want to follow rules." For the next five minutes he slashed the King's English.

When he finished the professor said that the "speech had a fine message for an audience," but added sarcastically, "Your language, however, well! It bordered on dees, does, and dem. Hardly the way you normally talk. I'm afraid I can't exactly approve." Whereupon the hulking Irishman rose and said,

Sir, it is true that I normally do not use the language of my previous speech. But I'm a union leader, boss of hundreds of men. If I got up in front of them and spoke high and mighty as you want me to, I'd be out tomorrow. I learned to go along with the boys years ago. They understand me . . . so I'm still top man (James R. Kelley, Catholic Digest, Jan., 195°)-

I suppose true etiquette of speech, in the last analysis, and the secret of success are "to go along with the boys," so that they "understand." When everybody in a locality or a situation talks a certain way, even the respected members present, then it is not wrong, and may be wise, to do likewise. What one says is a matter of principle; one may not swear just because everybody else does. But how one talks is a matter of accepted usage, not of principle, and that is the best manner which is preferred and most easily understood by one's hearers. For several years I tried heroically to pronounce aunt and ask as the dictionary preferred. I have finally given up and, retaining just a flavor of the a in arm, pronounce them almost as if they rhymed with pant and flask. If high and low in a locality say pungkin or punkin for pumpkin, it may be advisable to pronounce it that way, too.

However, I would caution that when in doubt as to the policy with regard to a particular word or expression, it is best to stay on the side of the dictionary. This is especially true for professional people — priests, doctors, teachers. In language as in morals, while the larger part of mankind shrewdly tries to pull its leaders down to its own level, a smaller and better part hopes and expects that those placed higher will maintain what is thought to be the true standard. If there are such in any locality, who know and secretly prefer the dictionary usage, it is well not to disappoint them, "to let them down," as it were. However, when the dictionary allows a choice, one should unhesitatingly use the second choice if it is more adapted to one's inclination or audience.

After you have made up your mind and know what is correct or preferable in matters of pronunciation, and have become properly conscious of pronunciation, you must again and again caution yourself against making others self-conscious about their pronunciation when in your presence. When others pronounce wrongfully or doubtfully, you will not advert to it pointedly. You will not interrupt the conversation, or cause embarrassment to a speaker by bringing up a point of pronunciation. You should, however, charitably and tactfully, especially if the mispronunciation is so flagrant as to lead to embarrassment sooner or later, find a way to tip the speaker off to the proper pronunciation. If someone said, "Wor-ces-ter seems to be an old town," you might after a few sentences say, "The cester in that old town the natives refer to as Wooster comes from the old Roman word castra, meaning 'fort.' "In this way you will avoid the deserved rebuke a lady tourist administered to a Californian. Pronouncing the J as in Joseph, she had spoken of visiting San Jose. He corrected, saying, "Madam, it's San Hose*. In California we pronounce the j as h." After he had given her time to recover from this correction, he asked when she visited California. She replied pointedly, "Why, I was out there in Hune and Huly."

An ever lurking pitfall in one's speech is that of mannerism expressions. The wisest and the best people are not exempt from this flaw. Mischievous students, keeping tab on a professor's use of well, counted thirty-seven of them in one lecture. One acquaintance, who has many interesting things to say, distracts me much if I have to listen to him long because of his constant interjection of, "Don't you know." In Ibsen's play, Hedda Gabler} the otherwise cultured George Tesman distractingly ends many of his sentences with Eh. Thousands of people mar their conversation by unconsciously interpolating you see or you know into their sentences. Others interject unspellable sounds and grunts like eh, ah, ugh. All such nervous, unconscious, pointless interjections are scarcely bearable blemishes in one's conversation. Similar to these is the overuse of some words. Some persons tiresomely designate hundreds of things as funny, when they mean odd or unusual or strange. Some keep calling innumerable things terrible or awful. Some girls sprinkle their conversation with lovely and cute more profusely than their grandmothers sprinkled the stew with salt. Perhaps the most overused expression now is O.K. For fear of getting caught with it in my next sentence, I would not dare to prohibit it. I do hint, however, that now and then replacing it with all right would be a relief. Repetitious pet expressions of any kind become either ludicrous or tiresome to hearers. They are also insidious. Unless one keeps a trusty watch against them, they slip into our talk the way bills get into our mail. A most brilliant college senior partially ruined his address to the assembly by an unthinking overuse of naturally. Worst of all, obnoxious though the habit may be, most friends too frequently will rather shun us than tell us. He is lucky who can find a friend who can be persuaded to tell him which barnacles of this type clutter his speech. And everyone should from time to time subject himself to a sharp self-check.

