Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/162

 to using the invention of speech, and make a conversation good or bad; they say things, first this one and then that one. They express their opinions,—nor must long periods of silence occur. Sometimes they go over many thousand miles of land and water for this purpose. Occasionally I have seen a hundred men and women at once, where conversations were advertised, so wholly given over to talk that they seemed to forget that they had other organs than tongues and ears; as if they could eject themselves like bits of packthread from the tip of the tongue. It is very much as if the trees next me, when I went into the wood,—the trees having heard of this, all set their leaves a-rustling, as if I only came to hear that; and I said to myself, "I shall not be able to tell when the wind blows." Whereupon they stopt,—but the aspen has rustled ever since.

A man may be an object of interest to me though his tongue be plucked out by the root. I am very much molested by those who require that I should talk; they who cannot live near me with pleasure unless I [114]