Part 1 (1/2)

Conversation.

by Andrew P. Peabody.

PART I.

AN ADDRESS

DELIVERED BEFORE THE

NEWBURYPORT FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL,

DECEMBER 19, 1846,

BY ANDREW P. PEABODY.

YOUNG LADIES,

You have made me happy by your kind invitation to meet you, and to address you on this anniversary. A day spent in this room at your annual examination, nearly two years ago, was a season of privilege and enjoyment not readily to be forgotten. I had previously entertained a high regard for your instructor. I then learned to know him by his work; and, were he not here, I should be glad to extend beyond a single sentence my congratulations with you that you are his pupils.

I have said that I accepted your invitation with gladness. Yet, in preparing myself to meet you, I find a degree of embarra.s.sment. This is for you a season of recreation,--a high festival; and I am accustomed to use my pen and voice only on grave occasions, and for solemn services. I know not how to add to your amus.e.m.e.nt. Should I undertake to make sport for you, my awkwardness would give you more mirth than my wit. The best that I can do is to select some subject that is or ought to be interesting to you, and to endeavor to blend a little instruction with the gayer and more lively notes of the occasion. The lesson shall be neither tediously long nor needlessly grave.

I propose to offer you a few hints on _conversation_. How large a portion of life does it fill up! How innumerable are its ministries and its uses! It is the most refined species of recreation,--the most sparkling source of merriment. It interweaves with a never-resting shuttle the bonds of domestic sympathy. It fastens the ties of friends.h.i.+p, and runs along the golden links of the chain of love. It enriches charity, and makes the gift twice blessed. There is, perhaps, a peculiar appropriateness in the selection of this topic for an address to young ladies; for they do more than any other cla.s.s in the community towards establis.h.i.+ng the general tone and standard of social intercourse. The voices of many of you already, I doubt not, strike the key-note of home conversation; and you are fast approaching an age when you will take prominent places in general society; will be the objects of peculiar regard; and will, in a great measure, determine whether the social converse in your respective circles shall be vulgar or refined, censorious or kindly, frivolous or dignified. It was said by a wise man of antiquity,--”Only give me the making of songs for the people, and I care not who makes the laws.” In our unmusical age and land, talking occupies the place which songs did among the melody-loving Greeks; and he who could tune the many-voiced harp of the social party, need crave no higher office or more potent sway.

Permit me now to enumerate some of the characteristics of graceful, elegant, and profitable conversation, commencing with the lower graces, and pa.s.sing on to the higher.

Let me first beg you, if you would be good talkers, to form and fix now, (for you can do this only now,) habits of correct and easy p.r.o.nunciation. The words which you now miscall, it will cost you great pains in after life to p.r.o.nounce aright, and you will always be in danger of returning inadvertently to your old p.r.o.nunciation. There are two extremes which you ought equally to shun. One is that of carelessness; the other, that of extreme precision, as if the sound of the words uttered were constantly uppermost in the mind. This last fault always suggests the idea of vanity and pedantry, and is of itself enough to add a deep indigo hue to a young lady's reputation.

One great fault of New England p.r.o.nunciation is, that the work is performed too much by the outer organs of speech. The tones of the voice have but little depth. Instead of a generous play of the throat and lungs, the throat almost closes, and the voice seems to be formed in the mouth. It is this that gives what is called a _nasal_ tone to the voice, which, when denied free range through its lawful avenues, rushes in part through the nose. We notice the nasal p.r.o.nunciation in excess here and there in an individual, while Englishmen and Southerners observe it as a prevailing characteristic of all cla.s.ses of people in the Northern States. Southerners in general are much less careful and accurate in p.r.o.nunciation than we are; but they more than compensate for this deficiency by the full, round tones in which they utter themselves. In our superficial use of the organs of speech, there are some consonants which we are p.r.o.ne to omit altogether. This is especially the case with _g_ in words that end with _ing_. Nine persons out of ten say _singin_ instead of _singing_. I know some public speakers, and many private ones, who never p.r.o.nounce the _t_ in such words as _object_ and _prospect_. Very few persons give the right sound to _r_ final. _Far_ is generally p.r.o.nounced as if it were written _fah_. Now, I would not have the full Hibernian roll of the _r_; but I would have the presence of the letter more distinctly recognized, than it often is, even by persons of refined and fastidious taste.

