Chapter 22
Lincoln was master of the art of making himself interesting to everybody he met. He put people at ease with his stories and jokes, and made them feel so completely at home in his presence that they opened up their mental treasures to him without reserve. Strangers were always glad to talk with him because he was so cordial and quaint, and always gave more than he got.
A sense of humor such as Lincoln had is, of course, a great addition to one's conversational power. But not everyone can be funny; and, if you lack the sense of humor, you will make yourself ludicrous by attempting to be funny.
A good conversationalist, however, is not too serious. He does not deal too much with facts, no matter how important. Facts, statistics, weary. Vivacity is absolutely necessary. Heavy conversation bores; too light, disgusts.
Therefore, to be a good conversationalist you must be spontaneous, buoyant, natural, sympathetic, and must show a spirit of good will.
You must feel a spirit of helpfulness, and must enter heart and soul into things which interest others. You must get the attention of people and hold it by interesting them, and you can only interest them by a warm sympathy--a real friendly sympathy. If you are cold, distant, and unsympathetic you can not hold their attention.
You must be broad, tolerant. A narrow stingy soul never talks well. A man who is always violating your sense of taste, of justice, and of fairness, never interests you. You lock tight all the approaches to your inner self, every avenue is closed to him. Your magnetism and your helpfulness are thus cut off, and the conversation is perfunctory, mechanical, and without life or feeling.
You must bring your listener close to you, must open your heart wide, and exhibit a broad free nature, and an open mind. You must be responsive, so that he will throw wide open every avenue of his nature and give you free access to his heart of hearts.
If a man is a success anywhere, it ought to be in his personality, in his power to express himself in strong, effective, interesting language. He should not be obliged to give a stranger an inventory of his possessions in order to show that he has achieved something. A greater wealth should flow from his lips, and express itself in his manner.
No amount of natural ability or education or good clothes, no amount of money, will make you appear well if you use poor English.
CHAPTER XVIII
A FORTUNE IN GOOD MANNERS
Give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes wherever he goes; he has not the trouble of earning or owning them; they solicit him to enter and possess.--EMERSON.
With hat in hand, one gets on in the world.--GERMAN PROVERB.
What thou wilt, Thou must rather enforce it with thy smile, Than hew to it with thy sword.
SHAKESPEARE.
Politeness has been compared to an air cus.h.i.+on, which, although there is apparently nothing in it, eases our jolts wonderfully.--GEORGE L.
CAREY.
Birth's gude, but breedin's better.--SCOTCH PROVERB.
Conduct is three fourths of life.--MATTHEW ARNOLD.
"Why the doose de 'e 'old 'is 'ead down like that?" asked a c.o.c.kney sergeant-major angrily, when a worthy fellow soldier wished to be reinstated in a position from which he had been dismissed. "Has 'e 's been han hofficer 'e bought to know 'ow to be'ave 'isself better. What use 'ud 'e be has a non-commissioned hofficer hif 'e didn't dare look 'is men in the face? Hif a man wants to be a soldier, hi say, let 'im c.o.c.k 'is chin hup, switch 'is stick abart a bit, an give a crack hover the 'ead to hanybody who comes foolin' round 'im, helse 'e might just has well be a Methodist parson."
The English is somewhat rude, but it expresses pretty forcibly the fact that a good bearing is indispensable to success as a soldier. Mien and manner have much to do with our influence and reputation in any walk of life.
"Don't you wish you had my power?" asked the East Wind of the Zephyr.
"Why, when I start they hail me by storm signals all along the coast.
I can twist off a s.h.i.+p's mast as easily as you can waft thistledown.
With one sweep of my wing I strew the coast from Labrador to Cape Horn with shattered s.h.i.+p timber. I can lift and have often lifted the Atlantic. I am the terror of all invalids, and to keep me from piercing to the very marrow of their bones, men cut down forests for their fires and explore the mines of continents for coal to feed their furnaces. Under my breath the nations crouch in sepulchers. Don't you wish you had my power?"
Zephyr made no reply, but floated from out the bowers of the sky, and all the rivers and lakes and seas, all the forests and fields, all the beasts and birds and men smiled at its coming. Gardens bloomed, orchards ripened, silver
The story goes that Queen Victoria once expressed herself to her husband in rather a despotic tone, and Prince Albert, whose manly self-respect was smarting at her words, sought the seclusion of his own apartment, closing and locking the door. In about five minutes some one knocked.
"Who is it?" inquired the Prince.
"It is I. Open to the Queen of England!" haughtily responded her Majesty. There was no reply. After a long interval there came a gentle tapping and the low spoken words: "It is I, Victoria, your wife." Is it necessary to add that the door was opened, or that the disagreement was at an end? It is said that civility is to a man what beauty is to a woman: it creates an instantaneous impression in his behalf.
The monk Basle, according to a quaint old legend, died while under the ban of excommunication by the pope, and was sent in charge of an angel to find his proper place in the nether world. But his genial disposition and great conversational powers won friends wherever he went. The fallen angels adopted his manner, and even the good angels went a long way to see him and live with him. He was removed to the lowest depths of Hades, but with the same result. His inborn politeness and kindness of heart were irresistible, and he seemed to change the h.e.l.l into a heaven. At length the angel returned with the monk, saying that no place could be found in which to punish him. He still remained the same Basle. So his sentence was revoked, and he was sent to Heaven and canonized as a saint.
