Good humor, flowing spirits, a sprightly wit, are essentials of good discourse. Add genial dispositions, graceful elocution, and to these accomplishments diffidence as the flower of the rest. There can be no eloquence where these are wanting. Any amount of sense, of logic, matter, leaves the discourse incomplete, interest flags, and disappointment ensues. None has command of himself till he can wield his powers sportfully, life sparkling from all his gifts and taking captive alike speaker and hearer, as they were docile children of his genius and surprised converts for the moment. "And I," says Socrates, "through my youth often change my mind, but looking to you and apprehending that you speak the things that are divine, I think so too." If one cannot inspire faith in what he says, no arts avail. Earnestness, sincerity, are orators whose persuasions are irresistible; they hold all gifts in fusion, magnetize, divinize, harmonize all. Good conversation is lyrical: a pentecost of tongues, touching the chords of melody in all minds, it prompts to the best each had to give, to better than any knew they had, what none claims as his own, as if he were the organ of some invisible player behind the scenes. What abandonments, reserves, which no premeditation, no cunning could have checked or called forth. What chasms are spanned with a trope, what pits forded, summits climbed, prospects commanded, perspectives gained,--the tour of the spheres made at a glance, a sitting; the circle coming safely out of the adventure. All men talk, few converse; of gossip we have enough, of argument more than enough, rhetoric, debate--omit these, speak from the heart to the heart underlying all differences, and we have conversation. For disputing there is the crowd; for ruminating, the woods; the clubs for wit and the superficial fellowship.