it appears in the novels to be in Russia.

This is partly the substance of what was said one winter evening before
the wood fire in the library of a house in Brandon, one of the lesser New
England cities. Like hundreds of residences of its kind, it stood in the
suburbs, amid forest-trees, commanding a view of city spires and towers
on the one hand, and on the other of a broken country of clustering trees
and cottages, rising towards a range of hills which showed purple and
warm against the pale straw-color of the winter sunsets. The charm of the
situation was that the house was one of many comfortable dwellings, each
isolated, and yet near enough together to form a neighborhood; that is to
say, a body of neighbors who respected each other's privacy, and yet
flowed together, on occasion, without the least conventionality. And a
real neighborhood, as our modern life is arranged, is becoming more and
more rare.

I am not sure that the talkers in this conversation expressed their real,
final sentiments, or that they should be held accountable for what they
said. Nothing so surely kills the freedom of talk as to have some
matter-of-fact person instantly bring you to book for some impulsive
remark flashed out on the instant, instead of playing with it and tossing
it about in a way that shall expose its absurdity or show its value.
Freedom is lost with too much responsibility and seriousness, and the
truth is more likely to be struck out in a lively play of assertion and
retort than when all the words and sentiments are weighed. A person very
likely cannot tell what he does think till his thoughts are exposed to
the air, and it is the bright fallacies and impulsive, rash ventures in
conversation that are often most fruitful to talker and listeners. The
talk is always tame if no one dares anything. I have seen the most
promising paradox come to grief by a simple "Do you think so?" Nobody, I
sometimes think, should be held accountable for anything said in private
conversation, the vivacity of which is in a tentative play about the
subject. And this is a sufficient reason why one should repudiate any
private conversation reported in the newspapers. It is bad enough to be
held fast forever to what one writes and prints, but to shackle a man
with all his flashing utterances, which may be put into his mouth by some
imp in the air, is intolerable slavery. A man had better be silent if he
can only say today what he will stand by tomo