CONVERSATION AND SOME OF ITS USES
YOUR conversation should also be planned more or less in advance.
Select some topic in which you think your lady friend will be
interested, such as, for example, the removal of tonsils and adenoids,
and "read up" on the subject so that you can discuss it in an
intelligent manner. Find out, for example, how many people had tonsils
removed in February, March, April. Contrast this with the same figures
for 1880, 1890, 1900. Learn two or three amusing anecdotes about
adenoids. Consult Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations" for appropriate
verses dealing with tonsils and throat troubles. Finally, and above all,
take time to glance through four or five volumes of Dr. Eliot's Five
Foot Shelf, for nothing so completely marks the cultivated man as the
ability to refer familiarly to the various volumes of the Harvard
classics.
