Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/359

Rh sat before great fires of wood four feet long, with a fence of blankets behind them, and water froze on the mantel-piece.

Feb. 7, 1838. Zeno, the Stoic, stood in precisely the same relation to the world that I do now. He is forsooth bred a merchant, as how many still, and can trade, and barter, and perhaps higgle, and moreover he can be shipwrecked and cast ashore at the Piræus, like one of your Johns or Thomases. He strolls into a shop, and is charmed by a book, by Xenophon, and straightway he becomes a philosopher. The sun of a new life's day rises to him serene and unclouded, which looks over. And still the fleshly Zeno sails on, shipwrecked, buffeted, tempest-tossed, but the true Zeno sails over a placid sea. Play high, play low, rain, sleet, or snow, it's all the same with the stoic. When evening comes, he sits down unwearied to the review of his day, what's done that's to be undone, what not done at all still to be done; himself Truth's unconcerned helpmate. Another system of book-keeping this, then, that the Cyprian trader to Phœnicia practiced.

This was he who said to a certain garrulous young man, &quot;On this account have we two ears and but one mouth, that we may hear more, and speak less.&quot; The wisest may apologize that he only said so to hear himself talk, for if he