You want something, in fact, to lift you out of this crowded, tobacco-stained commonplace, to kindle and chafe and glow in you.

I want you to dig into this commonplace, this vulgar American life, and see what is in it.
Sometimes I think it has a new and awful significance that we do not see.
Your ears are openest to the war-trumpet now.

Ha! that is spirit-stirring!--that wakes up the old Revolutionary blood! Your manlier nature had been smothered under drudgery, the poor daily necessity for bread and butter.

I want you to go down into this common, every-day drudgery, and consider if there might not be in it also a great warfare.

Not a serfish war; not altogether ignoble, though even its only end may appear to be your daily food.