Chinese employ singing girls; Japanese, geishas to talk, sing or dance.
The ideal would here again seem to be an amalgamation of East and West.
It is difficult for a mixed crowd to be always agreeable,
even in the congenial atmosphere of a good feast, unless the guests
have been selected with a view to their opinions rather than
to their social standing. Place a number of people whose ideas are common,
with a difference, around a well-spread table and there will be no lack
of good, earnest, instructive conversation. Most men and women
can talk well if they have the right sort of listeners.
If the hearer is unsympathetic the best talker becomes dumb.
Hosts who remember this will always be appreciated.
As a rule, a dinner conversation is seldom worth remembering,
which is a pity. Man, the most sensible of all animals, can talk nonsense
better than all the rest of his tribe. Perhaps the flow of words
may be as steady as the eastward flow of the Yang-tse-Kiang in my own country,
but the memory only retains a recollection of a vague, undefined -- what?
The conversation like the flavors provided by the cooks has been evanescent.
Why should not hostesses make as much effort to stimulate
the minds of their guests as they do to gratify their palates?
What a boon it would be to many a bashful man, sitting next to a lady
with whom he has nothing in common, if some public entertainer
during the dinner relieved him from the necessity of always thinking
of what he should say next? How much more he could enjoy
the tasty dishes his hostess had provided; and as for the lady --
what a number of suppressed yawns she might have avoided.
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