Let me next beg you to shun all the ungrammatical vulgarisms which are often heard, but which never fail to grate harshly on a well-tuned ear.

If you permit yourselves to use them now, you will never get rid of them. I know a venerable and accomplished lawyer, who has stood at the head of his profession in this State, and has moved in the most refined society for half a century, who to this day says _haint_ for _has not_, having acquired the habit when a schoolboy. I have known persons who have for years tried unsuccessfully to break themselves of saying _done_ for _did_, and _you and I_ for _you and me_. Many well-educated persons, through the power of long habit, persist in saying _shew_ for _showed_, while they know perfectly well that they might, with equal propriety, subst.i.tute _snew_ for _snowed_; and there is not far hence a clergyman, marvellously precise and fastidious in his choice of words, who is very apt to commence his sermon by saying, ”I _shew_ you in a recent discourse.” A false delicacy has very generally introduced _drank_ as the perfect participle of _drink_, instead of _drunk_, which alone has any respectable authority in its favor; and the imperfect tense and perfect participle have been similarly confounded in many other cases. I know not what grammar you use in this school. I trust that it is an old one; for some of the new grammars sanction these vulgarisms, and in looking over their tables of irregular verbs, I have sometimes half expected to have the book dashed from my hand by the indignant ghost of Lindley Murray. Great care and discretion should be employed in the use of the common abbreviations of the negative forms of the substantive and auxiliary verbs. _Can't_, _don't_, and _haven't_, are admissible in rapid conversation on trivial subjects. _Isn't_ and _hasn't_ are more harsh, yet tolerated by respectable usage. _Didn't_, _couldn't_, _wouldn't_, and _shouldn't_, make as unpleasant combinations of consonants as can well be uttered, and fall short but by one remove of those unutterable names of Polish gentlemen which sometimes excite our wonder in the columns of a newspaper. _Won't_ for _will not_, and _aint_ for _is not_ or _are not_, are absolutely vulgar; and _aint_, for _has not_ or _have not_, is utterly intolerable.

Nearly akin to these offences against good grammar is another untasteful practice, into which you are probably more in danger of falling, and which is a crying sin among young ladies,--I mean the use of exaggerated, extravagant forms of speech,--saying _splendid_ for _pretty_, _magnificent_ for _handsome_, _horrid_ for _very_, _horrible_ for _unpleasant_, _immense_ for _large_, _thousands_ or _myriads_ for any number greater than _two_. Were I to write down, for one day, the conversation of some young ladies of my acquaintance, and then to interpret it literally, it would imply that, within the compa.s.s of twelve or fourteen hours, they had met with more marvellous adventures and hair-breadth escapes, had pa.s.sed through more distressing experiences, had seen more imposing spectacles, had endured more fright, and enjoyed more rapture, than would suffice for half a dozen common lives. This habit is attended with many inconveniences. It deprives you of the intelligible use of strong expressions when you need them. If you use them all the time, n.o.body understands or believes you when you use them in earnest. You are in the same predicament with the boy who cried WOLF so often, when there was no wolf, that n.o.body would go to his relief when the wolf came. This habit has also a very bad moral bearing. Our words have a reflex influence upon our characters.

Exaggerated speech makes one careless of the truth. The habit of using words without regard to their rightful meaning, often leads one to distort facts, to misreport conversations, and to magnify statements, in matters in which the literal truth is important to be told. You can never trust the testimony of one who in common conversation is indifferent to the import, and regardless of the power, of words. I am acquainted with persons whose representations of facts always need translation and correction, and who have utterly lost their reputation for veracity, solely through this habit of overstrained and extravagant speech. They do not mean to lie; but they have a dialect of their own, in which words bear an entirely different sense from that given to them in the daily intercourse of discreet and sober people.

