Where I Lived, and What I Lived For
Though the view from my door was still more contracted, I did
they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary
worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty
account of the realities he beheld there, we should not recognize
I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most
horizon, tinged with blue. Indeed, by standing on tiptoe I could
finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain,
cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I
is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep.
the pond it impressed me like a tarn high up on the side of a
auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain
and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown
distinguished elevated perhaps by a mirage in their seething valley,
dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave
you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad
are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is
catch a glimpse of some of the peaks of the still bluer and more
ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had
pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which form the shore
doors as behind a door where I sat, even in the rainiest weather.
mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a
unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another
imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were
behind the constellation of Cassiopeias Chair, far from noise and
Did hourly feed him by."
chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and
quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?
attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there
such a rush, as I hear, the other day at one of the offices to learn
place their houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated. An
buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out some rocks,
above all, the recollection I had of it from my earliest voyages up
we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with
something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but
kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed
to describe more at length, for convenience putting the experience
of his character was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince.
could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homers
remarked: What a worthy messenger! What a worthy messenger!" The
The present was my next experiment of this kind, which I purpose
progress toward settling in the world. This frame, so slightly
devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our
news from that quarter was the revolution of 1649; and if you have
I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a
lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have
That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier,
born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way
hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our
my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange
preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy farmers on their day
so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external
What news! how much more important to know what that is which
landscape radiated from me accordingly. What is a house but a
is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again.
five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it
My right there is none to dispute."
does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more
morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up.
establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own
at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not
servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and
about two miles south of that our only field known to fame, Concord
are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel
-- "When you think of getting a farm turn it thus in your mind, not
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but
encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate
court-house, or a jail, or a shop, or a dwelling-house, and say what
several farms -- the refusal was all I wanted -- but I never got my
And held his thoughts as high
"I am monarch of all I survey,
stand before the door, and whence each blasted tree could be seen to
earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I
that thing really is before a true gaze, and they would all go to
What should we think of the shepherds life if his flocks always
in it first, that it may please me the more at last.
never heard what compensation he received for that -- and do all
shore arose stretched away toward the prairies of the West and the
the river, when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red
in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until the truth
thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but
thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquitos wing that
learned the history of her crops for an average year, you never need
elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a
should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are like.
has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not
gently and without perturbatiohttp://www.99lib.netn; let company come and let company
morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the
strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning
did not need to go outdoors to take the air, for the atmosphere
When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to
recently cut off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the
children of Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise. To him whose
"There was a shepherd that did live,
as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you
which I had visited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered
aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial
here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never
builder. It was suggestive somewhat as a picture in outlines. I
of a gentle rain-storm in August, when, both air and water being
can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin,
you are committed to a farm or the county jail.
the most succinct and lucid reports under this head in the
that part of creation where I had squatted;
heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito
reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only,
This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals
mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by
had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is
least could accomplish it.
into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with
come in. The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may
way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it
other directions, even from this point, I could not see over or
in my life -- I wrote this some years ago -- that were worth the
those things which had no other motive or excuse but that I might
with thundering voice, "Pause! Avast! Why so seeming fast, but
disturbance. I discovered that my house actually had its site in
Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be
Nights Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and
beyond the woods which surrounded me. It is well to have some water
half south of the village of Concord and somewhat higher than it, in
"Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on
premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with him,
clad, was a sort of crystallization around me, and reacted on the
present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and
called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this
face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces,
three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a
rich man without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the
wanted, if I could only afford to let it alone. But it turned out
At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider
pay for it and be unmolested in my possession of it; for I knew all
often safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I never read any
instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. The
it -- took his word for his deed, for I dearly love to talk --
as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give
has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never
spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never
there is hardly a man on his farm in the outskirts of Concord,
exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life.
Old Cato, whose "De Re Rustica" is my "Cultivator," says -- and
to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not
to be bought, and I knew their price. I walked over each farmers
To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was
simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a
As for Spain, for instance, if you know how to throw in Don Carlos
the foreign news by the last arrival, that several large squares of
mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we
today to save nine tomorrow. As for work, we havent any of any
be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to
What is your master doing? The messenger answered with respect: My
for my imagination. The low shrub oak plateau to which the opposite
that there are very few important communications made through it.
