Page:Anti-slavery and reform papers by Thoreau, Henry David.djvu/73

 62 A 7iii- Slavery and Reform Papers.

his prayers begin with '^ Now I lay me down to sleep/' and he is forever looking forward to the time when he shall go to his *^ long rest/^ He has consented to per- form certain old-established charities, too, after a fashion, but he does not wish to hear of any new-fangled ones ; he doesn't wish to have any supplementary articles added to the contract, to fit it to the present time. He shows the whites of his eyes on the Sabbath, and the blacks all the rest of the week. The evil is not merely a stagna- tion of blood, but a stagnation of spirit. Many, no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and by habit, and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives than they are. Accordingly they pronounce this man insane, for they know that iliey could never act as he does, as long as they are themselves.

We dream of foreign countries, of other times and races of men, placing them at a distance in history or space ; but let some significant event like the present occur in our midst, and we discover, often, this distance and this strangeness between us and our nearest neigh- bors. Tlfiey are our Austrias, and Chinas, and South Sea Islands. Our crowded society becomes well spaced all at once, clean and handsome to the eye — a city of magnificent distances. We discover why it was that we never got beyond compliments and surfaces with them before ; we become aware of as many versts between us and them as there are between a wandering Tartar and a Chinese town. The thoughtful man becomes a hermit in the thoroughfares of the market-place. Impassable seas suddenly find their level between us, or dumb steppes stretch themselves out there. It is the difference of constitution, of intelligence, and faith, and not streams