It would
be the same position the clergyman is in, or the wandering
beggar with his harp. Each day you must prove yourself anew.
You are not in immediate relations with material things."
'We talked of the principles of the community. I said I had
not a right to come, because all the confidence in it I had
was as an _experiment_ worth trying, and that it was a part of
the great wave of inspired thought. ---- declared they none of
them had confidence beyond this; but they seem to me to have.
Then I said, "that though I entirely agreed about the dignity
of labor, and had always wished for the present change, yet
I did not agree with the principle of paying for services by
time;[A] neither did I believe in the hope of excluding evil,
for that was a growth of nature, and one condition of the
development of good." We had valuable discussion on these
points.
'All Monday morning in the woods again. Afternoon, out with
the drawing party; I felt the evils of want of conventional
refinement, in the impudence with which one of the girls
treated me. She has since thought of it with regret, I notice;
and, by every day's observation of me, will see that she ought
not to have done it.
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