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WALDEN. 
tions made through it. To speak critically, I never re¬ 
ceived more than one or two letters in my life—I wrote 
this some years ago — that were worth the postage. 
The penny-post is, commonly, an institution through 
which you seriously offer a man that penny for his 
thoughts which is so often safely offered in jest. And 
I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a 
newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or mur¬ 
dered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one 
vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow 
run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog 
killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, — we 
never need read of another. One is enough. If you 
are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for 
a myriad instances and applications? To a philoso¬ 
pher all news , as it is called, is gossip, and they who 
edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet 
not a few are greedy after this gossip. There was 
such a rush, as I hear, the other day at one of the 
offices to learn the foreign news by the last arrival, that 
several large squares of plate glass belonging to the 
establishment were broken by the pressure, — news 
which I seriously think a ready wit might write a 
twelvemonth or twelve years beforehand with suf¬ 
ficient accuracy. As for Spain, for instance, if you 
know how to throw in Don Carlos and the Infanta, and 
Don Pedro and Seville and Granada, from time to time 
in the right proportions, —- they may have changed the 
names a little since I saw the papers, — and serve up 
a bull-fight when other entertainments fail, it will be 
true to the letter, and give us as good an idea of the 
exact state or ruin of things in Spain as the most suc¬ 
cinct and lucid reports under this head in the news- 