Still worse than overworking certain words and phrases is the peppering of our talk with epithets and expletives. One time, confined with three others in a hospital ward, engaged chiefly upon pinochle, one fellow used the expletive Jimminy so often that I simply could not stand it any longer. I begged him to please alternate with flagstone or pumpernickel for variety. Over and above the ethics involved in profanity, it is well to remark that any frequent use of epithets and expletives is an artistic blemish on our conversation. The person who keeps saying gee is conversationally not much better than the one who keeps saying damn or hell. Someone, incidentally, has listed at least eleven euphemisms for damn, such as drat, dang, darn, and another fourteen for damned, such as dashed, deuced, blasted, and confounded. Other profanity has similar euphemisms.

There seems to be a curious reflex in human nature that insists on popping out expletives. The uncouth will pop them coarse, the civilized will emit shadows thereof. Since this tendency is so deeply rooted, it would be unwise to rule out all expletives. Who knows, but for the relieving expletive, a capillary would burst instead 1 Consequently, we merely rule out altogether all profane and sinful expletives, and place a rigorous curtailment on all others. An occasional dad-burn, lawdy, gee-whillikins, crickey, begorrah, or bejabers will not cripple anyone's speech, or, in the right setting, offend or tire any normal listener. However, a frequent use of these epithets and any of their hundred brethren is a conversational blemish no gracious, lively, ready, Pauline Christian may permit himself.

If you want to be a pleasing and refined talker, you will proscribe profanity and obscenity altogether and absolutely, but you will also ration yourself against these other, morally indifferent epithets. It is good to start by making a list of those you remember using in the past month. Of these, you then determine to eliminate the ugliest ones altogether, and consciously set about using the others less frequently. Surely, talk sprinkled with expletives is unbecoming a really refined and efficient person. One cannot imagine them in the speech of St. Thomas More or Joan of Arc. To overcome the habit, the best procedure, as with vice, of which Pope says that to be hated it "needs but to be seen," is to become conscious of it. Avoidance should follow naturally.
  
Expletives bring to mind the use of slang. If I gauge sentiment correctly, people who brazenly boom a profanity, turn pale if anyone hints that they have been guilty of slang. Perhaps the surest way to ease one's mind about slang is to realize, first, that any sort of profanity or quasi profanity is worse than slang, artistically as well as morally, and, secondly, that anything else which isn't offensive to one's mother is nothing to worry about. Technically speaking, slang is the comparing of a good or indifferent thing to something ugly or unpleasant or bad. Calling a girl, whom God gave little sparkle but the character not to drink or "pet," a flat tire is slang. Similarly, calling a student upon whom God bestowed a slow, if perhaps willing, mind a dumbbell is slang. But calling an unnecessarily stubborn fellow a mule is not really slang.

This distinction is very important. When J. Edgar Hoover called certain gangsters rats, he was not indulging in slang but in figurative truthtelling. Calling one's mother-in-law a flat-iron or a teacher a battle-ax is slang because doing so is not fair, is not telling the truth about them, is really slandering them, for they are both, viewed in perspective, rather fine persons, or at least not nearly as bad as the picturesque comparisons imply. One can almost say that a gentleman or lady who follows Newman's requirements of never willingly giving offense is not likely to become guilty of slang. Just as one would not call a cripple a crutch-hound, so one should not call sickly or homely or fat or mentally retarded or crazy persons such names as wheezepill, toadface, blimp-belly, featherhead, or screwball. Since such people are not responsible for their shortcomings, it is uncharitable to apply derogatory comparisons to them. To do so is to be slangy, slangy in the correct sense of the word.

