HENRY THOREAU
looked for behind the stars, free from the millstones, even the carved and gilded ones, which customary town life hangs around the necks of most of us. Then, when he went down into the village, found the good people set at such elementary problems as they seem to us now, and then to him,—whether it was right for this country to uphold human slavery, or for man to withhold from woman her right in her property, or, for persons to get somewhat drunk frequently, or for a citizen to violate a law requiring him to become a slave hunter, or whether an innocent, blameless person dying, not a church member, had any chance of escaping the terrible wrath, not of the Adversary, but of his Maker, which should be exercised on him for untold millions of years,—or perhaps found advanced philosophers spending their time discussing if more aspiration
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