WHEN THE WORLD GOES HOME

BY HENRY BELLAMANN

The sky remembers when a bird has passed
And little wing-shaped waves forever flow
Both east and west; as when the great sails go
To Spain, the foam along their track is cast
On shores most far away. Then when at last
The world, like bird, like ship, goes home, and slow
Tides sink, will rest above the air, below

The sea, a wave of wing, of sail-bent mast.

AGAIN?

To my Home on Lake Champlain

BY JEANNETTE MARKS

Shall I come again?

Again to see the reeds,
Yellowing now?

"Bye and bye!

Bye and bye!"
Lake rushes cry.

Shall I come again

To these willow leaves

Falling now?

Their joy was brief!

The willow leaf

Knows grief.

Shall I breathe again

Gray balsam dripping amber

On the mould?

What knows the year

Of any fear,

Of any amber tear!

TALK AND TALKERS

BY J. B. YEATS

I ONCE asked a great scholar of a famous University his idea of happiness. He answered: "A good read." But scholars are like the stars, lonely and inscrutable, and in God's holy keeping. I myself like best those rare moments when congenial people meet and there is good conversation, each man doing his best to say exactly what he thinks. Is there anything so delightful, and at times so beautiful, and at all times so beguiling, as good conversation? Talk is man's sowing-time, and as he sows, so shall he reap. Literature is the harvest of talk. If Elizabethan literature is the best in the world, it is because conversation at the Court of Elizabeth and in the London cafés was the best in the world. Elizabethan literature is nobly extravagant and musical, scarcely touched at all with the spirit of contention; and so, no doubt, was their talk. If Ben Jonson, who was a Scotchman, had had his way, no doubt, the conversation would have been as contentious as the speeches of lawyers or the sermons of theologians or the talk of a man out of Belfast. You can't read Shakespeare without feeling that he was shy of contention, disliking to contradict or be contradicted. Images to him were dear for their own sake, as one loves little children or pretty girls, without vexing ourselves as to whether they are good little children or good girls.

Conversation has as many enemies as Mother Church, and chief of these is card playing. I have been told that in Pittsburgh the ladies entertain distinguished 'strangers by inviting them to luncheon parties where there are no men. The husbands can get themselves up in immaculate evening clothes, but only to play cards, except when they talk business among themselves. Had the Athenians acquired the habit, it is very doubtful whether we should have had an Aeschylus or a Sophocles or an Aristotle. Another enemy is story-telling.

In any company, let there be one brilliant teller of good stories, and all the company become tellers of "good stories," and the wonderful thing is that no one listens, except long enough to know the nature of the story that is being presented, upon which each one searches in his memory for another story that may cap it. I have sometimes watched a company thus engaged, and it was easy to see that while apparently they listened politely and waited to applaud, their minds were far away, and the man telling the story knew it, and was depressed, and the sense of inattention grew with each talker, so that, though they applauded ever so much, everyone was increasingly bored. There is another enemy always lying in wait ready to pounce, and, like a mad dog, bite and infect the company with its madness. I mean the American passion for turning every kind of conversation into an impromptu argument. The French people perhaps have leanings that way. I have seen them with flashing eyes gesticulating and shouting at each other, and all their literature, in poetry as well as in prose, shows it, being pervaded with a logic of contention; but there is French ceremony, and above all, French politeness, the spirit of Society, which regards as a crime everything that is tiresome. In American argumentativeness, there is not this restraint. I know all about it, for I have endured it many times. It is a debating society without a chairman and without rules. Sometimes you will see five men talking at once. It is not talk; it is not discussion; it is a mere riot of discord, and as unamiable as any riot in the street; and though the feeling lasts for but a moment, it must have an estranging effect; whereas real conversation brings people together in the holiday spirit of a common enjoyment.

Outside Belfast there is good conversation all over Ireland. Belfast itself is furiously Protestant, and Protestantism means the missionary spirit. Every man wants to convert his neighbor; your conduct, your morals, your opinions, are all fuel, to feed his controversial fire. He can't let you alone. In Belfast, conversation is always argument. They also have their taste for jocularity and story-telling. I suppose it relieves the strain among these foolishly intense people. Indeed, more than once I've noticed in a contentious company one silent man aloof from

it all, and have been relieved and delighted when he produced his long meditated joke or pun, setting the table in a roar; even though I knew that after him would come the inevitable succession of bad jokes and stories, the roar of laughter, though it be false laughter, being better any day than the clamor of argument. What is good conversation? When in love with a pretty girl, we find everything she says to be as exquisite as herself, and we don't care a straw whether we agree or disagree with her opinions. When we no longer love her, we are capable of thinking her tiresome or stupid if she is not as wise as Solomon. The chatter of a pretty girl in whom we are interested is as delightful as the song of the lark, even though, like the bird, she has no ideas; while there is nothing less attractive than the chatter of an ungainly woman. It has indeed sometimes happened that an ungainly woman who knows herself to be ungainly has cultivated wisdom and thereby kept her lover. In other words, talk with a pretty girl or with one of these wise Sibyls never becomes argument. Men argue sometimes with their wives, never with their sweethearts. English people do not argue. It is the habit of the nation not to argue. Although Protestants, they have somehow escaped the missionary spirit, saved, perhaps, by their incomparable spirit of personal independence. With them, an opinion is regarded as a personal property in which no man has any right to meddle. They do not converse much. It is a common sight to see a company of Englishmen sitting together, drinking, enjoying each other's society, and yet not talking; each man is immersed in his own thoughts. Yet, if they do meet for the purpose of conversation, they produce amongst them the best kind of conversation, and for this reason: that no one wants to argue.

For over twenty years, when I lived in London, I belonged to a Conversation Club, which had been founded by Moncure Conway and had taken, at his suggestion, the name of "The Calumets." Our club consisted of about a dozen members. We lived within easy reach, and met at each other's houses every other Sunday evening at nine o'clock. The talk was so interesting that we sometimes sat on till three or four o'clock. I do not remember that in all those twenty years, we ever had