194 THOREAU. 



neighbors, and sent forth to illustrate the " feathered 

 Mercury," as defined by Webster and Worcester. Plain- 

 ness of speech was carried to a pitch that would have 

 taken away the breath of George Fox ; and even swear- 

 ing had its evangelists, who answered a simple inquiry 

 after their health with an elaborate ingenuity of impre- 

 cation that might have been honorably mentioned by 

 Marlborough in general orders. Everybody had a mis- 

 sion (with a capital M) to attend to everybody-else's 

 business. No brain but had its private maggot, which 

 must have found pitiably short commons sometimes. Not 

 a few impecunious zealots abjured the use of money (un- 

 less earned by other people), professing to live on the 

 internal revenues of the spirit. Some had an assurance 

 of instant millennium so soon as hooks and eyes should be 

 substituted for buttons. Communities were established 

 where everything was to be common but common-sense. 

 Men renounced their old gods, and hesitated only whether 

 to bestow their furloughed allegiance on Thor or Budh. 

 Conventions were held for every hitherto inconceivable 

 purpose. The belated gift of tongues, as among the Fifth 

 Monarchy men, spread like a contagion, rendering its 

 victims incomprehensible to all Christian men ; whether 

 equally so to the most distant possible heathen or not 

 was unexperimented, though many woidd have sub- 

 scribed liberally that a fair trial might be made. It was 

 the pentecost of Shinar. The day of utterances repro- 

 duced the day of rebuses and anagrams, and there was 

 nothing so simple that uncial letters and the style of 

 Diphilus the Labyrinth could not turn into a riddle. 

 Many foreign revolutionists out of work added to the 

 general misunderstanding their contribution of broken 

 English in every most ingenious form of fracture. All 

 stood ready at a moment's notice to reform everything 

 but themselves. The general motto was : — 



