upply of interpreters would have long ere this
quite failed.

I imagine that the very unpleasant sensations which followed the
realization that I was among people who, while inscrutable to me, knew
my every thought, were very much what any one would have experienced in
the same case. They were very comparable to the panic which accidental
nudity causes a person among races whose custom it is to conceal the
figure with drapery. I wanted to run away and hide myself. If I analyzed
my feeling, it did not seem to arise so much from the consciousness of
any particularly heinous secrets, as from the knowledge of a swarm of
fatuous, ill-natured, and unseemly thoughts and half thoughts concerning
those around me, and concerning myself, which it was insufferable that
any person should peruse in however benevolent a spirit. But while my
chagrin and distress on this account were at first intense, they were
also very shortlived, for almost immediately I discovered that the
very knowledge that my mind was overlooked by others operated to check
thoughts that might be painful to them, and that, too, without more
effort of the will than a kindly person exerts to check the utterance of
disagreeable remarks. As a very few lessons in the elements of courtesy
cures a decent person of inconsiderate speaking, so a brief experience
among the mind-readers went far in my case to check inconsiderate
thinking. It must not be supposed, however, that courtesy among the
mind-readers prevents them from thinking pointedly and freely concerning
one another upon serious occasions, any more than the finest courtesy
among the talking races restrains them from speaking to one another
with entire plainness when it it desirable to do so. Indeed, among the
mind-readers, politeness never can extend to the point of insincerity,
as among talking nations, seeing that it is always one another's real
and inmost thought that they read. I may fitly mention here, though it
was not till later that I fully understood why it must necessarily be
so, that one need feel far less chagrin at the complete revelation of
his weaknesses to a mind-reader than at the slightest betrayal of them
to one of another race. For the very reason that the mind-reader reads
all your thoughts, particular thoughts are judged with reference to the
general tenor of thought. Your characteristic and habitual frame of
mind is what he takes account of. No one need fear being misjudged by
a mind-reader