I have had a little experience in that business,--that
there is a desire to hear what _I think_ on some subject, though I may
be the greatest fool in the country,--and not that I should say pleasant
things merely, or such as the audience will assent to; and I resolve,
accordingly, that I will give them a strong dose of myself. They have
sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and I am determined that they
shall have me, though I bore them beyond all precedent.

So now I would say something similar to you, my readers. Since _you_ are
my readers, and I have, not been much of a traveller, I will not talk
about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As
the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the
criticism.

Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.

This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked
almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my
dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at
leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily
buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for
dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me making a minute in the fields,
took it for granted that I was calculating my wages. If a man was tossed
out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or
scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because
he was thus incapacitated for--business! I think that there is nothing,
not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life
itself, than this incessant business.

There is a coarse and boisterous money-making fellow in the outskirts of
our town, who is going to build a bank-wall under the hill along the
edge of his meadow. The powers have put this into his head to keep him
out of mischief, and he wishes me to spend three weeks digging there
with him. The result will be that he will perhaps get some more money to
hoard, and leave for his heirs to spend foolishly. If I do this, most
will commend me as an industrious and hard-working man; but if I choose
to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit, though
but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler.
Nevertheless, as I do not need the police of meaningless labor to
regulate me, and do not see anything absolutely praise-worthy in this
fellow's undertaking, any more than in many an enterprise of