Sept. 28. Tuesday. I anticipate the coming in of spring as a child does the approach of some pomp through a gate of the city.
Sept. 30.
Better wait
Than be too late.[1]
Nov. 29. Cambridge.—One must fight his way, after a fashion, even in the most civil and polite society. The most truly kind and gracious have to be won by a sort of valor, for the seeds of suspicion seem to lurk in every spadeful of earth, as well as those of confidence. The president and librarian turn the cold shoulder to your application, though they are known for benevolent persons. They wonder if you can be anything but a thief, contemplating frauds on the library. It is the instinctive and salutary principle of self-defense; that which makes the cat show her talons when you take her by the paw.[2]
Certainly that valor which can open the hearts of men is superior to that which can only open the gates of cities.[3]
You must always let people see that they serve them-
- ↑ [On the back lining-page of the manuscript Journal volume which ends with this date are the following sentences in pencil:]
There is another young day let loose to roam the earth.
Happiness is very unprofitable stock.
The love which is preached nowadays is an ocean of new milk for a man to swim in. I hear no surf nor surge, but the winds coo over it.
- ↑ [See Week, pp. xx, xxi; Misc., Riv. 8, 9 (Emerson's Biographical Sketch of Thoreau).]
- ↑ [Week, p. 291; Riv. 361.]
