A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-slavery and reform papers.Thoreau, Henry David
History
A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-slavery and reform papers.
Thoreau, Henry David
Brown, John, 1800-1859; Québec (Province) -- Description and travel; Slavery -- United States
The chief fault of this book is, that it aims to secure the greatest
degree of gross comfort and pleasure merely. It paints a Mahometan’s
heaven, and stops short with singular abruptness when we think it is
drawing near to the precincts of the Christian’s,—and we trust we have
not made here a distinction without a difference. Undoubtedly if we were
to reform this outward life truly and thoroughly, we should find no duty
of the inner omitted. It would be employment for our whole nature; and
what we should do thereafter would be as vain a question as to ask the
bird what it will do when its nest is built and its brood reared. But a
moral reform must take place first, and then the necessity of the other
will be superseded, and we shall sail and plough by its force alone.
There is a speedier way than the “Mechanical System” can show to fill up
marshes, to drown the roar of the waves, to tame hyenas, secure
agreeable environs, diversify the land, and refresh it with “rivulets of
sweet water,” and that is by the power of rectitude and true behavior.
It is only for a little while, only occasionally, methinks, that we want
a garden. Surely a good man need not be at the labor to level a hill for
the sake of a prospect, or raise fruits and flowers, and construct
floating islands, for the sake of a paradise. He enjoys better prospects
than lie behind any hill. Where an angel travels it will be paradise all
the way, but where Satan travels it will be burning marl and cinders.
What says Veeshnoo Sarma? “He whose mind is at ease is possessed of all
riches. Is it not the same to one whose foot is enclosed in a shoe, as
if the whole surface of the earth were covered with leather?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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