CHAPTER V 

 GARDENS AND GOSSIPS 



WHEN one reflects how much of life is taken 

 up by talk, what an amount of energy, of 

 toil, is expended in it; how most things 

 hang upon it, how the entire machinery of the world 

 would crash to atoms without it; when one realizes 

 that every second of time is filled with the ceaseless 

 murmuring of millions of voices, why, one begins to 

 understand that talk, just talk, as a habit, a practice, a 

 necessity, exceeds all other human activities in impor- 

 tance, as it certainly does in volume and continuity. 

 Manifold in its variety, it is the one thing indispensable 

 to every one, from the mumbling savage in naked bond- 

 age to the earth to the greatest philosopher, from the 

 youngest to the oldest, the wisest to the vainest. 

 Everything we accomplish owes something at least to 

 talk ; without it we could not think, and even in our 

 feelings we require its assistance. Our joy is height- 

 ened, our sorrow relieved by it. To a mother, the 

 moment when her child first begins to use speech is 

 unforgetable ; and love itself, if it were dumb, would 

 lose something of its beauty. 



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