After sitring in my chamber many days, reading the
poets, I have been out early on a foggy morning, and
heard the cry of an owl in a neighboring wood as from a
nature behind the common, unexplored by science or by
literature. None of the feathered race has yet realized
my youthful conceptions of the woodland depths. I had
seen the red Election-bird brought from their recesses on
my comrades' string, and fancied that their plumage
would assume stranger and more dazzling colors, like the
tints of evening, in proportion as I advanced further into
the darkness and solitude of the forest. Still less have I
seen such strong and wild tints on any poet's string


These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not
affect me as those more venerable arts of hunting and
fishing, and even of husbandry in its primitive and simple
form; as ancient and honorable trades as the sun and moon
and winds pursue, coeval with the faculties of man,
and invented when these were invented. We do not know
their John Gutenberg, or Richard Arkwright, though
the poets would fain make them to have been gradually
learned and taught. According to Gower,

" And Iadahel, as saith the boke,
Firste made nette, and fishes toke.
Of huntyng eke he fond the chace,
Whiche nowe is knowe in many place;
A tent of clothe, with corde and stake,
He sette up first, and did it make."

Also, Lydgate says :

Jason first sayled, in story it is tolde,
Toward Colchos, to Wynne the flees of golde.
Ceres the Goddess fond first the tilthe of londe;


62 A WEEK.

Also, Aristeiis fonde first the usage

Of mylke, and cruddis, and of honey swote;

Peryodes, for grete avauntage,

From flyntes smote fuyre, daryng in the roote."

We read that Aristeus " obtained of Jupiter and Nep-
tune, that the pestilential heat of the dog days, wherein
was great mortality, should be mitigated with wind."
This is one of those dateless benefits conferred on man,
which have no record in our vulgar day, though we still
find some similitude to them in our dreams, in which we
have a more liberal and juster apprehension of things, un-
constrained by habit, which is then in some measure put
off, and divested of memory, which we call history.

According to fable, when the island of ^Egina was de-
populated by sickness, at the instance of JEacus, Jupiter
turned the ants into men, that is, as some think, he made
men of the inhabitants who lived meanly like ants. This
is perhaps the fullest history of those early days extant.


The fable which is naturally and truly composed, so
as to satisfy the imagination, ere it addresses the under-
standing, beautiful though strange as a wild flower, is to
the wise man an apothegm, and admits of his most gen-
erous interpretation. When we read that Bacchus made
the Tyrrhenian mariners mad, so that they leapt into the
sea, mistaking it for a meadow full of flowers, and so be-
came dolphins, we are not concerned about the historical
truth of this, but rather a higher poetical truth. We seem
to hear the music of a thought, and care not if the under-
standing be not gratified. For their beauty, consider the
fables of Narcissus, of Endymion, of Memnon son of


Morning, the representative of all promising youths who
have died a premature death, and whose memory is me-
lodiously prolonged to the latest morning; the beautiful
stories of Phaeton, and of the Sirens whose isle shone afar
off white with the bones of unburied men; and the preg-
nant ones of Pan, Prometheus, and the Sphynx; and that
long list of names which have already become part of the
universal language of civilized men, and from proper are
becoming common names or nouns, — theSibyls, the Eu-
menides, the Parcse, the Graces, the Muses, Nemesis, &,c.
It is interesting to observe with what singular unani-
mity the furthest sundered nations and generations consent
to give completeness and roundness to an ancient fable,
of which they indistinctly appreciate the beauty or the
truth. By a faint and dream-like effort, though it be only
by the vote of a scientific body, the dullest posterity slowly
add some trait to the mythus. As when astronomers call
the lately discovered planet Neptune; or the asteroid As-
trsea, that the Virgin who was driven from earth to heaven
at the end of the golden age, may have her local habita-
tion in the heavens more distinctly assigned her, — for the
slightest recognition of poetic worth is significant. By
such slow aggregation has mythology grown from the
first. The very nursery tales of this generation, were the
nursery tales of primeval races. They migrate from east
to west, and again from to west to east; now expanded into
the ' tale divine ' of bards, now shrunk into a popular
rhyme. This is an approach to that universal language
which men have sought in vain. This fond reiteration
of the oldest expressions of truth by the latest posterity,
content with slightly and religiously re-touching the old
material, is the most impressive proof of a common hu-
manity.


64 A WEEK.

All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, Chris-
tians, and Mahometans, and the same translated suffice
for all. All men are children, and of one family. The
same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the
morning. Joseph Wolff, the missionary, distributed co-
pies of Robinson Crusoe, translated into Arabic, among
the Arabs, and they made a great sensation. " Robinson
Crusoe's adventures and wisdom," says he, " were read
by Mahometans in the market-places of Sanaa, Hody-
eda, and Loheya, and admired and believed! " On read-
ing the book, the Arabians exclaimed, " Oh, that Robinson
Crusoe must have been a great prophet!"

To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient
history and biography. So far from being false or fabu-
lous in the common sense, it contains only enduring and
essential truth, the I and you, the here and there, the now
and then, being omitted. Either time or rare wisdom
writes it. Before printing was discovered, a century was
equal to a thousand years. The poet is he who can write
some pure mythology to-day without the aid of posterity.
In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have
told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sen-
tence for our classical dictionary, — and then, perchance,
have stuck up their names to shine in some corner of the
firmament. We moderns, on the other hand, collect only
the raw materials of biography and history, " memoirs to
serve for a history," which itself is but materials to serve
for a mythology. How many volumes folio would the Life
and Labors of Prometheus have filled, if perchance it had
fallen, as perchance it did first, in days of cheap printing!
Who knows what shape the fable of Columbus will at
length assume, to be confounded with that of Jason and
the expedition of the Argonauts. And Franklin, — there


SUNDAY. 65

may be a line for him in the future classical dictionary,
recording what that demigod did, and referring him to

some new geneaology. " Son of and .

He aided the Americans to gain their independence, in-
structed mankind in economy, and drew down lightning
from the clouds."

The hidden significance of these fables which is some-
times thought to have been detected, the ethics running
parallel to the poetry and history, are not so remarkable
as the readiness with which they may be made to express
a variety of truths. As if they were the skeletons of still
older and more universal truths than any whose flesh and
blood they are for the time made to wear. It is like striv-
ing to make the sun, or the wind, or the sea, symbols to
signify exclusively the particular thoughts of our day.
But what signifies it? In the mythus a superhuman in-
telligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of
men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the
the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy
fables precede the noon-day thoughts of men, as Aurora
the sun's rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keep-
ing in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in
this auroral atmosphere.


As we said before, the Concord is a dead stream, but
its scenery is the more suggestive to the contemplative voy-
ager, and this day its water was fuller of reflections ihan
our pages even. Just before it reaches the falls in Bille-
rica it is contracted, and becomes swifter and shallower,
with a yellow pebbly bottom, hardly passable for a canal
boat, leaving the broader and more stagnant portion above

6*


66 A WEEK.

like a lake among the hills. All through the Concord,
Bedford, and Billerica meadows, we had heard no murmur
from its stream, except where some tributary runnel tum-
bled in, —

Some tumultuous little rill,

Purling round its storied pebble,
Tinkling to the self-same tune,
From September until June,

Which no drought doth e'er enfeeble.

Silent flows the parent stream,

And if rooks do lie below,
Smothers with her waves the din,
As it were a youthful sin,

Just as still, and just as slow.

But now at length we heard this staid and primitive
river rushing to her fall, like any rill. We here left, its
channel, just above the Billerica Falls, and entered the
canal, which runs, or rather is conducted, six miles
through the woods to the Merrimack at Middlesex, and
as we did not care to loiter in this part of our voyage,
while one ran along the tow-path drawing the boat by
a cord, the other kept it off the shore with a pole, so
that we accomplished the whole distance in little more
than an hour. This canal, which is the oldest in the
country, and has even an antique look beside the more
modern-railroads, is fed by the Concord, so that we were
still floating on its familiar waters. It is so much water
which the river lets for the advantage of commerce.
There appeared some want of harmony in its scenery,
since it was not of equal date with the woods and
meadows through which it is led, nd we missed the
conciliatory influence of time on land and water; but in
the lapse of ages, Nature will recover and indemnify her-


SUNDAY. 67

self, and gradually plant fit shrubs and flowers along its
borders. Already the kingfisher sat upon a pine over the
water, and the bream and pickerel swam below. Thus
all works pass directly out of the hands of the architect
into the hands of Nature, to be perfected.

It was a retired and pleasant route, without houses or
travellers, except some young men who were lounging
upon a bridge in Chelmsford, who leaned impudently
over the rails to pry into our concerns, but we caught the
eye of the most forward, and looked at him till he was
visibly discomfited. Not that there was any peculiar
efficacy in our look, but rather a sense of shame left in
him which disarmed him.

It is a very true and expressive phrase, "He looked
daggers at me," for the first pattern and prototype of all
daggers must have been a glance of the eye. First, there
was the glance of Jove's eye, then his fiery bolt, then, the
material gradually hardening, tridents, spears, javelins,
and finally, for the convenience of private men, daggers,
krisses, and so forth, were invented. It is wonderful how
we get about the streets without being wounded by these
delicate and glancing weapons, a man can so nimbly whip
out his rapier, or without being noticed carry it unsheath-
ed. Yet after all, it is rare that one gets seriously looked
at.

As we passed under the last bridge over the canal, just
before reaching the Merrimack, the people coming out of
church paused to look at us from above, and apparently,
so strong is custom, indulged in some heathenish com-
parisons; but we were the truest observers of this sunny
day. According to Hesiod,

" The seventh is a holy day,
For then Latona brought forth golden-rayed Apollo,"


68 A WEEK.

and by our reckoning this was the seventh day of the
week, and not the first. I find among the papers of an
old Justice of the Peace and Deacon of the town of Con-
cord, this singular memorandum, which is worth preserv-
ing as a relic of an ancient custom. After reforming the
spelling and grammar, it runs as follows: — "Men that
travelled with teams on the Sabbath, Dec. 18th, 1803,
were Jeremiah Richardson and Jonas Parker, both of
Shirley. They had teams with rigging such as is used to
carry barrels, and they were travelling westward. Rich-
ardson was questioned by the Hon. Ephraim Wood, Esq.,
and he said that Jonas Parker was his fellow traveller, and
he further said that a Mr. Longley was his employer, who
promised to bear him out." We were the men that were
gliding northward, this Sept. 1st, 1839, with still team,
and rigging not the most convenient to carry barrels, un-
questioned by any Squire or Church Deacon, and ready
to bear ourselves out, if need were. In the latter part of
the seventeenth century, according to the historian of
Dunstable, " Towns were directed to erect ' a cage ' near
the meeting-house, and in this all offenders against the
sanctity of the Sabbath were confined." Society has relax-
ed a little from its strictness, one would say, but I presume
that there is not less religion than formerly. If the liga-
ture is found to be loosened in one part, it is only drawn
the tighter in another.

You can hardly convince a man of an error in a life-
time, but must content yourself with the reflection that
the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced,
his grand-children may be. The geologists tell us that it
took one hundred years to prove that fossils are organic,
and one hundred and fifty more, to prove that they are
not to be referred to the Noachian delude. I am not sure


69


but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal di-
vinities of Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jeho-
vah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more
absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than
Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, among gods,
not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate
and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the
Greeks. I should fear the infinite power and inflexible
justice of the almighty mortal, hardly as yet apotheosized,
so wholly masculine, with no sister Juno, no-ApolIo, no
Venus, nor Minerva, to intercede for me, -d-vum cpvilovou ts,
yijSo^tirrj re. The Grecian are youthful and erring and
fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many important
Inspects essentially of the divine race. Jn my Pantheon,
Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face,
his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his
crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe;
for the great God Pan is not dead, as was rumored. Per-
haps of all the gods of New England and of ancient
Greece, I am most constant at his shrine.

It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped
in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears
a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and re-
spectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one
another, not yet God. If I thought that I could speak
with discrimination and impartiality of the nations of
Christendom, I should praise them, but it tasks me too
much. They seem to be the most civil and humane, but
I may be mistaken. Every people have gods to suit their
circumstances; the Society Islanders had a god called
Toahitu, " in shape like a dog; he saved such as were in
danger of falling from rocks and trees." I think that we
can do without him, as we have not much climbing to do.


70 A WEEK.

Among them a man could make himself a god out of a
piece of wood in a few minutes, which would frighten him
out of his wits.

