One of the things that we should be most careful to guard against in conversation, if we would appear to advantage in the eyes of persons of the better sort, is undue familiarity. The man of native refinement, as well as the man of culture, is always careful to observe--in a greater or less degree, according to circumstances--the conventionalities that obtain in refined social intercourse. Perhaps the most repulsive character to be met with is the youth that seems to think it makes him appear vastly more manly to Jack, Jim, or Joe his acquaintances, in addressing them, and to speak of persons that he may, or may not, know in a familiar, disrespectful manner. To him Mr. Sheridan Short, if he has occasion to speak of him, is simply “Shed;” Mr. Lester Bullock is simply “Lester;” Mr. John Guthbert is simply “old John,” and so on. If this vulgar specimen of “Young America” has a father, he speaks of him as his “old man,” and middle-aged and elderly men, if they have grown-up sons, he designates as “old man Burt,” “old man Harrison,” etc. This kind of youth is always one of those loud-mouthed, guffaw fellows that think themselves, as the Kentuckian would say, “simply mountaneous.”
Story-telling in society is something that even those that tell stories well should indulge in but sparingly. All stories, unless well told, are tiresome; and then there is always the danger that to some of those that are compelled to listen they will be a “twice-told tale.” A serious fault of many story-tellers is that they themselves cannot refrain from laughing at the humor of their own anecdotes. All stories should be told clearly and tersely, and be so managed as to have a marked climax; and if the teller must laugh at them, he should be sure not to laugh until the climax is reached. The skilful do not think it incumbent on them to tell stories just as they hear them. Modifications that they think will render them more effective they do not hesitate to make.
He that never will confess his ignorance nor admit that he has erred in judgment publishes his weakness when he thinks he is concealing it. There are no surer indications of strength than candor and frankness. Men of sense do not expect to be looked upon as being all-wise and infallible, and they know that a frank confession that they are ignorant or have erred, always works to their advantage; and further, they feel that they are so wise and are so often right that they can afford to be frank in confessing their ignorance when they are ignorant and their errors when they have erred. “A man should never blush in confessing his errors,” says Rousseau, “for he proves by the avowal that he is wiser to-day than he was yesterday.”