like our benevolence or our learning much better than
she likes our frauds and wars. When we come out of the
caucus, or the bank, or the Abolition-convention, or
the Temperance-meeting, or the Transcendental club into
the fields and woods, she says to us, 'So hot? my little
Sir.'

We are full of mechanical actions. We must needs
intermeddle and have things in our own way, until the
sacrifices and virtues of society are odious. Love
should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy. Our
Sunday-schools and churches and pauper-societies are
yokes to the neck. We pain ourselves to please nobody.
There are natural ways of arriving at the same ends at
which these aim, but do not arrive. Why should all
virtue work in one and the same way? Why should all give
dollars? It is very inconvenient to us country folk, and
we do not think any good will come of it. We have not
dollars; merchants have; let them give them. Farmers will
give corn; poets will sing; women will sew; laborers will
lend a hand; the children will bring flowers. And why drag
this dead weight of a Sunday-school over the whole
Christendom? It is natural and beautiful that childhood
should inquire and maturity should teach; but it is time
enough to answer questions when they are asked. Do not
shut up the young people against their will in a pew and
force the children to ask them questions for an hour
against their will.

If we look wider, things are all alike; laws and letters