T 
 
 . LETTERS 
 TO VARIOUS PERSONS 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS, 
 "WALDEN," ETC., ETC. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 TICKNOR AND FIELDS 
 1865. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by 
 
 TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 
 in the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS : WELCH, BIGEXOW, & Co. 
 CAMBRIDGE. 
 
r o 
 
 EDITOR S NOTICE. 
 
 IT may interest the reader of this book to 
 know that nearly all these letters have been 
 printed directly from the original autographs fur 
 nished by the persons to whom they were ad 
 dressed. A few have been carefully copied, but 
 without alteration, from the worn and torn origi 
 nals. In some letters, passages have been omit 
 ted on account of private or personal references. 
 Otherwise, the letters have been printed as they 
 stood, with very few verbal corrections. 
 
 R. W. E. 
 
 12 May, 1865. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGH 
 LETTERS 1 
 
 POEMS. 
 
 SYMPATHY . . . . . . . .211 
 
 "ROMANS, COUNTRYMEN, AND LOVERS" . . 214 
 
 INSPIRATION 218 
 
 THE FISHER S BOY 220 
 
 MOUNTAINS 221 
 
 SMOKE 225 
 
 SMOKE IN WINTER ...... 226 
 
 MIST 228 
 
 HAZE . 229 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 TO MISS THOREAU. 
 
 CONCORD, June 13, 1840. 
 
 DEARH : 
 
 That letter to J , for which you had an 
 
 opportunity doubtless to substitute a more perfect 
 communication, fell, as was natural, into the hands 
 of his " transcendental brother," who is his proxy in 
 such cases, having been commissioned to acknowl 
 edge and receipt all bills that may be presented. 
 But what s in a name ? Perhaps it does not mat 
 ter whether it be John or Henry. Nor will those 
 same six months have to be altered, I fear, to suit 
 his case as well. But methinks they have not 
 passed entirely without intercourse, provided we 
 have been sincere though humble worshippers of 
 the same virtue in the mean time. Certainly it is 
 better that we should make ourselves quite sure of 
 such a communion as this by the only course which 
 is completely free from suspicion, the coincidence 
 of two earnest and aspiring lives, than run the 
 risk of a disappointment by relying wholly or 
 chiefly on so meagre and uncertain a means as 
 I A 
 
2 LETTERS. 
 
 speech, whether written or spoken, affords. How 
 often, when we have been nearest each other 
 bodily, have we really been farthest oif ! Our 
 tongues were the withy foils with which we fenced 
 each other off. Not that we have not met heartily 
 and with profit as members of one family, but it 
 was a small one surely, and not that other human 
 family. We have met frankly and without con 
 cealment ever, as befits those who have an instinc 
 tive trust in one another, and the scenery of whose 
 outward lives has been the same, but never as, 
 prompted by an earnest and affectionate desire to 
 probe deeper our mutual natures. Such inter 
 course, at least, if it has ever been, has not conde 
 scended to the vulgarities of oral communication, 
 for the ears are provided with no lid as the eye is, 
 and would not have been deaf to it in sleep. And 
 now glad am I, if I am not mistaken in imagining 
 that some such transcendental inquisitiveness has 
 travelled post thither, for, as I observed before, 
 where the bolt hits, thither was it aimed, any 
 arbitrary direction notwithstanding. 
 
 Thus much, at least, our kindred temperament 
 of mind and body and long family-arity have 
 done for us, that we already find ourselves stand 
 ing on a solid and natural footing with respect to 
 one another, and shall not have to waste time in 
 the so often unavailing endeavor to arrive fairly at 
 this simple ground. 
 
 Let us leave trifles, then, to accident ; and poll- 
 
LETTERS. 3 
 
 tics, and finance, and such gossip, to the moments 
 when diet and exercise are cared for, and speak to 
 each other deliberately as out of one infinity into 
 another, you there in time and space, and I 
 here. For beside this relation, all books and doc 
 trines are no better than gossip or the turning of a 
 spit. 
 
