TALKING OF LADY NOVELISTS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3204, 27 April 1911, Page 6

TALKING OF LADY NOVELISTS.

THE ART OF CONVERSATION

So much has been said concerning the art of conversation that I very much doubt if it be an art at all. Conversation has been so systematised by the telephone that it seems a mero trade. Anybody can talk well now even into a phonograph. One or 1 two secrets of the subject are, for all that, known only to the elect, notwithstanding such clever books on conversation as that of Horatio S. Krans. I am afraid Mr. Krans has neglected the richest of all sources of conversation. I refer to the works of pur growing army of lady novelists —Alice Brown, Inez Haynes, Edith Wharton, Gertrude Atherton, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman —but why compile a catalogue? These ladies are all exceedingly clever, and it is easy enough to learn, how they like to he talked to. One (has but to> study the perfect gentlemen out of whom they make heroes in their innumerable novels. • I will assume that I wanted to make myself agreeable conversationally to Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. I have read her fiction so 'long and so patiently that I know only too well the sort of things a man ought to say to seem brilliant to her. A dialogue between us would race like the chariot of the sun. Thus: “Yes, yes, woman remains the great incomprehensible—— ’ ’ “Not so fast, sir, I implore. When you say incomprehensibe, do you mean to men like yourself or to those high and ennobled souls who have made my sex their debtors?”

“Don’t you mean creditors?” “Debtors, I said.” “Yes, and being a woman, you meant something else.” “But I am not aware that it is necessary for me to mean anything at all. You would be too obtuse to comprehend me if I did!.” “That sounds rude.” “So it would have been in mamma’s youth. Girls are permitted to be witty now.”

This, I affirm, after careful perusal of her works, is the art of conversation to Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. It goes a long way to explain why we American men seem dull to our wives and 1 sisters. Now lqt me give you a bit of dialogue between myself and Gertrude Atherton in her own characteristic style: “So you mean to marry the heiress after all?” Here, after essaying to speak, I hesitate. I know her awkward, handsome, English heroes so well! “Yes,” I answer shortly at la*t. Then, as an afterthought. “You know you urged me to.” “Much urging you need to do what you should not do.” “You mean I should not marry her? Why should I not marry her?” “It would be useless to tell you that until you had been married to her a year.” “You mean I am not clever enough to understand?” “I mean that no man can understand why he should not marry a Avoman until it is too late fo rthe knoAvledge to do him any good.” “Oh! Then I am not clever?” “Do you suppose, if you were clever I woAild talk to you like this?” “But how would you talk to me if I were clever?” “Fool! Don’t you see that if you Avere clever you would not have to ask the question? But is isn’t a question—- “ New York Life.”