I fancy that some indefatigable spinster of the old
school, who had the supreme felicity to be born in " days
that tried men's souls," hearing this, may say with Nestor,
another of the old school, " But you are younger than I.
For time was when I conversed with greater men than
you. For not at any time have I seen such men nor shall
see them, as Perithous, and Dryas, and noiusva Zauv,"
that is probably Washington, sole " Shepherd of the
People." And when Apollo has now six times rolled
westward, or seemed to roll, and now for the sixth time
shows his face in the east, eyes well nigh glazed, long
glassed, which have fluctuated only between lamb's wool
and worsted, explore ceaselessly some good sermon book.
For six days shalt thou labor and do all thy knitting, but
on the seventh, forsooth, thy reading. Happy we who can
bask in this warm September sun, which illumines all
creatures, as well when they rest as when they toil, not
without a feeling of gratitude; whose life is as blame-
less, how blame-worthy soever it may be, on the Lord's
Mona-day as on his Suna-day.

There are various, nay incredible faiths; why should
we be alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God
believes. Long as I have lived, and many blasphemers
as I have heard and seen, I have never yet heard or wit-
nessed any direct and conscious blasphemy or irreverence;
but of indirect and habitual enough. Where is the man
who is guilty of direct and personal insolence to Him that
made him? — Yet there are certain current expressions
of blasphemous modes of viewing things, — as, frequently,
when we say, " He is doing a good business," — more pro-


71


fane than cursing and swearing. There is sin and death
in such words. Let not the children hear them. — My
neighbor says that his hill farm is " poor stuff," " only fit to
hold the world together," — and much more to that effect.
He deserves that God should give him a better for so free
a treating of his gifts, more than if he patiently put up
therewith. But perhaps my farmer forgets that his lean
soil has sharpened his wits. This is a crop it was good for.

One memorable addition to the old mythology is due to
this era, — the Christian fable. With what pains, and
tears, and blood, these centuries have woven this and
added it to the mythology of mankind. The new Pro-
metheus. With what miraculous consent, and patience,
and persistency, has this mythus been stamped upon the
memory of the race? It would seem as if it were in the
progress of our mythology to dethrone Jehovah, and crown
Christ in his stead.

If it is not a tragical life we live, then I know not what
to call it. Such a story as that of Jesus Christ, — the his-
tory of Jerusalem, say, being a part of the Universal
History. The naked, the embalmed, unburied death of
Jerusalem amid its desolate hills, — think of it. In Tas-
so's poem I trust some things are sweetly buried. Consider
the snappish tenacity with which they preach Christianity
still. What are time and space to Christianity, eighteen
hundred years, and a new world? — that the humble life
of a Jewish peasant should have force to make a New
York bishop so bigoted. Forty-four lamps, the gift of
kings, now burning in a place called the Holy Sepul-
chre;— a church bell ringing; — some unaffected tears
shed by a pilgrim on Mount Calvary within the week. —

" Jerusalem, Jerusalem, when I forget thee, may my
right hand forget her cunning."


72 A WEEK,

" By the waters of Babylon there we sat down, and we
wept when we remembered Zion."

I trust that some may be as near and dear to Buddha
or Christ, or Swedenborg, who are without the pale of
their churches. It is necessary not to be Christian, to '
appreciate the beauty and significance of the life of
Christ. I know that some will have hard thoughts of me,
when they hear their Christ named beside my Buddha,
yet I am sure that I am willing they should love their
Christ more than my Buddha, for the love is the main
thing, and I like him too. Why need Christians be still
intolerant and superstitious? The simple minded sailors
were unwilling to cast overboard Jonah at his own re-
quest. —

" Where is this love become in later age 1
Alas! 'tis gone in endless pilgrimage
From hence, and never to return, I doubt,
Till revolution wheel those times about."

One man says, —

" The world 's a popular disease, that reigns
Within the froward heart and frantic brains
Of poor distempered mortals."

Another that

" all the world 's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players."

The world is a strange place for a play-house to stand
within it. Old Drayton thought that a man that lived
here, and would be a poet, for instance, should have in
him certain "brave translunary things," and a "fine
madness " should possess his brain. Certainly it were as


SUNDAV. 73

well, that he might be up to the occasion. That is a
superfluous wonder, which Dr. Johnson expresses at the
assertion of Sir Thomas Browne, that " his life has been a
miracle of thirty years, which to relate, were not history,
but a piece of poetry, and would sound like a fable." The
wonder is rather that all men do not assert as much.

Think what a mean and wretched place this world is;
that half the time we have to light a lamp that we may see
to live in it. This is half our life. Who would under-
take the enterprise if it were all 1 And, pray, what more
has day to offer? A lamp that burns more clear, a purer
oil, say winter-strained, that so we may pursue our idle-
ness with less obstruction. Bribed with a little sunlight
and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave
off his wrath with hymns.

I make ye an offer,
Ye gods, hear the scoffer,
The scheme will not hurt you,
If ye will find goodness, I will find virtue
Though I am your creature,
And child of your nature,
I have pride still unbended,
And blood undescended,
Some free independence,
And my own descendants.
I cannot toil blindly,
Though ye behave kindly,
And I swear by the rood,
I'll be slave to no God.
If ye will deal plainly,
I will strive mainly,
If ye will discover,
Great plans to your lover,
And give him a sphere
Somewhat larger than here.
7


74 A WEEK.


" Verily, my angels! I was abashed on account of my
servant, who had no Providence but me; therefore did I
pardon him." — The Gulistan of Sadi.


Most people with whom I talk, men and women even
of some originality and genius, have their scheme of the
universe all cut and dried, — very dry, I assure you, to
hear, dry enough to burn, dry-rotted and powder-post,
methinks, — which they set up between you and them in
the shortest intercourse; an ancient and tottering frame
with all its boards blown off. They do not walk without
their bed. Some to me seemingly very unimportant and
unsubstantial things and relations, are for them everlast-
ingly settled, — as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the
like. These are like the everlasting hills to them. But
in all my wanderings, I never came across the least vestige
of authority for these things. They have not left so dis-
tinct a trace as the delicate flower of a remote geological
period on the coal in my grate. The wisest man preaches
no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not
even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky. If *
I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the
medium through which I see is clearer. To see from
earth to heaven, and see there standing, still a fixture,
that old Jewish scheme! What right have you to hold up
this obstacle to my understanding you, to your understand-
ing me! You did not invent it; it was imposed on you.
Examine your authority. Even Christ, we fear, had his
scheme, his conformity to tradition, which slightly vitiates
his teaching. He had not swallowed all formulas. He
preached some mere doctrines. As for me, Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, are now only the subtilest imaginable essences,


75


which would not stain the morning sky. Your scheme
must be the frame-work of the universe; all other schemes
will soon be ruins. The perfect God in his revelations of
himself has never got to the length of one such proposi-
tion as you, his prophets, state. Have you learned the
alphabet of heaven, and can count three 1 Do you know
the number of God's family? Can you put mysteries into
words? Do you presume to fable of the ineffable 1 Pray,
what geographer are you, that speak of heaven's topogra-
phy? Whose friend are you that speak of God's person-
ality? Do you, Miles Howard, think that he has made
you his confidant? Tell me of the height of the moun-
tains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may
believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty,
and I shall pronounce thee mad. Yet we have a sort of
family history of our God, — so have the Tahitians of
theirs, — and some old poet's grand imagination is im-
posed on us as adamantine everlasting truth, and God's
own word!

The New Testament is an invaluable book, though I con-
fess to having been slightly prejudiced against it in my
very early days by the church and the Sabbath school, so
that it seemed, before I read it, to be the yellowest book
in the catalogue. Yet I early escaped from their meshes.
It was hard to get the commentaries out of one's head,
and taste its true flavor. — I think that Pilgrim's Progress
is the best sermon which has been preached from this text;
almost all other sermons that I have heard or heard of,
have been but poor imitations of this. — It would be a poor
story to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ, because
the book has been edited by Christians. In fact, I love
this book rarely, though it is a sort of castle in the air to


76 A WEEK.

me, which I am permitted to dream. Having come to it
so recently and freshly, it has the greater charm, so that
I cannot find any to talk with about it. I never read a
novel, they have so little real life and thought in them.
The reading which I love best is the scriptures of the
several nations, though it happens that I am better ac-
quainted with those of the Hindoos, the Chinese, and the
Persians, than of the Hebrews, which I have come to last.
Give me one of these Bibles, and you have silenced me
for a while. When I recover the use of my tongue, I am
wont to worry my neighbors with the new sentences, but
commonly they cannot see that there is any wit in them.
Such has been my experience with the New Testament.
I have not yet got to the crucifixion, I have read it over
so many times. I should love dearly to read it aloud to my
friends, some of whom are seriously inclined; it is so good,
and I am sure that they have never heard it, it fits their
case exactly, and we should enjoy it so much together, —
but I instinctively despair of getting their ears. They
soon show by signs not to be mistaken, that it is inex-
pressibly wearisome to them. I do not mean to imply
that I am any better than my neighbors; for, alas! I know
that I am only as good, though I love better books than
they. It is remarkable, that notwithstanding the universal
favor with which the New Testament is outwardly re-
ceived, and even the bigotry with which it is defended,
there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation
of, the order of truth with which it deals. I know of no
book that has so few readers. There is none so truly
strange, and heretical, and unpopular. To Christians, no
less than Greeks and Jews, it is foolishness and a stum-
bling block. There are, indeed, severe things in it which
no man should read aloud but once. — "Seek first the


SUNDAY. 77

kingdom of heaven." — " Lay not up for yourselves treas-
ures on earth." — "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell
that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have
treasure in heaven." — " For what is a man profited, if he
shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or
what shall a man give in exchange for his soul 1 " — Think
of this, Yankees! — " Verily I say unto you, if ye have
faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this
mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall
remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you." —
Think of repeating these things to a New England audi-
ence! thirdly, fourthly, fifteenthly, till there are three
barrels of sermons! Who, without cant, can read them
aloud 1 Who, without cant, can [hear them, and not go
out of the meeting-house 1 They never were read, they
never were heard. Let but one of these sentences be
rightly read from any pulpit in the land, and there would
not be left one stone of that meeting-house upon another.


Yet the New Testament treats of man and man's so-
called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too con-
stantly moral and personal, to alone content me, who am
not interested solely in man's religious or moral nature,
or in man even. I have not the most definite designs on
the future. Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you
would that they should do unto you, is by no means a
golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest
man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden
not. to have any rule at all in such a case. The book has
never been written which is to be accepted without any
allowance. Christ was a sublime actor on the stage of the
world. He knew what he was thinking of when he said,

7*


78 A WEEK.

" Heaven and earth shall pass away, but ray words shall
not pass away." I draw near to him at such a time. Yet
he taught mankind but imperfectly how to live; his
thoughts were all directed toward another world. There
is another kind of success than his. Even here we have
a sort of living to get, and must buffet it somewhat longer.
There are various tough problems yet to solve, and we
must make shift to live, betwixt spirit and matter, such a
human life as we can.

A healthy man, with steady employment, as wood chop-
ping at fifty cents a cord, and a camp in the woods, will
not be a good subject for Christianity. The New Tes-
tament may be a choice book to him on some, but not on
all or most of his days. He will rather go a fishing in his
leisure hours. The apostles, though they were fishers
too, were of the solemn race of sea-fishers, and never
trolled for pickerel on inland streams.

Men have a singular desire to be good without being
good for any thing, because, perchance, they think vaguely
that so it will be good for them in the end. The sort of
morality which the priest inculcates is a very subtle
policy, far finer than the politicians, and the world is very
successfully ruled by them as the police-men. It is not
worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always.
The conscience really does not, and ought not to, monopo-
lize the whole of our lives, any more than the heart or
the head. It is as liable to disease as any other part. I
have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to
former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt
children, and at length gave them no peace. They did
not know when to swallow their cud, and their lives of
course yielded no milk.


SUNDAY. 79

Conscience is instinct bred in the house,

Feeling and Thinking propagate the sin

By an unnatural breeding in and in.

I say, Turn it out doors,

Into the moors.

I love a life whose plot is simple,

And does not thicken with every pimple;

A soul so sound no sickly conscience binds it,

That makes the universe no worse than 't finds it.

I love an earnest soul,

Whose mighty joy and sorrow

Are not drowned in a bowl,

And brought to life to-morrow;

That lives one tragedy,

And not seventy;

A conscience worth keeping,

Laughing not weeping;

A conscience wise and steady,

And forever ready;

Not changing with events,

Dealing in compliments;

A conscience exercised about

Large things, where one may doubt.

I love a soul not all of wood,

Predestinated to be good,

But true to the backbone

Unto itself alone,

And false to none;

Born to its own affairs,

Its own joys and own cares;

By whom the work which God begun

Is finished, and not undone;

Taken up where he left off,

Whether to worship or to scoff;

If not good, why then evil,

If not good god, good devil.


80 A WEEK.

Goodness! — you hypocrite, come out of that,
Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
I have no patience towards
Such conscientious cowards.
Give me simple laboring folk,
Who love their work,
Whose virtue is a song
To cheer God along.

