Jasper County Democrat, Volume 10, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 October 1907 — Questioning Is Not Conversation. [ARTICLE]

Questioning Is Not Conversation.

The man wbo Imagines that the art of conversation consists In asking questions spoils conversation as much as the man who never asks any. People of this description will interrupt a speaker as frequently, as they do in the French chamber and run anxiously from subject to subject with their interrogatories, like a cackling hen that Is going to lay an egg. Horace Walpole, when exiled at Houghton, bemoans the existence of such a pest in the person of an aunt. Writing to his friend Sir Horace Mann, he says: “I have an aunt here, a family piece of goods, an old remnafit of inquisitive hospitality and economy. She wore me so down by day and night with interrogations that I dreamed all night she was at my ear with a who’s, why’s, when’s and what’s till at last in my very sleep I cried out, ‘For heaven’s sake, madam, ask me no more questions.’ ” Dr. Johnson's dislike of being questioned is well known, and he gives the classic refutation of the habit In his own inimitable style: “Sir, questioning Is not the mode of conversation among gentleman. It Is assuming a superiority, and it Is particularly wrong to question a man concerning himself.”— Chambers' Journal.