Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/426

 400 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1859,

tinually, and can imagine the outside world also to be peopled. Yet some of my acquaintance would fain hustle me into the almshouse for the sake of society, as if I were pining for that diet, when I seem to myself a most befriended man, and find constant employment. However, they do not believe a word I say. They have got a club, the handle of which is in the Parker House at Boston, and with this they beat me from time to time, expecting to make me tender or minced meat, so fit for a club to dine off.

&quot; Hercules with his club The Dragon did drub ; But More of More Hall, With nothing at all, He slew the Dragon of Wantley.&quot;

Ah ! that More of More Hall knew what fair play was. Channing, who wrote to me about it once, brandishing the club vigorously (being set on by another, probably), says now, seriously, that he is sorry to find by my letters that I am &quot; absorbed in politics,&quot; and adds, begging my pardon for his plainness, &quot; Beware of an extrane ous life ! &quot; and so he does his duty, and washes his hands of me. I tell him that it is as if he should say to the sloth, that fellow that creeps so slowly along a tree, and cries ai from time to time, &quot; Beware of dancing ! &quot;

The doctors are all agreed that I am suffer-