midnight
In a word , dear sir and friend , in this crowded Old World there is not the same room that our bold forefathers found for men to walk about and jostle their neighbors . No ; they must sit down like boys at the form , and work out their tasks , with rounded shoulders and aching fingers . There has been a pastoral age , and a hunting age , and a fighting age ; now we have arrived at the age sedentary . Men who sit longest carry all before them , -- puny , delicate fellows , with hands just strong enough to wield a pen , eyes so bleared by the midnight lamp that they see no joy in that buxom sun -LRB- which draws me forth into the fields , as life draws the living -RRB- , and digestive organs worn and macerated by the relentless flagellation of the brain . Certainly , if this is to be the Reign of Mind , it is idle to repine , and kick against the pricks ; but is it true that all these qualities of action that are within me are to go for nothing ? If I were rich and happy in mind and circumstance , well and good ; I should shoot , hunt , farm , travel , enjoy life , and snap my fingers at ambition . If I were so poor and so humbly bred that I could turn gamekeeper or whipper in , as pauper gentlemen virtually did of old , well and good too ; I should exhaust this troublesome vitality of mine by nightly battles with poachers , and leaps over double dikes and stone walls .