I recalled an old saying yesterday that it is better to be silent and thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and prove it.

This went fleetingly through my mind as I checked the weekly statistics about the numismaticnews.net Web site and the traffic to my blog. I was looking to see what the price of “silence” was last week.

I had a concern not having posted anything last Friday and a simple invitation last Thursday to rejoin me on Oct. 1 that there might be a noticeable impact on the visits to my blog in the following days. The numbers indicate that this doesn’t seem to be the case.

I hope I did not disappoint too many visitors when they discovered nothing new on Friday, but it is gratifying to know that should I awake with a toothache in the night, the roof won’t fall in the next morning and in the following week when no blog appears.

Or, maybe I am on to something. Maybe I can post a “Watch this Space” sign here and go for days or weeks on end doing nothing. It would marvelously ease the burdens of my day. Or I could simply ask the question as to what stupendous and new topic would next appear in this space and ask readers to speculate with their postings. That, too, could go on for weeks.

Then again, perhaps I am too much in thrall to the book I am currently reading about Mark Twain’s life. There is that little matter of Tom Sawyer, his friends and the fence that needed whitewashing ...

Works for me.