staying in the house, on the other hand, may produce a softness and
smoothness, not to say thinness of skin, accompanied by an increased
sensibility to certain impressions. Perhaps we should be more susceptible
to some influences important to our intellectual and moral growth, if the
sun had shone and the wind blown on us a little less; and no doubt it is a
nice matter to proportion rightly the thick and thin skin. But methinks
that is a scurf that will fall off fast enough,--that the natural remedy
is to be found in the proportion which the night bears to the day, the
winter to the summer, thought to experience. There will be so much the
more air and sunshine in our thoughts. The callous palms of the laborer
are conversant with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose touch
thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of idleness. That is mere
sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the
tan and callus of experience.

When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become
of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall? Even some sects of
philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to themselves,
since they did not go to the woods. "They planted groves and walks of
Platanes," where they took _subdiales ambulationes_ in porticos open to
the air. Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if
they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have
walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In
my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my
obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily
shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head, and I
am not where my body is,--I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain
return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking
of something out of the woods? I suspect myself, and cannot help a
shudder, when I find myself so implicated even in what are called good