I was once reproved by a minister who was driving a
poor beast to some meeting-house horse-sheds among the
hills of New Hampshire, because I was bending my steps
to a mountain-top on the Sabbath, instead of a church,
when I would have gone further than he to hear a true
word spoken on that or any day. He declared that I was
" breaking the Lord's fourth commandment," and pro-
ceeded to enumerate, in a sepulchral tone, the disasters
which had befallen him whenever he had done any ordi-
nary work on the Sabbath. He really thought that a god
was at work to trip up those men who followed any se-
cular work on this day, and did not see that it was the
evil conscience of the workers that did it. The country
is full of this superstition, so that when one enters a vil-
lage, the church, not only really but from association, is
the ugliest looking building in it, because it is the one in
which human nature stoops the lowest and is most dis-
graced. Certainly, such temples as these shall ere long
cease to deform the landscape.

If I should ask the minister of Middlesex to let me
speak in his pulpit on a Sunday, he would object, because
I do not pray as he does, or because I am not ordained.
What under the sun are these things?

Really, there is no infidelity, now-a-days, so great as
that which prays, and keeps the Sabbath, and rebuilds the


SUNDAY. 81

churches. The sealer of the South Pacific preaches a
truer doctrine. The church is a sort of hospital for
men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for
their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pen-
sioners in their Retreat or Sailor's Snug Harbor, where
you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in
sunny weather. Let not the apprehension that he may
one day have to occupy a ward therein, discourage the
cheerful labors of the able-souled man. While he re-
members the sick in their extremities, let him not look
thither as to his goal. One is sick at heart of this pagoda
worship. It is like the beating of gongs in a Hindoo
subterranean temple. In dark places and dungeons the
preacher's words might perhaps strike root and grow, but
not in broad daylight in any part of the world that I
know. The sound of the Sabbath bell far away, now
breaking on these shores, does not awaken pleasing asso-
ciations, but melancholy and sombre ones rather. One
involuntarily rests on his oar, to humor his unusually
meditative mood. It is as the sound of many catechisms
and religious books twanging a canting peal round the
earth, seeming to issue from some Egyptian temple and
echo along the shore of the Nile, right opposite to Pha-
roah's palace and Moses in the bulrushes, startling a mul-
titude of storks and alligators basking in the sun.

Every where "good men" sound a retreat, and the
word has gone forth to fall back on innocence. Fall
forward rather on to whatever there is there. Chris-
tianity only hopes. It has hung its harp on the willows,
and cannot sing a song in a strange land. It has dreamed
a sad dream, and does not yet welcome the morning with
joy. The mother tells her falsehoods to her child, but
thank Heaven, the child does not grow up in its parent's


82 A WEEK.

shadow. Our mother's faith has not grown with her ex-
perience. Her experience has been too much for her.
The lesson of life was too hard for her to learn.

It is remarkable, that almost all speakers and writers
feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove
or to acknowledge the personality of God. Some Earl of
Bridgewater, thinking it better late than never, has pro-
vided for it in his will. It is a sad mistake. In reading
a work on agriculture, we have to skip the author's moral
reflections, and the words " Providence " and " He " scat-
tered along the page, to come at the profitable level of
what he has to say. What he calls his religion is for
the most part offensive to the nostrils. He should know
better than expose himself, and keep his foul sores covered
till they are quite healed. There is more religion in
men's science than there is science in their religion.
Let us make haste to the report of the committee on
swine.

A man's real faith is never contained in his creed, nor
is his creed an article of his faith. The last is never
adopted. This it is that permits him to smile ever, and
to live even as bravely as he does. And yet he clings
anxiously to his creed, as to a straw, thinking that that
does him good service because his sheet anchor does not
drag.

In most men's religion, the ligature, which should be
its umbilical cord connecting them with divinity, is rather
like that thread which the accomplices of Cylon held in
their hands when they went abroad from the temple of
Minerva, the other end being attached to the statue of the
goddess. But frequently, as in their case, the thread
breaks, being stretched, and they are left without an asy-
lum.


SUNDAY. 83

" A good and pious man reclined his head on the bosom of con-
templation, and was absorbed in the ocean of a revery. At the
instant when he awaked from his vision, one of his friends, by way
of pleasantry, said; What rare gift have you brought us from that
garden, where you have been recreating? He replied; I fancied
to myself and said, when I can reach the rose-bower, I will fill
my lap with the flowers, and bring them as a present to my
friends; but when I got there, the fragrance of the roses so in-
toxicated me, that the skirt dropped from my hands. ' O bird

of dawn! learn the warmth of affection from the moth; for that
scorched creature gave up the ghost, and uttered not a groan :
These vain pretenders are ignorant of him they seek after; for of
him that knew him we never heard again : — O thou! who tow-
erest above the flights of conjecture opinion and comprehension;
whatever has been reported of thee we have heard and read;
the congregation is dismissed, and life drawn to a close; and we
still rest at our first encomium of thee! ' " — Sadi.




Philosophy Interlude 3




The true and not despairing Friend will address his Friend in some such
terms as these.

“I never asked thy leave to let me love thee,—I have a right. I love
thee not as something private and personal, which is _your own_, but as
something universal and worthy of love, _which I have found_. O, how I
think of you! You are purely good, —you are infinitely good. I can
trust you forever. I did not think that humanity was so rich. Give me
an opportunity to live.”

“You are the fact in a fiction,—you are the truth more strange and
admirable than fiction. Consent only to be what you are. I alone will
never stand in your way.”

“This is what I would like,—to be as intimate with you as our spirits
are intimate,—respecting you as I respect my ideal. Never to profane
one another by word or action, even by a thought. Between us, if
necessary, let there be no acquaintance.”

“I have discovered you; how can you be concealed from me?”

The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will religiously accept
and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each
other's hopes. They are kind to each other's dreams.

Though the poet says, “'Tis the pre-eminence of Friendship to impute
excellence,” yet we can never praise our Friend, nor esteem him
praiseworthy, nor let him think that he can please us by any
_behavior_, or ever _treat_ us well enough. That kindness which has so
good a reputation elsewhere can least of all consist with this
relation, and no such affront can be offered to a Friend, as a
conscious good-will, a friendliness which is not a necessity of the
Friend's nature.

The sexes are naturally most strongly attracted to one another, by
constant constitutional differences, and are most commonly and surely
the complements of each other. How natural and easy it is for man to
secure the attention of woman to what interests himself. Men and women
of equal culture, thrown together, are sure to be of a certain value to
one another, more than men to men. There exists already a natural
disinterestedness and liberality in such society, and I think that any
man will more confidently carry his favorite books to read to some
circle of intelligent women, than to one of his own sex. The visit of
man to man is wont to be an interruption, but the sexes naturally
expect one another. Yet Friendship is no respecter of sex; and perhaps
it is more rare between the sexes than between two of the same sex.

Friendship is, at any rate, a relation of perfect equality. It cannot
well spare any outward sign of equal obligation and advantage. The
nobleman can never have a Friend among his retainers, nor the king
among his subjects. Not that the parties to it are in all respects
equal, but they are equal in all that respects or affects their
Friendship. The one's love is exactly balanced and represented by the
other's. Persons are only the vessels which contain the nectar, and the
hydrostatic paradox is the symbol of love's law. It finds its level and
rises to its fountain-head in all breasts, and its slenderest column
balances the ocean.

“And love as well the shepherd can
As can the mighty nobleman.”


The one sex is not, in this respect, more tender than the other.
A hero's love is as delicate as a maiden's.

Confucius said, “Never contract Friendship with a man who is not better
than thyself.” It is the merit and preservation of Friendship, that it
takes place on a level higher than the actual characters of the parties
would seem to warrant. The rays of light come to us in such a curve
that every man whom we meet appears to be taller than he actually is.
Such foundation has civility. My Friend is that one whom I can
associate with my choicest thought. I always assign to him a nobler
employment in my absence than I ever find him engaged in; and I imagine
that the hours which he devotes to me were snatched from a higher
society. The sorest insult which I ever received from a Friend was,
when he behaved with the license which only long and cheap acquaintance
allows to one's faults, in my presence, without shame, and still
addressed me in friendly accents. Beware, lest thy Friend learn at last
to tolerate one frailty of thine, and so an obstacle be raised to the
progress of thy love. There are times when we have had enough even of
our Friends, when we begin inevitably to profane one another, and must
withdraw religiously into solitude and silence, the better to prepare
ourselves for a loftier intimacy. Silence is the ambrosial night in the
intercourse of Friends, in which their sincerity is recruited and takes
deeper root.

Friendship is never established as an understood relation. Do you
demand that I be less your Friend that you may know it? Yet what right
have I to think that another cherishes so rare a sentiment for me? It
is a miracle which requires constant proofs. It is an exercise of the
purest imagination and the rarest faith. It says by a silent but
eloquent behavior,—“I will be so related to thee as thou canst imagine;
even so thou mayest believe. I will spend truth,—all my wealth on
thee,”—and the Friend responds silently through his nature and life,
and treats his Friend with the same divine courtesy. He knows us
literally through thick and thin. He never asks for a sign of love, but
can distinguish it by the features which it naturally wears. We never
need to stand upon ceremony with him with regard to his visits. Wait
not till I invite thee, but observe that I am glad to see thee when
thou comest. It would be paying too dear for thy visit to ask for it.
Where my Friend lives there are all riches and every attraction, and no
slight obstacle can keep me from him. Let me never have to tell thee
what I have not to tell. Let our intercourse be wholly above ourselves,
and draw us up to it.

The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings. It is an
intelligence above language. One imagines endless conversations with
his Friend, in which the tongue shall be loosed, and thoughts be spoken
without hesitancy or end; but the experience is commonly far otherwise.
Acquaintances may come and go, and have a word ready for every
occasion; but what puny word shall he utter whose very breath is
thought and meaning? Suppose you go to bid farewell to your Friend who
is setting out on a journey; what other outward sign do you know than
to shake his hand? Have you any palaver ready for him then? any box of
salve to commit to his pocket? any particular message to send by him?
any statement which you had forgotten to make?—as if you could forget
anything.—No, it is much that you take his hand and say Farewell; that
you could easily omit; so far custom has prevailed. It is even painful,
if he is to go, that he should linger so long. If he must go, let him
go quickly. Have you any _last_ words? Alas, it is only the word of
words, which you have so long sought and found not; _you_ have not a
_first_ word yet. There are few even whom I should venture to call
earnestly by their most proper names. A name pronounced is the
recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce
my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service.
Yet reserve is the freedom and abandonment of lovers. It is the reserve
of what is hostile or indifferent in their natures, to give place to
what is kindred and harmonious.

The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as that of hate. When it
is durable it is serene and equable. Even its famous pains begin only
with the ebb of love, for few are indeed lovers, though all would fain
be. It is one proof of a man's fitness for Friendship that he is able
to do without that which is cheap and passionate. A true Friendship is
as wise as it is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly to the
guidance of their love, and know no other law nor kindness. It is not
extravagant and insane, but what it says is something established
henceforth, and will bear to be stereotyped. It is a truer truth, it is
better and fairer news, and no time will ever shame it, or prove it
false. This is a plant which thrives best in a temperate zone, where
summer and winter alternate with one another. The Friend is a
_necessarius_, and meets his Friend on homely ground; not on carpets
and cushions, but on the ground and on rocks they will sit, obeying the
natural and primitive laws. They will meet without any outcry, and part
without loud sorrow. Their relation implies such qualities as the
warrior prizes; for it takes a valor to open the hearts of men as well
as the gates of castles. It is not an idle sympathy and mutual
consolation merely, but a heroic sympathy of aspiration and endeavor.

“When manhood shall be matched so
That fear can take no place,
Then weary _works_ make warriors
Each other to embrace.”


The Friendship which Wawatam testified for Henry the fur-trader, as
described in the latter's “Adventures,” so almost bare and leafless,
yet not blossomless nor fruitless, is remembered with satisfaction and
security. The stern, imperturbable warrior, after fasting, solitude,
and mortification of body, comes to the white man's lodge, and affirms
that he is the white brother whom he saw in his dream, and adopts him
henceforth. He buries the hatchet as it regards his friend, and they
hunt and feast and make maple-sugar together. “Metals unite from
fluxility; birds and beasts from motives of convenience; fools from
fear and stupidity; and just men at sight.” If Wawatam would taste the
“white man's milk” with his tribe, or take his bowl of human broth made
of the trader's fellow-countrymen, he first finds a place of safety for
his Friend, whom he has rescued from a similar fate. At length, after a
long winter of undisturbed and happy intercourse in the family of the
chieftain in the wilderness, hunting and fishing, they return in the
spring to Michilimackinac to dispose of their furs; and it becomes
necessary for Wawatam to take leave of his Friend at the Isle aux
Outardes, when the latter, to avoid his enemies, proceeded to the Sault
de Sainte Marie, supposing that they were to be separated for a short
time only. “We now exchanged farewells,” says Henry, “with an emotion
entirely reciprocal. I did not quit the lodge without the most grateful
sense of the many acts of goodness which I had experienced in it, nor
without the sincerest respect for the virtues which I had witnessed
among its members. All the family accompanied me to the beach; and the
canoe had no sooner put off than Wawatam commenced an address to the
Kichi Manito, beseeching him to take care of me, his brother, till we
should next meet. We had proceeded to too great a distance to allow of
our hearing his voice, before Wawatam had ceased to offer up his
prayers.” We never hear of him again.

