Page:Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906) v7.djvu/335

1841] Throughout the universe, with the sun and moon,

Which would dissolve allegiance as soon.

Shall I concern myself for fickleness,

And undertake to make my friends more sure,

When the great gods out of sheer kindliness,

Gave me this office for a sinecure?

April 15. Thursday. The gods are of no sect; they side with no man. When I imagine that Nature inclined rather to some few earnest and faithful souls, and specially existed for them, I go to see an obscure individual who lives under the hill, letting both gods and men alone, and find that strawberries and tomatoes grow for him too in his garden there, and the sun lodges kindly under his hillside, and am compelled to acknowledge the unbribable charity of the gods.

Any simple, unquestioned mode of life is alluring to men. The man who picks peas steadily for a living is more than respectable. He is to be envied by his neighbors.

April 16. I have been inspecting my neighbors' farms to-day and chaffering with the landholders, and I must confess I am startled to find everywhere the old system