The Duke of Marlborough "wrote English badly and spelled it worse," yet he swayed the destinies of empires. The charm of his manner was irresistible and influenced all Europe. His fascinating smile and winning speech disarmed the fiercest hatred and made friends of the bitterest enemies.
A gentleman took his daughter of sixteen to Richmond to witness the trial of his bitter personal enemy, Aaron Burr, whom he regarded as an arch-traitor. But she was so fascinated by Burr's charming manner that she sat with his friends. Her father took her from the courtroom, and locked her up, but she was so overcome by the fine manner of the accused that she believed in his innocence and prayed for his acquittal. "To this day," said she fifty years afterwards, "I feel the magic of his wonderful deportment."
Madame Recamier was so charming that when she pa.s.sed around the box at the Church St. Roche in Paris, twenty thousand francs were put into it.
At the great reception to Napoleon on his return from Italy, the crowd caught sight of this fascinating woman and almost forgot to look at the great hero.
"Please, Madame," whispered a servant to Madame de Maintenon at dinner, "one anecdote more, for there is no roast to-day." She was so fascinating in manner and speech that her guests appeared to overlook all the little discomforts of life.
According to St. Beuve, the privileged circle at Coppet after making an excursion returned from Chambery in two coaches. Those arriving in the first coach had a rueful experience to relate--a terrific thunder-storm, shocking roads, and danger and gloom to the whole company. The party in the second coach heard their story with surprise; of thunder-storm, of steeps, of mud, of danger, they knew nothing; no, they had forgotten earth, and breathed a purer air; such a conversation between Madame de Stael and Madame Recamier and Benjamin Constant and Schlegel! they were all in a state of delight. The intoxication of the conversation had made them insensible to all notice of weather or rough roads. "If I were Queen," said Madame Tesse, "I should command Madame de Stael to talk to me every day." "When she had pa.s.sed," as Longfellow wrote of Evangeline, "it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music."
Madame de Stael was anything but beautiful, but she possessed that indefinable something before which mere conventional beauty cowers, commonplace and ashamed. Her hold upon the minds of men was wonderful.
They were the creatures of her will, and she shaped careers as if she were omnipotent. Even the Emperor Napoleon feared her influence over his people so much that he destroyed her writings and banished her from France.
In the words of Whittier it could be said of her as might be said of any woman:--
Our homes are cheerier for her sake, Our door-yards brighter blooming, And all about the social air Is sweeter for her coming.
A guest for two weeks at the house of Arthur M. Cavanaugh, M. P., who was without arms or legs, was very desirous of knowing how he fed himself; but the conversation and manner of the host were so charming that the visitor was scarcely conscious of his deformity.
"When d.i.c.kens entered a room," said one who knew him well, "it was like the sudden kindling of a big fire, by which every one was warmed."
It is said that when Goethe entered a restaurant people would lay down their knives and forks to admire him.
Philip of Macedon, after hearing the report of Demosthenes' famous oration, said: "Had I been there he would have persuaded me to take up arms against myself."
Henry Clay was so graceful and impressive in his manner that a Pennsylvania tavern-keeper tried to induce him to get out of the stage-coach in which they were riding, and make a speech to himself and his wife.
"I don't think much of Choate's spread-eagle talk," said a simple-minded member of a jury that had given five successive verdicts to the great advocate; "but I call him a very lucky lawyer, for there was not one of those five cases that came before us where he wasn't on the right side." His manner as well as his logic was irresistible.
When Edward Everett took a professor's chair at Harvard after five years of study in Europe, he was almost wors.h.i.+ped by the students. His manner seemed touched by that exquisite grace seldom found except in women of rare culture. His great popularity lay in a magical atmosphere which every one felt, but no one could describe, and which never left him.
A New York lady had just taken her seat in a car on a train bound for Philadelphia, when a somewhat stout man sitting just ahead of her lighted a cigar. She coughed and moved uneasily; but the hints had no effect, so she said tartly: "You probably are a foreigner, and do not know that there is a smoking-car attached to the train. Smoking is not permitted here." The man made no reply, but threw his cigar from the window. What has her astonishment when the conductor told her, a moment later, that she had entered the private car of General Grant.
She withdrew in confusion, but the same fine courtesy which led him to give up his cigar was shown again as he spared her the mortification of even a questioning glance, still less of a look of amus.e.m.e.nt, although she watched his dumb, immovable figure with apprehension until she reached the door.
Julian Ralph, after telegraphing an account of President Arthur's fis.h.i.+ng-trip to the Thousand Islands, returned to his hotel at two o'clock in the morning, to find all the doors locked. With two friends who had accompanied him, he battered at a side door to wake the servants, but what was his chagrin when the door was opened by the President of the United States!
"Why, that's all right," said Mr. Arthur when Mr. Ralph asked his pardon. "You wouldn't have got in till morning if I had not come. No one is up in the house but me. I could have sent my colored boy, but he had fallen asleep and I hated to wake him."
The late King Edward, when Prince of Wales, the first gentleman in Europe, invited an eminent man to dine with him. When coffee was served, the guest, to the consternation of the others, drank from his saucer. An open t.i.tter of amus.e.m.e.nt went round the table. The Prince, quickly noting the cause of the untimely amus.e.m.e.nt, gravely emptied his cup into his saucer and drank after the manner of his guest. Silent and abashed, the other members of the princely household took the rebuke and did the same.