Friendship is not so kind as is imagined; it has not much human blood
in it, but consists with a certain disregard for men and their
erections, the Christian duties and humanities, while it purifies the
air like electricity. There may be the sternest tragedy in the relation
of two more than usually innocent and true to their highest instincts.
We may call it an essentially heathenish intercourse, free and
irresponsible in its nature, and practising all the virtues
gratuitously. It is not the highest sympathy merely, but a pure and
lofty society, a fragmentary and godlike intercourse of ancient date,
still kept up at intervals, which, remembering itself, does not
hesitate to disregard the humbler rights and duties of humanity. It
requires immaculate and godlike qualities full-grown, and exists at all
only by condescension and anticipation of the remotest future. We love
nothing which is merely good and not fair, if such a thing is possible.
Nature puts some kind of blossom before every fruit, not simply a calyx
behind it. When the Friend comes out of his heathenism and
superstition, and breaks his idols, being converted by the precepts of
a newer testament; when he forgets his mythology, and treats his Friend
like a Christian, or as he can afford; then Friendship ceases to be
Friendship, and becomes charity; that principle which established the
almshouse is now beginning with its charity at home, and establishing
an almshouse and pauper relations there.

As for the number which this society admits, it is at any rate to be
begun with one, the noblest and greatest that we know, and whether the
world will ever carry it further, whether, as Chaucer affirms,

“There be mo sterres in the skie than a pair,”


remains to be proved;

“And certaine he is well begone
Among a thousand that findeth one.”


We shall not surrender ourselves heartily to any while we are conscious
that another is more deserving of our love. Yet Friendship does not
stand for numbers; the Friend does not count his Friends on his
fingers; they are not numerable. The more there are included by this
bond, if they are indeed included, the rarer and diviner the quality of
the love that binds them. I am ready to believe that as private and
intimate a relation may exist by which three are embraced, as between
two. Indeed, we cannot have too many friends; the virtue which we
appreciate we to some extent appropriate, so that thus we are made at
last more fit for every relation of life. A base Friendship is of a
narrowing and exclusive tendency, but a noble one is not exclusive; its
very superfluity and dispersed love is the humanity which sweetens
society, and sympathizes with foreign nations; for though its
foundations are private, it is, in effect, a public affair and a public
advantage, and the Friend, more than the father of a family, deserves
well of the state.

The only danger in Friendship is that it will end. It is a delicate
plant, though a native. The least unworthiness, even if it be unknown
to one's self, vitiates it. Let the Friend know that those faults which
he observes in his Friend his own faults attract. There is no rule more
invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we
suspected. By our narrowness and prejudices we say, I will have so much
and such of you, my Friend, no more. Perhaps there are none charitable,
none disinterested, none wise, noble, and heroic enough, for a true and
lasting Friendship.

I sometimes hear my Friends complain finely that I do not appreciate
their fineness. I shall not tell them whether I do or not. As if they
expected a vote of thanks for every fine thing which they uttered or
did. Who knows but it was finely appreciated. It may be that your
silence was the finest thing of the two. There are some things which a
man never speaks of, which are much finer kept silent about. To the
highest communications we only lend a silent ear. Our finest relations
are not simply kept silent about, but buried under a positive depth of
silence never to be revealed. It may be that we are not even yet
acquainted. In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is
misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood. Then
there can never be an explanation. What avails it that another loves
you, if he does not understand you? Such love is a curse. What sort of
companions are they who are presuming always that their silence is more
expressive than yours? How foolish, and inconsiderate, and unjust, to
conduct as if you were the only party aggrieved! Has not your Friend
always equal ground of complaint? No doubt my Friends sometimes speak
to me in vain, but they do not know what things I hear which they are
not aware that they have spoken. I know that I have frequently
disappointed them by not giving them words when they expected them, or
such as they expected. Whenever I see my Friend I speak to him; but the
expecter, the man with the ears, is not he. They will complain too that
you are hard. O ye that would have the cocoa-nut wrong side outwards,
when next I weep I will let you know. They ask for words and deeds,
when a true relation is word and deed. If they know not of these
things, how can they be informed? We often forbear to confess our
feelings, not from pride, but for fear that we could not continue to
love the one who required us to give such proof of our affection.

I know a woman who possesses a restless and intelligent mind,
interested in her own culture, and earnest to enjoy the highest
possible advantages, and I meet her with pleasure as a natural person
who not a little provokes me, and I suppose is stimulated in turn by
myself. Yet our acquaintance plainly does not attain to that degree of
confidence and sentiment which women, which all, in fact, covet. I am
glad to help her, as I am helped by her; I like very well to know her
with a sort of stranger's privilege, and hesitate to visit her often,
like her other Friends. My nature pauses here, I do not well know why.
Perhaps she does not make the highest demand on me, a religious demand.
Some, with whose prejudices or peculiar bias I have no sympathy, yet
inspire me with confidence, and I trust that they confide in me also as
a religious heathen at least,—a good Greek. I, too, have principles as
well founded as their own. If this person could conceive that, without
wilfulness, I associate with her as far as our destinies are
coincident, as far as our Good Geniuses permit, and still value such
intercourse, it would be a grateful assurance to me. I feel as if I
appeared careless, indifferent, and without principle to her, not
expecting more, and yet not content with less. If she could know that I
make an infinite demand on myself, as well as on all others, she would
see that this true though incomplete intercourse, is infinitely better
than a more unreserved but falsely grounded one, without the principle
of growth in it. For a companion, I require one who will make an equal
demand on me with my own genius. Such a one will always be rightly
tolerant. It is suicide, and corrupts good manners to welcome any less
than this. I value and trust those who love and praise my aspiration
rather than my performance. If you would not stop to look at me, but
look whither I am looking, and farther, then my education could not
dispense with your company.

My love must be as free
As is the eagle's wing,
Hovering o'er land and sea
And everything.

I must not dim my eye
In thy saloon,
I must not leave my sky
And nightly moon.

Be not the fowler's net
Which stays my flight,
And craftily is set
T'allure the sight.

But be the favoring gale
That bears me on,
And still doth fill my sail
When thou art gone.

I cannot leave my sky
For thy caprice,
True love would soar as high
As heaven is.

The eagle would not brook
Her mate thus won,
Who trained his eye to look
Beneath the sun.


Few things are more difficult than to help a Friend in matters which do
not require the aid of Friendship, but only a cheap and trivial
service, if your Friendship wants the basis of a thorough practical
acquaintance. I stand in the friendliest relation, on social and
spiritual grounds, to one who does not perceive what practical skill I
have, but when he seeks my assistance in such matters, is wholly
ignorant of that one with whom he deals; does not use my skill, which
in such matters is much greater than his, but only my hands. I know
another, who, on the contrary, is remarkable for his discrimination in
this respect; who knows how to make use of the talents of others when
he does not possess the same; knows when not to look after or oversee,
and stops short at his man. It is a rare pleasure to serve him, which
all laborers know. I am not a little pained by the other kind of
treatment. It is as if, after the friendliest and most ennobling
intercourse, your Friend should use you as a hammer, and drive a nail
with your head, all in good faith; notwithstanding that you are a
tolerable carpenter, as well as his good Friend, and would use a hammer
cheerfully in his service. This want of perception is a defect which
all the virtues of the heart cannot supply:—

The Good how can we trust?
Only the Wise are just.
The Good we use,
The Wise we cannot choose.
These there are none above;
The Good they know and love,
But are not known again
By those of lesser ken.
They do not charm us with their eyes,
But they transfix with their advice;
No partial sympathy they feel,
With private woe or private weal,
But with the universe joy and sigh,
Whose knowledge is their sympathy.


Confucius said: “To contract ties of Friendship with any one, is to
contract Friendship with his virtue. There ought not to be any other
motive in Friendship.” But men wish us to contract Friendship with
their vice also. I have a Friend who wishes me to see that to be right
which I know to be wrong. But if Friendship is to rob me of my eyes, if
it is to darken the day, I will have none of it. It should be expansive
and inconceivably liberalizing in its effects. True Friendship can
afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance. A
want of discernment cannot be an ingredient in it. If I can see my
Friend's virtues more distinctly than another's, his faults too are
made more conspicuous by contrast. We have not so good a right to hate
any as our Friend. Faults are not the less faults because they are
invariably balanced by corresponding virtues, and for a fault there is
no excuse, though it may appear greater than it is in many ways. I have
never known one who could bear criticism, who could not be flattered,
who would not bribe his judge, or was content that the truth should be
loved always better than himself.

If two travellers would go their way harmoniously together, the one
must take as true and just a view of things as the other, else their
path will not be strewn with roses. Yet you can travel profitably and
pleasantly even with a blind man, if he practises common courtesy, and
when you converse about the scenery will remember that he is blind but
that you can see; and you will not forget that his sense of hearing is
probably quickened by his want of sight. Otherwise you will not long
keep company. A blind man, and a man in whose eyes there was no defect,
were walking together, when they came to the edge of a precipice. “Take
care! my friend,” said the latter, “here is a steep precipice; go no
farther this way.”—“I know better,” said the other, and stepped off.

It is impossible to say all that we think, even to our truest Friend.
We may bid him farewell forever sooner than complain, for our complaint
is too well grounded to be uttered. There is not so good an
understanding between any two, but the exposure by the one of a serious
fault in the other will produce a misunderstanding in proportion to its
heinousness. The constitutional differences which always exist, and are
obstacles to a perfect Friendship, are forever a forbidden theme to the
lips of Friends. They advise by their whole behavior. Nothing can
reconcile them but love. They are fatally late when they undertake to
explain and treat with one another like foes. Who will take an apology
for a Friend? They must apologize like dew and frost, which are off
again with the sun, and which all men know in their hearts to be
beneficent. The necessity itself for explanation,—what explanation will
atone for that?

True love does not quarrel for slight reasons, such mistakes as mutual
acquaintances can explain away, but, alas, however slight the apparent
cause, only for adequate and fatal and everlasting reasons, which can
never be set aside. Its quarrel, if there is any, is ever recurring,
notwithstanding the beams of affection which invariably come to gild
its tears; as the rainbow, however beautiful and unerring a sign, does
not promise fair weather forever, but only for a season. I have known
two or three persons pretty well, and yet I have never known advice to
be of use but in trivial and transient matters. One may know what
another does not, but the utmost kindness cannot impart what is
requisite to make the advice useful. We must accept or refuse one
another as we are. I could tame a hyena more easily than my Friend. He
is a material which no tool of mine will work. A naked savage will fell
an oak with a firebrand, and wear a hatchet out of a rock by friction,
but I cannot hew the smallest chip out of the character of my Friend,
either to beautify or deform it.

The lover learns at last that there is no person quite transparent and
trustworthy, but every one has a devil in him that is capable of any
crime in the long run. Yet, as an Oriental philosopher has said,
“Although Friendship between good men is interrupted, their principles
remain unaltered. The stalk of the lotus may be broken, and the fibres
remain connected.”

Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill
without. There may be courtesy, there may be even temper, and wit, and
talent, and sparkling conversation, there may be good-will even,—and
yet the humanest and divinest faculties pine for exercise. Our life
without love is like coke and ashes. Men may be pure as alabaster and
Parian marble, elegant as a Tuscan villa, sublime as Niagara, and yet
if there is no milk mingled with the wine at their entertainments,
better is the hospitality of Goths and Vandals.

My Friend is not of some other race or family of men, but flesh of my
flesh, bone of my bone. He is my real brother. I see his nature groping
yonder so like mine. We do not live far apart. Have not the fates
associated us in many ways? It says, in the Vishnu Purana: “Seven paces
together is sufficient for the friendship of the virtuous, but thou and
I have dwelt together.” Is it of no significance that we have so long
partaken of the same loaf, drank at the same fountain, breathed the
same air summer and winter, felt the same heat and cold; that the same
fruits have been pleased to refresh us both, and we have never had a
thought of different fibre the one from the other!

Nature doth have her dawn each day,
But mine are far between;
Content, I cry, for sooth to say,
Mine brightest are I ween.

