one
playing on a flute, and that sound harmonized with his mood. Still he
thought of his work; but the burden of his thought was, that though this
kept running in his head, and he found himself planning and contriving
it against his will, yet it concerned him very little. It was no more
than the scurf of his skin, which was constantly shuffled off. But the
notes of the flute came home to his ears out of a different sphere
from that he worked in, and suggested work for certain faculties which
slumbered in him. They gently did away with the street, and the village,
and the state in which he lived. A voice said to him--Why do you stay
here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is
possible for you? Those same stars twinkle over other fields than
these.--But how to come out of this condition and actually migrate
thither? All that he could think of was to practise some new austerity,
to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself
with ever increasing respect.

Brute Neighbors

Sometimes I had a companion in my fishing, who came through the village
to my house from the other side of the town, and the catching of the
dinner was as much a social exercise as the eating of it.

Hermit. I wonder what the world is doing now. I have not heard so much
as a locust over the sweet-fern these three hours. The pigeons are all
asleep upon their roosts--no flutter from them. Was that a farmer's noon
horn which sounded from beyond the woods just now? The hands are coming
in to boiled salt beef and cider and Indian bread. Why will men worry
themselves so? He that does not eat need not work. I wonder how much
they have reaped. Who would live there where a body can never think
for the barking of Bose? And oh, the housekeeping! to keep bright the
devil's door-knobs, and scour his tubs this bright day! Better not
keep a house. Say, some hollow tree; and then for morning calls and
dinner-parties! Only a woodpecker tapping. Oh, they swarm; the sun is
too warm there; they are born too far into life for me. I have water
from the spring, and a loaf of brown bread on the shelf.--Hark! I hear a
rustling of the leaves. Is it some ill-fed village hound yielding to
the instinct of the chase? or the lost pig which is said to be in these
woods, whose tracks I saw after the rain? It comes on apace; my sumachs
and sweetbriers tremble.--Eh, Mr. Poet, is it you? How do you like the
world to-day?

Poet. See