Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/436

 410 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1859,

months and years on account of my family. 1 This is the way I am serving King Admetus, confound him ! If it were not for my relations, I would let the wolves prey on his flocks to their bellies content. Such fellows you have to deal with ! herdsmen of some other king, or of the same, who tell no tale, but in the sense of count ing their flocks, and then lie drunk under a hedge. How is your grist ground? Not by some murmuring stream, while you lie dreaming on the bank ; but, it seems, you must take hold with your hands, and shove the wheel round. You can t depend on streams, poor feeble things ! You can t depend on worlds, -left to themselves ; but you ve got to oil them and goad them along. In short, you ve got to carry on two farms at once, the farm on the earth and the farm in your mind. Those Crimean and Italian battles were mere boys play, they are the scrapes into which truants get. But what a battle a man must fight everywhere to maintain his standing army of thoughts, and march with them in orderly array through the always hostile coun-

1 He was looking- after the manufacture of fine plumbago for the electrotypers, which was the family business after pen cil-making- grew unprofitable. The Thoreaus had a grinding mill in Acton, and a packing shop attached to their Concord house. &quot; Parker s society,&quot; mentioned at the close of the let ter, was the congregation of Theodore Parker, then in Italy, where he died in May, 1860.