h shall be, you wax listless; your
chariot-wheels drive heavily; your end of the pole drags in the mud, and
you speedily wallow in unmitigated disgust. If he broaches a subject on
which you have a real and deep living interest, you shrink from
unbosoming yourself to him. You feel that it would be sacrilege. He
feels nothing of the sort. He treads over your heart-strings in his
cowhide brogans, and does not see that they are not whip-cords. He pokes
his gold-headed cane in among your treasures, blind to the fact that you
are clutching both arms around them, that no gleam of flashing gold may
reveal their whereabouts to him. You draw yourself up in your shell,
projecting a monosyllabic claw occasionally as a sign of continued
vitality; but the pachyderm does not withdraw, and you gradually lower
into an indignation,--smothered, fierce, intense.

Why, _why_, WHY will people inundate their unfortunate victims with such
"weak, washy, everlasting floods?" Why will they haul everything out
into the open day? Why will they make the Holy of Holies common and
unclean? Why will they be so ineffably stupid as not to see that there
is that which speech profanes? Why will they lower their drag-nets into
the unfathomable waters, in the vain attempt to bring up your pearls and
gems, whose luster would pale to ashes in the garish light, whose only
sparkle is in the deep sea-soundings? _Procul, O procul este, profani!_

O, the matchless power of silence! There are words that concentrate in
themselves the glory of a lifetime; but there is a silence that is more
precious than they. Speech ripples over the surface of life, but silence
sinks into its depths. Airy pleasantnesses bubble up in airy, pleasant
words. Weak sorrows quaver out their shallow being, and are not. When
the heart is cleft to its core, there is no speech nor language.

Do not now, Messrs. Bores, think to retrieve your character by coming
into my house and sitting mute for two hours. Heaven forbid that your
blood should be found on my skirts! but I believe I shall kill you, if
you do. The only reason why I have not laid violent hands on you
heretofore is that your vapid talk has operated as a wire to conduct my
electricity to the receptive and kindly earth; but if you intrude upon
my magnetisms without any such life-preserver, your future in this world
is not worth a crossed sixpence. Your silence would break the reed that
your talk but bruised. The only people with whom