share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions
are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from
serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an
end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads
lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a
magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may
be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a
predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a
distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of
her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the
main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager
to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer
to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into
the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide
has the whooping cough. After all, the man whose horse trots a mile in
a minute does not carry the most important messages; he is not an
evangelist, nor does he come round eating locusts and wild honey. I
doubt if Flying Childers ever carried a peck of corn to mill.

  One says to me, "I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love
to travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg today and see
the country." But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the
swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend,
Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles;
the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day's wages. I remember when
wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road. Well, I
start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at
that rate by the week together. You will in the meanwhile have
earned your fare, and arrive there some time tomorrow, or possibly
this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season.
Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater
part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached round the world, I
think that I should keep ahead of you; and as for seeing the country
and getting experience of that kind, I should have to cut your
acquaintance altogether.

  Such is the universal law, which no man can ever outwit, and with
regard to the railroad even we may say it is as broad as it is long.
To make a railroad round the world available to all mankind is
equivalent to grading the whole surface of the planet. Men have an
indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks
and spades long enough all will at length ride somewhere, in next to
no time, and for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the depot,
and the conductor shouts "All aboard!" when the smoke is blown away
and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding,
but the rest are run over- and it will be called, and will be, "A
melancholy accident." No doubt they can ride at last who shall have
earned their fare, that is, if they survive so long, but they will
probably have lost their elasticity and desire to travel by that time.
This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to
enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it
reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune
first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a
poet. He should have gone up garret at once. "What!" exclaim a million
Irishmen starting up from all the shanties in the land, "is not this
railroad which we have built a good thing?" Yes, I answer,
comparatively good, that is, you might have done worse; but I wish, as
you are brothers of mine, that you could have spent your time better
than digging in this dirt.

  Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve dollars by
some honest and agreeable method, in order to meet my unusual
expenses, I planted about two acres and a half of light and sandy soil
near it chiefly with beans, but also a small part with potatoes, corn,
peas, and turnips. The whole lot contains eleven acres, mostly growing
up to pines and hickories, and was sold the preceding season for eight
dollars and eight cents an acre. One farmer said that it was "good for
nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels on." I put no manure
whatever on this land, not being the owner, but merely a squatter, and
not expecting to cultivate so much again, and I did not quite hoe it
all once. I got out several cords of stumps in plowing, which supplied
me with fuel for a long time, and left small circles of virgin
mould, easily distinguishable through the summer by the greater
luxuriance of the beans there. The dead and for the most part
unmerchantable wood behind my house, and the driftwood from the
pond, have supplied the remainder of my fuel. I was obliged to hire
a team and a man for the plowing, though I held the plow myself. My
farm outgoes for the first season were, for implements, seed, work,
etc., $14.72 1/2. The seed corn was given me. This never costs
anything to speak of, unless you plant more than enough. I got
twelve bushels of beans, and eighteen bushels of potatoes, beside some
peas and sweet corn. The yellow corn and turnips were too late to come
to anything. My whole income from the farm was

                                              $ 23.44

            Deducting the outgoes.............  14.72 1/2

                                                -----

            There are left....................$  8.71 1/2

beside produce consumed and on hand at the time this estimate was made
of the value of $4.50- the amount on hand much more than balancing a
little grass which I did not raise. All things considered, that is,
considering the importance of a man's soul and of today,
notwithstanding the short time occupied by my experiment, nay,
partly even because of its transient character, I believe that that
was doing better than any farmer in Concord did that year.