24 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
old horizontal mill-wheel in position to receive 
a jet on its buckets, transferred the motion to a 
horizontal shaft and saw, by a few cog-wheels 
and simple gearing, and throwing a roof of 
slabs over all, fit the outlet of the pond, you 
have a mill. .... A weight of water stored 
upon a meadow, applied to move a saw, which 
scratches its way through the trees placed be¬ 
fore it, so simple is a saw-mill. 
February 28, 1857. It is a singular infatua¬ 
tion that leads men to become clergymen in 
regular or even irregular standing. I pray to 
be introduced to new men at whom I may stop 
short and taste their peculiar sweetness. But 
in the clergyman of the most liberal sort I see 
no perfectly independent human nucleus, but I 
seem to see some indistinct scheme hovering 
about, to which he has lent himself, to which 
he belongs. It is a very fine cobweb in the 
lower stratum of the air, which stronger wings 
do not even discover. Whatever he may say, 
he does not know that one day is as good as 
another. Whatever he may say, he does not 
know that a man’s creed can never be written, 
that there are no particular expressions of wor¬ 
ship that deserve to be prominent. He dreams 
of a certain sphere to be filled by him some¬ 
thing less in diameter than a great circle, may 
be not greater than a hogshead. All the staves 
