Most friendships among girls, and older people, too, suggest that if there is one thing which is hated, it is silence. If silence does happen to get in among us in camp, how uneasy we are! After an awkward pause we all begin to talk at once,—any, every topic will serve to break the hush which has fallen upon us. And if we don’t succeed in getting rid of this silence—something apparently to be regarded as unfriendly and ominous—we make excuse to do something and do it.

But of silence Maurice Maeterlinck, the great Belgian author of “The Bluebird” and of many other plays, too, says that we talk only in the hours in which we do not live or do not wish to know our friends or feel ourselves at a great distance from reality. But where do we live more truly than in our camp life? Then he goes on to say what I think is equally true: That we are very jealous of silence, for even the most imprudent among us will not be silent with the first comer, some instinct telling us that it is dangerous to be silent with one whom we do not wish to know or for whom we do not care or do not trust.

Let us admit at the very beginning that one does well to be on one’s guard with the people with whom one does not care to be silent,—but one does not go camping with those people,—or, as the case may be, if we, ourselves, have a guilty conscience or an empty head much talking serves its ends. And there is another situation in which it seems almost impossible to be silent. There is someone for whom we have cared very much. Things have changed, there has been a misunderstanding, we have altered or someone else has made trouble between us. And the first thing we notice is that we no longer dare to be silent together. Speech must be made to cover up our common lack of sympathy. We talk, how we talk,—anything, everything! Even when we are happy we run to places where there is no silence, but now, if only we can be as noisy as children and avoid the truth of the sad thing which has happened to us!

Again, let us admit at once that there are different kinds of silence: There is a bitter silence which is the silence of hate, and another which is that of evil thoughts, and a hostile silence, and a silence which may mean the beginning of a storm or a fierce warfare. But the only silence worth having is friendly and it is of that we need to think, and it is that we can have by the camp fire in our wilderness life.

Isn’t it true after all that the question which most of us ought to ask ourselves seriously is not how many times we have talked but how many times we have been silent. Sometimes one wonders whether we are ever still and whether if we are to be silent, it is not a lesson which must be learned all over again. How many times have we talked in a single day? We can’t tell, for the number of times is so great that we can’t count them. And the times we have been silent? And I don’t mean how many times we have said nothing. To say nothing is not necessarily to be silent. Well, we can’t count the times we have been silent either, but that is because we haven’t been still at all. Yet there is a big life in which there is no speech and no need of it. Are we never to give ourselves a chance to live that?

Do you remember your first great silence? Was it going away from someone you loved? Perhaps it was a joyous visit to your grandmother or to an aunt or to see a friend, but it meant leaving your mother and you had never left her before. Or maybe it was your first year at boarding school or your freshman year at college. Do you remember the silence that came over you then and all that filled it? And do you remember how it wore away but gradually—that grip the stillness had within you and upon you? You know now that that first silence will never be forgotten. Or was it a return to those you loved and you realized as never before how incomparably dear these people were to you and that only silence could express that dearness? Or was it the silence of a crowd—awe inspiring silence which foretells the acclaim of some great event of happiness or a cry of woe? Or the silence of the wilderness as you looked down from a mountain side into some great valley of lakes? Or was it the death of someone you loved, and the silence that overcame you forced you not only to suffer as never before but also to think as you have never done about the meaning of life?

In that first great silence how many things that are precious revealed themselves to us. There was love; we did not realize how it was woven into every fibre of our lives; there was companionship; we did not realize how bitterly hard it would be to forego it; there was new experience; till it came we could not have known how much a part of our lives the old experience was. How many things in us that had been asleep were suddenly awakened! How much was that great silence worth to us then and now? Perhaps an unhappy or stricken silence we called it then; but even if it meant death or separation was it after all completely unhappy? Have we taken into account the wealth of conviction, of deepened experience, of increased love it brought us? Could anything so rich be in any true sense unhappy?

“Silence, the Great Empire of Silence,” cried Carlyle, “higher than the stars, deeper than the Kingdom of Death.” The world needs silent men but even more, I think, does it need silent women. Carlyle—and you should get what you can of his books and read them—calls silent men the salt of the earth. Might not silent women or silent girls be called double salt? He says that the world without such men is like a tree without roots. To such a tree there will be no leaves and no shade; to such a tree there will be no growth; a tree without roots cannot hold the moisture that is in the earth and it will soon fade, soon dry up and let everything else around it dry up, too.

Have you not heard women and girls with an incessant silly giggle or a titter or a laugh that meant just nothing at all and yet which was heard, like the dry rattle of the locust, morning, noon and night? Nervousness partially; empty-headedness maybe, or a mistaken idea of what is attractive. Silliness of that kind has no place in camp. Nothing is more wearying, more lacking in self-control than such a manner, nothing so exhausts other people. Such giggling or laughing or silly talking is to the mind what St. Vitus’s dance is to the body—an affliction to be endured perhaps but certainly not an attraction and not to be cultivated.

Is it not silence that opens the door to our best work? How about that work you enjoyed so much and did so well? How did you prepare for that? Yes, I know all about the work you bluffed through and even managed to get a high record in, but that work you really enjoyed, how was that done? Is it not silence, too, that opens the door to our dearest and deepest companionships, our profoundest sorrows, our greatest joys? Anyway this wilderness silence is all worth while thinking about, is it not?

Why should this great silence, this friendly wilderness power be considered anti-social? Really, is it not most social? Does it not bring us all nearer together, sometimes even when we are afraid to be nearer to one another? Does it not make us all equal, making us aware of those profound things in life which we all have in common? Silence can say, can teach, what speech can never, to the end of the world, learn to express. It is safe to say that as soon as most lips are silent, then and then only do the thoughts and the soul begin to live, to grow, to become something of what they are destined to be, for as Maeterlinck says, silence ripens the fruits of the soul. Never think that it is unsociable people or people who don’t know how to talk who set such a value on silence. No, it is those who are able to talk best and most deeply, think best and most deeply, who, following the long trail, recognize the fact that words can never after all express those truths which are among us—no, neither love, nor death, nor any great joy, nor destiny can ever be expressed by word of mouth, by speech.