Page:OptimismBlood.djvu/15

And we have held many opinions in course, and followed many occupations: we have been actor, artist, solicitor, playwright, poet, metaphysician, farmer and machinist; we have lectured, published, and preached a little; we have showed, gambled, and shyed our cap in the prize ring. Surely our book shall have the wit of the vagabond.—To the philanthropist who would reproach so reckless and aimless a life, there is this consolation, that it hath compassed but twenty-eight years, by God's mercy ; and time seems left us to amend. Yet for our own sake we would not recall nor re-live one hour of the past, if this book's success shall Crown our martyred respectability—which, living, had kept us incompetent to the task before us. We have heard that the rolling stone gathers no moss ; but we shall have lived to learn that the polish of locomotion compensates the want of the rich moss that grows only on quiet and stability, and shall flatter ourself that only a stone of some symmetry has any tendency to roll. We shall say that a man is wiser for a diversified experience; that he must have learned, better than any one-idea man, the features of humanity, and the spirit of the democratic life; that a man whose notions of the world are drawn from the expurgated editions of a circulating library—who never has sought the by. ways of life—who never was very sick nor very well, very rich nor very poor, who never was drunk, mad, moonstruck nor ecstatic, in short who knows little by experience of the varieties and extremities of life and consciousness, cannot stand before us as ah exponent of human sentiments, nor tell. how much a man's