in Thoreau’s Journal:

My practicalness is not to be trusted to the last. To be sure, I go upon my legs for the most part, but, being hard-pushed and dogged by a superficial common sense which is bound to near objects by beaten paths,

I am off the handle, as the phrase is, ––I am like those guinea-fowl which Charles Darwin saw at the Cape de Verd Islands. He says,”They avoided us like partridges on a rainy day in September, running with their heads cocked up; and if pursued, they readily took to the wing.