You are indignant because your slave, your freedman, your wife, or your client answered you back; and then you complain that the state has been deprived of that liberty of which you have deprived your own household. Again, you call it obstinacy if a man keeps silent when he is questioned. But let him speak and let him keep silent and let him laugh! “In the presence of his master?” you ask. Yes, even in the presence of the head of the family. Why do you shout? Why do you rant? Why do you call for the whip in the midst of dinner, all because the slaves are talking, because there is not the silence of the desert in a room that holds a crowd big as a mass-meeting? You do not have ears only for the purpose of listening to melodious sounds, soft and sweetly drawn and all in harmony; you should also lend ear to laughter and weeping, to soft words and bitter, to happiness and sorrow, to the voices of men and the roars and barking of animals. Poor fellow! why do you shudder at the shouting of a slave, at the rattling of bronze, or the banging of a door? Although you are so sensitive, you have to listen to thunder. And all this which I have said about the ears you may apply as well to the eyes, which if they are not well schooled suffer not less from squeamishness. They are offended by a spot, by dirt, by tarnished silver, and by a pool that is not transparent to the bottom. These same eyes, forsooth, that cannot tolerate marble unless it is mottled and polished with recent rubbing, that cannot tolerate a table unless it is marked by many a vein, that at home would see under foot only pavements more costly than gold — these eyes when outside will behold, all unmoved, rough and muddy paths and dirty people, as are most of those they meet, and tenement walls crumbled and cracked and out of line. Why is it, then, that we are not offended on the street, yet are annoyed at home, except that in the one case we are in an unruffled and tolerant state of mind, and in the other are peevish and fault-finding?