Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/352

at court, and I am astonished to observe how willing; men are to lumber their minds with such rubbish, to permit idle rumors, tales, incidents, even of an insignificant kind, to intrude upon what should be the sacred ground of the thoughts. Shall the temple of our thoughts be a public arena where the most trivial affair of the market and the gossip of the tea-table is discussed, a dusty, noisy, trivial place? or shall it be a quarter of the heavens itself, consecrated to the service of the gods, a hypaethral temple? I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my mind with the most insignificant, which only a divine mind can illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation. It is important to preserve the mind's chastity in this respect. Think of admitting the details of a single case at the criminal court into the mind to stalk profanely through its very sanctum sanctorum for an hour,—aye, for many hours; to make a very bar-room of your mind's inmost apartment, as if for a moment the dust of the street had occupied you,—aye, the very street itself, with all its travel, had poured through your very mind of minds, your thought s shrine, with all its filth and bustle. Would it not be an intellectual suicide? By all manner of boards and traps threatening the ex-