sand bank was revealed an antiquity beside which Nineveh is young, such a light as sufficed for the earliest ages. . . . Even at midday I see the full moon shining in the sky. What if in some vales only its light is reflected! What if there are some spirits which walk in its light alone still! . . . I passed from dynasty to dynasty, from one age of the world to another, . . . from Jove, perchance, back to Saturn. What river of Lethe was there to run between! I bade farewell to that light setting in the west, and turned to salute the new light rising in the east.
There is some advantage in being the humblest, cheapest, least dignified man in the village, so that the very stable boys shall damn you. Methinks I enjoy that advantage to an unusual extent. There is many a coarsely well-meaning fellow, who knows only the skin of me, who addresses me familiarly by my Christian name. I get the whole good of him, and lose nothing myself. There is "Sam," the jailer (whom I never call "Sam," however), who exclaimed last evening, "Thoreau, are you going up the street pretty soon? Well, just take a couple of these handbills along, and drop one on H's piazza, and one at H's, and I'll do as much for you another time." I am not above being abused sometimes.
