with my neighbor

the milk-seller about her cows, and with my seamstress about her dresses, and everyone was happy, and they said: what a skillful conversationalist! — though I had done no more than study people's natures, and cultivate myself a little.

And I learned that the style of conversation — the fine presen-tation of an idea, or a story, or a joke; presenting it briefly and without tedium, in a ringing voice that draws attention; presenting it at the fitting minute and on the fitting occasion — all these are factors beyond price. And I remembered the saying of Taha Husayn: ideas that are badly presented lose their value; and I remembered as well the verse of the poet describing a maiden sweet of speech:

One of the fair and modest maids — her companion wishes, when a tale of hers is ended, that she would tell it again.

I learned that conversation is three quarters of beauty: the beautiful woman may speak, and it is said, would she had stayed silent; and the woman who is not beautiful may speak until people all but cry out, stuff her mouth with pearls!... And the truth is that never once have I looked at a beauty presiding over a salon — everything about her, from her hair and her gown down to the tip of her shoe, the utmost of elegance — without waiting for her to speak; and when she began to utter what is becoming and what is not, I said: would she had stayed silent; then she would have kept the splendor of the statues.

And I learned as well that conversation is three quarters of people's esteem and respect, or of their contempt. It is a picture of your hidden self and of the kind of creature you are: you may be wise or foolish — God forbid — cultivated or ignorant, delicate

and gentle or coarse and rude, refined in your wit or crude in it; and you remain like a locked chest until you speak — and then you appear as you are. Among the Russian proverbs there is a lovely one that says: they receive a man according to his clothes and see him off according to his mind.

And now — do you reckon it an easy art?... Not I... In the dawn of my youth I would keep silent, and keep silent again, as proof of good breeding; then I took to talking and talking, to prove to people — out of vanity — that I understood every subject; but today, life having taught me much, and teaching me still, I have grown wary, and hesitate to plunge into any subject at all.

And after all that I still hold sessions with myself, and a reckoning no less strict than the reckoning of Munkar and Nakir on the Last Day; for I have

understood that my errors are still many. I have understood that the wounds of the spear-head find their healing, but what the tongue has wounded does not heal. I have understood that by my talk I rise and by it I sink, by it I am loved and by it I am hated, by it I win friends and by it I lose them, by it peace hovers over my house — or enmity and strife.

No, madam, it is not an easy art; and believe me, had I my way I would bring it into the schools as an art to be studied, and would form its students into circles, receiving strangers and kinsfolk, trying to converse with them and to succeed, with grades and marks awarded them for it.

It is one of the loftiest of the arts, for it is the music of society, and its soul.

Exquisite Form BRASSIERES

Exquisite brassieres

This is one of the models of the famous "Exquisite Form" brassieres on display at the shops of Gabriel Metni

MIRACLE OF Figure Flattery