The conversation at the dinner-table should be general, unless the
company is large, and the table too long to admit of it. But in any
case, each one is responsible first of all for keeping up a pleasant
chat with his or her partner, and not allowing that one to be neglected
while attention is riveted on some aggressively brilliant talker at the
other end of the table. No matter how uninteresting one's partner may
be, one must be thoughtful and entertaining; and such kind attention
may win the life-long gratitude of a timid _debutante_, or the equally
unsophisticated country cousin.
Dinner-table talk should be affable. The host and hostess must be
alert to turn the conversation from channels that threaten to lead to
antagonisms of opinion; and each guest should feel that it is more
important just now to make other people happy than to gratify his
impulse to "floor" them on the tariff question. In short, at dinner,
as under most social conditions, the watchword ever in mind should be,
"Not to myself alone."