success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause
momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are
farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist.
We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts
most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man.
The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and
indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little
star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.

Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish; I could sometimes eat
a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have
drunk water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky
to an opium-eater's heaven. I would fain keep sober always; and there
are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I believe that water is the only
drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of
dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an
evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by
them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes
destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all
ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?
I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long
continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also. But
to tell the truth, I find myself at present somewhat less particular in
these respects. I carry less religion to the table, ask no blessing; not
because I am wiser than I was, but, I am obliged to confess, because,
however much it is to be regretted, with years I have grown more coarse
and indifferent. Perhaps these questions are entertained only in youth,
as most believe of poetry. My practice is "nowhere," my opinion is here.
Nevertheless I am far from regarding myself as one of those privileged
ones to whom the Ved refers when it says, that "he who has true faith in
the Omnipresent Supreme Being may eat all that exists," that is, is not
bound to inquire what is his food, or who prepares it; and even in their
case it is to be observed, as a Hindoo commentator has remarked, that
the Vedant limits this privilege to "the time of distress."

Who has not sometimes derived an inexpressible satisfaction from his
food in which appetite had no share? I have been thrilled to think that
I owed a mental perception