living not merely holiest and honorable, but altogether inviting and
glorious; for if getting a living is not so, then living is not. One
would think, from looking at literature, that this question had
never disturbed a solitary individual's musings. Is it that men are
too much disgusted with their experience to speak of it? The lesson of
value which money teaches, which the Author of the Universe has
taken so much pains to teach us, we are inclined to skip altogether.
As for the means of living, it is wonderful how indifferent men of all
classes are about it, even reformers, so called- whether they inherit,
or earn, or steal it. I think that Society has done nothing for us
in this respect, or at least has undone what she has done. Cold and
hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men
have adopted and advise to ward them off.

  The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. How can one
be a wise man, if he does not know any better how to live than other
men?- if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle? Does
Wisdom work in a tread-mill? or does she teach how to succeed by her
example? Is there any such thing as wisdom not applied to life? Is she
merely the miller who grinds the finest logic? It is pertinent to
ask if Plato got his living in a better way or more successfully
than his contemporaries- or did he succumb to the difficulties of life
like other men? Did he seem to prevail over some of them merely by
indifference, or by assuming grand airs? or find it easier to live,
because his aunt remembered him in her will? The ways in which most
men get their living, that is, live, are mere makeshifts, and a
shirking of the real business of life- chiefly because they do not
know, but partly because they do not mean, any better.

  The rush to California, for instance, and the attitude, not merely
of merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called, in relation
to it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are
ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of
others less lucky, without contributing any value to society! And that
is called enterprise! I know of no more startling development of the
immorality of trade, and all the common modes of getting a living. The
philosophy and poetry and religion of such a mankind are not worth the
dust of a puffball. The hog that gets his living by rooting,
stirring up the soil so, would be ashamed of such company. If I
could command the wealth of all the worlds by lifting my finger, I
would not pay such a price for it. Even Mahomet knew that God did
not make this world in jest. It makes God to be a moneyed gentleman
who scatters a handful of pennies in order to see mankind scramble for
them. The world's raffle! A subsistence in the domains of Nature a
thing to be raffled for! What a comment, what a satire, on our
institutions! The conclusion will be, that mankind will hang itself
upon a tree. And have all the precepts in all the Bibles taught men
only this? and is the last and most admirable invention of the human
race only an improved muck-rake? Is this the ground on which Orientals
and Occidentals meet? Did God direct us so to get our living,
digging where we never planted- and He would, perchance, reward us
with lumps of gold?

  God gave the righteous man a certificate entitling him to food and
raiment, but the unrighteous man found a facsimile of the same in
God's coffers, and appropriated it, and obtained food and raiment like
the former. It is one of the most extensive systems of counterfeiting
that the world has seen. I did not know that mankind was suffering for
want of old. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very
malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold gild a great
surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

  The gold-digger in the ravines of the mountains is as much a gambler
as his fellow in the saloons of San Francisco. What difference does it
make whether you shake dirt or shake dice? If you win, society is the
loser. The gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer, whatever
checks and compensations there may be. It is not enough to tell me
that you worked hard to get your gold. So does the Devil work hard.
The way of transgressors may be hard in many respects. The humblest
observer who goes to the mines sees and says that gold-digging is of
the character of a lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same
same thing with the wages of honest toil. But, practically, he forgets
what he has seen, for he has seen only the fact, not the principle,
and goes into trade there, that is, buys a ticket in what commonly
proves another lottery, where the fact is not so obvious.

  After reading Howitt's account of the Australian gold-diggings one
evening, I had in my mind's eye, all night, the numerous valleys, with
their streams, all cut up with foul pits, from ten to one hundred feet
deep, and half a dozen feet across, as close as they can be dug, and
partly filled with water- the locality to which men furiously rush
to probe for their fortunes- uncertain where they shall break
ground- not knowing but the gold is under their camp itself- sometimes
digging one hundred and sixty feet before they strike the vein, or
then missing it by a foot- turned into demons, and regardless of each
others' rights, in their thirst for riches- whole valleys, for
thirty miles, suddenly honeycombed by the pits of the miners, so
that even hundreds are drowned in them- standing in water, and covered
with mud and clay, they work night and day, dying of exposure and
disease. Having read this, and partly forgotten it, I was thinking,
accidentally, of my own unsatisfactory life, doing as others do; and
with that vision of the diggings still before me, I asked myself why I
might not be washing some gold daily, though it were only the finest
particles- why I might not sink a shaft down to the gold within me,
and work that mine. There is a Ballarat, a Bendigo for you- what
though it were a sulky-gully? At any rate, I might pursue some path,
however solitary and narrow and crooked, in which I could walk with
love and reverence. Wherever a man separates from the multitude, and
goes his own way in this mood, there indeed is a fork in the road,
though ordinary travellers may see only a gap in the paling. His