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

266 so sumptuous that I seemed to be breaking my fast upon a bank in the midst of an arduous journey, that the water seemed to be a living spring, the napkins grass, the conversation free as the winds, and the servants that waited on us were our simple desires. Cut off from Pilpay and Æsop the moral alone at the bottom, would that content you?

Jan. 27, 1853. Trench says a wild man is a willed man; well, then, a man of will who does what he wills or wishes, a man of hope and of the future tense, for not only the obstinate is willed, but, far more, the constant and persevering. The obstinate man, properly speaking, is one who wills not. The perseverance of the saints is positive willedness, not a mere passive willingness. The fates are wild, for they will, and the Almighty is wild above all, as fate is.

What are our fields but felds or felled woods. They bear a more recent name than the woods, suggesting that previously the earth was covered with woods. Always in a new country a field is a clearing.

Jan. 27, 1854. I have an old account book found in Dea. R. Brown's garret since his death. The first leaf or two is gone. Its cover is brown paper, on which, amid many marks and scribblings, I find written:—