The best week of our life was one in which we did nothing but talk.  We spent it with a delightful gentleman who has a little bungalow on the shore of a lake in Pike County.  He had a great many books and cigars, both of which are conversational stimulants.  We used to lie out on the edge of the lake, in our oldest trousers, and talk.  We discussed ever so many subjects; in all of them he knew immensely more than we did.  We built up a complete philosophy of indolence and good will, according to Food and Sleep and Swimming their proper share of homage.  We rose at 10 in the morning and began talking; we talked all day and until 3 o’clock at night.  Then we went to bed and regained strength and combativeness for the coming day.  Never was a week better spent.  We committed no crimes, planned no secret treaties, devised no annexations or indemnities.  We envied no one.  We examined the entire world and found it worth while.  Meanwhile our wives, who were watching (perhaps with a little quiet indignation) from the veranda, kept on asking us, “What on earth do you talk about?”

Bless their hearts, men don’t have to have anything to talk about.  They just talk.

And there is only one rule for being a good talker:  learn how to listen.

THE UNNATURAL NATURALIST

It gives us a great deal of pleasure to announce, officially, that spring has arrived.

Our statement is not based on any irrelevant data as to equinoxes or bluebirds or bock-beer signs, but is derived from the deepest authority we know anything about, our subconscious self.  We remember that some philosopher, perhaps it was Professor James, suggested that individuals are simply peaks of self-consciousness rising out of the vast ocean of collective human Mind in which we all swim, and are, at bottom, one.  Whenever we have to decide any important matter, such as when to get our hair cut and whether to pay a bill or not, and whether to call for the check or let the other fellow do so, we don’t attempt to harass our conscious volition with these decisions.  We rely on our subconscious and instinctive person, and for better or worse we have to trust to its righteousness and good sense.  We just find ourself doing something and we carry on and hope it is for the best.

From this deep abyss of subconsciousness we learn that it is spring.  The mottled goosebone of the Allentown prophet is no more meteorologically accurate than our subconscience.  And this is how it works.

Once a year, about the approach of the vernal equinox or the seedsman’s catalogue, we wake up at 6 o’clock in the morning.  This is an immediate warning and apprisement that something is adrift.  Three hundred and sixty-four days in the year we wake, placidly enough, at seven-ten, ten minutes after the alarm clock has jangled.  But on this particular day, whether it be the end of February or the middle