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Sometimes every possible maxim or thought seems an old one; yet it is among the elder of the things in that unaugmentable stock, that never mind what one's situation may be, however prosperous and happy, he will still be impatient of it; he will still reach out of himself, and beyond every present condition. So, while many a poor be-inked galley-slave, toiling with the heavy oar of a quill, to gain something wherewithal to stave off the cravings of nature; and in his hours of morbid self-reproach, regarding his paltry wages, at all events, as an unavoidable disgrace to him; while this galley-slave of letters would have leaped with delight-reckless of the feeble seams of his pantaloons-at the most distant prospect of inheriting the broad farms of Saddle Meadows, lord of an all-sufficing income, and forever exempt from wearing on his hands those treacherous plague-spots of indigence-videlicet, blots from the inkstand;-Pierre himself, the undoubted and actual possessor of the things only longingly and hopelessly imagined by the other; the then top of Pierre's worldly ambition, was the being able to boast that he had written such matters as publishers would pay something for in the way of a mere business transaction, which they thought would prove profitable. Yet altogether weak and silly as this may seem in Pierre, let us preambillically examine a little further, and see if it be so indeed.
Pierre was proud; and a proud man-proud with the sort of pride now meant-ever holds but lightly those things, however beneficent, which he did not for himself procure. Were such pride carried out to its legitimate end, the man would eat no bread, the seeds whereof he had not himself put into the soil, not entirely without humiliation, that even that seed must be borrowed from some previous planter. A proud man likes to feel himself in himself, and not by reflection in others. He likes to be not only his own Alpha and Omega, but to be distinctly all the intermediate gradations, and then to slope off on his own spine either way, into the endless impalpable ether. What a glory it was then to Pierre, when first in his two gentlemanly hands he jingled the wages of labor! Talk of drums and the fife; the echo of coin of one's own earning is more inspiring than all the trumpets of Sparta. How disdainfully now he eyed the sumptuousness of his hereditary halls- the hangings, and the pictures, and the bragging historic armorials and the ba
The mechanic, the day-laborer, has but one way to live; his body must provide for his body. But not only could Pierre in some sort, do that; he could do the other; and letting his body stay lazily at home, send off his soul to labor, and his soul would come faithfully back and pay his body her wages. So, some unprofessional gentlemen of the aristocratic South, who happen to own slaves, give those slaves liberty to go and seek work, and every night return with their wages, which constitute those idle gentlemen's income. Both ambidexter and quadruple-armed is that man, who in a day-laborer's body, possesses a day-laboring soul. Yet let not such an one be over-confident. Our God is a jealous God; He wills not that any man should permanently possess the least shadow of His own self-sufficient attributes. Yoke the body to the soul, and put both to the plow, and the one or the other must in the end assuredly drop in the furrow. Keep, then, thy body effeminate for labor, and thy soul laboriously robust; or else thy soul effeminate for labor, and thy body laboriously robust. Elect! the two will not lastingly abide in one yoke. Thus over the most vigorous and soaring conceits, doth the cloud of Truth come stealing; thus doth the shot, even of a sixty-two-pounder pointed upward, light at last on the earth; for strive we how we may, we can not overshoot the earth's orbit, to receive the attractions of other planets; Earth's law of gravitation extends far beyond her own atmosphere.
In the operative opinion of this world, he who is already fully provided with what is necessary for him, that man shall have more; while he who is deplorably destitute of the same, he shall have taken away from him even that which he hath. Yet the world vows it is a very plain, downright matter-of-fact, plodding, humane sort of world. It is governed only by the simplest principles, and scorns all ambiguities, all transcendentals, and all ma
Wherefore we see that the so-called Transcendentalists are not the only people who deal in transcendentals. On the contrary, we seem to see that the Utilitarians, — the every-day world's people themselves, far transcend those inferior Transcendentalists by their own incomprehensible worldly maxims. And-what is vastly more-with the one party, their transcendentals are but theoretic and inactive, and therefore harmless; whereas with the other, they are actually clothed in living deeds.
The highly graveling doctrine and practice of the world, above cited, had in some small degree been manifested in the case of Pierre. He prospectively possessed the fee of several hundred farms scattered over part of two adjoining counties; and now the proprietor of that popular periodical, the Gazelle Magazine, sent him several additional dollars for his so
Now, the dollars derived from his ditties, these Pierre had always invested in cigars; so that the puffs which indirectly brought him his dollars were again returned, but as perfumed puffs; perfumed with the sweet leaf of Hava
For even at that early time in his authorial life, Pierre, however vain of his fame, was not at all proud of his paper. Not only did he make allumettes of his so