THE POND IN WINTER. 
319 
years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with 
which our modern world and its literature seem puny 
and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to 
be referred to a previous state of existence, so re¬ 
mote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down 
the book and go to my well for water, and lo ! there I 
meet the servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and 
Yishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the 
Ganges reading the Yedas, or dwells at the root of a 
tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant 
come to draw water for his master, and our buckets 
as it were grate together in the same well. The pure 
Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the 
Ganges. With favoring winds it is wafted past the site 
of the fabulous islands of Atlantis and the Hesperides, 
makes the periplus of Hanno, and, floating by Ternate 
and Tidore and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, melts 
in the tropic gales of the Indian seas, and is landed in 
ports of which Alexander only heard the names. 
