’All Saturday I was off in the woods.  In the evening we had a general conversation, opened by me, upon Education, in its largest sense, and on what we can do for ourselves and others.  I took my usual ground:  The aim is perfection; patience the road.  The present object is to give ourselves and others a tolerable chance.  Let us not be too ambitious in our hopes as to immediate results.  Our lives should be considered as a tendency, an approximation only.  Parents and teachers expect to do too much.  They are not legislators, but only interpreters to the next generation.  Soon, very soon, does the parent become merely the elder brother of his child;—­a little wiser, it is to be hoped. ——­ differed from me as to some things I said about the gradations of experience,—­that “to be brought prematurely near perfect beings would chill and discourage.”  He thought it would cheer and console.  He spoke well,—­with a youthful nobleness. ——­ said “that the most perfect person would be the most impersonal”—­philosophical bull that, I trow—­“and, consequently, would impede us least from God.”  Mr. R. spoke admirably on the nature of loyalty.  The people showed a good deal of the sans-culotte tendency in their manners,—­throwing themselves on the floor, yawning, and going out when they had heard enough.  Yet, as the majority differ from me, to begin with,—­that being the reason this subject was chosen,—­they showed, on the whole, more respect and interest than I had expected.  As I am accustomed to deference, however, and need it for the boldness and animation which my part requires, I did not speak with as much force as usual.  Still, I should like to have to face all this; it would have the same good effects that the Athenian assemblies had on the minds obliged to encounter them.

’Sunday.  A glorious day;—­the woods full of perfume.  I was out all the morning.  In the afternoon, Mrs. R. and I had a talk.  I said my position would be too uncertain here, as I could not work. ——­ said:—­“They would all like to work for a person of genius.  They would not like to have this service claimed from them, but would like to render it of their own accord.”  “Yes,” I told her; “but where would be my repose, when they were always to be judging whether I was worth it or not.  It would be the same position the clergyman is in, or the wandering beggar with his harp.  Each day you must prove yourself anew.  You are not in immediate relations with material things.”

’We talked of the principles of the community.  I said I had not a right to come, because all the confidence in it I had was as an experiment worth trying, and that it was a part of the great wave of inspired thought. ——­ declared they none of them had confidence beyond this; but they seem to me to have.  Then I said, “that though I entirely agreed about the dignity of labor, and had always wished for the present change, yet I did not agree