mountain, its bottom far above the surface of other lakes, and, as

such a rush, as I hear, the other day at one of the offices to learn

is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again.

of mountains.

calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of

whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why

where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely,

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while

neighbor to the birds; not by having imprisoned one, but having

neighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him. Such was

All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a large

the sun arose, I saw it throwing off its nightly clothing of mist,

wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts?

worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty

a thin crust insulated and floated even by this small sheet of

Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers

how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its

come in. The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may

distinguished elevated perhaps by a mirage in their seething valley,

to describe more at length, for convenience putting the experience

more to see it burn, since burn it must, and we, be it known, did

fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by

night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and

deadly slow?"

buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out some rocks,

surface of things. We think that that is which appears to be. If a

greedily, but go round and round it as long as I live, and be buried

that thing really is before a true gaze, and they would all go to

account of the realities he beheld there, we should not recognize

the most succinct and lucid reports under this head in the

as I have said.

paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a

thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but

deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I

paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which

learned the history of her crops for an average year, you never need

perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the

newspapers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign parts, a French

him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and

devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our

like a coin in a basin, all the earth beyond the pond appeared like

often safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I never read any

places in some remote and more celestial corner of the system,

mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to release

the pond it impressed me like a tarn high up on the side of a

stand before the door, and whence each blasted tree could be seen to

face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces,

many times this morning, nor a boy, nor a woman, I might almost say,

recently cut off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the

man should walk through this town and see only the reality, where,

standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and

just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a

builder. It was suggestive somewhat as a picture in outlines. I

within had lost none of its freshness. It was not so much within

experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo book, that

maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous

reflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were

Battle Ground; but I was so low in the woods that the opposite

stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches

mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which

you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so

of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.

remarked: What a worthy messenger! What a worthy messenger!" The

horizon, tinged with blue. Indeed, by standing on tiptoe I could

mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the

reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself so much the more

in it first, that it may please me the more at last.

go, let the bells ring and the children cry -- determined to make a

native city, was brought up by a forester, and, growing up to

cutting down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up some young

still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who play

Did hourly feed him by."

spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never

cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might

should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are like.

any more of his improvements. To enjoy these advantages I was ready

whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little

smaller and more thrilling songsters of the forest which never, or

awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some

rich man without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the

Old Cato, whose "De Re Rustica" is my "Cultivator," says -- and

the midst of an extensive wood between that town and Lincoln, and

been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up

its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries

these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts;

man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can

religion, till we come to九*九*藏*書 a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we

to carry it on; like Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders -- I

afford to let alone.

art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date

heavens own mint, and also of some portion of the village. But in

several farms -- the refusal was all I wanted -- but I never got my

thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquitos wing that

perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the

pay for it and be unmolested in my possession of it; for I knew all

through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord,

we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with

is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep.

universe. If it were worth the while to settle in those parts near

"I am monarch of all I survey,

does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more

The Harivansa says, "An abode without birds is like a meat without

are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is

at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not

and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe,

Though the view from my door was still more contracted, I did

But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible

above all, the recollection I had of it from my earliest voyages up

attend to that thing again, unless your speculations are of a merely

Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those

there is hardly a man on his farm in the outskirts of Concord,

left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest

and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the

called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this

that there are very few important communications made through it.

of a gentle rain-storm in August, when, both air and water being

disturbance. I discovered that my house actually had its site in

Nights Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and

site for a house not likely to be soon improved, which some might

sent a man to Khoung-tseu to know his news. Khoung-tseu caused the

called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over

pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which form the shore

time in the right proportions -- they may have changed the names a

wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the owner gave me

head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout

landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it yielded

freely a vast horizon" -- said Damodara, when his herds required new

The present was my next experiment of this kind, which I purpose

in your neighborhood, to give buoyancy to and float the earth. One

so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external

was but dry land.

attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there

which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be

shore arose stretched away toward the prairies of the West and the

pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to

spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on

postage. The penny-post is, commonly, an institution through which

the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an

my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all

from such an hour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the

doubt that time discriminates between the good and the bad; and when

after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and

"Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on

had not been overcome with drowsiness, they would have performed

most distant horizon. For the first week, whenever I looked out on

falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast,

more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It

every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus surveyed

is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and

was never old! "Kieou-he-yu (great dignitary of the state of Wei)

"glorify God and enjoy him forever."

others.

morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up.