For when my sun doth deign to rise,
Though it be her noontide,
Her fairest field in shadow lies,
Nor can my light abide.

Sometimes I bask me in her day,
Conversing with my mate,
But if we interchange one ray,
Forthwith her heats abate.

Through his discourse I climb and see,
As from some eastern hill,
A brighter morrow rise to me
Than lieth in her skill.

As 't were two summer days in one,
Two Sundays come together,
Our rays united make one sun,
With fairest summer weather.


As surely as the sunset in my latest November shall translate me to the
ethereal world, and remind me of the ruddy morning of youth; as surely
as the last strain of music which falls on my decaying ear shall make
age to be forgotten, or, in short, the manifold influences of nature
survive during the term of our natural life, so surely my Friend shall
forever be my Friend, and reflect a ray of God to me, and time shall
foster and adorn and consecrate our Friendship, no less than the ruins
of temples. As I love nature, as I love singing birds, and gleaming
stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning and evening, and summer and
winter, I love thee, my Friend.

But all that can be said of Friendship, is like botany to flowers. How
can the understanding take account of its friendliness?

Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much as their lives. They
will leave consolation to the mourners, as the rich leave money to
defray the expenses of their funerals, and their memories will be
incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of
other men are overgrown with moss; for our Friends have no place in the
graveyard.

This to our cis-Alpine and cis-Atlantic Friends.

Also this other word of entreaty and advice to the large and
respectable nation of Acquaintances, beyond the mountains;—Greeting.

My most serene and irresponsible neighbors, let us see that we have the
whole advantage of each other; we will be useful, at least, if not
admirable, to one another. I know that the mountains which separate us
are high, and covered with perpetual snow, but despair not. Improve the
serene winter weather to scale them. If need be, soften the rocks with
vinegar. For here lie the verdant plains of Italy ready to receive you.
Nor shall I be slow on my side to penetrate to your Provence. Strike
then boldly at head or heart or any vital part. Depend upon it, the
timber is well seasoned and tough, and will bear rough usage; and if it
should crack, there is plenty more where it came from. I am no piece of
crockery that cannot be jostled against my neighbor without danger of
being broken by the collision, and must needs ring false and jarringly
to the end of my days, when once I am cracked; but rather one of the
old-fashioned wooden trenchers, which one while stands at the head of
the table, and at another is a milking-stool, and at another a seat for
children, and finally goes down to its grave not unadorned with
honorable scars, and does not die till it is worn out. Nothing can
shock a brave man but dulness. Think how many rebuffs every man has
experienced in his day; perhaps has fallen into a horse-pond, eaten
fresh-water clams, or worn one shirt for a week without washing.
Indeed, you cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity
for that which shocks you. Use me, then, for I am useful in my way, and
stand as one of many petitioners, from toadstool and henbane up to
dahlia and violet, supplicating to be put to my use, if by any means ye
may find me serviceable; whether for a medicated drink or bath, as balm
and lavender; or for fragrance, as verbena and geranium; or for sight,
as cactus; or for thoughts, as pansy. These humbler, at least, if not
those higher uses.

Ah, my dear Strangers and Enemies, I would not forget you. I can well
afford to welcome you. Let me subscribe myself Yours ever and
truly,—your much obliged servant. We have nothing to fear from our
foes; God keeps a standing army for that service; but we have no ally
against our Friends, those ruthless Vandals.

Once more to one and all,

“Friends, Romans, Countrymen, and Lovers.”

Let such pure hate still underprop
Our love, that we may be
Each other's conscience.
And have our sympathy
Mainly from thence.

We'll one another treat like gods,
And all the faith we have
In virtue and in truth, bestow
On either, and suspicion leave
To gods below.

Two solitary stars,—
Unmeasured systems far
Between us roll,
But by our conscious light we are
Determined to one pole.

What need confound the sphere,—
Love can afford to wait,
For it no hour's too late
That witnesseth one duty's end,
Or to another doth beginning lend.

It will subserve no use,
More than the tints of flowers,
Only the independent guest
Frequents its bowers,
Inherits its bequest.

No speech though kind has it,
But kinder silence doles
Unto its mates,
By night consoles,
By day congratulates.

What saith the tongue to tongue?
What heareth ear of ear?
By the decrees of fate
From year to year,
Does it communicate.

Pathless the gulf of feeling yawns,—
No trivial bridge of words,
Or arch of boldest span,
Can leap the moat that girds
The sincere man.

No show of bolts and bars
Can keep the foeman out,
Or 'scape his secret mine
Who entered with the doubt
That drew the line.

No warder at the gate
Can let the friendly in,
But, like the sun, o'er all
He will the castle win,
And shine along the wall.

There's nothing in the world I know
That can escape from love,
For every depth it goes below,
And every height above.

It waits as waits the sky,
Until the clouds go by,
Yet shines serenely on
With an eternal day,
Alike when they are gone,
And when they stay.

Implacable is Love,—
Foes may be bought or teased
From their hostile intent,
But he goes unappeased
Who is on kindness bent.


Having rowed five or six miles above Amoskeag before sunset, and
reached a pleasant part of the river, one of us landed to look for a
farm-house, where we might replenish our stores, while the other
remained cruising about the stream, and exploring the opposite shores
to find a suitable harbor for the night. In the mean while the
canal-boats began to come round a point in our rear, poling their way
along close to the shore, the breeze having quite died away. This time
there was no offer of assistance, but one of the boatmen only called
out to say, as the truest revenge for having been the losers in the
race, that he had seen a wood-duck, which we had scared up, sitting on
a tall white-pine, half a mile down stream; and he repeated the
assertion several times, and seemed really chagrined at the apparent
suspicion with which this information was received. But there sat the
summer duck still, undisturbed by us.

By and by the other voyageur returned from his inland expedition,
bringing one of the natives with him, a little flaxen-headed boy, with
some tradition, or small edition, of Robinson Crusoe in his head, who
had been charmed by the account of our adventures, and asked his
father's leave to join us. He examined, at first from the top of the
bank, our boat and furniture, with sparkling eyes, and wished himself
already his own man. He was a lively and interesting boy, and we should
have been glad to ship him; but Nathan was still his father's boy, and
had not come to years of discretion.

We had got a loaf of home-made bread, and musk and water melons for
dessert. For this farmer, a clever and well-disposed man, cultivated a
large patch of melons for the Hooksett and Concord markets. He
hospitably entertained us the next day, exhibiting his hop-fields and
kiln and melon-patch, warning us to step over the tight rope which
surrounded the latter at a foot from the ground, while he pointed to a
little bower at one corner, where it connected with the lock of a gun
ranging with the line, and where, as he informed us, he sometimes sat
in pleasant nights to defend his premises against thieves. We stepped
high over the line, and sympathized with our host's on the whole quite
human, if not humane, interest in the success of his experiment. That
night especially thieves were to be expected, from rumors in the
atmosphere, and the priming was not wet. He was a Methodist man, who
had his dwelling between the river and Uncannunuc Mountain; who there
belonged, and stayed at home there, and by the encouragement of distant
political organizations, and by his own tenacity, held a property in
his melons, and continued to plant. We suggested melon-seeds of new
varieties and fruit of foreign flavor to be added to his stock. We had
come away up here among the hills to learn the impartial and unbribable
beneficence of Nature. Strawberries and melons grow as well in one
man's garden as another's, and the sun lodges as kindly under his
hillside,—when we had imagined that she inclined rather to some few
earnest and faithful souls whom we know.

We found a convenient harbor for our boat on the opposite or east
shore, still in Hooksett, at the mouth of a small brook which emptied
into the Merrimack, where it would be out of the way of any passing
boat in the night,—for they commonly hug the shore if bound up stream,
either to avoid the current, or touch the bottom with their poles,—and
where it would be accessible without stepping on the clayey shore. We
set one of our largest melons to cool in the still water among the
alders at the mouth of this creek, but when our tent was pitched and
ready, and we went to get it, it had floated out into the stream, and
was nowhere to be seen. So taking the boat in the twilight, we went in
pursuit of this property, and at length, after long straining of the
eyes, its green disk was discovered far down the river, gently floating
seaward with many twigs and leaves from the mountains that evening, and
so perfectly balanced that it had not keeled at all, and no water had
run in at the tap which had been taken out to hasten its cooling.

As we sat on the bank eating our supper, the clear light of the western
sky fell on the eastern trees, and was reflected in the water, and we
enjoyed so serene an evening as left nothing to describe. For the most
part we think that there are few degrees of sublimity, and that the
highest is but little higher than that which we now behold; but we are
always deceived. Sublimer visions appear, and the former pale and fade
away. We are grateful when we are reminded by interior evidence of the
permanence of universal laws; for our faith is but faintly remembered,
indeed, is not a remembered assurance, but a use and enjoyment of
knowledge. It is when we do not have to believe, but come into actual
contact with Truth, and are related to her in the most direct and
intimate way. Waves of serener life pass over us from time to time,
like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather. In some
happier moment, when more sap flows in the withered stalk of our life,
Syria and India stretch away from our present as they do in history.
All the events which make the annals of the nations are but the shadows
of our private experiences. Suddenly and silently the eras which we
call history awake and glimmer in us, and _there_ is room for Alexander
and Hannibal to march and conquer. In short, the history which we read
is only a fainter memory of events which have happened in our own
experience. Tradition is a more interrupted and feebler memory.

This world is but canvas to our imaginations. I see men with infinite
pains endeavoring to realize to their bodies, what I, with at least
equal pains, would realize to my imagination,—its capacities; for
certainly there is a life of the mind above the wants of the body, and
independent of it. Often the body is warmed, but the imagination is
torpid; the body is fat, but the imagination is lean and shrunk. But
what avails all other wealth if this is wanting? “Imagination is the
air of mind,” in which it lives and breathes. All things are as I am.
Where is the House of Change? The past is only so heroic as we see it.
It is the canvas on which our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in
one sense, the dim prospectus of our future field. Our circumstances
answer to our expectations and the demand of our natures. I have
noticed that if a man thinks that he needs a thousand dollars, and
cannot be convinced that he does not, he will commonly be found to have
them; if he lives and thinks a thousand dollars will be forthcoming,
though it be to buy shoe-strings with. A thousand mills will be just as
slow to come to one who finds it equally hard to convince himself that
he needs _them_.

Men are by birth equal in this, that given
Themselves and their condition, they are even.


I am astonished at the singular pertinacity and endurance of our lives.
The miracle is, that what is _is_, when it is so difficult, if not
impossible, for anything else to be; that we walk on in our particular
paths so far, before we fall on death and fate, merely because we must
walk in some path; that every man can get a living, and so few can do
anything more. So much only can I accomplish ere health and strength
are gone, and yet this suffices. The bird now sits just out of gunshot.
I am never rich in money, and I am never meanly poor. If debts are
incurred, why, debts are in the course of events cancelled, as it were
by the same law by which they were incurred. I heard that an engagement
was entered into between a certain youth and a maiden, and then I heard
that it was broken off, but I did not know the reason in either case.
We are hedged about, we think, by accident and circumstance, now we
creep as in a dream, and now again we run, as if there were a fate in
it, and all things thwarted or assisted. I cannot change my clothes but
when I do, and yet I do change them, and soil the new ones. It is
wonderful that this gets done, when some admirable deeds which I could
mention do not get done. Our particular lives seem of such fortune and
confident strength and durability as piers of solid rock thrown forward
into the tide of circumstance. When every other path would fail, with
singular and unerring confidence we advance on our particular course.
What risks we run! famine and fire and pestilence, and the thousand
forms of a cruel fate,—and yet every man lives till he—dies. How did he
manage that? Is there no immediate danger? We wonder superfluously when
we hear of a somnambulist walking a plank securely,—we have walked a
plank all our lives up to this particular string-piece where we are. My
life will wait for nobody, but is being matured still without delay,
while I go about the streets, and chaffer with this man and that to
secure it a living. It is as indifferent and easy meanwhile as a poor
man's dog, and making acquaintance with its kind. It will cut its own
channel like a mountain stream, and by the longest ridge is not kept
from the sea at last. I have found all things thus far, persons and
inanimate matter, elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my
resources. No matter what imprudent haste in my career; I am permitted
to be rash. Gulfs are bridged in a twinkling, as if some unseen
baggage-train carried pontoons for my convenience, and while from the
heights I scan the tempting but unexplored Pacific Ocean of Futurity,
the ship is being carried over the mountains piecemeal on the backs of
mules and lamas, whose keel shall plough its waves, and bear me to the
Indies. Day would not dawn if it were not for

THE INWARD MORNING


Packed in my mind lie all the clothes
Which outward nature wears,
And in its fashion's hourly change
It all things else repairs.

In vain I look for change abroad,
And can no difference find,
Till some new ray of peace uncalled
Illumes my inmost mind.

