XXI
People addicted to secresy are so without knowing why; they are so not ‘for cause,’ but for secresy’s sake. It is a mixture of cowardice and conceit. They think, if they tell you any thing, you may understand it better than they do, or turn it in some way against them; but that while they shut up their mouths they are wiser than you, just as liars think by telling you a falsehood they have an advantage over you. There are others who deal in significant nods, smiles, and half-sentences, so that you never can get at their meaning, and indeed they have none, but leave it to you to put what interpretation you please on their embryo hints and conceptions. They are glad to find a proxy for their want of understanding.