On the other hand, to apply critical or unpleasant comparisons to types of persons who are guilty of things which can and should be corrected is not really slang but picturesque language. It should not be discouraged as long as it remains within the bounds of good taste. Calling a rough person a mugg, a spiteful girl a cat, a parasite a chiseler, an unsociable person a crab, an immoral woman a bag, ought not to be discouraged as slang. These are a picturesque way of disapproving and perhaps correcting social faults. Some eventually become standard for designating an evil thing, such as parasite in the list just mentioned. Originally meaning eating beside another, it is now a standard term for one who dishonorably lives off another's labors. Conversationally, these picturesque comparisons are desirable and necessary. One must remember, however, that the more picturesque a term is the more one must guard against overusing it; it calls too much attention to itself to allow frequent use.

But what is most important is that one make scrupulously sure that the picturesque name one intends is fair and refers to a just responsibility. In some college circles, a girl "determined" to win the man she loves, is called a war horse. Here an uncomplimentary comparison is used for a trait which is not morally wrong and is probably socially good. At least Bernard Shaw thinks that girls, instead of waiting patiently for someone to ask them, should make a determined effort themselves to find the man they want! To call a serious, hard-studying student a bookworm is no longer bad, since long use has virtually converted the word to the compliment it ought to be, but to call him a grind or, worse, a greasy grind is too sharply critical of a trait which is more virtue than vice. Hence it is truly slang, and ought to be avoided. Somewhere in this happy land, chaperones are called fire extinguisher^. I leave it to the reader to determine whether this is slang or poetry.

"Calling a frivolous girl a powder puff is all right. But calling girls, God's creations, human beings with immortal souls, by such names as him, rib, skirt, or tomato is slang, is language which St. Paul's Christian must avoid. One may not figuratively apply to any human beings, merely in their capacity as human beings, names which humiliate or belittle them. Definitely, when one does not specifically play against a correctable social and moral flaw, one should not apply any but complimentary comparisons to human beings. Otherwise one is guilty of slang in the true sense of the word.

Conversation should beautify the world, not make it even uglier than it is. When a cadaver is called a stiff, life is made uglier. That which housed a human soul and cannot help its present condition may not be called an unedifying name. Generally, whatever is crude, any comparison that could rightly offend the much-cited Victorian maiden, even when otherwise apt or powerful,  is slang in  the objectionable sense. The word bellyache, for complaining, is most picturesque and apt, but the proper conversationalist will tend to avoid it. There are two current picturesque expressions for being caught off guard, namely, caught flat-footed and that which describes one as being caught with a part of man's usual apparel unsuspended! A conversationalist will not be cheated of the former by any charge of slang, but he will resolutely avoid the latter as introducing unnecessary ugliness into talk.

What has often helped me personally in deciding the propriety of an expression, as I was evolving through my various school years, was the question, "How would this sound, even if it were in a smoking car, on the lips of a bishop or college president or governor?" If even in a smoking car it would sound improper coming from them, then it should always be regarded as improper for ourselves. My mother on one occasion gave me a sharp lesson in this matter of harmless, nonsinful, but ugly, unrefined expressions. In boarding school, I had somehow picked up, as an alternative to the worse expression, the term son-of-a-buck. Home on vacation I used it unthinkingly and with gusto. My mother, hearing it, declared herself shocked. Surprised, I said that there was nothing sinful about the word. She answered that that was not the only issue; that it was ugly and sounded crude, and must be avoided. She was right. Now I shudder to think I ever could have used it. Picturesque expressions should be rejected, if they are unjust or unfair, if they unnecessarily hurt, if they are coarse. These are the marks of slang, that is, of objectionable figurative language. Perhaps one could call slang a compliment in reverse.