 Equally to you and S , from 
 
 Your affectionate brother, 
 
 H. D. THOREAU. 
 
 TO MRS. BROWN. 
 
 CONCORD, July 21, 1841. 
 
 DEAR FRIEND : 
 
 Don t think I need any prompting to write to 
 you ; but what tough earthenware shall I put in 
 to my packet to travel over so many hills, and 
 thrid so many woods, as lie between Concord 
 and Plymouth ? Thank fortune it is all the way 
 down hill, so they will get safely carried ; and yet 
 it seems as if it were writing against time and the 
 sun, to send a letter east, for no natural force for 
 wards it. You should go dwell in the west, and 
 then I would deluge you with letters, as boys 
 throw feathers into the air to see the wind take 
 them. I should rather fancy you at evening 
 dwelling far away behind the serene curtain of 
 
4 LETTERS. 
 
 the west, the home of fair weather, than over 
 by the chilly sources of the east wind. 
 
 What quiet thoughts have you now-a-days 
 which will float on that east wind to west, for so 
 we may make our worst servants our carriers, 
 what progress made from can t to can, in practice 
 and theory ? Under this category, you remem 
 ber, we used to place all our philosophy. Do you 
 have any still, startling, well moments, in which 
 you think grandly, and speak with emphasis ? 
 Don t take this for sarcasm, for not in a year of 
 the gods, I fear, will such a golden approach to 
 plain speaking revolve again. But away with 
 such fears ; by a few miles of travel, w r e have not 
 distanced each other s sincerity. 
 
 I grow savager and savager every day, as if 
 fed on raw meat, and my tameness is only the 
 repose of untamableness. I dream of looking 
 abroad summer and winter, with free gaze, from 
 some mountain-side, while my eyes revolve in an 
 Egyptian slime of health, I to be nature looking 
 into nature, with such easy sympathy as the blue- 
 eyed grass in the meadow looks in the face of the 
 sky. From some such recess I would put forth 
 sublime thoughts daily, as the plant puts forth 
 leaves. Now-a-nights I go on to the hill to see 
 the sun set, as one would go home at evening, 
 the bustle of the village has run on all day, and 
 left me quite in the rear ; but I see the sunset, 
 and find that it can wait for my slow virtue. 
 
LETTERS. 5 
 
 But I forget that you think more of this human 
 nature than of this nature I praise. Why won t 
 you believe that mine is more human than any 
 single man or woman can be ? that in it, in the 
 sunset there, are all the qualities that can adorn 
 a household, and that sometimes in a flutter 
 ing leaf, one may hear all your Christianity 
 preached. 
 
 You see how unskilful a letter- writer I am, 
 thus to have come to the end of my sheet, when 
 hardly arrived at the beginning of my story. I 
 was going to be soberer, I assure you, but now 
 have only room to add, that if the fates allot 
 you a serene hour, don t fail to communicate 
 some of its serenity to your friend, 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 No, no. Improve so rare a gift for yourself, 
 and send me of your leisure. 
 
 TO MRS. L. C. B. 
 
 COXCORD, Wednesday Evening, 
 September 8 [1841]. 
 
 DEAR FRIEXD : 
 
 Your note came wafted to ( my hand, like the 
 first leaf of the Fall on the September wind, and 
 I put only another interpretation upon its lines, 
 
6 LETTERS. 
 
 than upon the veins of those which are soon to 
 be strewed around me. It is nothing but Indian 
 Summer here at present. I mean that any weather 
 seems reserved expressly for our late purposes, 
 whenever we happen to be fulfilling them. I do 
 not know what right I have to so much happiness, 
 but rather hold it in reserve till the time of my 
 desert. 
 
 What with the crickets, and the lowing of kine, 
 and the crowing of cocks, our Concord life is sono 
 rous enough. Sometimes I hear the cock bestir 
 himself on his perch under my feet and crow 
 shrilly long before dawn, and I think I might 
 have been born any year for all the phenomena I 
 know. 
 
