from one who has been our friend, we separate with content, without grief, as gently and naturally as night passes into day. But grief and pain take place when the separation is partial and transient, when there is a lingering sympathy.
From this high discourse of Love, Marriage, and Friendship, the exact date of which in its final form cannot well be determined, but probably just before the publication of The Week in 1849, we pass now to an essay in a lighter mood, which Thoreau himself, in the Manuscript before me, entitles,—
CONVERSATION[1]
Talking is very singular. Men and women get together and then talk. They cannot even stay long together without talking, according to the rules of polite society. Not that they communicate what they have to say, or do anything natural or important to be done; but by common consent they fall
- ↑ We are indebted to Mr. John P. Woodbury for the privilege of printing this little essay, which seems to have eluded all editors of Thoreau up to the present year, when parts of it came out in the Atlantic. What we here print is the original form.
[113]