the best advantage; and then I let it lie, fallow, perchance, for a

the foreign news by the last arrival, that several large squares of

As for Spain, for instance, if you know how to throw in Don Carlos

in my life -- I wrote this some years ago -- that were worth the

not feel crowded or confined in the least. There was pasture enough

pecuniary character. If one may judge who rarely looks into the

I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for I had carried

proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of

memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or

more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has

took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my

sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop

gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company

mind; even put a higher price on it -- took everything but a deed of

distant mountain ranges in the northwest, those true-blue coins from

seeds ready. Many think that seeds improve with age. I have no

hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our

messenger to be seated near him, and questioned him in these terms:

with thundering voice, "Pause! Avast! Why so九_九_藏_書 seeming fast, but

or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future

discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the misconception

lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads

of his character was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince.

milk.

making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at

early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one

his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity,

way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it

exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every

stealthily withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the

To speak critically, I never received more than one or two letters

is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to

their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip. There was

a deed of it, his wife -- every man has such a wife -- changed her

half south of the village of Concord and somewhat higher than it, in

my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange

today to save nine tomorrow. As for work, we havent any of any

of the best things which I did. They say that characters were

the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live. In

boat, was a tent, which I used occasionally when making excursions

such a time; and the clear portion of the air above it being,

and larger pastures.

scale -- I have always cultivated a garden -- was, that I had had my

boat, after passing from hand to hand, has gone down the stream of

newspapers: and as for England, almost the last significant scrap of

wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the

wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few

see that earth is not continent but insular. This is as important

exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life.

has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.

interverting water, and I was reminded that this on which I dwelt

property from the flames, but, if we will confess the truth, much

What should we think of the shepherds life if his flocks always

from shore to shore. A lake like this is never smoother than at

ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had

other directions, even from this point, I could not see over or

life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who

establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own

more it will please you, if it is good." I think I shall not buy

bear its fruit, and prove itself to be good, no less than the light.

outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and

slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish

the only translation I have seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage

When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to

such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken

an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they

into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with

season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least

weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at

so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I

are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They

but would forsake all and follow that sound, not mainly to save

let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring

only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual

something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but

to be bought, and I knew their price. I walked over each farmers

morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied

when I had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him to carry it on. This

cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our

while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.

race with which he lived. One of his fathers ministers having

actual possession was when I bought the Hollowell place, and had

experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of real-estate

broad field; its bounding on the river, which the owner said

time. With this more substantial shelter about me, I had made some

through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your

morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the

such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian

music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air --

After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul of man, or

beyond the woods which surrounded me. It is well to have some water

breaking up of some nocturnal conventicle. The very dew seemed to

elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a

quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man

My right there is none to dispute."

clad, was a sort of crystallization around me, and reacted on the

despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way.

through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition,

such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of the

maples, through which I heard the house-dog bark. I was in haste to

servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and

sedes, a seat? -- better if a country seat. I discovered many a

consequence. We have the Saint Vitus dance, and cannot possibly

have thought too far from the read.99csw.comvillage, but to my eyes the village

value even of the smallest well is, that when you look into it you

So soul," continues the Hindoo philosopher, "from the circumstances

the place in his description. Look at a meeting-house, or a

it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten

This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals

heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito

those things which had no other motive or excuse but that I might

had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for

has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never

of rest at the end of the week -- for Sunday is the fit conclusion

could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homers

that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my

lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have

us as good an idea of the exact state or ruin of things in Spain as

window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the

you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad

commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride

whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us

everywhere.

cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I

not set it on fire -- or to see it put out, and have a hand in it,

having a point dappui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place

what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I

determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a

think it enough to go round it once. The oftener you go there the

As were the mounts whereon his flocks

murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel

again what noble life it can make. All memorable events, I should

finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain,

I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most

of an ill-spent week, and not the fresh and brave beginning of a new

serenity of evening, and the wood thrush sang around, and was heard

virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness.

kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed

children of Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise. To him whose

are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth

birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, had made

important. From a hill-top near by, where the wood had been

After a nights sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast.

think you, would the "Mill-dam" go to? If he should give us an

trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were

place their houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated. An

imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were

they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary

ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what

three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a

had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is

news from that quarter was the revolution of 1649; and if you have

aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial

and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth

was too far from it. Well, there I might live, I said; and there I

live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether

steppes of Tartary, affording ample room for all the roving families

born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way

directions to be waked every half-hour, doubtless for no other

about two miles south of that our only field known to fame, Concord

The only house I had been the owner of before, if I except a

church itself. Hardly a man takes a half-hours nap after dinner,

To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was

Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have

say, transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The

few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and

revolution not excepted.

parish bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without setting the bell,

keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this

reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only,

other entertainments fail, it will be true to the letter, and give

broker by my friends. Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the

The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were: its

to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not

barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between

seasoning." Such was not my abode, for I found myself suddenly

and fore paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through

but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, "Whats the news?"

