It is not necessary that conversation should roll around a given point.
I think that is the most entertaining, restful, and real talk which
is the most roving. You may begin in Portland and end in San Francisco.
You may start talking about preserving peaches, and halt on the latest
sensation. It is often very amusing to trace the line of such converse:
it moves in a zigzag course, and terminates many miles out of the
original direction. By this discursiveness I do not mean gossip. Of
course talk of that kind has no good part in conversation: it is the
slave of ignorance and bad character. I might, however, differ from
some as to what gossip is,--whether there may not be certain kinds
of talk miscalled gossip. I am quite sure that criticising the
misfortunes of others, and watching a chance for dilating upon their
lot, with your neighbors on the next doorstep, would come under the head
of worse than gossip. It might be well to distinguish between gossip and
scandal: the one is goodness adulterated; the other is evil unmixed.
Good conversation is the mark of highest culture. That is why, in spite
of shabby dresses, unbanged hair, tremendous mouths, and large noses,
some persons are purely delightful. We have seen that this is so, yet
have not added that something lies in the voice as well as in the
manners and words of such people.
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