266 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
ance and actual understanding of one another, 
but degrade themselves immediately into the 
puppets of convention. They do as if, in given 
circumstances, they had agreed to know each 
other only so well. They rarely get so far as 
to inform one another gratuitously, and use 
each other like the sea and the woods for what 
is new and inspiring there. The best inter- 
course and communion they have is a silence 
above and behind their speech. We should be 
very simple to rely on words. What we knew 
before, always interprets a man’s words. I can¬ 
not easily remember what any man has said to 
me, but how can I forget what he is to me ? 
We know each other better than we are aware. 
We are admitted to startling privacies with 
every person we meet. 
March 29, 1853. P. m. To the early 
willow behind Martial Miles’s.On the 
railroad I hear the telegraph. This is the lyre 
that is as old as the world. I put my ear to 
the post and the sound seems to be in its core 
directly against my ear. This is all of music. 
The utmost refinements of art, I think, can go 
no further. 
Walking along near the edge of the meadow 
under Supine Hill, I slumped through the sod 
into a musk-rat’s nest, for there was only a thick¬ 
ness of two inches over it, which was enough 
