The Defence of Idleness. 229 



something to think about. This is a wide-spread 

 want, and its value may be measured by its uni- 

 versality. Buried in bricks, the brain will still 

 work, and what wonders has it not wrought when 

 there was no trace of Nature near to cheer it ! 

 Books have been written in dungeons, but would 

 this have been possible had the prisoner never 

 wandered in a green field or rambled in a forest ? 



But speak of out-of-doors and Thoreau comes 

 to mind. He was a surveyor, but how much 

 more an idler in the fields ! Was it when he 

 measured the farmers' wood-lots that he nailed to 

 the mast those bright thoughts that have been a 

 help to mankind ever since ? What of the days 

 when, to shield himself from the driving storms, 

 he crouched behind the stone wall ? He thought 

 himself a philosopher then, as he distinctly states, 

 and he was right. The life that is wholly given 

 to manual labor is a life half lost. 



Nature was not limited to the lilies and lobelia 

 to-day. The fields reaching to the far-off woods 

 were bright with golden-rod ; there were ivory- 

 white "turtle-heads" clustered in shady nooks, 

 orchids in abundance, purple gerardia, eupatorium, 



20 



