often when a topic is started that promises well, and might come to something in a general exchange of wit and fancy, and some one begins to speak on it, and speak very well, too, have you not had a lady at your side cut in and give you her views on it—­views that might be amusing if thrown out into the discussion, but which are simply impertinent as an interruption!  How often when you have tried to get a “rise” out of somebody opposite have you not had your neighbor cut in across you with some private depressing observation to your next neighbor!  Private talk at a dinner-table is like private chat at a parlor musicale, only it is more fatal to the general enjoyment.  There is a notion that the art of conversation, the ability to talk well, has gone out.  That is a great mistake.  Opportunity is all that is needed.  There must be the inspiration of the clash of minds and the encouragement of good listening.  In an evening round the fire, when couples begin, to whisper or talk low to each other, it is time to put out the lights.  Inspiring interest is gone.  The most brilliant talker in the world is dumb.  People whose idea of a dinner is private talk between seat-neighbors should limit the company to two.  They have no right to spoil what can be the most agreeable social institution that civilization has evolved.

NATURALIZATION

Is it possible for a person to be entirely naturalized?—­that is, to be denationalized, to cast off the prejudice and traditions of one country and take up those of another; to give up what may be called the instinctive tendencies of one race and take up those of another.  It is easy enough to swear off allegiance to a sovereign or a government, and to take on in intention new political obligations, but to separate one’s self from the sympathies into which he was born is quite another affair.  One is likely to remain in the inmost recesses of his heart an alien, and as a final expression of his feeling to hoist the green flag, or the dragon, or the cross of St. George.  Probably no other sentiment is, so strong in a man as that of attachment to his own soil and people, a sub-sentiment always remaining, whatever new and unbreakable attachments he may form.  One can be very proud of his adopted country, and brag for it, and fight for it; but lying deep in a man’s nature is something, no doubt, that no oath nor material interest can change, and that is never naturalized.  We see this experiment in America more than anywhere else, because here meet more different races than anywhere else with the serious intention of changing their nationality.  And we have a notion that there is something in our atmosphere, or opportunities, or our government, that makes this change more natural and reasonable than it has been anywhere else in history.  It is always a surprise to us when a born citizen of the United States changes his allegiance, but it seems a thing of course that