ing the worst of a bargain. Indeed, it is a
sign how little we are truly civilized, that such silence or laconicism
as this, can be met constantly outside the class (invariably cunning) of
peasants; indeed, among men exercising what we are pleased to call
_liberal professions_.

The persons in whom silence is a mark of natural fine breeding are those
who, being able to taste the real essence of things, are apt, perhaps
wrongly, to despise the unessential. They are disdainful of all the old
things inevitably repeated in saying half a new one. They cannot do with
the lumber, wastepaper, shavings, sawdust, rubbish necessary for packing
and conveying objects of value; now most of talk, and much of life, is
exactly of that indispensable useful uselessness. They are silent for
the same reason that they are frequently inactive, recognizing that
words and actions are so often mere litter and encumbrance. One feels
frozen occasionally by their unspoken criticism; one's small exuberances
checked by lack of sympathy and indulgence; one would like, sometimes,
to pick a quarrel with them, to offer a penny for their thoughts, to
force them to be as unselective and vulgar as one's self. But one
desists, feeling instinctively the refreshment (as of some solitary
treeless down or rocky stream) and purification of their fine
abstention in this world where industry means cinder-heaps, and
statesmanship, philosophy, art, philanthropy, mean "secondary products"
of analogous kind.

Before concluding this over-garrulous tribute to silence, I would fain
point out the contrast, ironical enough, between the pleasant sense of
comradeship with some of those who "never utter," and the loneliness of
spirit in which we steam and post and cab through every possible realm
of fact and theory with certain other people. I am not alluding to the
making hay of politics, exhibitions, theatres, current literature, etc.,
which is so much the least interesting form of gossip. What I mean are
those ample, apparently open talks between people who have found each
other out; who know the cardboard and lath and plaster of the
architectural arrangements or suspect the water-supply and drainage
behind; talks where one knows that the other is shirking some practical
conclusion, divagating into the abstract, and has to pick his way among
hidden interests and vanities, or avert his eyes from moral vistas which
he knows of.... "So-and-so is such a delightful talker--so w