Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/381

367 as they to give them aid. Their meanness would drag down your deed to be a compromise with conscience, and not leave it to be done on the high table-land of the benevolent soul. But if I am to serve them, I must not serve the devil. We go about mending the times when we should be building the eternity.

Feb. 11, 1852. I have lived some thirty odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably can tell me nothing, to the purpose. There is life, an experiment untried by me, and it does not avail me that you have tried it. If I have any valuable experience I am sure to reflect that this my mentors said nothing about. What were mysteries to the child remain mysteries to the old man.

It is a mistake to suppose that in a country where railroads and steamboats and the printing press and the church, where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very large body of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of savages. To know this, I should not need to look farther than to the shanties which everywhere line our railroads, that last improvement in civilization. But I will refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of the white, or enlightened spots on the map.