He was a poser in the sense already indicated,--namely, he was one man before the public and another at work. In this sense every man clever enough to forget himself at times is something of a poser, for only the stupid who can talk nothing but “shop,” wherever they are, are the same day in and day out. Most men are able to leave their work behind and adopt a _rôle_ more or less artificial in social intercourse. The brilliant few who make society possess this faculty in an eminent degree. The objection that social England has against the shopkeeper is, no doubt, based upon many sad experiences that the shopkeeper brings his shop with him to dinner, and will not, or cannot, pose to the extent of forgetting his material concerns in the presence of the frivolous. The preacher, the politician, the lawyer, the soldier may introduce a little “shop” in general conversation, for these occupations are supposed to have a more general interest; but the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker cannot. But preacher, politician, lawyer, and soldier make the better guests if they pose a little and forget, for the time being, their occupations. Convictions must be introduced sparingly in social intercourse; a very few go a great way. Why not adopt and duly post some such salutary rule as this? In social intercourse the utterance of one’s profound convictions shall bear the same ratio to one’s total utterances on any given occasion that the speaker bears to the number present and participating in the conversation. That is to say, if the conversation is between two alone, half that either says may be his convictions, the other half a polite, though futile, endeavor to understand the other’s convictions. If at a table of twelve, about a twelfth of one’s real thoughts are permissible, and all that, in justice to others, should be attempted. But, then, conversation is a lost art. An Athenian could talk better about everything than a modern can talk about anything. Cast a subject, a thought, so much as a suggestion, into a knot of Greeks, and in a trice, like dogs over a bone, they would be wrestling with it, and the less they knew about it the brighter the discussion. Knowledge is the last refuge of the stupid. Facts are the sinkers of talk. Ideas are the flash-lights of the imagination; and conversation depends not upon knowledge but upon ideas. One who knows nothing of a subject may have more ideas concerning it than one who knows all about. Women are frequently better conversers than men, because less hampered by facts. Knowledge is a heavy weight for conversation to carry. But of all the bores who find their way to the dinner-table the specialist in knowledge is the most hopeless. The man who knows everything about something is at the stupid end; the man who knows something about everything at the brilliant, with a place at his right hand for the woman who knows nothing about anything.