What is it gilds the trees and clouds,
And paints the heavens so gay,
But yonder fast-abiding light
With its unchanging ray?

Lo, when the sun streams through the wood,
Upon a winter's morn,
Where'er his silent beams intrude,
The murky night is gone.

How could the patient pine have known
The morning breeze would come,
Or humble flowers anticipate
The insect's noonday hum,—

Till the new light with morning cheer
From far streamed through the aisles,
And nimbly told the forest trees
For many stretching miles?

I've heard within my inmost soul
Such cheerful morning news,
In the horizon of my mind
Have seen such orient hues,

As in the twilight of the dawn,
When the first birds awake,
Are heard within some silent wood,
Where they the small twigs break,

Or in the eastern skies are seen,
Before the sun appears,
The harbingers of summer heats
Which from afar he bears.


Whole weeks and months of my summer life slide away in thin volumes
like mist and smoke, till at length, some warm morning, perchance, I
see a sheet of mist blown down the brook to the swamp, and I float as
high above the fields with it. I can recall to mind the stillest summer
hours, in which the grasshopper sings over the mulleins, and there is a
valor in that time the bare memory of which is armor that can laugh at
any blow of fortune. For our lifetime the strains of a harp are heard
to swell and die alternately, and death is but “the pause when the
blast is recollecting itself.”



Philosophical Interlude 4



Some hard and dry book in a dead language, which you have found it
impossible to read at home, but for which you have still a lingering
regard, is the best to carry with you on a journey. At a country inn,
in the barren society of ostlers and travellers, I could undertake the
writers of the silver or the brazen age with confidence. Almost the
last regular service which I performed in the cause of literature was
to read the works of

AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS.


If you have imagined what a divine work is spread out for the poet, and
approach this author too, in the hope of finding the field at length
fairly entered on, you will hardly dissent from the words of the
prologue,

“Ipse semipaganus
Ad sacra Vatum carmen affero nostrum.”

I half pagan
Bring my verses to the shrine of the poets.


Here is none of the interior dignity of Virgil, nor the elegance and
vivacity of Horace, nor will any sibyl be needed to remind you, that
from those older Greek poets there is a sad descent to Persius. You can
scarcely distinguish one harmonious sound amid this unmusical bickering
with the follies of men.

One sees that music has its place in thought, but hardly as yet in
language. When the Muse arrives, we wait for her to remould language,
and impart to it her own rhythm. Hitherto the verse groans and labors
with its load, and goes not forward blithely, singing by the way. The
best ode may be parodied, indeed is itself a parody, and has a poor and
trivial sound, like a man stepping on the rounds of a ladder. Homer and
Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling
of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet
the sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing.
Most of all, satire will not be sung. A Juvenal or Persius do not marry
music to their verse, but are measured fault-finders at best; stand but
just outside the faults they condemn, and so are concerned rather about
the monster which they have escaped, than the fair prospect before
them. Let them live on an age, and they will have travelled out of his
shadow and reach, and found other objects to ponder.

As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, particeps
criminis. One sees not but he had best let bad take care of itself,
and have to do only with what is beyond suspicion. If you light on the
least vestige of truth, and it is the weight of the whole body still
which stamps the faintest trace, an eternity will not suffice to extol
it, while no evil is so huge, but you grudge to bestow on it a moment
of hate. Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own
straightforwardness is the severest correction. Horace would not have
written satire so well if he had not been inspired by it, as by a
passion, and fondly cherished his vein. In his odes, the love always
exceeds the hate, so that the severest satire still sings itself, and
the poet is satisfied, though the folly be not corrected.

A sort of necessary order in the development of Genius is, first,
Complaint; second, Plaint; third, Love. Complaint, which is the
condition of Persius, lies not in the province of poetry. Erelong the
enjoyment of a superior good would have changed his disgust into
regret. We can never have much sympathy with the complainer; for after
searching nature through, we conclude that he must be both plaintiff
and defendant too, and so had best come to a settlement without a
hearing. He who receives an injury is to some extent an accomplice of
the wrong-doer.

Perhaps it would be truer to say, that the highest strain of the muse
is essentially plaintive. The saint’s are still tears of joy. Who has
ever heard the Innocent sing?

But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest
satire; as impersonal as Nature herself, and like the sighs of her
winds in the woods, which convey ever a slight reproof to the hearer.
The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire.

Hence we have to do only with the rare and fragmentary traits, which
least belong to Persius, or shall we say, are the properest utterances
of his muse; since that which he says best at any time is what he can
best say at all times. The Spectators and Ramblers have not failed to
cull some quotable sentences from this garden too, so pleasant is it to
meet even the most familiar truth in a new dress, when, if our neighbor
had said it, we should have passed it by as hackneyed. Out of these six
satires, you may perhaps select some twenty lines, which fit so well as
many thoughts, that they will recur to the scholar almost as readily as
a natural image; though when translated into familiar language, they
lose that insular emphasis, which fitted them for quotation. Such lines
as the following, translation cannot render commonplace. Contrasting
the man of true religion with those who, with jealous privacy, would
fain carry on a secret commerce with the gods, he says:—

“Haud cuivis promptum est, murmurque humilesque susurros
Tollere de templis; et aperto vivere voto.”

It is not easy for every one to take murmurs and low
Whispers out of the temples, and live with open vow.


To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum sanctorum, and
the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence. Why
should he betake himself to a subterranean crypt, as if it were the
only holy ground in all the world which he had left unprofaned? The
obedient soul would only the more discover and familiarize things, and
escape more and more into light and air, as having henceforth done with
secrecy, so that the universe shall not seem open enough for it. At
length, it is neglectful even of that silence which is consistent with
true modesty, but by its independence of all confidence in its
disclosures, makes that which it imparts so private to the hearer, that
it becomes the care of the whole world that modesty be not infringed.

To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is a still
greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts may be matter for
secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity,
by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as light.

In the third satire, he asks:—

“Est aliquid quò tendis, et in quod dirigis arcum?
An passim sequeris corvos, testâve, lutove,
Securus quò pes ferat, atque ex tempore vivis?”

Is there anything to which thou tendest, and against which thou
directest thy bow?
Or dost thou pursue crows, at random, with pottery or clay,
Careless whither thy feet bear thee, and live ex tempore?


The bad sense is always a secondary one. Language does not appear to
have justice done it, but is obviously cramped and narrowed in its
significance, when any meanness is described. The truest construction
is not put upon it. What may readily be fashioned into a rule of
wisdom, is here thrown in the teeth of the sluggard, and constitutes
the front of his offence. Universally, the innocent man will come forth
from the sharpest inquisition and lecturing, the combined din of
reproof and commendation, with a faint sound of eulogy in his ears. Our
vices always lie in the direction of our virtues, and in their best
estate are but plausible imitations of the latter. Falsehood never
attains to the dignity of entire falseness, but is only an inferior
sort of truth; if it were more thoroughly false, it would incur danger
of becoming true.

“Securus quo pes ferat, atque ex tempore vivit,”


is then the motto of a wise man. For first, as the subtle discernment
of the language would have taught us, with all his negligence he is
still secure; but the sluggard, notwithstanding his heedlessness, is
insecure.

The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out
of an eternity which includes all time. The cunning mind travels
further back than Zoroaster each instant, and comes quite down to the
present with its revelation. The utmost thrift and industry of thinking
give no man any stock in life; his credit with the inner world is no
better, his capital no larger. He must try his fortune again to-day as
yesterday. All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time
measures nothing but itself. The word that is written may be postponed,
but not that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the
occasion say it. All the world is forward to prompt him who gets up to
live without his creed in his pocket.

In the fifth satire, which is the best, I find,—

“Stat contrà ratio, et secretam garrit in aurem,
Ne liceat facere id, quod quis vitiabit agendo.”

Reason opposes, and whispers in the secret ear,
That it is not lawful to do that which one will spoil by doing.


Only they who do not see how anything might be better done are forward
to try their hand on it. Even the master workman must be encouraged by
the reflection, that his awkwardness will be incompetent to do that
thing harm, to which his skill may fail to do justice. Here is no
apology for neglecting to do many things from a sense of our
incapacity,—for what deed does not fall maimed and imperfect from our
hands?—but only a warning to bungle less.

The satires of Persius are the furthest possible from inspired;
evidently a chosen, not imposed subject. Perhaps I have given him
credit for more earnestness than is apparent; but it is certain, that
that which alone we can call Persius, which is forever independent and
consistent, was in earnest, and so sanctions the sober consideration
of all. The artist and his work are not to be separated. The most
wilfully foolish man cannot stand aloof from his folly, but the deed
and the doer together make ever one sober fact. There is but one stage
for the peasant and the actor. The buffoon cannot bribe you to laugh
always at his grimaces; they shall sculpture themselves in Egyptian
granite, to stand heavy as the pyramids on the ground of his character.

Suns rose and set and found us still on the dank forest path which
meanders up the Pemigewasset, now more like an otter’s or a marten’s
trail, or where a beaver had dragged his trap, than where the wheels of
travel raise a dust; where towns begin to serve as gores, only to hold
the earth together. The wild pigeon sat secure above our heads, high on
the dead limbs of naval pines, reduced to a robin’s size. The very
yards of our hostelries inclined upon the skirts of mountains, and, as
we passed, we looked up at a steep angle at the stems of maples waving
in the clouds.

Far up in the country,—for we would be faithful to our experience,—in
Thornton, perhaps, we met a soldier lad in the woods, going to muster
in full regimentals, and holding the middle of the road; deep in the
forest, with shouldered musket and military step, and thoughts of war
and glory all to himself. It was a sore trial to the youth, tougher
than many a battle, to get by us creditably and with soldierlike
bearing. Poor man! He actually shivered like a reed in his thin
military pants, and by the time we had got up with him, all the
sternness that becomes the soldier had forsaken his face, and he
skulked past as if he were driving his father’s sheep under a
sword-proof helmet. It was too much for him to carry any extra armor
then, who could not easily dispose of his natural arms. And for his
legs, they were like heavy artillery in boggy places; better to cut the
traces and forsake them. His greaves chafed and wrestled one with
another for want of other foes. But he did get by and get off with all
his munitions, and lived to fight another day; and I do not record this
as casting any suspicion on his honor and real bravery in the field.

Wandering on through notches which the streams had made, by the side
and over the brows of hoar hills and mountains, across the stumpy,
rocky, forested, and bepastured country, we at length crossed on
prostrate trees over the Amonoosuck, and breathed the free air of
Unappropriated Land. Thus, in fair days as well as foul, we had traced
up the river to which our native stream is a tributary, until from
Merrimack it became the Pemigewasset that leaped by our side, and when
we had passed its fountain-head, the Wild Amonoosuck, whose puny
channel was crossed at a stride, guiding us toward its distant source
among the mountains, and at length, without its guidance, we were
enabled to reach the summit of AGIOCOCHOOK.

“Sweet days, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,
Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die.”


HERBERT.


When we returned to Hooksett, a week afterward, the melon man, in whose
corn-barn we had hung our tent and buffaloes and other things to dry,
was already picking his hops, with many women and children to help him.
We bought one watermelon, the largest in his patch, to carry with us
for ballast. It was Nathan’s, which he might sell if he wished, having
been conveyed to him in the green state, and owned daily by his eyes.
After due consultation with “Father,” the bargain was concluded,—we to
buy it at a venture on the vine, green or ripe, our risk, and pay “what
the gentlemen pleased.” It proved to be ripe; for we had had honest
experience in selecting this fruit.

Finding our boat safe in its harbor, under Uncannunuc Mountain, with a
fair wind and the current in our favor, we commenced our return voyage
at noon, sitting at our ease and conversing, or in silence watching for
the last trace of each reach in the river as a bend concealed it from
our view. As the season was further advanced, the wind now blew
steadily from the north, and with our sail set we could occasionally
lie on our oars without loss of time. The lumbermen throwing down wood
from the top of the high bank, thirty or forty feet above the water,
that it might be sent down stream, paused in their work to watch our
retreating sail. By this time, indeed, we were well known to the
boatmen, and were hailed as the Revenue Cutter of the stream. As we
sailed rapidly down the river, shut in between two mounds of earth, the
sounds of this timber rolled down the bank enhanced the silence and
vastness of the noon, and we fancied that only the primeval echoes were
awakened. The vision of a distant scow just heaving in sight round a
headland also increased by contrast the solitude.We lay awake a long
while, listening to the murmurs of the brook, in
the angle formed by whose bank with the river our tent was pitched, and
there was a sort of human interest in its story, which ceases not in
freshet or in drought the livelong summer, and the profounder lapse of
the river was quite drowned by its din. But the rill, whose

“Silver sands and pebbles sing
Eternal ditties with the spring,”


is silenced by the first frosts of winter, while mightier streams, on
whose bottom the sun never shines, clogged with sunken rocks and the
ruins of forests, from whose surface comes up no murmur, are strangers
to the icy fetters which bind fast a thousand contributary rills.

