Walden, Henry David Thoreau [top ten ebook reader .TXT] 📗

, if not before. It is said thatDeucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones over their headsbehind them:--

Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,

Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati.

Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way,--

"From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care,Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are."

So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing thestones over their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell.

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mereignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares andsuperfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot beplucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsyand tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has notleisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustainthe manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in thema