. I am a fragment, and this is a fragment of me. I can very
confidently announce one or another law, which throws itself into relief
and form, but I am too young yet by some ages to compile a code. I
gossip for my hour concerning the eternal politics. I have seen many
fair pictures not in vain. A wonderful time I have lived in. I am not
the novice I was fourteen, nor yet seven years ago. Let who will
ask Where is the fruit? I find a private fruit sufficient. This is
a fruit,--that I should not ask for a rash effect from meditations,
counsels and the hiving of truths. I should feel it pitiful to demand a
result on this town and county, an overt effect on the instant month and
year. The effect is deep and secular as the cause. It works on periods
in which mortal lifetime is lost. All I know is reception; I am and I
have: but I do not get, and when I have fancied I had gotten anything,
I found I did not. I worship with wonder the great Fortune. My reception
has been so large, that I am not annoyed by receiving this or that
superabundantly. I say to the Genius, if he will pardon the proverb,
In for a mill, in for a million. When I receive a new gift, I do not
macerate my body to make the account square, for if I should die I could
not make the account square. The benefit overran the merit the first
day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called,
I reckon part of the receiving.

Also that hankering after an overt or practical effect seems to me an
apostasy. In good earnest I am willing to spare this most unnecessary
deal of doing. Life wears to me a visionary face. Hardest roughest
action is visionary also. It is but a choice between soft and turbulent
dreams. People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge
doing. I am very content with knowing, if only I could know. That is
an august entertainment, and would suffice me a great while. To know a
little would be worth the expense of this world. I hear always the law
of Adrastia, "that every soul which had acquired any truth, should be
safe from harm until another period."

I know that the world I converse with in the city and in the farms, is
not the world I think. I observe that difference, and shall observe it.
One day I shall know the value and law of this discrepance. But I have
not found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize the
world of thought. Many eager persons successively make an experiment
in this way, and make