In this connection, it may not be amiss to notice a certain cla.s.s of phrases, often employed to fill out and dilute sentences, such as, _I'm sure_,--_I declare_,--_That's a fact_,--_You know_,--_I want to know_,--_Did you ever?_--_Well! I never_,--and the like. All these forms of speech disfigure conversation, weaken the force of the a.s.sertions or statements with which they are connected, and give unfavorable impressions as to the good breeding of the person that uses them.

You will be surprised, young ladies, to hear me add to these counsels,--”Above all things, swear not at all.” Yet there is a great deal of swearing among those who would shudder at the very thought of being profane. The Jews, who were afraid to use the most sacred names in common speech, were accustomed to swear by the temple, by the altar, and by their own heads; and these oaths were rebuked and forbidden by divine authority. I know not why the rebuke and prohibition apply not with full force to the numerous oaths by _goodness_, _faith_, _patience_, and _mercy_, which we hear from lips that mean to be neither coa.r.s.e nor irreverent, in the schoolroom, street, and parlor; and a moment's reflection will convince any well-disposed person, that, in the exclamation _Lor_, the cutting off of a single letter from a consecrated word can hardly save one from the censure and the penalty written in the third commandment. I do not regard these expressions as harmless. I believe them inconsistent with Christian laws of speech. Nor do they accord with the simple, quiet habit of mind and tone of feeling which are the most favorable to happiness and usefulness, and which sit as gracefully on gay and buoyant youth as on the sedateness of maturer years. The frame of mind in which a young lady says, in reply to a question, _Mercy! no_, is very different from that which prompts the simple, modest _no_. Were there any room for doubt, I should have some doubt of the truth of the former answer; for the unnatural, excited, fluttered state of mind implied in the use of the oath, might indicate either an unfitness to weigh the truth, or an unwillingness to acknowledge it.

In fine, transparency is an essential attribute of all graceful and becoming speech. Language ought to represent the speaker's ideas, and neither more nor less. Exclamations, needless expletives, unmeaning extravagances, are as untasteful as the streamers of tattered finery which you sometimes see fluttering about the person of a dilapidated belle. Let your thoughts be as strong, as witty, as brilliant, as you can make them; but never seek to atone for feeble thought by large words, or to rig out foolish conceits in the spangled robe of genuine wit. Speak as you think and feel; and let the tongue always be an honest interpreter to the heart.

But it is time that we pa.s.sed to higher considerations. There are great laws of duty and religion which should govern our conversation; and the divine Teacher a.s.sures us that even for our idle words we are accountable to Him who has given us the power of speech. Now, I by no means believe that there is any principle of our religion which frowns upon wit or merriment, or forbids playful speech at fit seasons and within due limits. The very fact that the Almighty has created the muscles which produce the smile and the laugh, is a perpetual rebuke to those who would call all laughter madness, and all mirth folly.

Amus.e.m.e.nt, in its time and place, is a great good; and I know of no amus.e.m.e.nt so refined, so worthy an intellectual being, as that conversation which is witty and still kind, playful, yet always reverent, which recreates from toil and care, but leaves no sting, and violates no principle of brotherly love or religious duty.

Evil speaking, slander, detraction, gossip, scandal, are different names for one of the chief dangers to be guarded against in conversation; and you are doing much towards defending yourselves against it by the generous mental culture which you enjoy in this seminary. The demon of slander loves an empty house. A taste for scandal betrays a vacant mind.

Furnish your minds, then, by useful reading and study, and by habits of reflection and mental industry, that you may be able to talk about subjects as well as about people,--about events too long past or too remote to be interwoven with slander. But, if you must talk about people, why not about their good traits and deeds? The truest ingenuity is that which brings hidden excellences to light; for virtue is in her very nature modest and retiring, while faults lie on the surface and are detected with half an eye.