But at this point it is important to stress that if an expression, an imaginative comparison, is not unfair, hurtful, or coarse, it may be a most effective device for giving our talk the "edge of liveliness" St. Paul wants. It may be the best way to put things in a new light. Poetry, for example, consists of clothing an idea or ideal in an apt and warm comparison which our sense can realize more quickly than the ideal literally expressed. Our Lord in this manner compares a sinner to a lost sheep; Tennyson compares dying to crossing the bar; Holmes compares an old man to the last leaf upon the tree. You can easily see that the linguistic device in this and calling an unpopular girl a wallflower or an unrelenting scholar a bookworm is identical. The difference lies in the spirit behind the expression, the gra-ciousness which motivates it, and the good taste and beauty which envelop it.

It must, therefore, be stated emphatically that man's highest linguistic device for making ideas lively and beautiful, constituting the power of literature, must also characterize all superior conversation. A good talker will not avoid such figurativeness; he will seek it, he will try to create it. When Goldsmith told Johnson that if he wrote a fable of fishes, the mighty lexicographer would make his goldfish talk like whales, he eloquently soared into this poetic method. But so too does the fellow who speaks of a whale of a laugh.

It is also to be noted that in ordinary conversation such suggestive expressions need not and should not be quite as ethereal or flowery as in poetry. Conversation is colloquial and may have a tang of earth. In ordinary talk, for example, speaking of milk as ambrosia, unless in jest, would be too dainty. While again, calling it as college people often do, cow juice or moo juice is unacceptable because it degrades a wholesome food, yet calling it arrested ice cream or coffee bleacher would be enlivening and picturesque.

The tendency and ability to invent and use various comparisons and suggestions in place of the literal name of things is the mark of every really superior conversationalist, just as it is the stock-in-trade of every true writer. However, the successful use of this device is so much a matter of high imaginative talent that not many can be helped to shine in it, but everybody can learn to appreciate and encourage it. Just as good poetry is quoted by millions who do not write it, so a conversationalist may well use the apt figures he has heard or learned elsewhere, if only he is careful not to drool them into a groove. Those who cannot invent original expressions of this sort may be consoled to realize that they can be acceptable, if not brilliant, talkers, without them.

But there are several rhetorical matters without which one cannot achieve St. Paul's requisite edge of liveliness. A good conversationalist must get away from over-co-ordination and overgeneralization. At the beginning of this chapter I related how my pastor regretted my continuous boyish use of and then in telling a story. That was over-co-ordination. It is the tendency of all children and all untrained or unthinking people. They tend to string together all of their ideas, heavyweight and featherweight alike, in simple and in compound sentences. They should, of course, put only their heavyweight ideas into main clauses (simple or compound sentences), while their featherweight ideas should be in phrases or in the subordinate clause of a complex sentence. Instead of saying, "After I had finally parked the car, I started looking for the hardware store," they say, "I parked the car, and then I looked for the hardware store." The constant use of and or so between main clauses, one of which should really be reduced to a clause beginning with after or because or when, is the besetting vice of eight out of ten who read this book and nine out of ten who won't read it. It is impossible to be an acceptable conversationalist until one has trained oneself to lie in wait for every second and and so between sentences — and has killed it. Compound sentences, that is, and-but-so clauses, are not grammatically wrong, but in about half the frequency of the ordinary talker they are wrong rhetorically and false logically.

Actually, the worst feature of the overuse of and and so is not the poor rhetoric but the flabby, chatterbox logic. It betrays the talker as someone who among ideas does not recognize the difference between a colonel and a recruit. It is this lack of discrimination among ideas that as much as any other one thing makes for boresomeness in talking. When a woman says, "It was Saturday and I wanted to go to confession. So at three o'clock I took the car and drove to church. But the confessor did not come until four, so it was almost five before I got home," she can have the face of an angel and the voice of Galli-Curci, but she will still be boring. The minimum subordination necessary to keep those ideas from being boring is, "Since it was Saturday, I wanted to go to confession. At three o'clock I took the car and drove to church. But the confessor did not come until four, so that it was almost five before I got home."

