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