SOLITUDE. 
145 
Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office, 
the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the 
grocery, Beacon Hill, or the "Five Points, where men 
most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, 
whence in all our experience we have found that to 
issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out 
its roots in that direction. This will vary with different 
natures, but this is the place where a wise man will dig 
his cellar. ... I one evening overtook one of my towns¬ 
men, who has accumulated what is called “ a handsome 
property,” — though I never got a fair view of it, — 
on the Walden road, driving a pair of cattle to market, 
who inquired of me how I could bring my mind to give 
up so many of the comforts of life. I answered that I 
was very sure I liked it passably well; I was not joking. 
And so I went home to my bed, and left him to pick 
his way through the darkness and the mud to Brighton, 
-— or Bright-town, — which place he would reach some 
time in the morning. 
Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a 
dead man makes indifferent all times and places. The 
place where that may occur is always the same, and inde¬ 
scribably pleasant to all our senses. For the most part 
we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to 
make bur occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our 
distraction. Nearest to all things is that power which 
fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are 
continually being executed. Next to us is not the work¬ 
man whom we have hired, with whom we love so well 
to talk, but the workman whose work we are. 
“ How vast and profound is the influence of the sub¬ 
tile powers of Heaven and of Earth ! ” 
“We seek to perceive them, and we do not see them ; 
10 
