PENANCE
I would fain say something, not so much
concerning the Chinese and Sandwich Islanders as you who read these pages, who
are said to live in New England; something about your condition, especially
your outward condition or circumstances in this world, in this town, what it
is, whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is, whether it cannot be
improved as well as not. I have traveled a good deal in Concord; and
everywhere, in shops, in offices, and fields, the inhabitants appeared to me to
be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.
. . .The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with
those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an
end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or
finished any labor. They have no friend Iolaus to burn with a hot iron the root
of the hydra’s head, but as soon as the head is crushed, two spring up.
from Economy, Walden
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