Terrors of Tea Talk

Andre Morize, who teaches at Bordeaux and also at Harvard, thinks conversation is languishing. A lot of other people think so, too. Professor Morize has a theory that one reason why conversation isn't so good as it used to be, and ought to be, is that people go to teas, and stand up all through them. You can't talk well standing up, he says, which just goes to show that he's never met Smedley D. Butler, Hugh S. Johnson or One-Eyed Connolly, or never stood up in a pre-war saloon, where conversation was practically rampant.

And maybe the notion that conversation isn't so good as it used to be is just a superstition. Maybe conversation never was so good as it used to be. People as they grow older often grow to think that nothing is quite so good as it used to be--motoring isn't so good as buggy-riding, the winters aren't so cold, the summers aren't so pleasant, the statesmen aren't so intelligent, the politicians aren't so honest, the apples aren't so red and the goose doesn't hang so high. Worcester Telegram.