The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV | Page 9

of no use to you?--take a
pound of flesh clean out of your heart, and trip on my smiling way as if
I had not earned the gallows?
And what in Heaven's name is the good of all this ceaseless talk? To
what purpose are you wearied, exhausted, dragged out and out to the
very extreme of tenuity? A sprightly badinage,--a running fire of
nonsense for half an hour,--a tramp over unfamiliar ground with a
familiar guide,--a discussion of something with somebody who knows
all about it, or who, not knowing, wants to learn from you,--a pleasant
interchange of commonplaces with a circle of friends around the fire, at
such hours as you give to society: all this is not only tolerable, but
agreeable,--often positively delightful; but to have an indifferent person,
on no score but that of friendship, break into your sacred presence, and
suck your blood through indefinite cycles of time, is an abomination. If
he clatters on an indifferent subject, you can do well enough for fifteen
minutes, buoyed up by the hope that he will presently have a fit, or be
sent for, or come to some kind of an end. But when you gradually open
to the conviction that vis inertiæ rules the hour, and the thing which has
been is that which shall be, you wax listless; your chariot-wheels drive
heavily; your end of the pole drags in the mud, and you speedily
wallow in unmitigated disgust. If he broaches a subject on which you
have a real and deep living interest, you shrink from unbosoming
yourself to him. You feel that it would be sacrilege. He feels nothing of
the sort. He treads over your heart-strings in his cowhide brogans, and
does not see that they are not whip-cords. He pokes his gold-headed
cane in among your treasures, blind to the fact that you are clutching
both arms around them, that no gleam of flashing gold may reveal their
whereabouts to him. You draw yourself up in your shell, projecting a
monosyllabic claw occasionally as a sign of continued vitality; but the
pachyderm does not withdraw, and you gradually lower into an
indignation,--smothered, fierce, intense.
Why, why, WHY will people inundate their unfortunate victims with
such "weak, washy, everlasting floods?" Why will they haul everything

out into the open day? Why will they make the Holy of Holies common
and unclean? Why will they be so ineffably stupid as not to see that
there is that which speech profanes? Why will they lower their
drag-nets into the unfathomable waters, in the vain attempt to bring up
your pearls and gems, whose luster would pale to ashes in the garish
light, whose only sparkle is in the deep sea-soundings? Procul, O
procul este, profani!
O, the matchless power of silence! There are words that concentrate in
themselves the glory of a lifetime; but there is a silence that is more
precious than they. Speech ripples over the surface of life, but silence
sinks into its depths. Airy pleasantnesses bubble up in airy, pleasant
words. Weak sorrows quaver out their shallow being, and are not.
When the heart is cleft to its core, there is no speech nor language.
Do not now, Messrs. Bores, think to retrieve your character by coming
into my house and sitting mute for two hours. Heaven forbid that your
blood should be found on my skirts! but I believe I shall kill you, if you
do. The only reason why I have not laid violent hands on you
heretofore is that your vapid talk has operated as a wire to conduct my
electricity to the receptive and kindly earth; but if you intrude upon my
magnetisms without any such life-preserver, your future in this world is
not worth a crossed sixpence. Your silence would break the reed that
your talk but bruised. The only people with whom it is a joy to sit silent
are the people with whom it is a joy to talk. Clear out!
Friendship plays the mischief in the false ideas of constancy which are
generated and cherished in its name, if not by its agency. Your enemies
are intense, but temporary. Time wears off the edge of hostility. It is the
alembic in which offenses are dissolved into thin air, and a calm
indifference reigns in their stead. But your friends are expected to be a
permanent arrangement. They are not only a sore evil, but of long
continuance. Adhesiveness seems to be the head and front, the bones
and the blood, of their creed. It is not the direction of the quality, but
the quality itself, which they swear by. Only stick, it is no matter what
you stick to. Fall out with a man, and you can kiss and be friends as
soon as