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266 and actual understanding of one another, but degrade themselves immediately into the puppets of convention. They do as if, in given circumstances, they had agreed to know each other only so well. They rarely get so far as to inform one another gratuitously, and use each other like the sea and the woods for what is new and inspiring there. The best intercourse and communion they have is a silence above and behind their speech. We should be very simple to rely on words. What we knew before, always interprets a man's words. I cannot easily remember what any man has said to me, but how can I forget what he is to me? We know each other better than we are aware. We are admitted to startling privacies with every person we meet.

March 29, 1853 To the early willow behind Martial Miles's On the railroad I hear the telegraph. This is the lyre that is as old as the world. I put my ear to the post and the sound seems to be in its core directly against my ear. This is all of music. The utmost refinements of art, I think, can go no further

Walking along near the edge of the meadow under Supine Hill, I slumped through the sod into a musk-rat's nest, for there was only a thickness of two inches over it, which was enough