TOPICS OF TALK

That conversation, the intellectual salt and pepper of thought, has of late become stereotyped, is a charge often repeated. Business and bridge are the talk of the town, even that section which has had the advantage of a college training. In the current Harper's, Albert Nock, one-time editor of the uncompromising and now deceased Freeman, brings this plaint again into prominence. The stock market has over cast music. Work and Whitehead flourish in place of politics as topics of conversation.

The general decline in the art of talking can not of course be laid to any one institution. Nor is a consciously planned and press-agented campaign to promote conversation the remedy for indolence of discussion. Rather the end may be accomplished by a studied indirection of effort.

Nationally the satisfaction of Mr. Marshall's demand for a good five cent cigar would no doubt stimulate comment. Locally, the construction of a congenial restaurant might have the desired effect.

For in these days, food and tobacco are the two chief stimulants to well-considered syllables. A good meal provides the indispensable feeling of comfort; a cigar or a pipe prolongs the sensation of ease which, if not interrupted by an unseemly clatter of dishes, is provocative of talk and thought. And in college, the conversation can never be entirely of finances and finesses. Since the business of a student is culture, his shop talk necessarily is of the arts.

The habit once established has a fair chance of invading the graduate's realm, always provided the elements of comfort are supplied. Both in college and out, a vital connection exists between cultural conversation and the baser materials of life.