I dreamed this night of an event which had occurred long before. It was
a difference with a Friend, which had not ceased to give me pain,
though I had no cause to blame myself. But in my dream ideal justice
was at length done me for his suspicions, and I received that
compensation which I had never obtained in my waking hours. I was
unspeakably soothed and rejoiced, even after I awoke, because in dreams
we never deceive ourselves, nor are deceived, and this seemed to have
the authority of a final judgment.

We bless and curse ourselves. Some dreams are divine, as well as some
waking thoughts. Donne sings of one

“Who dreamt devoutlier than most use to pray.”


Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. We are scarcely less
afflicted when we remember some unworthiness in our conduct in a dream,
than if it had been actual, and the intensity of our grief, which is
our atonement, measures the degree by which this is separated from an
actual unworthiness. For in dreams we but act a part which must have
been learned and rehearsed in our waking hours, and no doubt could
discover some waking consent thereto. If this meanness had not its
foundation in us, why are we grieved at it? In dreams we see ourselves
naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see
others awake. But an unwavering and commanding virtue would compel even
its most fantastic and faintest dreams to respect its ever-wakeful
authority; as we are accustomed to say carelessly, we should never have
dreamed of such a thing. Our truest life is when we are in dreams
awake.

“And, more to lulle him in his slumber soft,
A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe,
And ever-drizzling raine upon the loft,
Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swowne.
No other noyse, nor people’s troublous cryes,
As still are wont t’ annoy the walled towne,
Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lyes
Wrapt in eternall silence farre from enemyes.”




THURSDAY


“He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon
The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone,
Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear,
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.
* * * * *
Where darkness found him he lay glad at night;
There the red morning touched him with its light.
* * * * *
Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth,—his hall the azure dome;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there’s his road,
By God’s own light illumined and foreshowed.”

EMERSON.

When we awoke this morning, we heard the faint, deliberate, and ominous
sound of rain-drops on our cotton roof. The rain had pattered all
night, and now the whole country wept, the drops falling in the river,
and on the alders, and in the pastures, and instead of any bow in the
heavens, there was the trill of the hair-bird all the morning. The
cheery faith of this little bird atoned for the silence of the whole
woodland choir beside. When we first stepped abroad, a flock of sheep,
led by their rams, came rushing down a ravine in our rear, with
heedless haste and unreserved frisking, as if unobserved by man, from
some higher pasture where they had spent the night, to taste the
herbage by the river-side; but when their leaders caught sight of our
white tent through the mist, struck with sudden astonishment, with
their fore-feet braced, they sustained the rushing torrent in their
rear, and the whole flock stood stock-still, endeavoring to solve the
mystery in their sheepish brains. At length, concluding that it boded
no mischief to them, they spread themselves out quietly over the field.
We learned afterward that we had pitched our tent on the very spot
which a few summers before had been occupied by a party of Penobscots.
We could see rising before us through the mist a dark conical eminence
called Hooksett Pinnacle, a landmark to boatmen, and also Uncannunuc
Mountain, broad off on the west side of the river.

This was the limit of our voyage, for a few hours more in the rain
would have taken us to the last of the locks, and our boat was too
heavy to be dragged around the long and numerous rapids which would
occur. On foot, however, we continued up along the bank, feeling our
way with a stick through the showery and foggy day, and climbing over
the slippery logs in our path with as much pleasure and buoyancy as in
brightest sunshine; scenting the fragrance of the pines and the wet
clay under our feet, and cheered by the tones of invisible waterfalls;
with visions of toadstools, and wandering frogs, and festoons of moss
hanging from the spruce-trees, and thrushes flitting silent under the
leaves; our road still holding together through that wettest of
weather, like faith, while we confidently followed its lead. We managed
to keep our thoughts dry, however, and only our clothes were wet. It
was altogether a cloudy and drizzling day, with occasional brightenings
in the mist, when the trill of the tree-sparrow seemed to be ushering
in sunny hours.

“Nothing that naturally happens to man can hurt him, earthquakes and
thunder-storms not excepted,” said a man of genius, who at this time
lived a few miles farther on our road. When compelled by a shower to
take shelter under a tree, we may improve that opportunity for a more
minute inspection of some of Nature’s works. I have stood under a tree
in the woods half a day at a time, during a heavy rain in the summer,
and yet employed myself happily and profitably there prying with
microscopic eye into the crevices of the bark or the leaves or the
fungi at my feet. “Riches are the attendants of the miser; and the
heavens rain plenteously upon the mountains.” I can fancy that it would
be a luxury to stand up to one’s chin in some retired swamp a whole
summer day, scenting the wild honeysuckle and bilberry blows, and
lulled by the minstrelsy of gnats and mosquitoes! A day passed in the
society of those Greek sages, such as described in the Banquet of
Xenophon, would not be comparable with the dry wit of decayed cranberry
vines, and the fresh Attic salt of the moss-beds. Say twelve hours of
genial and familiar converse with the leopard frog; the sun to rise
behind alder and dogwood, and climb buoyantly to his meridian of two
hands’ breadth, and finally sink to rest behind some bold western
hummock. To hear the evening chant of the mosquito from a thousand
green chapels, and the bittern begin to boom from some concealed fort
like a sunset gun!—Surely one may as profitably be soaked in the juices
of a swamp for one day as pick his way dry-shod over sand. Cold and
damp,—are they not as rich experience as warmth and dryness?

At present, the drops come trickling down the stubble while we lie
drenched on a bed of withered wild oats, by the side of a bushy hill,
and the gathering in of the clouds, with the last rush and dying breath
of the wind, and then the regular dripping of twigs and leaves the
country over, enhance the sense of inward comfort and sociableness. The
birds draw closer and are more familiar under the thick foliage,
seemingly composing new strains upon their roosts against the sunshine.
What were the amusements of the drawing-room and the library in
comparison, if we had them here? We should still sing as of old,—

My books I’d fain cast off, I cannot read,
’Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large
Down in the meadow, where is richer feed,
And will not mind to hit their proper targe.

Plutarch was good, and so was Homer too,
Our Shakespeare’s life were rich to live again,
What Plutarch read, that was not good nor true,
Nor Shakespeare’s books, unless his books were men.

Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough,
What care I for the Greeks or for Troy town,
If juster battles are enacted now
Between the ants upon this hummock’s crown?

Bid Homer wait till I the issue learn,
If red or black the gods will favor most,
Or yonder Ajax will the phalanx turn,
Struggling to heave some rock against the host.

Tell Shakespeare to attend some leisure hour,
For now I’ve business with this drop of dew,
And see you not, the clouds prepare a shower,—
I’ll meet him shortly when the sky is blue.

This bed of herd’s-grass and wild oats was spread
Last year with nicer skill than monarchs use,
A clover tuft is pillow for my head,
And violets quite overtop my shoes.

And now the cordial clouds have shut all in
And gently swells the wind to say all’s well
The scattered drops are falling fast and thin,
Some in the pool, some in the flower-bell.

I am well drenched upon my bed of oats;
But see that globe come rolling down its stem
Now like a lonely planet there it floats,
And now it sinks into my garment’s hem.

Drip drip the trees for all the country round,
And richness rare distils from every bough,
The wind alone it is makes every sound,
Shaking down crystals on the leaves below.

For shame the sun will never show himself,
Who could not with his beams e’er melt me so,
My dripping locks,—they would become an elf,
Who in a beaded coat does gayly go.


The Pinnacle is a small wooded hill which rises very abruptly to the
height of about two hundred feet, near the shore at Hooksett Falls. As
Uncannunuc Mountain is perhaps the best point from which to view the
valley of the Merrimack, so this hill affords the best view of the
river itself. I have sat upon its summit, a precipitous rock only a few
rods long, in fairer weather, when the sun was setting and filling the
river valley with a flood of light. You can see up and down the
Merrimack several miles each way. The broad and straight river, full of
light and life, with its sparkling and foaming falls, the islet which
divides the stream, the village of Hooksett on the shore almost
directly under your feet, so near that you can converse with its
inhabitants or throw a stone into its yards, the woodland lake at its
western base, and the mountains in the north and northeast, make a
scene of rare beauty and completeness, which the traveller should take
pains to behold.

We were hospitably entertained in Concord, New Hampshire, which we
persisted in calling New Concord, as we had been wont, to distinguish
it from our native town, from which we had been told that it was named
and in part originally settled. This would have been the proper place
to conclude our voyage, uniting Concord with Concord by these
meandering rivers, but our boat was moored some miles below its port.

The richness of the intervals at Penacook, now Concord, New Hampshire,
had been observed by explorers, and, according to the historian of
Haverhill, in the

“year 1726, considerable progress was made in the settlement, and a
road was cut through the wilderness from Haverhill to Penacook. In the
fall of 1727, the first family, that of Captain Ebenezer Eastman, moved
into the place. His team was driven by Jacob Shute, who was by birth a
Frenchman, and he is said to have been the first person who drove a
team through the wilderness. Soon after, says tradition, one Ayer, a
lad of 18, drove a team consisting of ten yoke of oxen to Penacook,
swam the river, and ploughed a portion of the interval. He is supposed
to have been the first person who ploughed land in that place. After he
had completed his work, he started on his return at sunrise, drowned a
yoke of oxen while recrossing the river, and arrived at Haverhill about
midnight. The crank of the first saw-mill was manufactured in
Haverhill, and carried to Penacook on a horse.”

But we found that the frontiers were not this way any longer. This
generation has come into the world fatally late for some enterprises.
Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before
us. We cannot now have the pleasure of erecting the last house; that
was long ago set up in the suburbs of Astoria City, and our boundaries
have literally been run to the South Sea, according to the old patents.
But the lives of men, though more extended laterally in their range,
are still as shallow as ever. Undoubtedly, as a Western orator said,
“Men generally live over about the same surface; some live long and
narrow, and others live broad and short”; but it is all superficial
living. A worm is as good a traveller as a grasshopper or a cricket,
and a much wiser settler. With all their activity these do not hop away
from drought nor forward to summer. We do not avoid evil by fleeing
before it, but by rising above or diving below its plane; as the worm
escapes drought and frost by boring a few inches deeper. The frontiers
are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a
fact, though that fact be his neighbor, there is an unsettled
wilderness between him and Canada, between him and the setting sun, or,
farther still, between him and it. Let him build himself a log-house
with the bark on where he is, fronting IT, and wage there an Old
French war for seven or seventy years, with Indians and Rangers, or
whatever else may come between him and the reality, and save his scalp
if he can.

We now no longer sailed or floated on the river, but trod the
unyielding land like pilgrims. Sadi tells who may travel; among others,
“A common mechanic, who can earn a subsistence by the industry of his
hand, and shall not have to stake his reputation for every morsel of
bread, as philosophers have said.” He may travel who can subsist on the
wild fruits and game of the most cultivated country. A man may travel
fast enough and earn his living on the road. I have at times been
applied to to do work when on a journey; to do tinkering and repair
clocks, when I had a knapsack on my back. A man once applied to me to
go into a factory, stating conditions and wages, observing that I
succeeded in shutting the window of a railroad car in which we were
travelling, when the other passengers had failed. “Hast thou not heard
of a Sufi, who was hammering some nails into the sole of his sandal; an
officer of cavalry took him by the sleeve, saying, Come along and shoe
my horse.” Farmers have asked me to assist them in haying, when I was
passing their fields. A man once applied to me to mend his umbrella,
taking me for an umbrella-mender, because, being on a journey, I
carried an umbrella in my hand while the sun shone. Another wished to
buy a tin cup of me, observing that I had one strapped to my belt, and
a sauce-pan on my back. The cheapest way to travel, and the way to
travel the farthest in the shortest distance, is to go afoot, carrying
a dipper, a spoon, and a fish-line, some Indian meal, some salt, and
some sugar. When you come to a brook or pond, you can catch fish and
cook them; or you can boil a hasty-pudding; or you can buy a loaf of
bread at a farmer’s house for fourpence, moisten it in the next brook
that crosses the road, and dip into it your sugar,—this alone will last
you a whole day;—or, if you are accustomed to heartier living, you can
buy a quart of milk for two cents, crumb your bread or cold pudding
into it, and eat it with your own spoon out of your own dish. Any one
of these things I mean, not all together. I have travelled thus some
hundreds of miles without taking any meal in a house, sleeping on the
ground when convenient, and found it cheaper, and in many respects more
profitable, than staying at home. So that some have inquired why it
would not be best to travel always. But I never thought of travelling
simply as a means of getting a livelihood. A simple woman down in
Tyngsborough, at whose house I once stopped to get a draught of water,
when I said, recognizing the bucket, that I had stopped there nine
years before for the same purpose, asked if I was not a traveller,
supposing that I had been travelling ever since, and had now come round
again; that travelling was one of the professions, more or less
productive, which her husband did not follow. But continued travelling
is far from productive. It begins with wearing away the soles of the
shoes, and making the feet sore, and erelong it will wear a man clean
up, after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that
the after-life of those who have travelled much is very pathetic. True
and sincere travelling is no pastime, but it is as serious as the
grave, or any part of the human journey, and it requires a long
probation to be broken into it. I do not speak of those that travel
sitting, the sedentary travellers whose legs hang dangling the while,
mere idle symbols of the fact, any more than when we speak of sitting
hens we mean those that sit standing, but I mean those to whom
travelling is life for the legs, and death too, at last. The traveller
must be born again on the road, and earn a passport from the elements,
the principal powers that be for him. He shall experience at last that
old threat of his mother fulfilled, that he shall be skinned alive. His
sores shall gradually deepen themselves that they may heal inwardly,
while he gives no rest to the sole of his foot, and at night weariness
must be his pillow, that so he may acquire experience against his rainy
days.—So was it with us.

