Page:Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906) v7.djvu/373

1841] Sept. 28. Tuesday. I anticipate the coming in of spring as a child does the approach of some pomp through a gate of the city.

Sept. 30.

Nov. 29. Cambridge.—One must fight his way, after a fashion, even in the most civil and polite society. The most truly kind and gracious have to be won by a sort of valor, for the seeds of suspicion seem to lurk in every spadeful of earth, as well as those of confidence. The president and librarian turn the cold shoulder to your application, though they are known for benevolent persons. They wonder if you can be anything but a thief, contemplating frauds on the library. It is the instinctive and salutary principle of self-defense; that which makes the cat show her talons when you take her by the paw.

Certainly that valor which can open the hearts of men is superior to that which can only open the gates of cities.

You must always let people see that they serve