As a proselyte to the new feeling I was eager to talk of it and make much of its surprises. Not with Thyriel and my proparents alone did I discuss its varied aspects; I could listen by the hour to their teachings. But it brought me into intercourse with many whom I had scarcely seen before except in the course of my education as I wandered through the various halls. I was astonished to find how often they sought opportunity to talk to me. They drew me aside as if they had important business with me, and confidentially imparted their views of death which I had heard a hundred times from others, until I grew weary of their chatter, for I wished to talk myself. But they would not allow me to break in on their everlasting torrent of babble; even Thyriel could not endure my interruptions. Though I never grew weary of her talk, I could not restrain the desire to have my say, too. There was no subject on which we could not soliloquise by the hour, but we preferred to talk of death, the freshest and most joyous of topics. And every other youth was just as eager to deliver his opinions to me and to everybody else. However busy they might be with the task in hand, off they would break from it for colloquy, which soon spun itself into the soliloquy of the stronger lungs and the most enduring tongue. Everyone seemed to comport himself as if his views were of the utmost importance to the world. They all seemed bursting with the obvious; out it must come or they would die. In every other corner I would find two or three debating with faces all aglow, sometimes in the most confidential whispers; approaching to listen, I would find their topic trite and stale as last year’s gossip; the speaker was pressing home on his hearers in a voice of portentous awe what no one would think of disputing. The elders interfered and tried by patient advice to stop this tempest of loquacity. Hurrying from post to post they tried to keep the young at their work, but it was an endless task. On would go the glib current as soon as their attention was turned elsewhere. Matters began to look serious, for the work of the community was being neglected. The ordinary services of life were barely performed. Little or no progress could be made in such a state of affairs. Indeed, it became manifest that the main aim of the race, progress, would soon be forgotten, and retrogression supervene. The faces of the elders became graver every day; their advice was unheeded, their example unfollowed. Babble, babble, babble, on rolled the fluent river of talk, as if the island had been in the midst of Western civilisation. When I closed my eyes so loud and empty sounded the magpie babel I could easily fancy myself back again in my native land, and believe that I had dreamt my recent years and wakened again in Christendom.