Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/300

 276 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1854,

the very flies buzz too distinctly, and have ac cused myself because I did not still this super ficial din. We must not be too easily distracted by the crying of children or of dynasties. The Irishman erects his sty, and gets drunk, and jabbers more and more under my eaves, and I am responsible for all that filth and folly. I find it, as ever, very unprofitable to have much to do with men. It is sowing the wind, but not reaping even the whirlwind ; only reaping an unprofitable calm and stagnation. Our conver sation is a smooth, and civil, and never-ending speculation merely. I take up the thread of it again in the morning, with very much such cour age as the invalid takes his prescribed Seidlitz powders. Shall I help you to some of the mack erel? It would be more respectable if men, as has been said before, instead of being such pigmy desperates, were Giant Despairs. Emerson says that his life is so unprofitable and shabby for the most part, that he is driven to all sorts of resources, and, among the rest, to men. I tell him that we differ only in our resources. Mine is to get away from men. They very rarely affect me as grand or beautiful ; but I know that there is a sunrise and a sunset every day. In the summer, this world is a mere watering- place, a Saratoga, drinking so many tum blers of Congress water ; and in the winter, is it