But while we are fio books, though the most seled
classid read only particular written languages, which are
themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of
fetting the language which all things as speak without
metaphor, which alone is copious and standard. Much is published,
but little printed. The rays which stream through the shutter will
be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed. No
method nor discipline supersede the y of being forever
on the alert. What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry,
no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most
admirable routine of life, pared with the discipline of looking
always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student
merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk
on into futurity.
I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I
often did better than this. There were times when I could not
afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work,
whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life.
Sometimes, in a summer m, having taken my aced bath, I
sat in my sunny doorway from suill noon, rapt in a revery,
amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude
and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless
through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or
the noise of some travellers wagon on the distant highway, I was
reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like in
the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would
have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much
over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals
mean by plation and the forsaking of works. For the most
part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to
light some work of mi was m, and lo, now it is evening,
and nothing memorable is aplished. Instead of singing like the
birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the
sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had
I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my
. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any
heathey, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the
tig of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is
said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one
word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward
for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing
day." This was sheer idleo my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but
if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should
not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in
himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly
reprove his indolence.
I had this adva least, in my mode of life, over those
who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the
theatre, that my life itself was bey amusement and never
ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many ses and without an
end. If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating
our lives acc to the last a mode we had learned, w