rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without
perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring
and the children cry--determined to make a day of it. Why should we
knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed
in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the
meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of
the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail
by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine
whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell
rings, why should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are
like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward
through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and
delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through
Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through
Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we
come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and
say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d'appui,
below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a
wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not
a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a
freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you
stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun
glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its
sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will
happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only
reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats
and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our
business.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I
drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin
current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in
the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know
not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that
I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it
discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to
be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head