____Henry David Thoreau __________ Feb. 8, 1841. ______ My Journal is that of me which would else spill over and run to waste, gleanings from the field which in action I
reap. I must not live for it, but in it for the gods. They are my correspondent, to whom daily I send off this sheet postpaid. I am clerk in their counting-room, and at evening transfer the
account from day-book to ledger. It is as a leaf which hangs over my head in the path. I bend the twig and write my prayers on it; then letting it go, the bough springs up and shows the scrawl
to heaven.
