The Art of Listening

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 24, 1914

The Art of Listening

ARE you a good listener? Or are you too busy creating epigrams of your own and developing your own points of view to pay attention to what any one else is saying? If you don't know how to listen well, you are a decided wet blanket on that most delightful of arts—the art of conversation.

Think back a moment to your own experience one time when you were trying to relate something, and to tell it through to its conclusion. Was there some one who sat on the edge of his chair with the air of merely waiting for you to swallow a period in order to snatch your next sentence? Or was there some one who hadn't the patience to wait even for the period, but rushed in at the comma, and snatched the conversation from you bodily, or perhaps recalling something more thrilling that happened to him or to a friend of his, plunged immediately into his own experience, and left yours dangling unfinished in mid-air?

If you have suffered in any way from the interrupter, the poor listener, you can form some sort of idea what effect your own inattention has on the conversation of your friends.

It is surprising that more people do not realize the advantage of listening well, for the charm it possesses is indisputable. The good listener is universally popular. He is looked upon as charming and comprehending, and eventually wins for himself a reputation for real cleverness.—Continent.