Concerning Reticence

ARMS and the man are sung. Action, speech, works, happenings, — deeds, in short, occupy the chronicling humor of our day. Possibly “those things which we ought not to have done,” the deeds, are duly deplored, but it is the doing of them that is brought to notice. History lives and fattens on but one part of human thought, that which is expressed. Embodiment is prerequisite to all else; with embodiment the poet, the financier, the scientist, and the housewife work, and for it is the credit of eternity invoked.

But who extols the unexpressed ? When is it said that by their omissions ye shall know them ? What homage has the man whose virtue is that he has not done, has not said ? Some belated appreciation he may have at the hands of an admirer who comes afterward upon the traces of his restraint, but the world has stigmatized him as uncontributive. He himself is the sole communicant in the elegant sanctuary of his reserve, the King Ludwig of his intimate drama. The very renunciation which keeps him silent forbids him the encomium it merits; his great inaction, maintained at the cost of we know not what effort, and to the detriment of we know not what personal success, but ever reinforced by what consoling humor we know not either, — his monumental inaction is less noted than his merest outward reflex of habit that can be classed as deed.

Just how monumental, indeed, may never be known. But every man’s memory will confirm the adjective. What an Epochmachende und Welterstaunende Arbeit, for instance, was the epigram which I sacrificed yesterday to the claims of that anæmic goddess Propriety! It mortifies me to recall the witless platitude I hurriedly stuffed in its place, — a cheap gravestone, but a noble burying. And not the least of the achievement was the smile with which I afterward resumed my tattered amiability. Is there a harsher abstinence than the abstinence from wit ?

Or again, there was the mutual speech of those two strangers concerning a person whom I had well-nigh by heart. Without a sign I listened to their inexact decrees and vain imaginings, when I possessed the word that would have turned their faces in amazement. And how was I compensated for the forfeiture of that wondrous look? By the doubtful satisfaction that it was the just tax of good taste.

Possibly a lecturer did violence to my sternest convictions, or a minister startled me by a betrayal of some deep-guarded weakness; but who of my neighbors was aware ? Or some light word was dropped in casual talk that swept the ground of the future away beneath my feet, but my outward composure had still to be inviolate. Or else, more likely, I burned to reveal, by ever so slight a word or gesture, some secret that would revolutionize an occasion.

There may even come a time when I must suffer the imprisonment of my intelligence, must exhibit before the world an unstudied innocence, when the simplest calculation has sufficed to put me in possession of the facts. Is there a more cruel fate than to be obliged to wear an outgrown ignorance, to allow unrepudiated some tacit charge of denseness ?

In wider relations, too: I made perhaps a sufficiently noteworthy success at the work I loved, and afterwards was besieged for more of the same by admirers, consumers, and purveyors; but in the face of their persuasion I refrain and shall refrain, for reasons which may never obtain credit abroad.

No credit, perhaps; these inactions are not recorded, are not so much as recognized. Yet a curious thing is that the social fabric is woven thereof. Prom the basic silences asked by refinement, to the conventional neglect of the last morsel on your plate, the spirit of reticence permeates human intercourse Set formulas of thanks or welcome cover a multitudinous variety of sentiment not to be uttered; by uniformities of usage we avoid self-revelation.

For at best we are only neophytes at reticence. To be able so to put things away in the mind that they may never get accidentally mixed and uttered, to be able to “ separate words from thoughts ” so that they flourish quite independently of each other, — these are Olympian attributes. An atmosphere of trustworthiness seems to emanate from the rare being so possessed; an aura of safety hangs round about him. Though you can scarcely name the reason, he has become to you a marked man. He has the self-respect born of his omissions, and although he alone knows the full beauty of his restraint, the afterglow of the vision is seen upon his personality.

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