HENRY THOREAU
cannot come from eating upward-growing vegetables like wheat, instead of burrowing, darkling carrots or grovelling turnips; or the soul may not be polluted by eating “raised bread;” or again, when he found the people spending their rare holidays in the bar-room, or the old-time muster-field, strewn with fired ramrods, and redolent of New England rum and bad language and worse discipline, or, having forced their farm-work that they might do so, spending days listening to the foul or degrading details of the Criminal Court session, or cheering blindly for Webster after his deliberate desertion of all that he had once stood for to best New England,—no wonder, then, I say, that he rejoiced that his neck was out of such yokes, and his eyes washed clearer by Walden water, and, as his generous instinct always bade him share the knowledge he won, he
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