Thoreau writes in his journal:
I have just been reading a book called “The Crescent and the Cross,”*Â till now I am somewhat ashamed of myself. Am I sick, or idle, that I can sacrifice my energy, America, and to-day to this man’s ill-remembered and indolent story? . . . I sit here at my window like a priest of Isis, and observe the phenomena of three thousand years ago, yet unimpaired.
* By Eliot Warburton.
