There need be no mystery about it.  The social instinct and the social habit are wanting to a great many people of uncommon intelligence and cultivation—­that sort of flexibility or adaptability that makes agreeable society.  But this even does not account for the failure of so many promising dinners.  The secret of this failure always is that the conversation is not general.  The sole object of the dinner is talk—­at least in the United States, where “good eating” is pretty common, however it may be in England, whence come rumors occasionally of accomplished men who decline to be interrupted by the frivolity of talk upon the appearance of favorite dishes.  And private talk at a table is not the sort that saves a dinner; however good it is, it always kills it.  The chance of arrangement is that the people who would like to talk together are not neighbors; and if they are, they exhaust each other to weariness in an hour, at least of topics which can be talked about with the risk of being overheard.  A duet to be agreeable must be to a certain extent confidential, and the dinner-table duet admits of little except generalities, and generalities between two have their limits of entertainment.  Then there is the awful possibility that the neighbors at table may have nothing to say to each other; and in the best-selected company one may sit beside a stupid man—­that is, stupid for the purpose of a ‘tete-a-tete’.  But this is not the worst of it.  No one can talk well without an audience; no one is stimulated to say bright things except by the attention and questioning and interest of other minds.  There is little inspiration in side talk to one or two.  Nobody ought to go to a dinner who is not a good listener, and, if possible, an intelligent one.  To listen with a show of intelligence is a great accomplishment.  It is not absolutely essential that there should be a great talker or a number of good talkers at a dinner if all are good listeners, and able to “chip in” a little to the general talk that springs up.  For the success of the dinner does not necessarily depend upon the talk being brilliant, but it does depend upon its being general, upon keeping the ball rolling round the table; the old-fashioned game becomes flat when the balls all disappear into private pockets.  There are dinners where the object seems to be to pocket all the balls as speedily as possible.  We have learned that that is not the best game; the best game is when you not only depend on the carom, but in going to the cushion before you carom; that is to say, including the whole table, and making things lively.  The hostess succeeds who is able to excite this general play of all the forces at the table, even using the silent but not non-elastic material as cushions, if one may continue the figure.  Is not this, O brothers and sisters, an evil under the sun, this dinner as it is apt to be conducted?  Think of the weary hours you have given to a rite that should be the highest social pleasure!  How