Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/165

 and unburdens his breast; and so the action is begun. They bless God and Nature many times gratuitously, and part mutually well pleased, leaving their cards. They did not happen to be present at each other's christening; but better late than never.

There is good society, and there is bad.

This is plainly a fragment, and, from the handwriting, belongs to the early period of Thoreau's literary life. He notes in a late Journal that he wrote an essay on Sound and Silence in December, 1838; and during the next three years he returned now and then to the same subject. Thus in February, 1841, when he was not quite twenty-four years old, he says: "I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years, and have hardly made a rent in it. Silence has no end; speech is but the beginning of it." This seems like part of that series of paradoxes of which this fragmentary essay is another part. In his later writing, as will be noticed, particularly in his last journey, now to be recorded, the paradox has almost disappeared. [117]