that economy
of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely
professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading
Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.

As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements"; there
is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The
devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share
and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to
be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They
are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already
but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York.
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine
to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to
communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was
earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was
presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had
nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk
sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old
World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that
will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the
Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. After all, the man whose horse
trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages;
he is not an evangelist, nor does he come round eating locusts and wild
honey. I doubt if Flying Childers ever carried a peck of corn to mill.

One says to me, "I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to
travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg today and see the
country." But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest
traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try
who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety
cents. That is almost a day's wages. I remember when wages were sixty
cents a day for laborers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot,
and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week
together. You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive
there some time tomorrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky
enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will
be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the r