Page:Anti-slavery and reform papers by Thoreau, Henry David.djvu/127

 Ii6 Anti- Slavery and Reform Papers.

for I have had a little experience ia that basiness, — that there is a desire to hear what / ildnli on some subject, though I may be the greatest fool in the country, — and not that I should say pleasant things merely, or such as the audience will assent to ; and I resolve, accordingrlv, that I will si^YQ them a stronof dose of myself. They have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and I am determined that they shall have me, though I bore them beyond all precedent.

So now I would say something similar to you, my readers. Since jou are my readers, and I have not been much of a traveller, I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can.

As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, * and retain all the criticism.

Let us consider the way in which we spend our liv^es.

This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle ! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no Sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work.

I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in ; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me making a minute in the fields, took it for granted that I was calculating my w^ages. If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for — business ! I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to j( philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.

There is a coarse and boisterous money-making fellow