THE BATTALION. 17
capacity whereby all our social relationshios the most com
plex and the most simple may be put in towords. Through
the modulation of voice and the apt use of words which have
drawn their varied shades of thought, not from learning and
learned, but from the homely experience ot the thoughtful
though illerate masses, we have the means of probing the
inmost recesses of fellow hearts and impressing them in turn
with our sentiments. Isay we have the means, but, how
constantly is this God-given play-ground and drill-ground of
our social being—conversation—turned into a rubbish heap,
a garbage heap, a cess pool of iniquitous gossip. Such as
breeds poison and scatters it in every direction like the
typhoid marshes from whose exhalations cities are depopu
lated ! Could we phonograph the conversation of one of our
mixed social gatherings and reproduce it during some leisure
hour, we would be norror stricken at the utter silliness, not to
say, hurtfulness that prevails where all should be high toned,
refining and pure. The sorry jest and questionable anecdote
which have drawn the laugh in saloons, gambling joints and
places of ill fame too often make the stock in trade, disguised
is may be, but only enough to leave their low born origin too
plainly recorded. The shaft of envy, the malice of social
rivalry, the hypocrisy of selfish design, the stiletto thrust of
slander would come out like punctuation marks profusely
scattered amidst a mass of wordy nonsense nauseating from
the very absence of savor. If conversation, is, as I have de
fined it, the outcome of social life, the student of speech must
needs be impressed with a certain rottenness in social life,
which harmonizes poorly with the boasted moral elevation of
man. To carry the figure further, may we not say that men
and women are. phonographs of the society they keep, and is
not this fact the very key to the trouble? We do not in our
social reunions reflect the home and the house in which with
brothers and sisters we were trained, but, the flashy, gaudy,
and too often vicious companionship into which we have
strayed away. Society has to a certain extent destroyed the