Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/401

Rh were shorter. The ice now may be too old and white. The sun being in a cloud, partly obscured, I see a very dark purple tinge on the flat drifts on the ice, earlier than usual, and when afterward the sun comes out below the cloud, I see no purple nor rose. Hence it seems that the twilight has as much or more to do with this phenomenon, supposing the sun to be low, than the slight angle of its rays with the horizon.

Always you have to contend with the stupidity of men. It is like a stiff soil, a hard pan. If you go deeper than usual, you are sure to meet with a pan made harder even by the superficial cultivation. The stupid you have always with you. Men are more obedient at first to words than to ideas. They mind names more than things. Read them a lecture on &quot;Education,&quot; naming the subject, and they will think they have heard something important, but call it &quot;Transcendentalism,&quot; and they will think it moonshine. Or halve your lecture, and put a psalm at the beginning and a prayer at the end of it, and they will pronounce it good without thinking.

The Scripture rule, &quot;Unto him that hath, shall be given,&quot; is true of composition. The more you have thought and written on a given theme, the more you can still write. Thought breeds thought. It grows under your hands.