【瓦尔登湖】经济篇（5）

Some of you, we all know, are poor.

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, always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent;

lying, flattering, 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.