be, though they may be dark and muddy.

Many a traveller came out of his way to see me and the inside of my
house, and, as an excuse for calling, asked for a glass of water. I told
them that I drank at the pond, and pointed thither, offering to lend
them a dipper. Far off as I lived, I was not exempted from the annual
visitation which occurs, methinks, about the first of April, when
everybody is on the move; and I had my share of good luck, though there
were some curious specimens among my visitors. Half-witted men from the
almshouse and elsewhere came to see me; but I endeavored to make them
exercise all the wit they had, and make their confessions to me; in such
cases making wit the theme of our conversation; and so was compensated.
Indeed, I found some of them to be wiser than the so-called overseers
of the poor and selectmen of the town, and thought it was time that the
tables were turned. With respect to wit, I learned that there was not
much difference between the half and the whole. One day, in particular,
an inoffensive, simple-minded pauper, whom with others I had often seen
used as fencing stuff, standing or sitting on a bushel in the fields to
keep cattle and himself from straying, visited me, and expressed a wish
to live as I did. He told me, with the utmost simplicity and truth,
quite superior, or rather inferior, to anything that is called humility,
that he was "deficient in intellect." These were his words. The Lord
had made him so, yet he supposed the Lord cared as much for him as for
another. "I have always been so," said he, "from my childhood; I never
had much mind; I was not like other children; I am weak in the head. It
was the Lord's will, I suppose." And there he was to prove the truth
of his words. He was a metaphysical puzzle to me. I have rarely met a
fellowman on such promising ground--it was so simple and sincere and so
true all that he said. And, true enough, in proportion as he appeared
to humble himself was he exalted. I did not know at first but it was the
result of a wise policy. It seemed that from such a basis of truth and
frankness as the poor weak-headed pauper had laid, our intercourse might
go forward to something better than the intercourse of sages.

I had some guests from those not reckoned commonly among the town's
poor, but who should be; who are among the world's poor, at any rate;
guests who appeal, not to your hospitality, but to your hospitalality;
who earnestly wish to b