X the surface. Truly, we are deep thinkers, we are ambitious spirits! As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and hide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information. I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect. There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. There are such words as joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary and mean. We think that we can change our clothes only. It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind. Who knows what sort of seventeen-year locust will next come out of the ground? The government of the world. I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine. The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this be the eventful year, may which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets. Every one has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer's kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts, from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb, heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board, may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society's most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last! I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning-star. INDEX ACTON (Mass.), 192. Es alienum, another's brass, a Age and youth, 16. Amusements, games and, despair Animal life and heat nearly syn- Ants, battle of the, 355-361. "Best" room, the pine wood be Bibles of mankind, 167, 168. scious penance, 9; Walden ice Bricks, mortar growing harder - Brighton or Brighttown, 209. Brister's Spring, 406, 408. Building one's own house, sig- Business habits indispensable, Busk, Indian feast of first fruits, Calidas', Sacontala quoted, 491. Canoe, water-logged in Walden Cards left by visitors, 203. Cat, the Collins's, 71; in the woods, domestic and “winged," Cato Major, quoted, 101; 132, Caves, birds do not sing in, 47. Channing, W. E., quoted, 317. Chaucer, Geoffrey, quoted, 331. Circulating library, 165. 163. Clothing, a necessary of life, 22; Codinan place, the, 401. Compost, better part of man soon Concord (Mass.), Walden Pond of, 192; two-colored waters of, Damodara, quoted, 138. Day, deliberately, like nature, Debt, getting in and out of, 13. Dialogue between Hermit and Digby, Sir Kenelm, quoted, 253. Divinity in man! Look at the Dog in the woods, a village Bose, Doing-good, a crowded profes of Hawthornden, Dwelling-house, what not to ECONOMY, 7–127. Epitome of the year, the day, 464. |