I am sure a fellow
shooting an ugly weir in a canoe has exactly as much
thought about fame as most commanders going into battle;
and yet the action, fall out how it will, is not one of
those the muse delights to celebrate. Indeed, it is
difficult to see why the fellow does a thing so nameless
and yet so formidable to look at, unless on the theory that
he likes it.
*
It is but a lying cant that would represent the merchant
and the banker as people disinterestedly toiling for
mankind, and then most useful when absorbed in their
transactions; for the man is more important than
his services.
*
It was my custom, as the hours dragged on, to repeat the
question, 'When will the carts come in?' and repeat it
again and again until at last those sounds arose in the
street that I have heard once more this morning. The road
before our house is a great thoroughfare for early carts.
I know not, and I never have known, what they carry, whence
they come, or whither they go. But I know that, long ere
dawn, and for hours together, they stream continuously
past, with the same rolling and jerking of wheels, and the
same clink of horses' feet. It was not for nothing that
they made the burthen of my wishes all night through. They
are really the first throbbings of life, the harbingers of
day; and it pleases you as much to hear them as it must
please a shipwrecked seaman once again to grasp a hand of
flesh and blood after years of miserable solitude.
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