Fri 20 Sep 1996 15:00
All men want, not
something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to
be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or
dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in
some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain
it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season,
like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon
retires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its
slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry
and expansion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal
coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be
inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of
mankind.




  But how do the poor minority fare? Perhaps it will be found that
just in proportion as some have been placed in outward circumstances
above the savage, others have been degraded below him. The luxury of
one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. On the one
side is the palace, on the other are the almshouse and "silent
poor." The myriads who built the pyramids to be the tombs of the
Pharaohs were fed on garlic, and it may be were not decently buried
themselves.


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