 We count sixteen eggs daily now, when arith 
 metic will only fetch the hens up to thirteen ; but 
 the world is young, and we wait to see this eccen 
 tricity complete its period. 
 
 My verses on Friendship are already printed 
 in the Dial, not expanded, but reduced to com 
 pleteness, by leaving out the long lines, which 
 always have, or should have, a longer, or at least 
 another sense than short ones. 
 
 Just now I am in the mid-sea of verses, and they 
 actually rustle round me, as the leaves would round 
 the head of Autumnus himself, should he thrust 
 it up through some vales which I know, but, alas ! 
 many of them are but crisped and yellow leaves 
 like his, I fear, and will deserve no better fate than 
 
LETTERS. 7 
 
 to make mould for new harvests. I see the stanza 
 rise around me, verse upon verse, far and near, 
 like the mountains from Agiochook, not all hav 
 ing a terrestrial existence as yet, even as some of 
 them may be clouds ; but I fancy I see the gleam 
 of some Sebago Lake and silver cascade, at whose 
 well I may drink one day. I am as unfit for 
 any practical purpose I mean for the further 
 ance of the world s ends as gossamer for ship- 
 timber ; and I, who am going to be a pencil-maker 
 to-morrow, can sympathize with God Apollo, who 
 served King Admetus for a while on earth. But 
 I believe he found it for his advantage at last, 
 as I am sure I shall, though I shall hold the no 
 bler part at least out of the service. 
 
 Don t attach any undue seriousness to this 
 threnody, for I love my fate to the very core and 
 rind, and could swallow it without paring it, I 
 think. You ask if I have written any more 
 poems ? Excepting those which Vulcan is now 
 forging, I have only discharged a few more bolts 
 into the horizon, in all, three hundred verses, and 
 sent them, as I may say, over the mountains to 
 Miss Fuller, who may have occasion to remember 
 the old rhyme, 
 
 " Three scipen gode 
 Comen mid than flode 
 Three hundred cnihten." 
 
 But these are far more Vandalic than they. In 
 this narrow sheet there is not room even for one 
 
8 LETTERS. 
 
 thought to root itself; but you must consider this 
 an odd leaf of a volume, and that volume 
 Your friend, 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 TO MRS. BROWN. 
 
 COKCOKD, October 5, 1841. 
 
 DEAR FRIEND : 
 
 I send you Williams s letter as the last remem 
 brancer to one of those " whose acquaintance he 
 had the pleasure to form while in Concord." It 
 came quite unexpectedly to me, but I was very 
 glad to receive it, though I hardly know whether 
 my utmost sincerity and interest can inspire a 
 sufficient answer to it. I should like to have you 
 send it back by some convenient opportunity. 
 
 Pray let me know what you are thinking about 
 any day, what most nearly concerns you. Last 
 winter, you know, you did more than your share 
 of the talking, and I did not complain for want of 
 an opportunity. Imagine your stove-door out of 
 order, at least, and then while I am fixing it, you 
 will think of enough things to say. 
 
 What makes the value of your life at present ? 
 what dreams have you ? and what realizations ? 
 You know there is a high table-land which not 
 even the east wind reaches. Now can t we walk 
 
LETTERS. 9 
 
 and chat upon its plane still, as if there were no 
 lower latitudes ? Surely our two destinies are 
 topics interesting and grand enough for any occa 
 sion. 
 
 I hope you have many gleams of serenity and 
 health, or, if your body will grant you no positive 
 respite, that you may, at any rate, enjoy your 
 sickness occasionally, as much as I used to tell of. 
 But here is the bundle going to be done up, so ac 
 cept a " good-night " from 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 TO MRS. L. C. B. 
 
 CONCORD, March 2, 1842. 
 
 DEAR FRIEND : 
 
 I believe I have nothing new to tell you, for 
 what was news you have learned from other 
 sources. I am much the same person that I was, 
 who should be so much better ; yet when I re 
 alize what has transpired, and the greatness of 
 the part I am unconsciously acting, I am thrilled, 
 and it seems as if there were none in history to 
 match it. 
 
