It is difficult to see how the 'natural-born fool'--to use an American expression--can ever hope to become well mannered, for without good sense, or rather tact, a man must continually make a fool of himself in society. Why are women as a rule better mannered than men? Because their greater sympathy and power of quicker intuition give to them finer tact. Nor is talent which knows what to do of much use, if the tact he wanting which should enable us to see how to do it. He who has talent without tact is like the millionaire who never has a penny of ready-money about him. Mr Smiles illustrates the difference between a man of quick tact and of no tact whatever by an interview which he says once took place between Lord Palmerston and Mr Behnes the sculptor. At the last sitting which Lord Palmerston gave him, Behnes opened the conversation with: 'Any news, my lord, from France? How do we stand with Louis Napoleon?' The Foreign Secretary raised his eyebrows for an instant, and quietly replied: 'Really, Mr Behnes, I don't know; I have not seen the newspapers!' Behnes, with much talent, was one of the many men who entirely missed their way in life through want of tact. Nowhere is there room for the display of good manners so much as in conversation. Well-mannered people do not talk too much. Remembering that the first syllable of the word conversation is _con_ (with), that it means talking with another, they abstain from lecturing, and are as ready to listen as to be heard. They are neither impatient to interrupt others nor uneasy when interrupted themselves. Knowing that their anecdote or sharp reply will keep, or need not find utterance at all, they give full attention to their companion, and do not by their looks vote him a bore, or at least an interruption to their own much better remarks. But beside the rule, that we should not be impatient to get in our word, that a few brilliant flashes of _silence_ should occur in our conversation, another rule is, not to take for our theme--ourselves. We must remember that, as a rule, we and our concerns can be of no more importance to other men than they and their concerns are to us. Why then should we go over the annals of our lives generally and of our diseases in particular to comparative strangers; why review the hardships we have suffered in money matters, in love, at law, in our profession, or loudly boast of successes in each of these departments? Why, lastly, should the pride that apes humility induce us to fish for compliments by talking _ad nauseam_ of our faults? We need not say that low gossip or scandal-bearing is quite incompatible with good manners. 'The occasions of silence,' says Bishop Butler, 'are obvious--namely when a man has nothing to say, or nothing but what is better unsaid; better either in regard to some particular persons he is present with, or from its being an interruption to conversation of a more agreeable kind; or better, lastly, with regard to himself.'