ECONOMY. 
7 
resume their natural position, while from the twist of 
the neck nothing but liquids can pass into the stomach;” 
or dwelling, chained for life, at the foot of a tree; or 
measuring with their bodies, like caterpillars, the breadth 
of vast empires; or standing on one leg on the tops of 
pillars, — even these forms of conscious penance are 
hardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes 
which I daily witness. The twelve labors of Hercules 
were trifling in comparison with those which my neigh¬ 
bors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and 
had an end; but I could never see that these men slew 
or captured any monster or finished any labor. They 
have no friend Iolas to burn with a hot iron the root of 
the hydra’s head, but as soon as one head is crushed, 
two spring up. 
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it 
is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and 
farming tools ; for these are more easily acquired than 
got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open 
pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have 
seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to 
labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why 
should they eat their sixty acres, when man is con¬ 
demned to eat only his peck of dirt ? Why should 
they begin digging their graves as soon as they are 
born ? They have got to live a man’s life, pushing all 
these things before them, and get on as well as they can. 
How many a poor immortal soul have I met well nigh 
crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down 
the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five 
feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one 
hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and 
wood-lot! The portionless, who struggle with no such 
