WHAT WE LOSE AND WHAT WE GAIN. 211 



shoes will serve a hero longer than they have 

 served his valet if a hero ever has a valet ; 

 bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make 

 them do. Only they who go to soirees and 

 legislative halls must have new coats, coats to 

 change as often as the man changes in them. 

 But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and 

 shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do, 

 will they not ? Who ever saw his old clothes, 

 his old coat actually worn out, resolved into its 

 primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of 

 charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him, 

 perchance, to be bestowed on one poorer still, 

 or shall we say richer, who could do with less? 

 I say beware of all enterprises that require new 

 clothes and not rather a new wearer of clothes. 

 If there is not a new man, how can the new 

 clothes be made to fit ? If you have any enter- 

 prise before you, try it in your old clothes. All 

 men want not something to do with, but some- 

 thing to do, or rather something to be. Per- 

 haps we should never procure a new suit, how- 

 ever dirty or ragged the old, until we have so 

 conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some 

 way, that we feel like new men in the old, and 

 that to retain it would be like keeping new 

 wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like 

 that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. 

 The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it. 

 Thus, also, the snake casts its slough, and the 

 caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal indus- 



