My sober friend, have you ever tried to do anything that the world at large considers not quite sensible, not quite sane?
Try it! It is easier to commit a thundering crime.

A friend of mine delights in walking to town bareheaded, and I fully believe the neighbourhood is more disquieted thereby than it would be if my friend came home drunken or failed to pay his debts.
Here I am then, a farmer, forty miles from home in planting time, taking his ease under a maple tree and writing in a little book held on his knee! Is not that the height of absurdity?
Of all my friends the Scotch Preacher was the only one who seemed to understand why it was that I must go away for a time.

Oh, I am a sinful and revolutionary person! When I left home last week, if you could have had a truthful picture of me--for is there not a photography so delicate that it will catch the dim thought-shapes which attend upon our lives ?--if you could have had such a truthful picture of me, you would have seen, besides a farmer named Grayson with a gray bag hanging from his shoulder, a strange company following close upon his steps.

Among this crew you would have made out easily: Two fine cows.

Four Berkshire pigs.