Walden

over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this
morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in
the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the
rudiment of an eye himself.

For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that
there are very few important communications made through it. To speak
critically, I never received more than one or two letters in my life—I
wrote this some years ago—that were worth the postage. The penny-post
is, commonly, an institution through which you seriously offer a man
that penny for his thoughts which is so often safely offered in jest.
And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If
we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one
house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one
cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot
of grasshoppers in the winter,—we never need read of another. One is
enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for
a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all _news_, as it
is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over