 Soon after John s death I listened to a music- 
 box, and if, at any time, that event had seemed in 
 consistent with the beauty and harmony of the 
 universe, it was then gently constrained into the 
 1* 
 
10 LETTERS. 
 
 placid course of nature by those steady notes, in 
 mild and unoffended tone echoing far and wide 
 under the heavens. But I find these things more 
 strange than sad to me. What right have I to 
 grieve, who have not ceased to wonder ? We 
 feel at first as if some opportunities of kindness and 
 sympathy were lost, but learn afterward that any 
 pure grief is ample recompense for all. That is, 
 if we are faithful ; for a great grief is but sympa 
 thy with the soul that disposes events, and is as 
 natural as the resin on Arabian trees. Only Na 
 ture has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only 
 is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the 
 blackbirds sing along the river which he fre 
 quented, as pleasantly as ever. The same ever 
 lasting serenity will appear in this face of God, 
 and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not. 
 
 We are made happy when reason can discover 
 no occasion for it. The memory of some past 
 moments is more persuasive than the. experience 
 of present ones. There have been visions of such 
 breadth and brightness that these motes were in 
 visible in their light. 
 
 I do not wish to see John ever again, I mean 
 him who is dead, but that other, whom only he 
 would have wished to see, or to be, of whom he 
 was the imperfect representative. For we are not 
 what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each 
 other for such, but for what we are capable of 
 being. 
 
LETTERS. 11 
 
 As for Waldo, he died as the mist rises from 
 the brook, which the sun will soon dart his rays 
 through. Do not the flowers die every autumn ? 
 He had not even taken root here. I was not 
 startled to hear that he was dead : it seemed the 
 most natural event that could happen. His fine 
 organization demanded it, and nature gently 
 yielded its request. It would have been strange 
 if he had lived. Neither will nature manifest any 
 sorrow at his death, but soon the note of the lark 
 will be heard down in the meadow, and fresh dan 
 delions will spring from the old stocks where he 
 plucked them last summer. 
 
 I have been living ill of late, but am now doing 
 better. How do you live in that Plymouth world, 
 
 now-a-days? Please remember me to M 
 
 R . You must not blame me if I do talk to 
 
 the clouds, for I remain 
 
 Your friend, 
 
 HENRY D. TIIOREAU. 
 
 TO MR. FULLER. 
 
 CONCORD, January 16, 1843. 
 
 DEAR RICHARD : 
 
 I need not thank you for your present, for I 
 hear its music, which seems to be playing just for 
 us two pilgrims marching over hill and dale of a 
 
12 LETTERS. 
 
 summer afternoon, up those long Bolton hills and 
 by those bright Harvard lakes, such as I see in 
 the placid Lucerne on the lid ; and whenever I 
 hear it, it will recall happy hours passed with its 
 donor. 
 
 When did mankind make that foray into nature 
 and bring off this booty ? For certainly it is but 
 history that some rare virtue in remote times plun 
 dered these strains from above and communicated 
 them to men. Whatever we may think of it, 
 it is a part of the harmony of the spheres you 
 have sent me, which has condescended to serve 
 us Admetuses, and I hope I may so behave 
 that this may always be the tenor of your thought 
 for me. 
 
 If you have any strains, the conquest of your 
 own spear or quill, to accompany these, let the 
 winds waft them also to me. 
 
 I write this with one of the " primaries " of my 
 osprey s wings, which I have preserved over my 
 glass for some state occasion, and now it offers. 
 
 Mrs. E sends her love. 
 
 Your friend, 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
LETTERS. 13 
 
 TO MKS. L. C. B. 
 
 CONCORD, January 24, 1843. 
 
