音频下载[点击右键另存为][00:01.20]Passage 32. Why Should We Live with Such Hurry

[00:06.99]Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?

[00:13.01]We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.

[00:16.51]Men say that a stitch in time saves nine,

[00:20.12]and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow.

[00:25.05]As for work, we haven’t any of any consequence.

[00:29.09]We have the Saint Vitus’ dance，and cannot possibly keep our heads still.

[00:34.67]If I should only give a few pulls at the parish bellrope, as for a fire,

[00:41.02]that is,without setting the bell, there is hardly a man on his farm

[00:45.95]in the outskirts of Concord,notwithstanding that press of engagements

[00:51.42]which was his excuse so many times this morning,nor a boy, nor a woman,

[00:57.21]I might almost say, but would forsake all and follow that sound,

[01:02.36]not mainly to save property from the flames,but,

[01:06.07]if we will confess the truth, much more to see it burn, since burn it must,

[01:12.42]and we, be it known, did not set it on fire—or to see it put out,

[01:18.44]and have a hand in it, if that is done as handsomely;

[01:22.49]yes, even if it were the parish church itself.

[01:26.42]Hardly a man takes a half-hour’s nap after dinner,

[01:30.58]but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks,

[01:33.87]“What’s the news?” as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels.

[01:38.90]Some give directions to be waked every half-hour, doubtless for no other purpose;

[01:44.48]and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed.

[01:48.64]After a night’s sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast.

[01:54.00]“Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe”,

[01:59.47]—and he reads it over his coffee and rolls,

[02:03.30]that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River;

[02:07.57]never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world,

[02:14.46]and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.