SAY WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY!

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVI, Issue 11, 24 December 1925, Page 13

SAY WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY!

There was a lull in the conversation. And then: “Do you know . . ” began Lorna in a thrilled voice. “When 1 was going down the High Street the other day, on Wednesday—no, it couldn’t have been Wednesday, because 1 was at the Baker’s then; it must have been Tuesday; yes, it was Tuesday, 1 remember now—because 1 went to the pictures in the ex cuing . . But everyone had stopped listening! So there was nothing for her to do but to trail off into silence as unobtrusively as she could. Now Lorna had some really interesting news to impart; she had something to say that would have made her friends sit up quickly and take notice ; Lorna might have been the heroine of the evening! But Lorna just can’t say what she has to say in a vivid, interesting way that will attract and hold attention. She has to go meandering off at a tangent, getting so far away from her original subject that tlicre is never time to get back to it before her audience has stopped listening. She has yet to learn that if you want people to listen to you you must say what you have to say in as direct and vigorous a manner as you can; waiting until you have caught your hearers’ attention and curiosity before you begin embroidering your story. It is the natural instinct of most people to be talkers; not listeners. And it is too much to expect that any company will preserve an eager silence for more than a few minutes, to listen to a long and dreary rigmarole. Someone else begins saying something, in far more interesting tones, perhaps, than yours, and everybody stops listening io vou. to hear what she ha-' to