A still better rendering would be, "Since it was Saturday, when I wanted to go to confession, I took the car at three and drove to church. The confessor, however, did not come until four, so that it was almost five before I got home." This rendering is correct, rhetorically. However, a really superior talker would go a step further in reducing some of the ideas. She would instinctively calculate which is the most important idea she wished to convey. If it is to explain to her mother-in-law why her husband's dinner was late Saturday, she would subordinate everything around that point. She would then say, "Last Saturday, wanting to go to confession, I drove to church at three, but because the confessor did not come until four, it was almost five before I got home." Now we have a sentence in which the ideas, "I went to church and came home late" stand out sharply because all the other ideas are reduced to phrases, such as "wanting to go," "Last Saturday," and to subordinate clauses, such as "because the confessor was."

Such subordination is the rhetorical requirement for superior conversation. If you have that, even if you have little else, you will seldom be boring. If you do not avoid at least the most flagrant co-ordination — stringing all ideas together with and and so — you cannot have St. Paul's edge of liveliness, no matter what your knowledge or topic or voice. As the shortest cut to improvement, simply make up your mind not to use and or so noticeably often. Secondly, keep asking yourself which is your most important idea. Then strive to put the lesser ones into phrases and subordinate clauses. It would be highly advantageous if you got yourself a college composition book and reviewed the sections on co-ordination and subordination.1

1 Virtually any recognized college rhetoric textbook will do. It happens that I have found the following most helpful in classes: Easley S. Jones, Practical English Composition, 3 ed.  (D. Appleton-Century, 1941), pp. 159-195.

Probing still deeper, the actual reason for too frequent use of ands is lack of good prose rhythm. Fundamentally this is said to reflect a person's sincerity, depth of feeling, and clear thinking. Perhaps if a person have much of these, he does not need to worry about rhetoric or prose rhythm: it will be given unto him, or has already been given to him. The power of a sincere, intense personality, such as Lincoln's was, will do many things right naturally, which others have to labor hard to achieve artfully. But no one should take for granted that he is blessed with this powerful personality. He should check to make sure. In general terms, he should make sure that he has more complex sentences than compound ones, and that he has approximately twice as many prepositional phrases as main clauses. More accurately and specifically, according to a Thorndike study, good writing for every seven independent statements should have one apposi-tive, five verbals, six subordinate clauses, and fourteen prepositional phrases.2 This is the estimated rhetorical par, the construction for good rhythm in good writing.

It is true that in good conversation the par, the number of subordinate elements to main clauses, would not be so high. Nevertheless, the tabulation for good writing emphasizes the importance of proper subordination and gives the self-improving conversationalist some standard toward which to move. To put all this more simply and practically, however, if you find that when you have three ideas on your mind, you generally push them all into three main or independent clauses, then you lack proper prose rhythm. If you say, "I was tired, but I did not want to go to bed, so I read a short story," you are pushing each of the three ideas into a main clause. According to the Thorndike study, one of them should probably have been a phrase, and another a subordinate clause. Many constructions like that make any speaker appear garrulous or dull. If the three ideas had been weighed for relative importance and then ranked grammatically as follows, "Being tired, but not yet willing to go to bed, I read a short story," the effect would have been tonic, it would have exhibited an edge of liveliness. Hearers would not think of the speaker's rhetoric as being good, or of his having good prose rhythm, but they would tend to comment on his having such an interesting and lively personality!

While this proper rhetorical discrimination of ideas is very important, it is unfortunately no short cut. It requires considerable and continuous mental effort and self-discipline. A mere resolve is not enough. Fortunately there is another technique for giving life and personality to conversation, also necessary, but somewhat easier to acquire. It is the technique of being as specific as the circumstances warrant, of using a word which can best call

2 See Easley S. Jones, op. cit., p. 197.

up a definite picture. A really good talker will never say bird when he can say bobolink; house, when he can say bungalow; many when he can say fifty-nine; tall when he can say six feet, two. It isn't worms which catch the fish but a worm. The quickest and surest way to reasonably interesting speech is to replace the vague with the definite, the general with the specific, whenever possible. Edgar, in Shakespeare's King Lear does not merely tell his blind father that the beach is far below, he specifies items which indicate the drop. He says the croius (not vaguely birds but specifically crows) that wing the midway air look like beetles (not merely like insects but like beetles), and "The fishermen that walk upon the beach appear like mice."

