o
interrupt, noise will not be so particularly painful. Occasionally it
happens that some slight but constant noise continues to bother and
distract me for a time before I become distinctly conscious of it. All
I feel is a steady increase in the labor of thinking--just as though I
were trying to walk with a weight on my foot. At last I find out what
it is. Let me now, however, pass from genus to species. The most
inexcusable and disgraceful of all noises is the cracking of whips--a
truly infernal thing when it is done in the narrow resounding streets
of a town. I denounce it as making a peaceful life impossible; it puts
an end to all quiet thought. That this cracking of whips should be
allowed at all seems to me to show in the clearest way how senseless
and thoughtless is the nature of mankind. No one with anything like an
idea in his head can avoid a feeling of actual pain at this sudden,
sharp crack, which paralyzes the brain, rends the thread of
reflection, and murders thought. Every time this noise is made, it
must disturb a hundred people who are applying their minds to business
of some sort, no matter how trivial it may be; while on the thinker
its effect is woeful and disastrous, cutting his thoughts asunder,
much as the executioner's axe severs the head from the body. No sound,
be it ever so shrill, cuts so sharply into the brain as this cursed
cracking of whips; you feel the sting of the lash right inside your
head; and it affects the brain in the same way as touch affects a
sensitive plant, and for the same length of time.

With all due respect for the most holy doctrine of utility, I really
cannot see why a fellow who is taking away a wagon-load of gravel or
dung should thereby obtain the right to kill in the bud the thoughts
which may happen to be springing up in ten thousand heads--the number
he will disturb one after another in half an hour's drive through the
town. Hammering, the barking of dogs, and the crying of children are
horrible to hear; but your only genuine assassin of thought is the
crack of a whip; it exists for the purpose of destroying every
pleasant moment of quiet thought that any one may now and then enjoy.
If the driver had no other way of urging on his horse than by making
this most abominable of all noises, it would be excusable; but quite
the contrary is the case. This cursed cracking of whips is not only
unnecessary, but even useless. Its aim is to produce an effect upon
the intellig