 DEAR FRIEND : 
 
 The other day I wrote you a letter to go in 
 
 Mrs. E s bundle, but, as it seemed unworthy, 
 
 I did not send it, and now, to atone for that, I am 
 going to send this, whether it be worthy or not. 
 I will not venture upon news, for, as all the house 
 hold are gone to bed, I cannot learn what has 
 been told you. Do you read any noble verses 
 nowadays? or do not verses still seem noble? 
 For my own part, they have been the only things 
 I remembered, or that which occasioned them, 
 when all things else were blurred and defaced. 
 All things have put on mourning but they; for 
 the elegy itself is some victorious melody or joy 
 escaping from the wreck. 
 
 It is a relief to read some true book, wherein 
 all are equally dead, equally alive. I think the 
 best parts of Shakespeare would only be enhanced 
 by the most thrilling and affecting events. I have 
 found it so. And so much the more, as they are 
 not intended for consolation. 
 
 Do you think of coming to Concord again ? I 
 shall be glad to see you. I should be glad to 
 know that I could see you when I would. 
 
 We always seem to be living just on the brink 
 of a pure and lofty intercourse, which would make 
 the ills and trivialness of life ridiculous. After 
 
14 LETTERS. 
 
 each little interval, though it be but for the night, 
 we are prepared to meet each other as gods and 
 goddesses. 
 
 I seem to have dodged all my days with one or 
 two persons, and lived upon expectation, as if 
 the bud would surely blossom ; and so I am con 
 tent to live. 
 
 What means the fact, which is so common, 
 so universal, that some soul that has lost all 
 hope for itself can inspire in another listening soul 
 an infinite confidence in it, even while it is ex 
 pressing its despair ? 
 
 I am very happy in my present environment, 
 though actually mean enough myself, and so, of 
 course, all around me ; yet, I am sure, we for the 
 most part are transfigured to one another, and are 
 that to the other which we aspire to be ourselves. 
 The longest course of mean and trivial intercourse 
 may not prevent my practising this divine courtesy 
 to my companion. Notwithstanding all I hear 
 about brooms, and scouring, and taxes, and house 
 keeping, I am constrained to live a strangely 
 mixed life, as if even Valhalla might have its 
 kitchen. We are all of us Apollos serving some 
 Admetus. 
 
 I think I must have some muses in my pay that 
 I know not of, for certain musical wishes of mine 
 are answered as soon as entertained. Last sum 
 mer I went to Hawthorne s suddenly for the ex 
 press purpose of borrowing his music-box, and 
 
LETTERS. 15 
 
 almost immediately Mrs. H proposed to lend 
 
 it to me. The other day I said I must go to Mrs. 
 Barrett s to hear hers, and, lo ! straightway Rich 
 ard F sent me one for a present from Cam 
 bridge. It is a very good one. I should like to 
 have you hear it. I shall not have to employ you 
 to borrow for me now. Good night. 
 
 From your affectionate friend, 
 
 H. D. T. 
 
 TO MRS. L. C. B. 
 
 CONCORD, Friday Evening, 
 January 25, 1843. 
 
 DEAR FRIEND : 
 
 Mrs. E asks me to write you a letter, which 
 
 she will put into her bundle to-morrow along 
 with the Tribunes and Standards, and miscel 
 lanies, and what not, to make an assortment. But 
 what shall I write. You live a good way off, and 
 I don t know that I have anything which will 
 bear sending so far. But I am mistaken, or 
 rather impatient when I say this, for we all 
 have a gift to send, not only when the year be 
 gins, but as long as interest and memory last. I 
 don t know whether you have got the many I 
 have sent you, or rather whether you were quite 
 sure where they came from. I mean the letters 
 I have sometimes launched off eastward in my 
 
16 LETTERS. 
 
 thought ; but if you have been happier at one 
 time than another, think that then you received 
 them. But this that I now send you is of another 
 sort. It will go slowly, drawn by horses over 
 muddy roads, and lose much of its little value by 
 the way. You may have to pay for it, and it may 
 not make you happy after all. But what shall be 
 my new-year s gift, then ? Why, I will send 
 you my still fresh remembrance of the hours I 
 have passed with you here, for I find in the re 
 membrance of them the best gift you have left 
 to me. We are poor and sick creatures at best ; 
 but we can have well memories, and sound and 
 healthy thoughts of one another still, and an in 
 tercourse may be remembered which was without 
 blur, and above us both. 
 
