Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/136

 of it; he is dead! dead! dead as a smelt; in the language of Tippecanoe and Tyler too, 'he is a gone coon. And before he concluded he reeled with intoxication. And the speech of the Secretary of the State which followed is said to have been "dignified, able, and suited to the occasion, as was, also, the closing argument for the prosecution."

Perhaps it is needless to add that the defendant was acquitted.

Sunday, November 5.

It is remarkable how language, as well as all things else, records only life and progress, never death and decay. We are obliged often to contradict ourselves to express these, as the tree requires the vital energy to push off its dead leaves. We have to say, for instance, "grows or waxes less."

So the poet only records the actions of the coward as well as those of the hero, and of the unjust as well as the just.

Tuesday, November 7.

When Ossian personifies the sun and addresses him, it is unnecessary to suppose, as [88]