Then I spoke only once more to him....I think my question was substantially this: "You seem so near the brink of the dark river, that I almost wonder how the opposite shore may appear to you?" He then answered: "One world at a time."

—Parker Pillsbury (1809–1898) of Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). Quoted in F.B. Sanborn, The Personality of Thoreau (1901)