Sometimes we lodged at an inn in the woods, where trout-fishers from
distant cities had arrived before us, and where, to our astonishment,
the settlers dropped in at nightfall to have a chat and hear the news,
though there was but one road, and no other house was visible,—as if
they had come out of the earth. There we sometimes read old newspapers,
who never before read new ones, and in the rustle of their leaves heard
the dashing of the surf along the Atlantic shore, instead of the sough
of the wind among the pines. But then walking had given us an appetite
even for the least palatable and nutritious food.

Some hard and dry book in a dead language, which you have found it
impossible to read at home, but for which you have still a lingering
regard, is the best to carry with you on a journey. At a country inn,
in the barren society of ostlers and travellers, I could undertake the
writers of the silver or the brazen age with confidence. Almost the
last regular service which I performed in the cause of literature was
to read the works of

AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS.


If you have imagined what a divine work is spread out for the poet, and
approach this author too, in the hope of finding the field at length
fairly entered on, you will hardly dissent from the words of the
prologue,

“Ipse semipaganus
Ad sacra Vatum carmen affero nostrum.”

I half pagan
Bring my verses to the shrine of the poets.


Here is none of the interior dignity of Virgil, nor the elegance and
vivacity of Horace, nor will any sibyl be needed to remind you, that
from those older Greek poets there is a sad descent to Persius. You can
scarcely distinguish one harmonious sound amid this unmusical bickering
with the follies of men.

One sees that music has its place in thought, but hardly as yet in
language. When the Muse arrives, we wait for her to remould language,
and impart to it her own rhythm. Hitherto the verse groans and labors
with its load, and goes not forward blithely, singing by the way. The
best ode may be parodied, indeed is itself a parody, and has a poor and
trivial sound, like a man stepping on the rounds of a ladder. Homer and
Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling
of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet
the sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing.
Most of all, satire will not be sung. A Juvenal or Persius do not marry
music to their verse, but are measured fault-finders at best; stand but
just outside the faults they condemn, and so are concerned rather about
the monster which they have escaped, than the fair prospect before
them. Let them live on an age, and they will have travelled out of his
shadow and reach, and found other objects to ponder.

As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, particeps
criminis. One sees not but he had best let bad take care of itself,
and have to do only with what is beyond suspicion. If you light on the
least vestige of truth, and it is the weight of the whole body still
which stamps the faintest trace, an eternity will not suffice to extol
it, while no evil is so huge, but you grudge to bestow on it a moment
of hate. Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own
straightforwardness is the severest correction. Horace would not have
written satire so well if he had not been inspired by it, as by a
passion, and fondly cherished his vein. In his odes, the love always
exceeds the hate, so that the severest satire still sings itself, and
the poet is satisfied, though the folly be not corrected.

A sort of necessary order in the development of Genius is, first,
Complaint; second, Plaint; third, Love. Complaint, which is the
condition of Persius, lies not in the province of poetry. Erelong the
enjoyment of a superior good would have changed his disgust into
regret. We can never have much sympathy with the complainer; for after
searching nature through, we conclude that he must be both plaintiff
and defendant too, and so had best come to a settlement without a
hearing. He who receives an injury is to some extent an accomplice of
the wrong-doer.

Perhaps it would be truer to say, that the highest strain of the muse
is essentially plaintive. The saint’s are still tears of joy. Who has
ever heard the Innocent sing?

But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest
satire; as impersonal as Nature herself, and like the sighs of her
winds in the woods, which convey ever a slight reproof to the hearer.
The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire.

Hence we have to do only with the rare and fragmentary traits, which
least belong to Persius, or shall we say, are the properest utterances
of his muse; since that which he says best at any time is what he can
best say at all times. The Spectators and Ramblers have not failed to
cull some quotable sentences from this garden too, so pleasant is it to
meet even the most familiar truth in a new dress, when, if our neighbor
had said it, we should have passed it by as hackneyed. Out of these six
satires, you may perhaps select some twenty lines, which fit so well as
many thoughts, that they will recur to the scholar almost as readily as
a natural image; though when translated into familiar language, they
lose that insular emphasis, which fitted them for quotation. Such lines
as the following, translation cannot render commonplace. Contrasting
the man of true religion with those who, with jealous privacy, would
fain carry on a secret commerce with the gods, he says:—

“Haud cuivis promptum est, murmurque humilesque susurros
Tollere de templis; et aperto vivere voto.”

It is not easy for every one to take murmurs and low
Whispers out of the temples, and live with open vow.


To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum sanctorum, and
the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence. Why
should he betake himself to a subterranean crypt, as if it were the
only holy ground in all the world which he had left unprofaned? The
obedient soul would only the more discover and familiarize things, and
escape more and more into light and air, as having henceforth done with
secrecy, so that the universe shall not seem open enough for it. At
length, it is neglectful even of that silence which is consistent with
true modesty, but by its independence of all confidence in its
disclosures, makes that which it imparts so private to the hearer, that
it becomes the care of the whole world that modesty be not infringed.

To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is a still
greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts may be matter for
secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity,
by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as light.

In the third satire, he asks:—

“Est aliquid quò tendis, et in quod dirigis arcum?
An passim sequeris corvos, testâve, lutove,
Securus quò pes ferat, atque ex tempore vivis?”

Is there anything to which thou tendest, and against which thou
directest thy bow?
Or dost thou pursue crows, at random, with pottery or clay,
Careless whither thy feet bear thee, and live ex tempore?


The bad sense is always a secondary one. Language does not appear to
have justice done it, but is obviously cramped and narrowed in its
significance, when any meanness is described. The truest construction
is not put upon it. What may readily be fashioned into a rule of
wisdom, is here thrown in the teeth of the sluggard, and constitutes
the front of his offence. Universally, the innocent man will come forth
from the sharpest inquisition and lecturing, the combined din of
reproof and commendation, with a faint sound of eulogy in his ears. Our
vices always lie in the direction of our virtues, and in their best
estate are but plausible imitations of the latter. Falsehood never
attains to the dignity of entire falseness, but is only an inferior
sort of truth; if it were more thoroughly false, it would incur danger
of becoming true.

“Securus quo pes ferat, atque ex tempore vivit,”


is then the motto of a wise man. For first, as the subtle discernment
of the language would have taught us, with all his negligence he is
still secure; but the sluggard, notwithstanding his heedlessness, is
insecure.

The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out
of an eternity which includes all time. The cunning mind travels
further back than Zoroaster each instant, and comes quite down to the
present with its revelation. The utmost thrift and industry of thinking
give no man any stock in life; his credit with the inner world is no
better, his capital no larger. He must try his fortune again to-day as
yesterday. All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time
measures nothing but itself. The word that is written may be postponed,
but not that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the
occasion say it. All the world is forward to prompt him who gets up to
live without his creed in his pocket.

In the fifth satire, which is the best, I find,—

“Stat contrà ratio, et secretam garrit in aurem,
Ne liceat facere id, quod quis vitiabit agendo.”

Reason opposes, and whispers in the secret ear,
That it is not lawful to do that which one will spoil by doing.


Only they who do not see how anything might be better done are forward
to try their hand on it. Even the master workman must be encouraged by
the reflection, that his awkwardness will be incompetent to do that
thing harm, to which his skill may fail to do justice. Here is no
apology for neglecting to do many things from a sense of our
incapacity,—for what deed does not fall maimed and imperfect from our
hands?—but only a warning to bungle less.

The satires of Persius are the furthest possible from inspired;
evidently a chosen, not imposed subject. Perhaps I have given him
credit for more earnestness than is apparent; but it is certain, that
that which alone we can call Persius, which is forever independent and
consistent, was in earnest, and so sanctions the sober consideration
of all. The artist and his work are not to be separated. The most
wilfully foolish man cannot stand aloof from his folly, but the deed
and the doer together make ever one sober fact. There is but one stage
for the peasant and the actor. The buffoon cannot bribe you to laugh
always at his grimaces; they shall sculpture themselves in Egyptian
granite, to stand heavy as the pyramids on the ground of his character.

Suns rose and set and found us still on the dank forest path which
meanders up the Pemigewasset, now more like an otter’s or a marten’s
trail, or where a beaver had dragged his trap, than where the wheels of
travel raise a dust; where towns begin to serve as gores, only to hold
the earth together. The wild pigeon sat secure above our heads, high on
the dead limbs of naval pines, reduced to a robin’s size. The very
yards of our hostelries inclined upon the skirts of mountains, and, as
we passed, we looked up at a steep angle at the stems of maples waving
in the clouds.

Far up in the country,—for we would be faithful to our experience,—in
Thornton, perhaps, we met a soldier lad in the woods, going to muster
in full regimentals, and holding the middle of the road; deep in the
forest, with shouldered musket and military step, and thoughts of war
and glory all to himself. It was a sore trial to the youth, tougher
than many a battle, to get by us creditably and with soldierlike
bearing. Poor man! He actually shivered like a reed in his thin
military pants, and by the time we had got up with him, all the
sternness that becomes the soldier had forsaken his face, and he
skulked past as if he were driving his father’s sheep under a
sword-proof helmet. It was too much for him to carry any extra armor
then, who could not easily dispose of his natural arms. And for his
legs, they were like heavy artillery in boggy places; better to cut the
traces and forsake them. His greaves chafed and wrestled one with
another for want of other foes. But he did get by and get off with all
his munitions, and lived to fight another day; and I do not record this
as casting any suspicion on his honor and real bravery in the field.

Wandering on through notches which the streams had made, by the side
and over the brows of hoar hills and mountains, across the stumpy,
rocky, forested, and bepastured country, we at length crossed on
prostrate trees over the Amonoosuck, and breathed the free air of
Unappropriated Land. Thus, in fair days as well as foul, we had traced
up the river to which our native stream is a tributary, until from
Merrimack it became the Pemigewasset that leaped by our side, and when
we had passed its fountain-head, the Wild Amonoosuck, whose puny
channel was crossed at a stride, guiding us toward its distant source
among the mountains, and at length, without its guidance, we were
enabled to reach the summit of AGIOCOCHOOK.

“Sweet days, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,
Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die.”


HERBERT.


When we returned to Hooksett, a week afterward, the melon man, in whose
corn-barn we had hung our tent and buffaloes and other things to dry,
was already picking his hops, with many women and children to help him.
We bought one watermelon, the largest in his patch, to carry with us
for ballast. It was Nathan’s, which he might sell if he wished, having
been conveyed to him in the green state, and owned daily by his eyes.
After due consultation with “Father,” the bargain was concluded,—we to
buy it at a venture on the vine, green or ripe, our risk, and pay “what
the gentlemen pleased.” It proved to be ripe; for we had had honest
experience in selecting this fruit.

Finding our boat safe in its harbor, under Uncannunuc Mountain, with a
fair wind and the current in our favor, we commenced our return voyage
at noon, sitting at our ease and conversing, or in silence watching for
the last trace of each reach in the river as a bend concealed it from
our view. As the season was further advanced, the wind now blew
steadily from the north, and with our sail set we could occasionally
lie on our oars without loss of time. The lumbermen throwing down wood
from the top of the high bank, thirty or forty feet above the water,
that it might be sent down stream, paused in their work to watch our
retreating sail. By this time, indeed, we were well known to the
boatmen, and were hailed as the Revenue Cutter of the stream. As we
sailed rapidly down the river, shut in between two mounds of earth, the
sounds of this timber rolled down the bank enhanced the silence and
vastness of the noon, and we fancied that only the primeval echoes were
awakened. The vision of a distant scow just heaving in sight round a
headland also increased by contrast the solitude.