through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all
worldly engagements. You may safely say, A penny for your thoughts, or a
thousand pounds. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and
shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the
afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them,--as if the legs
were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon,--I think that they
deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.

I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some
rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh
hour of four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, when
the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the
daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for,--I
confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of
the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops
and offices the whole day for weeks and months, ay, and years almost
together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of,--sitting there now
at three o'clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o'clock in the
morning. Bonaparte may talk of the three-o'clock-in-the-morning courage,
but it is nothing to the courage which can sit down cheerfully at this
hour in the afternoon over against one's self whom you have known all the
morning, to starve out a garrison to whom you are bound by such strong
ties of sympathy. I wonder that about this time, or say between four and
five o'clock in the afternoon, too late for the morning papers and too
early for the evening ones, there is not a general explosion heard up and
down the street, scattering a legion of antiquated and house-bred notions
and whims to the four winds for an airing,--and so the evil cure itself.

How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men, stand it
I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not