22 
WALDEN. 
would not after all admit me into the list of town 
officers, nor make my place a sinecure with a moderate 
allowance. My accounts, which I can swear to have 
kept faithfully, I have, indeed, never got audited, still 
less accepted, still less paid and settled. However, I 
have not set my heart on that. 
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets 
at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighbor¬ 
hood. “ Do you wish to buy any baskets ? ” he asked. 
“ No, we do not want any,” was the reply. “ What! ” 
exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, “ do you 
mean to starve us ? ” Having seen his industrious white 
neighbors so well off, — that the lawyer had only to 
weave arguments, and by some magic wealth and stand¬ 
ing followed, he had said to himself; I will go into busi¬ 
ness ; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can 
do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he 
would have done his part, and then it would be the white 
man’s to buy them. He had not discovered that it was 
necessary for him to make it worth the other’s while to 
buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or 
to make something else which it would be worth his 
while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a 
delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one’s 
while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I 
think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of 
studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my 
baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of 
selling them. The life which men praise and regard as 
successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate 
any one kind at the expense of the others ? 
Finding that my fellow-citizens were not likely to 
offer me any room in the court house, or any curacy or 
