Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/223

 ^T.SO.j TO HARRISON BLAKE. 199

is put to man. Let us not answer it hastily. Let us not be content to get our bread in some gross, careless, and hasty manner. Some men go a-himting, some a-fishing, some a-gaming, some to war ; but none have so pleasant a time as they who in earnest seek to earn their bread. It is true actually as it is true really ; it is true materially as it is true spiritually, that they who seek honestly and sincerely, with all their hearts and lives and strength, to earn their bread, do earn it, and it is sure to be very sweet to them. A very little bread, a very few crumbs are enough, if it be of the right quality, for it is infinitely nutritious. Let each man, then, earn at least a crumb of bread for his body before he dies, and know the taste of it, that it is iden tical with the bread of life, and that they both go down at one swallow.

Our bread need not ever be sour or hard to digest. What Nature is to the mind she is also to the body. As she feeds my imagination, she will feed my body ; for what she says she means, and is ready to do. She is not simply beautiful to the poet s eye. Not only the rainbow and sunset are beautiful, but to be fed and clothed, sheltered and warmed aright, are equally beau tiful and inspiring. There is not necessarily any gross and ugly fact which may not be eradi cated from the life of man. We should endeavor