Pretty copious rain in the night.

September 23. 

Pretty copious rain in the night. 

11 A. M. — River risen about fourteen inches above lowest this year (or thirteen and three quarters above my mark by boat). 

What an army of non-producers society produces, —, ladies generally (old and young) and gentlemen of leisure, so called! Many think themselves well employed as charitable dispensers of wealth which somebody else earned, and these who produce nothing, being of the most luxurious habits, are precisely they who want the most, and complain loudest when they do not get what they want. 

They who are literally paupers maintained at the public expense are the most importunate and insatiable beggars. They cling like the glutton to a living man and suck his vitals up. 

To every locomotive man there are three or four deadheads clinging to him as if they conferred a great favor on society by living upon it. 

Meanwhile they fill the churches, and die and revive from time to time. They have nothing to do but sin, and repent of their sins. How can you expect such bloodsuckers to be happy?  

Not only foul and poisonous weeds grow in our tracks, but our vileness and luxuriance make simple and wholesome plants rank and weed-like. All that I ever got a premium for was a monstrous squash, so coarse that nobody could eat it. Some of these bad qualities will be found to lurk in the pears that are invented in and about the purlieus of great towns. 

"The evil that men do lives after them." 

The corn and potatoes produced by excessive manuring may be said to have, not only a coarse, but a poisonous, quality. They are made food [for] hogs and oxen too. 

What creatures is the grain raised on the corn-fields of Waterloo food for, unless it be for such as prey upon men? Who cuts the grass in the graveyard? 

I can detect the site of the shanties that have stood all along the railroads by the ranker vegetation. I do not go there for delicate wild-flowers. 

It is important, then, that we should air our lives from time to time by removals, and excursions into the fields and woods, — starve our vices. Do not sit so long over any cellar-hole as to tempt your neighbor to bid for the privilege of digging saltpetre there. 

So live that only the most beautiful wild-flowers will spring up where you have dwelt, — harebells, violets, and blue-eyed grass.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 23, 1859