164 
WALDEN. 
I endeavored to make them exercise all the wit they 
had, and make their confessions to me; in such cases 
making wit the theme of our conversation; and so was 
compensated. Indeed, I found some of them to be wiser 
than the so called overseers of the poor and selectmen 
of the town, and thought it was time that the tables 
were turned. With respect to wit, I learned that 
there was not much difference between the half and 
the whole. One day, in particular, an inoffensive, 
simple-minded pauper, whom with others I had often 
seen used as fencing stuff, standing or sitting on a bushel 
in the fields to keep cattle and himself from straying, 
visited me, and expressed a wish to live as I did. He 
told me, with the utmost simplicity and truth, quite 
superior, or rather inferior , to any thing that is called 
humility, that he was “ deficient in intellect.” These 
were his words. The Lord had made him so, yet he 
supposed the Lord cared as much for him as for 
another. “ I have always been so,” said he, “ from my 
childhood; I never had much mind; I was not like other 
children; I am weak in the head. It was the Lord’s 
will, I suppose.” And there he was to prove the truth 
of his words. He was a metaphysical puzzle to me. I 
have rarely met a fellow-man on such promising ground, 
— it was so simple and sincere and so true all that he 
said. And, true enough, in proportion as he appeared 
to humble himself was he exalted. I did not know at 
first but it was the result of a wise policy. It seemed 
that from such a basis of truth and frankness as the poor 
weak-headed pauper had laid, our intercourse might go 
forward to something better than the intercourse of sages. 
I had some guests from those not reckoned commonly 
among the town’s poor, but who should be; who are 
