Dec. 8—$Silence is golden, said an adage of my early youth, and I often think this idea must have come down the ages to us from old friend Chaucer who wrote something to the effect that, "the first virtue, my son, if thou wilt learn is to restrain and keep well thy tongue." Perhaps he was right, but I am left with an uncomfortable feeling that if we all kept quiet and did not stand up for ourselves we should never get anywhere. Taking [one's ideas from Nature....it at once becomes obvious that only in the loneliest and most dismal places is there complete silence golden, if you like fora little time, but very wearisome if it continues for long. Such thoughts came to me this morning when I walked in my garden and realized that it was never I am not writing of dreadful traffic noises, the shouting of passing humanity, or all those hundred-and-one noises which are a disturbance to quiet thought: I am thinking of all those tiny little noises which start when
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.