This world is a place of business.  What an infinite bustle!  I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive.  It interrupts my dreams.  There is no sabbath.  It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once.  It is nothing but work, work, work.  I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents.  An Irishman, seeing me making a minute in the fields, took it for granted that I was calculating my wages.  If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for—­business!  I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.

There is a coarse and boisterous money-making fellow in the outskirts of our town, who is going to build a bank-wall under the hill along the edge of his meadow.  The powers have put this into his head to keep him out of mischief, and he wishes me to spend three weeks digging there with him.  The result will be that he will perhaps get some more money to hoard, and leave for his heirs to spend foolishly.  If I do this, most will commend me as an industrious and hard-working man; but if I choose to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler.  Nevertheless, as I do not need the police of meaningless labor to regulate me, and do not see anything absolutely praise-worthy in this fellow’s undertaking, any more than in many an enterprise of our own or foreign governments, however amusing it may be to him or them, I prefer to finish my education at a different school.

If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.  As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!

Most men would feel insulted, if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages.  But many are no more worthily employed now.  For instance:  just after sunrise, one summer morning, I noticed one of my neighbors walking beside his team, which was slowly drawing a heavy hewn stone swung under the axle, surrounded by an atmosphere of industry,—­his day’s work begun,—­his brow commenced to sweat,—­a reproach to all sluggards and idlers,—­pausing abreast the shoulders of his oxen, and half turning round with a flourish of his merciful whip, while they gained their length on him.  And I thought, Such is the labor which the American Congress exists to protect,—­honest, manly toil,—­honest as the day is long,—­that makes his bread taste sweet, and keeps society sweet,—­which