foreign countries to improve the color of the wine; so that
the poetaster maybe celebrating the virtues of the Poke without knowing
it. Here are berries enough to paint afresh the western sky, and play
the bacchanal with, if you will. And what flutes its ensanguined stems
would make, to be used in such a dance! It is truly a royal plant. I
could spend the evening of the year musing amid the Poke-stems. And
perchance amid these groves might arise at last a new school of
philosophy or poetry.

* * * * *

From "Walden, or Life in the Woods."

=_232._= WALDEN POND.

The greatest depth was exactly one hundred and two feet, to which may
be added the five feet which it has risen since, making one hundred and
seven. This is a remarkable depth for so small an area; yet not an inch
of it can be spared by the imagination. What if all ponds were shallow?
Would it not react on the minds of men? I am thankful that this pond was
made deep and pure for a symbol. While men believe in the infinite, some
ponds will be thought to be bottomless.

* * * * *

From "Life without Principle."

=_233._= WANTS OF THE AGE.

I saw, the other day, a vessel which had been wrecked, and many lives
lost, and her cargo of rags, juniper-berries, and bitter almonds, was
strewn along the shore. It seemed hardly worth the while to tempt the
dangers of the sea between Leghorn and New York, for the sake of a cargo
of juniper-berries and bitter almonds. America sending to the Old World
for her bitters! Is not the sea-brine,--is not shipwreck, bitter enough,
to make the cup of life go down here? Yet such, to a great extent, is
our boasted commerce; and there are those who style themselves statesmen
and philosophers who are so blind as to think that progress and
civilization depend on precisely this kind of interchange and
activity,--the activity of flies about a molasses-hogshead. Very well,
observes one, if men were oysters. And very well, answer I, if men were
mosquitoes.

Lieutenant Herndon, whom our Government sent to explore the Amazon,
and, it is said, to extend the area of Slavery, observed that there was
wanting there "an industrious and active population, who know what the
comforts of life are, and who have artificial wants to draw out the
great resources of the country." But what are the "artificial wants" to
be encouraged? Not the love of luxuries, like the tobacco and slaves
of,