do you do?" This admits of no answer. Convention forbids
us to reply in detail that we are feeling if anything
slightly lower than last week, but that though our
temperature has risen from ninety-one-fifty to
ninety-one-seventy-five, our respiration is still normal.

   Still worse is the weather as an opening topic. For it
either begins and ends as abruptly as the medical diagnosis,
or it leads the two talkers on into a long and miserable
discussion of the weather of yesterday, of the day before
yesterday, of last month, of last year and the last fifty
years.

   Let one beware, however, of a conversation that begins
too easily.

   The Mutual Friends' Opening

   This can be seen at any evening reception, as when the
hostess introduces two people who are supposed to have
some special link to unite them at once with an
instantaneous snap, as when, for instance, they both come
from the same town.

   "Let me introduce Mr. Sedley," said the hostess. "I think
you and Mr. Sedley are from the same town, Miss Smiles.
Miss Smiles, Mr. Sedley."

   Off they go at a gallop. "I'm so delighted to meet you,"
says Mr. Sedley. "It's good to hear from anybody who
comes from our little town." (If he's a rollicking
humourist, Mr. Sedley calls it his little old "burg.")

   "Oh, yes," answers Miss Smiles. "I'm from Winnipeg too.

   I was so anxious to meet you to ask if you knew the

   McGowans. They're my greatest friends at home."

   "The—who?" asks Mr. Sedley.

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