"
The prose in _The Dial_ reflects the new spirit. In the first volume we may
note such expressions of imaginative enthusiasm as:--
"The reason why Homer is to me like dewy morning is because I too lived
while Troy was and sailed in the hollow ships of the Grecians.... And
Shakespeare in _King John_ does but recall me to myself in the dress of
another age, the sport of new accidents. I, who am Charles, was sometime
Romeo. In _Hamlet_ I pondered and doubted. We forget that we have been
drugged with the sleepy bowl of the Present."
In the same volume we find some of Alcott's famous _Orphic Sayings_, of
which the following is a sample:--
"Engage in nothing that cripples or degrades you. Your first duty is
self-culture, self-exaltation: you may not violate this high trust.
Yourself is sacred, profane it not. Forge no chains wherewith to shackle
your own members. Either subordinate your vocation to your life or quit
it forever."
A writer on _Ideals of Every Day Life_ in _The Dial_ for January, 1841,
suggested a thought that is finding an echo in the twentieth century:--
"No one has a right to live merely to get a living.
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