Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/332

318 My life must seem as if it were passing on a higher level than that which I occupy. It must possess a dignity which will not allow me to be familiar.

Feb. 3, 1852. When I review the list of my acquaintances from the most impartial point of view, and consider each one's excesses and defects of character which are the subject of mutual ridicule and astonishment and pity (and I class myself among them), I cannot help asking myself, &quot;If this is the sane world, what must a mad-house be?&quot; It is only by a certain flattery, and an ignoring of their faults, that even the best are made available for society.

I have been to the libraries (yesterday) at Cambridge and Boston. It would seem as if all things compelled us to originality. How happens it that I find not in the country, in the fields and woods, the works even of like-minded naturalists and poets. Those who have expressed the purest and deepest love of nature have not recorded it on the bark of the trees with the lichens, they have left no memento of it there; but if I would read their books, I must go to the city, so strange and repulsive both to them and to me, and deal with men and institutions with whom I have no sympathy. When I have just been there on this errand, it seems too great a price to pay even for access to the works