Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor
students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such
portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretsch the
seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him
whom it fits.
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 travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere,
in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared
to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.
What I have heard of Bramins sitting exposed to four fires and
looking in the face of the sun; or hanging suspended, with their
heads downward, over flames; or looking at the heavens over
their shoulders"until it becames impossible for them to resume
their natural position, while from the twist of the neck nothing
but liquids can pass into the stomach", or dweilling, chained for
life, at the foot of a tree; or measuring with their bodies, like
caterpillars, the breadth of vast empires; or standing on one leg
on the top of pillars,-even these forms of conscious penance
are hardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes
which I daily witness. 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, bur as soon as one head is
crushed, two spring up.