Page:Thoreau - As remembered by a young friend.djvu/170

 he writes: “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current glides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky whose bottom is pebbly with stars.” Page 86, note 1. In the year of Our Lord, 1852, the alleged manifestations of departed spirits reached Concord, through various humble “mediums.” Judge Hoar remarked, “If this be a treasure, verily we have it in earthen vessels.”

Thoreau writes to his sister, in Bangor: “Concord is just as idiotic as ever in relation to the spirits and their knockings. Most people here believe in a spiritual world which no respectable junk bottle, which had not met with a slip, would condescend to contain even a portion of for a moment, — whose atmosphere would extinguish a candle let down into it, like a well that wants airing; in spirits which the very bullfrogs in our meadows would blackball. Their evil genius is seeing how low it can degrade them. The hooting of owls, the croaking of frogs, is celestial wisdom in comparison. If I could be brought to believe in the things which they believe, I should make haste to get rid of my certificate of stock in this and the next world's enterprises, and buy a share in the first Immediate Annihilation Company that offered. I would exchange my immortality for