Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/129

 doors, a few visitors cards and the latest Annual; such life only as there is in the shells on the mantelpiece. The very children cry with less inwardness and depth than they do in the cottage. There they do not live, it is there they reside. There is no hearth in the centre of that house. The atmosphere of the apartments is not yet peopled with the spirits of its inhabitants; but the voices sound hollow and echo, and we see only the paint and the paper.

Sunday, October 22.

Through all his vice and deformity the ineradicable health of man is seen. The superabundant mirth that will be seen in any All-Fools' Day, though the mob be composed of the lame, the blind, and the infirm, the poor and vicious; yet the innocent mirth will put a new face on the matter.

[Here follows a series of semi-comic epitaphs:]

EPITAPH ON PURSY

Traveller, this is no prison, He is not dead, but risen. [81]