| | | | | | PROBABLY not one of our readers is so fortunate as not | to number among his acquaintance an asker of questions, so | curiously infelicitous in the subjects of his | inquiries, and so persevering in the pursuit of them, as | to make the being

"put to the question "

a very | intelligible torture, even with no rack in the background. | An adept at awkward questions is, indeed, one of | Nature's born tormentors, and his mere presence sends | a thrill through any sensitive assembly. We are not | speaking of persons who for a purpose, or prompted | by malice, ask unpleasant questions. Questions are a | natural weapon of offence, and in malignant hands are | death-carrying projectiles; but when a man knows | what he is about, he will not, for his own sake, be reckless in | flinging mischief, seeing that it will surely | recoil upon himself; besides that, on the other hand, | we know our enemies, and can be on our guard against | them. The questioners we mean are well-wishers, | unconscious of their mission to scatter mistrust, uneasiness, | | and dismay into every circle they enter. They are as obtuse as | old Edie Ochiltree affects to be in his inquiries after the | Praetorium, and cannot understand why any subject, sustained by | a protracted catechism of probing questions, is not matter for | agreeable conversation. They like the company of their | fellow-creatures, and have a sort of backhanded pity for them, which | leads them to recognise everyone | ~~ and, as it seems, catalogue him in their minds ~~ by | his misfortunes, mischances, or out-of-sight annoyances, which it | is evidently their notion of sympathy to bring into open court. | No man is so prosperous, so hedged in by good-luck, but they | will prove they know something he would rather not talk about, | and make that the basis of their dealing with him. They carry a | bunch of keys that unlocks every one's dark closet, have an | unfailing scent for the traditionary skeleton, and evidently a | bewildered notion of the duty of throwing wide open the doors | that conceal it; and all this in blundering good-nature, insensible | to the miseries they stir up. How it is that they always remember | the wrong thing, and inquire after the wrong people, and take | persevering interest in what those most concerned affect to forget, | is a perversity beyond reason or analysis to account for. We only | know that, for our sins, it is so. If the man you have pinned your | faith upon has failed you, if you have a son that has come to no | good, a daughter whose marriage has disappointed you, or a | friend who has used you shabbily, our questioner will, in blind | unconsciousness, lay siege to your trouble | | and get at the bottom of it. So you have to tell whether you | do or do not hear from your scamp of a brother in Australia, or | how a bad speculation has turned out, or what are the | particular tenets of the sect your sister has fallen away to. | For questions of this sort must be answered. They are put in | good faith, and evidently arise out of inherent want of | observation, or a different view of life from the ordinary one ~~ | a view that does not believe in scamps, and recognises no | social scale of gentility either in religions or families. All | that can be done is to treat the subject from the questioner's | stand-point, and make the best of it; it would be mere impolicy | to resist or resent his interrogations. He is led by his instinct to | your sore place; you feel a fate in it, possibly a retribution. | There is another sort of questioner, not so terrible in idea, but | often, in fact, a cause of equal torment ~~ one who will leave | your failures and worries alone, his perceptions being correct on | these points, but who is possessed by an unaccountable curiosity | to inform himself of the amount of your knowledge, or, possibly, | of your ignorance. These self-constituted inspectors will ask | questions with as much system and pertinacity as though they | had to furnish a report of your proficiency. There is a sensation of | being put upon a chapter of Mangnall, or of being in for another | competitive examination. Or the querist wants to know your | experience ~~ not your opinions, but what you have seen. Your | accuracy is tested; you answer, as it were, on oath. Hard | questions constantly call you back to | | positive knowledge.

"Give me the facts,"

our questioner | seems to say,

"and I will find the judgment."

| Questions may follow all the outer rules of civility, and yet drain | us of our self-respect for the time being; for the mind is so | constituted that its own esteem depends on the estimate of | others, and if a man in company acts as though we were ignorant | or injudicious, we are likely enough to feel so. In both these | examples the offence lies in the interrogators' showing | themselves, whether instinctively or otherwise, alive to our | weak points, and insensible to the more impressive, dignified side | of us. We account for it by an evident thick-skinned defect of | sympathy, apart from any shade of malignity; but, all the same, | we endure an attack, and suffer under a helpless sense of | exposure. | But, at any rate, these people ask because they want to know. | There is a third habit of questioning much more common than | either of the two we have indicated, where the inquirer achieves | all he aims at by putting an interruption in an interrogative | form. Most persons known for asking questions never wait for | an answer, and never want one. Their share in conversation is not | to start a subject, for which they have not sufficient | suggestiveness or invention; but to rush in with irrelevant | queries, to interject questions into other people's discourse ~~ | questions feigning to bear upon the topic under discussion, but | really deviating from it ~~ and whose only purpose is to relieve | the interrupter from the weariness of silence or the faintest | effort of thought. No conversation can be sustained under this | | mode of interruption. It is, of course, the habit of children, and | the mode of meeting it should be the same with child and man; | they should be made to do penance for every giddy, irrelevant | question, by an act of forced attention. It is very rarely ~~ only, | we should say, in books composed in the form of dialogues ~~ | that information is ever imparted by the method of deliberate | question and answer; for the reason that, in real life, the people | who ask the most questions never listen to the answer. They | ought to be made to do so if it were not too much trouble. The | only weapon against the aggressive mode of questioning is to | insist on your right of reply, in spite of the shifts, evasions, and | writhings of the impatient inquirer caught in the snare of his | own setting. | A question is often only an assertion with a spice of triumph in | it, and so, conspicuously, needs no reply. On all occasions of | sudden elation we are liable to this form of vainglory; and it has, | we do not doubt, a good deal to do with the American habit of | asking questions, which writers describe as still in full force. | Miss Bremer, who writes warmly of the many congenial spirits | she finds in New England, makes this almost a solitary | exception to the pleasures of intercourse.

