106 
WALDEN. 
settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet down¬ 
ward through the mud and slush of opinion, and pre¬ 
judice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that 
alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and Lon¬ 
don, through New York and Boston and Concord, 
through church and state, through poetry and philoso¬ 
phy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and 
rocks in place, which we can call reality , and say, This is, 
and no mistake ; and then begin, having a point d’appui, 
below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you 
might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, 
or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Bealometer, 
that future ages might know how deep a freshet of 
shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. 
If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, 
you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if 
it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you 
through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily 
conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we 
crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear 
the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremi¬ 
ties ; if we are alive, let us go about our business. 
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at 
it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect 
how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but 
eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the 
sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count 
one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I 
have always been regretting that I was not as wise as 
the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it dis¬ 
cerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do 
not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is 
necessary. My head is hands and feet* I feel all my 
