The following piece about simple conversation has become far more complicated than when this was written a hundred years ago. I relate to many of his sentiments here.

  "What I desire and admire in life is a friendly contact with my fellows, interesting work, leisure for following the pursuits I enjoy, such as art and literature. I wish with all my heart that all people cared equally for the things which I love. I should like to be able to talk frankly and unaffectedly about books, and interesting people, and the beauties of nature, and abstract topics of a mild kind, with any one I happened to meet. But, as a rule, to speak frankly, I find that people of what I must call the lower classes are not interested in these things; and people in what I will call the upper class are faintly interested, in a horrible and condescending way, -- which is worse than no interest at all." Arthur Benson.