Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/281

 JST. 35.] TO HARRISON BLAKE. 257

ter, simply for paying our whole debt to God, which includes our debt to them, and though we have His receipt for it, for His paper is dis honored. The cashier will tell you that He has no stock in his bank.

How prompt we are to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our bodies ; how slow to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our souls ! Indeed, we would-be-practical folks cannot use this word without blushing because of our infidelity, hav ing starved this substance almost to a shadow. We feel it to be as absurd as if a man were to break forth into a eulogy on his dog, who has n t any. An ordinary man will work every day for a year at shoveling dirt to support his body, or a family of bodies ; but he is an extraordinary man who will work a whole day in a year for the support of his soul. Even the priests, the men of God, so called, for the most part confess that they work for the support of the body. But he alone is the truly enterprising and prac tical man who succeeds in maintaining his soul here. Have not we our everlasting life to get ? and is not that the only excuse at last for eat ing, drinking, sleeping, or even carrying an umbrella when it rains ? A man might as well devote himself to raising pork, as to fattening the bodies, or temporal part merely, of the whole human family. If we made the true dis-