within had lost none of its freshness. It was not so much within
seasoning." Such was not my abode, for I found myself suddenly
maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous
memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or
having a point dappui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place
suggested a stream flowing out in that direction through a wooded
"there was a kings son, who, being expelled in infancy from his
complete retirement, being, about two miles from the village, half a
that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive
my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my
Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need
surface of things. We think that that is which appears to be. If a
parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most
interverting water, and I was reminded that this on which I dwelt
of two years into one. As I have said, I do not propose to write an
through the mud and slhttp://www.99lib.netush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition,
deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I
Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those
many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable
Vedas say, "All intelligences awake with the morning." Poetry and
rarely, serenade a villager -- the wood thrush, the veery, the
life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all
the while that it would yield the most abundant crop of the kind I
"glorify God and enjoy him forever."
keep our heads still. If I should only give a few pulls at the
are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth
fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that I came to
more to see it burn, since burn it must, and we, be it known, did
not set it on fire -- or to see it put out, and have a hand in it,
The only house I had been the owner of before, if I except a
every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus surveyed
of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.
site for a house not likely to be soon improved, which some might
afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard, wood-lot, and
have thought too far from the village, but to my eyes the village
come to the end of them. The messenger being gone, the philosopher
live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether
standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and
scale -- I have always cultivated a garden -- was, that I had had my
Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink
master desires to diminish the number of his faults, but he cannot
commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride
critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry
Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that
shore, half a mile off, like the rest, covered with wood, was my
expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not
it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten
ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what
broker by my friends. Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the
when I had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him to carry it on. This
morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied
materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a
of an ill-spent week, and not the fresh and brave beginning of a new
quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man
whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little
to the Pleiades or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then I was
pecuniary character. If one may judge who rarely looks into the
window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the
apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual
important. From a hill-top near by, where the wood had been
boat, after passing from hand to hand, has gone down the stream of
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to
freely a vast horizon" -- said Damodara, when his herds required new
early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one
most distant horizon. For the first week, whenever I looked out on
as that it keeps butter cool. When I looked across the pond from
gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to
life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its
yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at
Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers
been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up
did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how I could
the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live. In
say, transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The
but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, "Whats the news?"
had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for
twelve-month, or twelve years, beforehand with sufficient accuracy.
actual possession was when I bought the Hollowell place, and had
more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has
nightly by astronomers. We are wont to imagine rare and delectable
making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at
see that earth is not continent but insular. This is as important
steppes of Tartary, affording ample room for all the roving families
My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of
Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have
through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and
newspapers: and as for England, almost the last significant scrap of
a deed of it, his wife -- every man has such a wife -- changed her
exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every
After a nights sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast.
and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the
postage. The penny-post is, commonly, an institution through which
it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed
parish bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without setting the bell,
there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other
art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date
man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can
seeds ready. Many think that seeds improve with age. I have no
of rest at the end o
藏书网f the week -- for Sunday is the fit conclusion
from shore to shore. A lake like this is never smoother than at
valley, but stream there was none. That way I looked between and
wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; a
really there, or at an equal remoteness from the life which I had
universe. If it were worth the while to settle in those parts near
fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by
cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. However,
nawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should have; but
wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts?
without a wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes,
virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness.
experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of real-estate
"Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and
lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads
those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man,
But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible
while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.
more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It
on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when
cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our
uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have
sedes, a seat? -- better if a country seat. I discovered many a
forever again." I can understand that. Morning brings back the
this might be done.
barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between
make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great
this globe" -- and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man
doubt that time discriminates between the good and the bad; and when
these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts;
proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of
sent a man to Khoung-tseu to know his news. Khoung-tseu caused the
music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air --
from such an hour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the
When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and
was but dry land.
religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we
So soul," continues the Hindoo philosopher, "from the circumstances
so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite
and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe,
requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own
spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on
Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward
an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they
the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an
The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were: its
traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation
go, let the bells ring and the children cry -- determined to make a
purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed.
front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn
Battle Ground; but I was so low in the woods that the opposite
others.
or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future
perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the
had not been overcome with drowsiness, they would have performed
paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a
sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and
native city, was brought up by a forester, and, growing up to
simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have
man should walk through this town and see only the reality, where,
after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and
its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries
pressure -- news which I seriously think a ready wit might write a
broad field; its bounding on the river, which the owner said
night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and
you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so
are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They
property from the flames, but, if we will confess the truth, much
only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual
such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of the
experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo book, that
think you, would the "Mill-dam" go to? If he should give us an
his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to
little since I saw the papers -- and serve up a bull-fight when
nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and
directions to be waked every half-hour, doubtless for no other
one -- with this one other draggle-tail of a sermon, should shout
so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I
Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not
are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay
I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for I had carried
is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to
left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest
how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its
hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and
such things as we know, would be like a fairy ta99lib•netle and the Arabian
notwithstanding that press of engagements which was his excuse so
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are
somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to
boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you
valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he
hang upon the trees later into the day than usual, as on the sides
outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and
To speak critically, I never received more than one or two letters
in your neighborhood, to give buoyancy to and float the earth. One
whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us
afford to let alone.
deadly slow?"
instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is
and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with
necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of
As were the mounts whereon his flocks
such a time; and the clear portion of the air above it being,
begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make a
head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout
protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that was
stealthily withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the
where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely,
uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and
us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool
caged myself near them. I was not only nearer to some of those
maples, through which I heard the house-dog bark. I was in haste to
business.
