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WALDEN. 
along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, 
we perceive that only great and worthy things have any 
permanent and absolute existence, — that petty fears 
and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. 
This is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing 
the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived 
by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of 
routine and habit every where, which still is built on 
purely illusory foundations. Children, who play life, 
discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, 
who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are 
wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I have read 
in a Hindoo book, that “ there was a king’s son, who, 
being expelled in infancy from his native city, was 
brought up by a forester, and, growing up to maturity 
in that state, imagined himself to belong to the bar¬ 
barous race with which he lived. One of his father’s 
ministers having discovered him, revealed to him what 
he was, and the misconception of his character was 
removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. So 
soul,” continues the Hindoo philosopher, “ from the cir¬ 
cumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own char¬ 
acter, until the truth is revealed to it by some holy 
teacher, and then it knows itself to be Brahme .” I per¬ 
ceive that we inhabitants of New England live this 
mean life that we do because our vision does not pene¬ 
trate the surface of things. We think that that is which 
appears to be. If a man should walk through this 
town and see only the reality, where, think you, would 
the “ Mill-dam ” go to ? If he should give us an ac¬ 
count of the realities he beheld there, we should not 
recognize the place in his description. Look at a 
meeting-house, or a court-house, or a jail, or a shop, or 
