Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/280

270 I hear scarcely any toads of late, except a few at evening. See in the garden, on the side of a corn-hill, the hole in which one sits by day. It is round, and about the width of his body across, extending one side underneath about the length of my little finger. It is shaped in the main like a turtle's nest, but not so broad beneath, and not quite so deep. There sits the toad in the shade and concealed completely under the ground, with its head toward the entrance, waiting for evening.

July 1, 1840. To be a man is to do a man's work. Always our resource is to endeavor. We may well say, Success to our endeavors. Effort is the prerogative of virtue.

The true laborer is recompensed by his labor not by his employer. Industry is its own wages. Let us not suffer our hands to lose one jot of their handiness by looking behind to a mere recompense, knowing that our true endeavor cannot be thwarted, nor we be cheated of our earnings unless by not earning them. Some symbol of value may shape itself to the senses in wood or marble or verse, but this is fluctuating as the laborer's hire, which may or may not be withheld. Perhaps the hugest and most effective deed may have no sensible result at all on earth, but paint itself in the heavens in new stars and constellations. Its very material lies out of Nature.