I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough
to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded
man that es in my way. I am naturally , but might
possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my
business called me thither.
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for
friendship, three for society. When visitors came in larger and
ued here was but the third chair for them all, but
they generally eized the room by standing up. It is surprising
how many great men and women a small house will tain. I have had
twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at onder my
roof, a we often parted without being aware that we had e
very o one another. Many of our houses, both publid
private, with their almost innumerable apartments, their huge halls
and their cellars for the ste of wines and other munitions of
peace, appear to be extravagantly large for their inhabitants. They
are so vast and magnifit that the latter seem to be only vermin
whifest them. I am surprised when the herald blows his summons
before some Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House, to see e
creeping out over the piazza for all inhabitants a ridiouse,
which soon again slinks into some hole in the pavement.
One invenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house,
the difficulty of getting to a suffit distance from my guest
when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words. You want room
for your thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or two
before they make their port. The bullet of your thought must have
overe its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last
and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it
may plow out again through the side of his head. Also, our
sentences wanted room to unfold and form their ns in the
interval. Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and
natural boundaries, even a siderable ral ground, between
them. I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to
a panion on the opposite side. In my house we were so hat
we could not begin to hear -- we could not speak low enough to be
heard; as when you throw two stones into calm water so hat
they break each others undulations. If we are merely loquacious
and loud talkers, then we afford to stand very ogether,
cheek by jowl, and feel each others breath; but if we speak
reservedly and thoughtfully, we want to be farther apart, that all
animal heat and moisture may have a ce to evaporate. If we
would enjoy the most intimate society with that in each of us which
is without, or above, being spoken to, we must not only be silent,
but only so far apart bodily that we ot possibly hear each
others voi any case. Referred to this standard, speech is for
the venience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many
fihings which we ot say if we have to shout. As the
versation began to assume a loftier and graone, we
gradually shoved our chairs farther apart till they touched the wall
in opposite ers, and then only there was not room enough.
My "best" room, however, my withdrawing room, always ready for
pany, on whose carpet the sun rarely fell, was the pine wood