The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current, December 01, 1897, Image 16

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    THE BATTALION.
15
Conversation.
How often the letter writer has found occasion to say: if
I could only speak with you face to face, I could tell you
my wishes and leelings so much more freely than by means
of this more or less artificial correspondence ! Notwithstand
ing the popularity of modern stump speaking and forensic
eloquence, the politician will acknowledge that the friend
made by five minutes conversation is more reliable than the
hundreds of adherents gained around the platform. The one
is a friend the others are partisan adherents likely to he
turned aside by a flood of eloquence from the other party.
The wise preacher knows that the carefully prepared sermon
of a year will not accomplish so much as the casual visits to
the homes of his people, and a few minutes ol unstudied and
sympathetic conversation with the families. Indeed, in
the ability to converse well there lies for every man more
power than in the possession of libraries of encyclopedias, or
law books, or in masses of oratorical or literary wisdom.
A Demosthenes, or a Lord Braughan, or a Pitt, or Burke,
or Webster, or Calhoun may bend an evidence momentarily
to his will like a storm wind passing over a forest, but for
permanent impression, for the knitting ot fast friendship, for
the planting of seeds which will go on yielding harvests of
good or bad fruit, give me the man who converses well. The
great movements of the world’s history have all begun, and
the plots which have ended in national disgrace have all been
hatched “ unter Vier Augen ” as the German’s say. This
matter of conversation is of the utmost importance to the
student who desires to utilize all the abilities with which he
is endowed. In his essays and discourses and studied haran
gues, all useful in their place, he elevates his thoughts upon
the more or less stylish stilts which other men have con
structed; he cluthes his sentiments in a fashionable garb;
models his speech after some Swift, Addison, or Blair stand-