If A Man Sits Down To Think,

Our High Respect For A Well-read Man Is Praise Enough For Literature. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature Is Not Slow To Equip Us In The Prison-uniform Of The Party To Which We Adhere.

If A Man Knows The Law, Find Out, Though He Live In A Pine Shanty, And Resort To Him. And If A Man Can Pipe Or Sing, So As To Wrap The Imprisoned Soul In An Elysium; Or Can Paint A Landscape, And Convey Into Souls And Ochres All The Enchantments Of Spring Or Autumn; Or Can Liberate And Intoxicate All People Who Hear Him With Delicious Songs And Verses; It Is Certain That The Secret Cannot Be Kept; The First Witness Tells It To A Second, And Men Go By Fives And Tens And Fifties To His Doors.

The First Steps In Agriculture, Astronomy, Zoology, (those First Steps Which The Farmer, The Hunter, And The Sailor Take,) Teach That Nature's Dice Are Always Loaded; That In Her Heaps And Rubbish Are Concealed Sure And Useful Results.

We Come To Our Own And Would Make Friends With Matter, Which The Ambitious Chatter Of The Schools Would Persuade Us To Despise. We Can Never Part With It; The Mind Loves Its Old Home: As Water To Our Thirst, So Is Rock, The Ground, To Our Eyes, And Hands, And Feet. It Is Firm Water: It Is Cold Flame: What Health, What Affinity!