Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/198

184 exception, heathenish and barbarous, seen from the heights of philosophy. A wise man sees as clearly the heathenism and barbarity of his own countrymen as those of the nations to whom his countrymen send missionaries. The Englishman and American are subject equally to many national superstitions with the Hindoos and Chinese. My countrymen are to me foreigners. I have but little more sympathy with them than with the mob of India or of China. All nations are remiss in their duties, and fall short of their standards. Madame Pfeiffer says of the Parsees or Fire-worshipers in Bombay, who should all have been on hand on the esplanade to greet the first rays of the sun, that she found only a few here and there, and some did not make their appearance till nine o'clock.—I see no important difference between the assumed gravity and bought funeral sermon of the parish clergyman and the howlings and strikings of the breast of the hired mourning women of the East.

Bill Wheeler had two clumps for feet, and progressed slowly by short steps, having frozen his feet once, as I understood. Him I have been sure to meet once in five years, progressing into the town on his stubs, holding the middle of the road, as if he drove the invisible herd of the world before him, especially on a military