KNACK IN ASKING QUESTIONS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3378, 13 June 1927, Page 7

KNACK IN ASKING QUESTIONS.

(By Lady Adams.) “Presumably, 1 am not skilled in conversation, but pride myself on a certain knack in asking questions,’’ wrote the late Sir W. Robertson Nicoll.

' Years of close attention to conversational openings have shown me that a wise talker, on being introduced, ‘ often begins operations by a question — usually a personal one. “What boat did you cross in?” he would ask an American, newly arrived in England. That might or might not lead to the discovery of a mutual friend, but it gave the two players time to look at each other, and to do a certain amount of preliminary gauging. Kindly people who do not desire to be known for their powers of talk often begin by a question, for a sympathetic question is a soothing opening. An understanding woman Ivho has had much to do with women students, mostly country bred and living in lodgings, not iu hostels, used to ask if they got the morning or afternoon sun in their room; from that to pot plants that could stand the' grim environment of cheap lodgings, was smooth walking, and the tongue-tied strangers were usually happily talking bulbs in two minutes.

Of course, there is the bored Disraeli attitude question. You recollect how, when he met some vaguely remembered acquaintance—“ And how’s the old complaint?” he would ask. The answer may have given the novelist time to think out a bit of lot, but few people dare to face being told in detail, with illustrations, examples, foot-notes, and parentheses, all about any complaint, let alone an old one.

One wise old gentleman, to whose lot it falls to sit beside many a strange woman at dinner-parties, has an invaluable question. “And how’s the novel coming on?” Ho tells me that his partner seldom expresses surprise; that there is not a “How did you know?” in a whole season. Every woman is writing, has written, or is thinking of writing a novel. Because of his knack of asking questions, Sir William learnt that John Leech left behind him 40 pairs of trousers, and 46 pots of cayenne pepper, and that Professor Cowell bought a hoot at a time, elastic-sided. One wonders what his questions were. He was’such a wonderful listener that his questionees probably told all they knew.

Of course, there is the question that is not calculated to put the questioned at ease. Frequenters of Pullman cars in America show sometimes a perhaps too healthy interest in their neighbours’ affairs, and do not quite understand a fellow-passenger who does not ask questions in return. I. once was the train companion ror 56 hours of a traveller in wall paper. Before he could ask me, I told him my name, my gge, from where, to wnere 1 was going, and why, what my husband did and all about him, and then asked him all the questions I could think of. He whs delighted, and made my journey extremely pleasant. But when, with modest pride, I told my mother of my comfortable journey, she said she had never been so shocked in her life.

Latelv my husband was lecturing in Tennessee, and as he went down the stair after class an excited student rushed after him and grabbed his arm. “Sa-ay, professor, now old are you ” he gasped. My professor very properly/replied that in England we do not ask each other questions like that. “Aw-w-, cut it out, professor. There’s ten dollars dependin’ an it,” said the gentleman from Tennessee. And just last month, in California, he wag introduced —introduced, mark you —to a girl of under four years of age, at some kind of a specially selected infants’ school that he had been asked to visit.

“Pleased to meet ye, Sir Jahn,” said the child. “How manny oceans hev ye crawsed?”