That is the way to talk. A poor talker talks about a personal or special topic in general terms; a good conversationalist talks about a general topic in specific terms. Good talkers, for example, will talk about foot trouble in general and then cite many specific instances from all over — themselves, their friends, the newspapers — to establish their viewpoints. Garrulous, tiresome talkers will talk about their own or their relative's special foot trouble in general terms and then from the one case conclude with a platitude, as for example, that foot trouble is indeed an expensive ailment. The motto for good conversation is: Keep the topic general, the reasons and proofs and examples specific.

No generalizer can be a good conversationalist. A person who habitually talks in such terms as, "They live in a very large house," "That's a very expensive restaurant," "Mother's back yard is full of flowers," is a generalizer. He will not be very interesting, and if he talks much he will be flat or tiresome. But if he says, "They live in a nine-room, three-story house," "The cheapest dinner in Holway's restaurant is $3.00," "Mother's back yard has fifteen varieties of flowers, from asters to snapdragons," he is a specifier. He then talks like one who has been there, like one who knows. He therefore talks like one with authority. We learn something from him. He is interesting. People noticed and said of our Lord that He talked as one with authority. That wasn't only because Jesus was God. Even God in talking to man has to follow the principles of rhetoric to be interesting, and Jesus did. When He wanted to convince people that a kindly Providence sees everything, He cites the "lilies of the field" as growing without toiling or spinning. Another time, declaring that "any sound tree will bear good fruit," He asks specifically, "Can grapes be plucked from briers, or figs from thistles?" Again, urging His hearers to "lay up treasure for yourselves in heaven," He does not generalize heaven as a safe and secure place but as one "where there is no moth or rust to consume it" (Matt. 6 and 7).

A general sentence such as "Mother's back yard is full of flowers" is suitable only as a topic sentence, as embracing specific examples which preceded or better which will follow. It ought to have at least three examples or proofs or descriptions of these flowers in detail. Shakespeare, in the King Lear citation given above, opens his enumeration of crows, samphire gatherer, and the fishermen with the generalized or topical sentence, "How fearful and dizzy 'tis to cast one's eye so low!" Jesus, too, in His discussion of Providence begins with a fairly generalized statement, "do not be solicitous for your life, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on." One should fix in one's mind that generalized statements are justifiable only as the caps or binders of clusters of statements proving or explaining them. As such topic sentences, they are good and necessary. But without such a cluster, a generalized statement is a loose lead to dullness. They are the mark of the windbag and the bore. You should make a conscious effort to count things and to measure them in your speech. Resolve, for example, never to say few if you can say three, never animal if you can say cat, never went if you can say ran, never entertained if you can say yodled. This resolve will prove a marvelous tonic to your whole conversational personality. You will begin to count and measure things. Your vocabulary will increase magically, and will take on life and color and realism. You will begin to learn the names of trees, birds, and flowers, of tools and machines, in short, of everything in more types and classes. When you attend a rally or a play, you will automatically estimate by rows and seats how many people are there. Then when you talk about it you will not say lamely that a "lot of people" were there, but you will say that you calculated 850. In this way, assuming that you ever keep with you that common sense without which nothing is a virtue, you will become an increasingly more interesting conversationalist. You will also be a more interesting person — mainly because you will be a more interested one.

In short, if you realize that good rhetoric demands that you be specific, a more sparkling personality will be your reward. To a greater or lesser degree, that goes for all the points of this chapter — subordinating ideas properly, employing figurative turns of expression, taking pride in good usage and pronunciation, and avoiding dictional idiosyncrasies. Conversation is your most continual social activity. Its tool is language — grammar, rhetoric, words. You must determine to handle all three as well as you can. The mere will to do so — the steady interest in those matters — will in itself go a long way toward making you talk so that others will like to hear you. These matters, along with those to follow, will make people not only like to hear you talk, but like to hear you talk even more than they like to hear themselves talk.

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