did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how I could

business.

life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it

shore, half a mile off, like the rest, covered with wood, was my

this peak toward the Sudbury meadows, which in time of flood I

there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other

fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This

begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make a

requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own

it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed

master desires to diminish the number of his faults, buｒｅａｄ•９９cｓｗ•ｃｏmt he cannot

court-house, or a jail, or a shop, or a dwelling-house, and say what

one -- with this one other draggle-tail of a sermon, should shout

nightly by astronomers. We are wont to imagine rare and delectable

valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he

five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it

present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and

critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry

traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation

be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to

will begin to mine.

only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and

without a wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes,

information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how

"there was a kings son, who, being expelled in infancy from his

Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be

forever again." I can understand that. Morning brings back the

uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have

progress toward settling in the world. This frame, so slightly

simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a

gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to

earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I

Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not

doors as behind a door where I sat, even in the rainiest weather.

really there, or at an equal remoteness from the life which I had

plate glass belonging to the establishment were broken by the

chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and

through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and

of men. "There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy

this globe" -- and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man

instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. The

in the winter -- we never need read of another. One is enough. If

behind the constellation of Cassiopeias Chair, far from noise and

That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier,

over the near green hills to some distant and higher ones in the

caged myself near them. I was not only nearer to some of those

My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to

uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and

At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider

of two years into one. As I have said, I do not propose to write an

mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a

little since I saw the papers -- and serve up a bull-fight when

can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin,

nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and

Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink

shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and

danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With

which I had visited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered

that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive

simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have

nawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should have; but

afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard, wood-lot, and

those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man,

And held his thoughts as high

on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when

dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave

unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another

What news! how much more important to know what that is which

that part of creation where I had squatted;

as that it keeps butter cool. When I looked across the pond from

if that is done as handsomely; yes, even if it were the parish

engraven on the bathing tub of King Tchingthang to this effect:

never heard what compensation he received for that -- and do all

fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable

somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to

to the Pleiades or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then I was

fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that I came to

parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most

it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to

pressure -- news which I seriously think a ready wit might write a

For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think

preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy farmers on their day

cultivated it, and him too to some extent, I trust, and withdrew

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but

hang upon the trees later into the day than usual, as on the sides

in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until the truth

know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in

day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let

many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable

necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of

hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and

his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to

-- "When you think of getting a farm turn it thus in your mind, not

twelve-month, or twelve years, beforehand with sufficient accuracy.

Let us settle ourselves, and work and w九-九-藏-書edge our feet downward

life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all

catch a glimpse of some of the peaks of the still bluer and more

apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual

did not need to go outdoors to take the air, for the atmosphere

and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with

strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning

rarely, serenade a villager -- the wood thrush, the veery, the

as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give

us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal

without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough,

are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel

universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions;

not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they

boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you

What is your master doing? The messenger answered with respect: My

When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and

this might be done.

in the summer, and this is still rolled up in my garret; but the

auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain

protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that was

front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn

it -- took his word for his deed, for I dearly love to talk --

here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never

"Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and

"There was a shepherd that did live,

purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed.

and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which

Vedas say, "All intelligences awake with the morning." Poetry and

expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not

which commonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those

suggested a stream flowing out in that direction through a wooded

attracted me. Where I lived was as far off as many a region viewed

complete retirement, being, about two miles from the village, half a

pieces in your account of them. Men esteem truth remote, in the

the river, when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red

highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its

instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is

mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we

come to the end of them. The messenger being gone, the philosopher

valley, but stream there was none. That way I looked between and

make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great

materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a

ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the

cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best

cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. However,

has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not

laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding

somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes

life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its

imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this

Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that

me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees,

encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate

keep our heads still. If I should only give a few pulls at the

as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you

my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my

scarlet tanager, the field sparrow, the whip-poor-will, and many

and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown

you are committed to a farm or the county jail.

it far enough; or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for

at last I shall plant, I shall be less likely to be disappointed.

for my imagination. The low shrub oak plateau to which the opposite

I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a

quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?

wanted, if I could only afford to let it alone. But it turned out

details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and

notwithstanding that press of engagements which was his excuse so

wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; a

yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at

and the Infanta, and Don Pedro and Seville and Granada, from time to

the while that it would yield the most abundant crop of the kind I

landscape radiated from me accordingly. What is a house but a

premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with him,

so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite

least could accomplish it.

Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need

have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was

to a higher life than we fell asleep from; and thus the darkness

be Brahme." I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by

Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are

sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and

to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add

are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay