Most men are so taken up with the cares and rude practice of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Literally, the laboring man has not leisure for a strict and lofty integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the fairest and noblest relations. His labor will depreciate in the market. How can he remember well his ignorance who has so often to use his knowledge. _Aug. 15._ The sounds heard at this hour, 8.30, are the distant rumbling of wagons over bridges,—a sound farthest heard of any human at night,—the baying of dogs, the lowing of cattle in distant yards.[407] What if we were to obey these fine dictates, these divine suggestions, which are addressed to the mind and not to the body, which are certainly true,—not to eat meat, not to buy, or sell, or barter, etc., etc., etc.? * * * * * I will not plant beans another summer, but sincerity, truth, simplicity, faith, trust, innocence, and see if they will not grow in this soil with such manure as I have, and sustain me.[408] When a man meets a man, it should not be some uncertain appearance and falsehood, but the personification of great qualities. Here comes truth, perchance, personified, along the road.[409] Let me see how Truth behaves. I have not seen enough of her. He shall utter no foreign word, no doubtful sentence, and I shall not make haste to part with him. I would not forget that I deal with infinite and divine qualities in my fellow. All men, indeed, are divine in their core of light, but that is indistinct and distant to me, like the stars of the least magnitude, or the galaxy itself, but my kindred planets show their round disks and even their attendant moons to my eye. Even the tired laborers I meet on the road, I really meet as travelling gods, but it is as yet, and must be for a long season, without speech.