Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/442

 416 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1860,

same height, and breadth, and weight ; and yet, to the man who sits most east, this life is a weariness, routine, dust and ashes, and he drowns his imaginary cares (!) (a sort of fric tion among his vital organs) in a bowl. But to the man who sits most west, his contemporary (!), it is a field for all noble endeavors, an elysium, the dwelling-place of heroes and demigods. The former complains that he has a thousand affairs to attend to ; but he does not realize that his affairs (though they may be a thousand) and he are one.

Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves. They learn to make houses ; but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes. What is the use of a house if you have n t got a tolerable planet to put it on ? if you cannot tolerate the planet it is on ? Grade the ground first. If a man believes and expects great things of him self, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him (of course you cannot put him anywhere, nor show him anything), he will be surrounded by grandeur. He is in the con dition of a healthy and hungry man, who says to himself, How sweet this crust is ! If he despairs of himself, then Tophet is his dwell- iiig-place, and he is in the condition of a sick