THEME--ON A SMALL, USEFUL VIRTUE

"Talkable" is not a new adjective.  But it needs a new definition,
and the complement of a corresponding noun.  I would fain set down
on paper some observations and reflections which may serve to make
its meaning clear, and render due praise to that most excellent
quality in man or woman,--especially in anglers,--the small but
useful virtue of TALKABILITY.

Robert Louis Stevenson uses the word "talkable" in one of his essays
to denote a certain distinction among the possible subjects of human
speech.  There are some things, he says in effect, about which you
can really talk; and there are other things about which you cannot
properly talk at all, but only dispute, or harangue, or prose, or
moralize, or chatter.

After mature consideration I have arrived at the opinion that this
distinction among the themes of speech is an illusion.  It does not
exist.  All subjects, "the foolish things of the world, and the weak
things of the world, and base things of the world, yea, and things
that are not," may provide matter for good talk, if only the right
people are engaged in the enterprise.  I know a man who can make a
description of the weather as entertaining as a tune on the violin;
and even on the threadbare theme of the waywardness of domestic
servants, I have heard a discreet woman play the most diverting and
instructive variations.

No, the quality of talkability does not mark a distinction among
things; it denotes a difference among people.  It is not an
attribute unequally distributed among material objects and abstract
ideas.  It is a virtue which belongs to the mind and moral character
of certain persons.  It is a reciprocal human quality; active as
well as passive; a power of bestowing and receiving.