ere."

I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend
four hours a day at least--and it is commonly more than that--sauntering
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, or 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, aye, 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
STAND it at all. When, early in a summer afternoon, we have been shaking
the dust of the village from the skirts of our garments, making haste
past those houses with purely Doric or Gothic fronts, which have such
an air of repose about them, my companion whispers that probably about
these times th