Your conversation should also be planned more or less in advance.
Select some topic in which you think your lady friend will be
interested, such as, for example, the removal of tonsils and
adenoids, and “read up” on the subject so that you can discuss it
in an intelligent manner. Find out, for example, how many people
had tonsils removed in February, March, April. Contrast this with
the same figures for 1880, 1890, 1900. Learn two or three amusing
anecdotes about adenoids. Consult Bartlett’s “Familiar
Quotations” for appropriate verses dealing with tonsils and
throat troubles. Finally, and above all, take time to glance
through four or five volumes of Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf, for
nothing so completely marks the cultivated man as the ability to
refer familiarly to the various volumes of the Harvard classics.