This is a remarkable depth for so small an area; yet not an inch
of it can be spared by the imagination. What if all ponds were shallow?
Would it not react on the minds of men? I am thankful that this pond was
made deep and pure for a symbol. While men believe in the infinite, some
ponds will be thought to be bottomless.
* * * * *
From "Life without Principle."
=_233._= WANTS OF THE AGE.
I saw, the other day, a vessel which had been wrecked, and many lives
lost, and her cargo of rags, juniper-berries, and bitter almonds, was
strewn along the shore. It seemed hardly worth the while to tempt the
dangers of the sea between Leghorn and New York, for the sake of a cargo
of juniper-berries and bitter almonds. America sending to the Old World
for her bitters! Is not the sea-brine,--is not shipwreck, bitter enough,
to make the cup of life go down here? Yet such, to a great extent, is
our boasted commerce; and there are those who style themselves statesmen
and philosophers who are so blind as to think that progress and
civilization depend on precisely this kind of interchange and
activity,--the activity of flies about a molasses-hogshead. Very well,
observes one, if men were oysters. And very well, answer I, if men were
mosquitoes.
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