How To Do It | Page 9

land-grant made to Gorges,
and between the sentences I had a chance to hear every word poor Bob
said to Laura. Mark now, Laura is a nice clever girl, who has come to
make the Watsons a visit through her whole vacation at Poughkeepsie;
and all the young people are delighted with her pleasant ways, and all
of them would be glad to know more of her than they do. Bob really
wants to know her, and he was really glad to be introduced to her. Mrs.
Pollexfen presented him to her, and he asked her to dance, and they
stood on the side of the cotillon behind me and in front of Dr. Ollapod.
After they had taken their places, Bob said: "Jew go to the opera last
week, Miss Walter?" He meant, "Did you go to the opera last week?"
"No," said Laura, "I did not."
"O, 't was charming!" said Bob. And there this effort at talk stopped, as
it should have done, being founded on nothing but a lie; which is to say,
not founded at all. For, in fact, Bob did not care two straws about the
opera. He had never been to it but once, and then he was tired before it
was over. But he pretended he cared for it. He thought that at an
evening party he must talk about the opera, and the lecture season, and
the assemblies, and a lot of other trash, about which in fact he cared
nothing, and so knew nothing. Not caring and not knowing, he could
not carry on his conversation a step. The mere fact that Miss Walter
had shown that she was in real sympathy with him in an indifference to
the opera threw him off the track which he never should have been on,
and brought his untimely conversation to an end.
Now, as it happened, Laura's next partner brought her to the very same
place, or rather she never left it, but Will Hackmatack came and
claimed her dance as soon as Bob's was done. Dr. Ollapod had only got
down to the appeal made to the lords sitting in equity, when I noticed
Will's beginning. He spoke right out of the thing he was thinking of.
"I saw you riding this afternoon," he said.
"Yes," said Laura, "we went out by the red mills, and drove up the hill
by Mr. Pond's."

"Did you?" said Will, eagerly. "Did you see the beehives?"
"Beehives? no;--are there beehives?"
"Why, yes, did not you know that Mr. Pond knows more about bees
than all the world beside? At least, I believe so. He has a gold medal
from Paris for his honey or for something. And his arrangements there
are very curious."
"I wish I had known it," said Laura. "I kept bees last summer, and they
always puzzled me. I tried to get books; but the books are all written
for Switzerland, or England, or anywhere but Orange County."
"Well," said the eager Will, "I do not think Mr. Pond has written any
book, but I really guess he knows a great deal about it. Why, he told
me--" &c., &c., &c.
It was hard for Will to keep the run of the dance; and before it was over
he had promised to ask Mr. Pond when a party of them might come up
to the hill and see the establishment; and he felt as well acquainted with
Laura as if he had known her a month. All this ease came from Will's
not pretending an interest where he did not feel any, but opening
simply where he was sure of his ground, and was really interested.
More simply, Will did not tell a lie, as poor Bob had done in that
remark about the opera, but told the truth.
If I were permitted to write more than thirty-five pages of this
note-paper (of which this is the nineteenth), I would tell you twenty
stories to the same point. And please observe that the distinction
between the two systems of talk is the eternal distinction between the
people whom Thackeray calls snobs and the people who are gentlemen
and ladies. Gentlemen and ladies are sure of their ground. They pretend
to nothing that they are not. They have no occasion to act one or
another part. It is not possible for them, even in the choice of subjects,
to tell lies.
The principle of selecting a subject which thoroughly interests you
requires only one qualification. You may be very intensely interested in
some affairs of your own; but in general society you have no right to
talk of them, simply because they are not of equal interest to other
people. Of course you may come to me for advice, or go to your