 Perhaps you may like to know of my estate 
 nowadays. As usual, I find it harder to account 
 for the happiness I enjoy, than for the sadness 
 which instructs me occasionally. If the little of 
 this last which visits me would only be sadder, it 
 would be happier. One while I am vexed by a 
 sense of meanness ; one while I simply wonder 
 at the mystery of life ; and at another, and at an 
 other, seem to rest on my oars, as if propelled by 
 propitious breezes from I know not what quarter. 
 But for the most part, I am an idle, inefficient, lin 
 gering (one term will do as well as another, where 
 all are true and none true enough) member of the 
 great commonwealth, who have most need of my 
 
LETTERS. 17 
 
 own charity, if I could not be charitable and 
 indulgent to myself, perhaps as good a subject for 
 my own satire as any. You see how, when I 
 come to talk of myself, I soon run dry, for I 
 would fain make that a subject which can be no 
 subject for me, at least not till I have the grace to 
 rule myself. 
 
 I do not venture to say anything about your 
 griefs, for it would be unnatural for me to speak 
 as if I grieved with you, when I think I do not. 
 If I were to see you, it might be otherwise. But 
 I know you will pardon the trivialness of this let 
 ter ; and I only hope as I know that you have 
 reason to be so that you are still happier than 
 you are sad, and that you remember that the 
 smallest seed of faith is of more worth than the 
 largest fruit of happiness. I have no doubt that 
 
 out of S s death you sometimes draw sweet 
 
 consolation, not only for that, but for long-stand 
 ing griefs, and may find some things made smooth 
 by it, which before were rough. 
 
 I wish you would communicate with me, and 
 not think me unworthy to know any of your 
 thouo-hts. Don t think me unkind because I 
 
 55 
 
 have not written to you. I confess it was for so 
 poor a reason as that you almost made a principle 
 of not answering. I could not speak truly with 
 this ugly fact in the way ; and perhaps I wished 
 to be assured, by such evidence as you could not 
 voluntarily give, that it was a kindness. For 
 
18 LETTERS. 
 
 every glance at the moon, does she not send me 
 an answering ray ? Noah would hardly have 
 done himself the pleasure to release his dove, if 
 she had not been about to come back to him with 
 tidings of green islands amid the waste. 
 
 But these are far-fetched reasons. I am not 
 speaking directly enough to yourself now, so let 
 me say directly from 
 
 Your friend, 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 TO R. F. FULLER. 
 
 CONCORD, April 2, 1843. 
 
 DEAR RICHARD : 
 
 I was glad to receive a letter from you so bright 
 and cheery. You speak of not having made any 
 conquests with your own spear or quill as yet ; 
 but if you are tempering your spear-head during 
 these days, and fitting a straight and tough shaft 
 thereto, will not that suffice ? We are more 
 pleased to consider the hero in the forest cutting 
 cornel or ash for his spear, than marching in tri 
 umph with his trophies, f The present hour is 
 always wealthiest when it is poorer than the fu 
 ture ones, as that is the pleasantest site which 
 affords the pleasantest prospects. 
 
