SOCIAL GIFTS.
(To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—In reference to your article on " Social Gifts " in your last number, would you allow me (as a lonely old widower of seventy, partly blind, and with no family at home) to tell your readers how I handle my social intercourse ? I have each day a single person at a time to come and see me in the afternoons for a cup of tea and a talk. But why one at a time ? Because I have found from experience, that if two should happen to come in together, whether two women, or a woman and a man, or two men, not a word will pass between us all except of the most trivial social and conventional character, except in the case of two men, but even then with large reserves which, as knowing both, I soon perceived. But on my plan of one at a time, owing to. the different angles from which each sees the world and human life, my afternoons are a perennial delight to me, and our conversations range over the whole field of serious interests down even to the personal and ephemeral— religion, politics, social and political economy, literature, morals, history—and indeed almost everything under the sun. And all with the unexpressed implication that everything said is strictly confidential. I hope that some of your readers will follow my plan of " one at a time " and see what comes of it.—
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