For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think
information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how
danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With
this peak toward the Sudbury meadows, which in time of flood I
ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the
discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the misconception
reflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were
murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel
still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who play
many times this morning, nor a boy, nor a woman, I might almost say,
have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was
which commonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those
and fore paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through
was too far from it. Well, there I might live, I said; and there I
revolution not excepted.
greedily, but go round and round it as long as I live, and be buried
birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, had made
details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and
highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its
at last I shall plant, I shall be less likely to be disappointed.
imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this
has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.
After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul of man, or
Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while
is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and
mountain, its bottom far above the surface of other lakes, and, as
what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I
church itself. Hardly a man takes a half-hours nap after dinner,
whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why
through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your
boat, was a tent, which I used occasionally when making excursions
through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord,
was never old! "Kieou-he-yu (great dignitary of the state of Wei)
milk.
wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the owner gave me
only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and
to a higher life than we fell asleep from; and thus the darkness
not feel crowded or confined in the least. There was pasture enough
stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches
the midst of an extensive wood between that town and Lincoln, and
and larger pastures.
fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable
like a coin in a basin, all the earth beyond the pond appeared like
the only translation I have seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage
but would forsake all and follow that sound, not mainly to save
as I have said.
of the best things which I did. They say that characters were
attend to that thing again, unless your speculations are of a merely
value even of the smallest well is, that when you look into it you
let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring
despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way.
mind; even put a higher price on it -- took everything but a deed of
wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the
without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough,
somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes
will begin to mine.
wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few
everywhere.
not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they
universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions;
newspapers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign parts, a French
any more of his improvements. To enjoy these advantages I was ready
slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by showswww•99lib•net, men establish
cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best
which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be
mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which
messenger to be seated near him, and questioned him in these terms:
weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at
and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which
time. With this more substantial shelter about me, I had made some
time in the right proportions -- they may have changed the names a
trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were
calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of
cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might
his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity,
other entertainments fail, it will be true to the letter, and give
laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal
over the near green hills to some distant and higher ones in the
a thin crust insulated and floated even by this small sheet of
me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees,
the sun arose, I saw it throwing off its nightly clothing of mist,
neighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him. Such was
the best advantage; and then I let it lie, fallow, perchance, for a
race with which he lived. One of his fathers ministers having
in the summer, and this is still rolled up in my garret; but the
that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my
life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who
breaking up of some nocturnal conventicle. The very dew seemed to
places in some remote and more celestial corner of the system,
it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to
such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken
life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it
mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to release
determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a
scarlet tanager, the field sparrow, the whip-poor-will, and many
know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in
keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this
serenity of evening, and the wood thrush sang around, and was heard
sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop
falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast,
to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add
paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which
in the winter -- we never need read of another. One is enough. If
awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some
think it enough to go round it once. The oftener you go there the
bear its fruit, and prove itself to be good, no less than the light.
shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and
reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself so much the more
pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to
pieces in your account of them. Men esteem truth remote, in the
it far enough; or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for
distant mountain ranges in the northwest, those true-blue coins from
more it will please you, if it is good." I think I shall not buy
and the Infanta, and Don Pedro and Seville and Granada, from time to
cultivated it, and him too to some extent, I trust, and withdrew
the place in his description. Look at a meeting-house, or a
plate glass belonging to the establishment were broken by the
of mountains.
just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a
us as good an idea of the exact state or ruin of things in Spain as
few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and
again what noble life it can make. All memorable events, I should
perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the
engraven on the bathing tub of King Tchingthang to this effect:
landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it yielded
day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let
be Brahme." I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this
him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and
my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all
to carry it on; like Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders -- I
called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over
cutting down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up some young
of men. "There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy
and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth
All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a large
fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This
season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least
attracted me. Where I lived was as far off as many a region viewed
The Harivansa says, "An abode without birds is like a meat without
consequence. We have the Saint Vitus dance, and cannot possibly
their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip. There was
smaller and more thrilling songsters of the forest which never, or
heavens own mint, and also of some portion of the village. But in
neighbor to the birds; not by having imprisoned one, but having
took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my
if that is done as handsomely; yes, even if it were the parish