Chapter V 
GARDENS AND GOSSIPS 
W HEN 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. 