 What you say about your studies furnishing 
 
LETTERS. 19 
 
 you with a " mimic idiom " only, reminds me that 
 we shall all do well if we learn so much as to talk, 
 
 to speak truth. The only fruit which even 
 much living yields seems to be often only some 
 trivial success, the ability to do some slight 
 thing better. We make conquest only of husks 
 and shells for the most part, at least apparently, 
 
 but sometimes these are cinnamon and spices, 
 you know. Even the grown hunter you speak of 
 slays a thousand buffaloes, and brings off only 
 their hides and tongues. What immense sacri 
 fices, what hecatombs and holocausts, the gods 
 exact for very slight favors ! How much sincere 
 life before we can even utter one sincere word. 
 
 fWhat I was learning in College was chiefly, I 
 think, to express myself, and I see now, that as the 
 old orator prescribed, 1st, action ; 2d, action ; 3d, 
 action ; my teachers should have prescribed to me, 
 1st, sincerity ; 2d, sincerity ; 3d, sincerity. The 
 old mythology is incomplete without a god or god 
 dess of sincerity, on whose altars we might offer 
 up all the products of our farms, our workshops, 
 and our studies. It should be our Lar when we 
 sit on the hearth, and our Tutelar Genius when we 
 walk abroad. This is the only panacea. I mean 
 sincerity in our dealings with ourselves mainly ; 
 any other is comparatively easy,/ But I must stop % 
 before I get to ITthly. I believe I have but one 
 text and one sermon. 
 
 Your rural adventures beyond the West Cam- 
 
 .V 
 
20 LETTERS. 
 
 bridge hills have probably lost nothing by distance 
 of time or space. I used to hear only the sough 
 of the wind in the woods of Concord, when I was 
 striving to give my attention to a page of Calcu 
 lus. But, depend upon it, you will love your 
 native hills the better for being separated from 
 them. 
 
 I expect to leave Concord, which is my Rome, 
 and its people, who are my Romans, in May, and 
 go to New York, to be a tutor in Mr. William 
 Emerson s family. So I will bid you good by till 
 I see you or hear from you again. 
 Your friend, 
 
 H. D. THOREAU. 
 
 TO MRS. E. 
 CASTLETON, Staten Island, May 22, 1843. 
 
 MY DEAR FKIEND : 
 
 I believe a good many conversations with you 
 were left in an unfinished state, and now indeed I 
 don t know where to take them up. But I will 
 resume some of the unfinished silence. I shall 
 not hesitate to know you. I think of you as some 
 elder sister of mine, whom I could not have 
 avoided, a sort of lunar influence, only of 
 such age as the moon, whose time is measured by 
 her light. You must know that you represent to 
 
LETTERS. 21 
 
 me woman, for I have not travelled very far or 
 wide, and what if I had ? I like to deal with 
 you, for I believe you do not lie or steal, and these 
 are very rare virtues. I thank you for your influ 
 ence for two years. I was fortunate to be sub 
 jected to it, and am now to remember it. It is the 
 noblest gift we can make ; what signify all others 
 that can be bestowed ? You have helped to keep 
 my life " on loft," as Chaucer says of Griselda, 
 and in a better sense. You always seemed to look 
 down at me as from some elevation some of 
 your high humilities and I was the better for 
 having to look up. I felt taxed not to disappoint 
 your expectation ; for could there be any accident 
 so sad as to be respected for something better than 
 we are ? It was a pleasure even to go away from 
 you, as it is not to meet some, as it apprised me 
 of my high relations ; and such a departure is a 
 sort of further introduction and meeting. ("Nothing 
 makes the earth seem so spacious as to have 
 friends at a distance ; they make the latitudes and 
 longitudes.^/ 
 
 You must not think that fate is so dark there, 
 for even here I can see a faint reflected light over 
 Concord, and I think that at this distance I can 
 better weigh the value of a doubt there. Your 
 moonlight, as I have told you, though it is a re 
 flection of the sun, allows of bats and owls and 
 other twilight birds to flit therein. But I am 
 very glad that you can elevate your life with a 
 
22 LETTERS. 
 
 doubt, for I am sure that it is nothing but an insa 
 tiable faith after all, that deepens and darkens its 
 current. And your doubt and my confidence are 
 only a difference of expression. 
 
