《瓦尔登湖·第一章·经济篇·Economy》第4节
Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins æs alienum, another’s brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other’s brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.
注释摘要
梭罗在这一段里描绘的不是一种抽象的经济困境，而是他所见的康科德镇居民的日常精神姿态。他用的词很重：“mean and sneaking lives”，卑微而鬼祟的生活。这不是对贫困本身的嘲笑，而是对贫困所催生的那种永远在算计、永远在讨好、永远在欠债的状态的诊断。他把这种状态称为“a very ancient slough”——一个古老的泥沼——并用拉丁词 …