This skyward track, however, is fit only for the winged portion of the human species, for the smallest. What can it profit poor quill-driving brethren, whose souls have not even wing-shells, to say nothing of wings? Or these tethered persons with the best back, breast, and neck-fins, who float motionless in the wicker Fish-box of the State, and are not allowed to swim, because the Box or State, long ago tied to the shore, itself swims in the name of the Fishes? To the whole standing and writing host of heavy-laden State-domestics, Purveyors, Clerks of all departments, and all the lobsters packed together heels over head into the Lobster-basket of the Government office-rooms, and for refreshments, sprinkled over with a few nettles; to these persons, what way of becoming happy _here_ can I possibly point out? My _second_ merely; and that is as follows: to take a compound microscope, and with it to discover, and convince themselves, that their drop of Burgundy is properly a Red Sea, that butterfly-dust is peacock-feathers, mouldiness a flowery-field, and sand a heap of jewels. These microscopic recreations are more lasting than all costly watering-place recreations.--But I must explain these metaphors by new ones. The purpose for which I have sent _Fixlein's Life_ into the Messrs. Lübeks' Warehouse, is simply that in this same _Life_--therefore in this Preface it is less needful--I may show to the whole Earth that we ought to value little joys more than great ones, the night-gown more than the dress-coat; that Plutus's heaps are worth less than his handfuls, the plum than the penny for a rainy day; and that not great, but little good-haps can make us happy.--Can I accomplish this, I shall, through means of my Book, bring up for Posterity a race of men finding refreshment in all things; in the warmth of their rooms and of their night-caps; in their pillows; in the three High Festivals; in mere Apostles' days; in the Evening Moral Tales of their wives, when these gentle persons have been forth as ambassadresses visiting some Dowager Residence, whither the husband could not be persuaded; in the bloodletting-day of these their newsbringers; in the day of slaughtering, salting, potting against the rigor of grim winter; and in all such days. You perceive, my drift is, that man must become a little Tailor-bird, which, not amid the crashing boughs of the storm-tost, roaring, immeasurable tree of Life, but on one of its leaves, sews itself a nest together, and there lies snug. The most essential sermon one could preach to our century were a sermon on the duty of staying at home.