Conversation is a traffick; and if you enter into it, without some stock of knowledge, to ballance the account perpetually betwixtyou,--the trade drops at once: and this is the reasonwhy travellers have so little [good] conversation with natives,--owing to their [the natives'] suspicionthat there is nothing to be extracted from the conversationworth the trouble of their bad language.
![Conversation is a traffick; and if you enter into it, without some stock of knowledge, to ballance the account perpetually betwixtyou,--the trade drops at once: and this is the reasonwhy travellers have so little [good]](http://cdn.quoteddaily.com/images/laurence-sterne/conversation-is-a-traffick-and-if-you-enter-into-it-without-some-stock-of-knowledge-to-ballance-the-account-perpetually.jpg)