"But, oh! how | these Americans, especially these American ladies, do ask | questions!"

And we gather that it is all done in the | exultation of showing off their country and its wonders to a | foreigner.

"Have you such scenes or such great works in | your country?"

~~ meaning, of course,

" you have | not."

From hence we | | gather that the familiar form of check with which troublesome | children of the Old World have been snubbed for so many | generations has never been imposed on the inquiring youth of | the New, and would be contrary to the freedom of American | institutions. Mrs Mrs Popchin has awed their infancy with the | story of the boy who was gored to death by a mad bull for | asking questions. In fact, they have never in their lives had

| "Don't ask questions"

said to them ~~ a precept which has | created a good deal of modern ridicule, but which, meaning, as | it generally does,

"Don't ask a string of questions in a | breath,"

is a wise one, at once forming the manners and | referring the mind to its own resources. | Another trying form of question does not arise from any vain | desire to be talking, but from mere impatience of detail. People | will not allow a speaker to tell a story his own way, and to work | up the interest by such elaboration as is needed for the fit | unfolding of the narrative. They cry

"Question!"

as it were, | and clamour for the end, when, in fact, the end is nothing without | the middle, and the narrator is balked of his gradual | denouement. And there is the question which shows an | utter miss of your point, and which drops upon it and | extinguishes it like a wet blanket. To know what questions to | ask and what to refrain from, is evidently among the first and | most imperative principles of good manners. A question is the | natural resource of a vacant mind, and nothing but the check of | politeness prevents vague, desultory people from putting | | questions all day long. With them it is an act of self-discipline | not to ask of every occupied person, What are you reading? to | whom are you writing? what are you doing? where are you | going? ~~ though nothing comes of it, and even the curiosity is | not real. It is only an impulse of propelling their vacuity into | another person's business, and so coining into a sort of contact | witli occupation through one of the most irritating and | distracting means of disturbing it. | Thus to be, in any of these various ways, known as an asker of | questions, is to be known as a bore, as a hindrance to natural | flowing intercourse; but there is a reverse habit of mind which, | though less observed, is as great a check to free, comfortable | association. There are people who never ask questions, whose | minds do not act in that direction, but work by formal statement, | not in partnership. They never seem to want to know anything | you can tell them, whether facts, or domestic details, or | opinions. They never begin a sentence with Have you been? | have you done? have you felt? do you know? do you like? do | you wish? are you glad? are you sorry? And the absence of | these feelers and approaches makes conversation with such | persons a lasting difficulty. It seems as if we had always to | obtrude our thoughts and doings upon them, and to force our | way where they do not care to have us. People ought to have a | little curiosity about one another, and we feel this without | knowing it, through the sense of effort and flatness which | oppresses us where the show of it is utterly wanting. This | posture | | of mind may be real, deep-seated unsociableness, and most | often it is so, but it may be shyness and a merely superficial | pride. Thus there are people with such an invincible reluctance | or inability to ask a question, that they will prefer walking miles | out of the right road to asking their way. They are like ghosts, | and cannot speak first or address a stranger with a form of | inquiry. | The art of drawing out others, as it is sometimes put, conveys an | idea of conceit and priggishness in its professors; but there is | such a power which can be used without offence to our self-love, | and to the great benefit of society, and this must consist in the | knowledge of the right questions to ask, and in a graceful way | of putting them. Every one's memory treasures some one who, | in his bashful youth, made him feel cleverer and brighter than | he knew himself to be; and this agreeable, flattering sensation | may always be traced to the questions which seemed to follow | one another by a sort of happy chance ~~ questions eliciting | thought and opinion, and which were just of the kind it was | pleasantest and easiest to answer. All conversation ought to | begin with question and answer, to put the interlocutors on easy, | equal terms; but this should be only the first stage. So soon as | people warm to their subject, they give their opinion or tell their | tale without asking. One might say that no man who does not | know how to ask questions, and the right questions to ask, can | have any personal influence. He may teach men in the lump, but | he will make no way with them one | | by one. The gift is a token of natural and practised sympathy; | no one can possess himself of it by trying for it just when he | wants it. We may any of us convince ourselves of this by | recalling the abortive efforts we have made upon children and | the very young ~~ a class who, if they have any shyness in them, | hate being questioned, and have a morbid terror of the operation | which is apt to extend itself to the operator. But they hate it, and | recoil from it, and shut themselves up with a more oyster-like | isolation than before, because our attempt has failed in some of | the requirements of a tentative question ~~ probably in interest in | our own inquiry, certainly in sympathetic insight into their state | of mind. It is part of all reserve, adult as well as infantile, to | make this insight hard, if not impossible, of attainment to those | not possessed of the happy knack; and the longer we know a | reserved man, the more it becomes a liberty to ask him anything. | From all this we see that questions answer to the power and | sense of touch. A rude question is a clutch or a shove; a | congenial one, opening heart and fancy, is a friendly shake of | the hand or a caress. Occasionally mind and body work on such | precisely similar impulses, that the one acts out the processes of | the other. Thus the more terrible form of questioner will address | you with eyes staring within six inches of your face, hands | holding you by the button, and with other manipulations exactly | answering to his concurrent intrusion on your freedom and | privacy of thought. However, more people understand the | sacred rights of | | person than of mind, though an attention to the analogy | between the two might furnish rules as to the mode of approach, | regulating its nearness according to the measure of congeniality | and the privileges of acquaintance.