"That bold adopts each house he views, his own;
Makes every pulse his checquer, and, at pleasure,
Walks forth, and taxes all the world, like Caesar";--

as if consistency were the secret of health, while the poor
inconsistent aspirant man, seeking to live a pure life, feeding
on air, divided against himself, cannot stand, but pines and dies
after a life of sickness, on beds of down.

The unwise are accustomed to speak as if some were not sick; but
methinks the difference between men in respect to health is not
great enough to lay much stress upon. Some are reputed sick and
some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse
to the sounder.

Shad are still taken in the basin of Concord River at Lowell,
where they are said to be a month earlier than the Merrimack
shad, on account of the warmth of the water. Still patiently,
almost pathetically, with instinct not to be discouraged, not to
be _reasoned_ with, revisiting their old haunts, as if their
stern fates would relent, and still met by the Corporation with
its dam. Poor shad! where is thy redress? When Nature gave thee
instinct, gave she thee the heart to bear thy fate? Still
wandering the sea in thy scaly armor to inquire humbly at the
mouths of rivers if man has perchance left them free for thee to
enter. By countless shoals loitering uncertain meanwhile, merely
stemming the tide there, in danger from sea foes in spite of thy
bright armor, awaiting new instructions, until the sands, until
the water itself, tell thee if it be so or not. Thus by whole