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Plattsburgh (New York) Republican, Saturday, Dec. 12, 1863:
THE DECAY OF CONVERSATION.—The ancient art of conversation is falling into decay. It is an ascertainable fact, that, in proportion to the increased population, tho aggregate bulk of conversation is lessening. People now-a-days have something else to do but talk; not only do they live in such a hurry, that there is only leisure for just comparing ideas as to the weather, but they have each and all a gross quantity of reading to do, which puts talking out of the question.
If persons remain at home, they read; if they go to the sea-side they read; we have met misguided individuals out in the open fields with books in hand; young folks have been seen stretched out underneath trees, and upon the banks of rivers, poring over the opened page; on the tops of mountains, in the desert, far within forests—every where, men now pull printed sheets from their pockets, and in the earliest, latest, highest occupation of this life, they read.
The fact is incontestably true, that modern men and women are reading themselves into a comparatively silent race. Reading is the great delusion of the present time; it has become a sort of lay piety, according to which the perusal of volumes reckons as good works. It is, in a word, the superstition of the nineteenth century.
THE DECAY OF CONVERSATION.—The ancient art of conversation is falling into decay. It is an ascertainable fact, that, in proportion to the increased population, tho aggregate bulk of conversation is lessening. People now-a-days have something else to do but talk; not only do they live in such a hurry, that there is only leisure for just comparing ideas as to the weather, but they have each and all a gross quantity of reading to do, which puts talking out of the question.
If persons remain at home, they read; if they go to the sea-side they read; we have met misguided individuals out in the open fields with books in hand; young folks have been seen stretched out underneath trees, and upon the banks of rivers, poring over the opened page; on the tops of mountains, in the desert, far within forests—every where, men now pull printed sheets from their pockets, and in the earliest, latest, highest occupation of this life, they read.
The fact is incontestably true, that modern men and women are reading themselves into a comparatively silent race. Reading is the great delusion of the present time; it has become a sort of lay piety, according to which the perusal of volumes reckons as good works. It is, in a word, the superstition of the nineteenth century.
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