Peripatetic Meditations 



like " Confound you!" By so doing I feel that 

 I defend my dignity. 



But if I cannot run as I used to, I can walk, 

 and, stumping away with a stout staff, get over 

 enough ground to gather food for thought. 

 Consolation here, and age needs lots of it. 



What can be more delightful than to have an 

 outburst of enthusiasm on your part met with 

 freezing indifference by your audience? To 

 see "who cares?" written so plainly on every 

 countenance that each becomes a "speaking" 

 one is, I say, delightful. Not at first, for the 

 effect is quite the opposite, but a moment later 

 when the reaction sets in and you learn, never 

 to forget, that no one can have an audience 

 equal to himself. 



Poor Solitude ! you have been much maligned. 

 Here I am, quite alone, in the old woods and 

 yet seldom in a city's streets have I been in 

 more of a crowd. I am equal to listening to 

 all I have to say and to all that Nature has to 

 say to me. That surely is sufficient. More 

 would prove "wasteful and ridiculous excess." 



We forget too readily. This is the third day 

 of the fifth month and the seventy-first since 



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