himself and to be happy in his own society, that he could
consent with difficulty even to the interruptions of
friendship. "SUCH ARE MY ENGAGEMENTS TO MYSELF that I dare
not promise," he once wrote in answer to an invitation; and
the italics are his own. Marcus Aurelius found time to study
virtue, and between whiles to conduct the imperial affairs of
Rome; but Thoreau is so busy improving himself, that he must
think twice about a morning call. And now imagine him
condemned for eight hours a day to some uncongenial and
unmeaning business! He shrank from the very look of the
mechanical in life; all should, if possible, be sweetly
spontaneous and swimmingly progressive. Thus he learned to
make lead-pencils, and, when he had gained the best
certificate and his friends began to congratulate him on his
establishment in life, calmly announced that he should never
make another. "Why should I?" said he "I would not do again
what I have done once." For when a thing has once been done
as well as it wants to be, it is of no further interest to
the self-improver. Yet in after years, and when it became
needful to support his family, he returned patiently to this
mechanical art - a step more than worthy of himself.

The pencils seem to have been Apollo's first experiment in
the service of Admetus; but others followed. "I have
thoroughly tried school-keeping," he writes, "and found that
my expenses were in proportion, or rather out of proportion,
to my income; for I was obliged to dress and train, not to
say think and believe, accordingly, and I lost my time into
the bargain. As I did not teach for the benefit of my
fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure.