They had no
idle thoughts, and no one without could see their work, for their
industry was not as in knots and excrescences embayed.
But I find it difficult to remember them. They fade irrevocably
out of my mind even now while I speak, and endeavor to recall
them and recollect myself. It is only after a long and serious
effort to recollect my best thoughts that I become again aware of
their cohabitancy. If it were not for such families as this, I
think I should move out of Concord.
We are accustomed to say in New England that few and fewer
pigeons visit us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for
them. So, it would seem, few and fewer thoughts visit each
growing man from year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid
waste--sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to
mill--and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on.
They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial
season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of
the mind, cast by the WINGS of some thought in its vernal or
autumnal migration, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the
substance of the thought itself.
Pages:
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63