 I have hardly begun to live on Staten Island 
 yet ; but, like the man who, when forbidden to 
 tread on English ground, carried Scottish ground 
 in his boots, I carry Concord ground in my boots 
 and in my hat, and am I not made of Concord 
 dust ? I cannot realize that it is the roar of the 
 sea I hear now, and not the wind in Walden 
 woods. I find more of Concord, after all, in the 
 prospect of the sea, beyond Sandy Hook, than in 
 the fields and woods. 
 
 If you were to have this Hugh the gardener for 
 your man, you would think a new dispensation 
 had commenced. He might put a fairer aspect on 
 the natural world for you, or at any rate a screen 
 between you and the almshouse. There is a 
 beautiful red honeysuckle now in blossom in the 
 woods here, which should be transplanted to Con 
 cord ; and if what they tell me about the tulip- 
 tree be true, you should have that also. I have 
 not seen Mrs. Black yet, but I intend to call on 
 her soon. Have you established those simpler 
 modes of living yet? "In the full tide of suc 
 cessful operation ? " 
 
 Tell Mrs. Brown that I hope she is anchored in 
 a secure haven and derives much pleasure still 
 from reading the poets, and that her constellation 
 
LETTEKS. 23 
 
 is not quite set from my sight, though it is sunk so 
 
 low in that northern horizon. Tell E H 
 
 that her bright present did " carry ink safely to 
 Staten Island," and was a conspicuous object in 
 Master Haven s inventory of my effects. Give 
 
 my respects to Madam E , whose Concord 
 
 face I should be glad to see here this summer ; 
 and remember me to the rest of the household 
 who have had vision of me. Shake a day-day to 
 Edith, and say good night to Ellen for me. Fare 
 well. 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 TO MRS. E. 
 
 STATEN ISLAND, June 20, 1843. 
 MY VERY DEAR FRIEND I 
 
 I have only read a page of your letter, and have 
 come out to the top of the hill at sunset, where I 
 can see the ocean, to prepare to read the rest. It 
 is fitter that it should hear it than the walls of my 
 chamber. The very crickets here seem to chirp 
 around me as they did not before. I feel as if it 
 were a great daring to go on and read the rest, and 
 then to live accordingly. There are more than 
 thirty vessels in sight going to sea. I am almost 
 afraid to look at your letter. I see that it will 
 make my life very steep, but it may lead to fairer 
 prospects than this. 
 
24 LETTERS. 
 
 You seem to me to speak out of a very clear 
 and high heaven, where any one may be who 
 stands so high. Your voice seems not a voice, 
 but comes as much from the blue heavens as from 
 the paper. 
 
 My dear friend, it was very noble in you to 
 write me so trustful an answer. It will do as well 
 for another world as for this ; such a voice is for 
 no particular time nor person, but it makes him 
 who may hear it stand for all that is lofty and true 
 in humanity. The thought of you will constantly 
 elevate my life ; it will be something always above 
 the horizon to behold, as when I look up at the 
 evening star. I think I know your thoughts with 
 out seeing you, and as well here as in Concord. 
 You are not at all strange to me. 
 
 I could hardly believe, after the lapse of one 
 night, that I had such a noble letter still at hand 
 to read, that it was not some fine dream. I 
 looked at midnight to be sure that it was real. I 
 feel that I am unworthy to know you, and yet 
 they will not permit it wrongfully. 
 
 I, perhaps, am more willing to deceive by ap 
 pearances than you say you are ; it would not be 
 w r orth the while to tell how willing ; but I have 
 the power perhaps too much to forget my mean 
 ness as soon as seen, and not be incited by per 
 manent sorrow. My actual life is unspeakably 
 mean compared with what I know and see that it 
 might be. Yet the ground from which I see and 
 
LETTERS. 25 
 
 say this is some part of it. It ranges from heaven 
 to earth, and is all things in an hour. The experi 
 ence of every past* moment but belies the faith of 
 each present. We nevej* conceive the greatness 
 of our fates. Are not these faint flashes of light 
 which sometimes obscure the sun their certain 
 dawn ? 
 
 My friend, I have read your letter as if I was 
 not reading it. After each pause I could defer 
 the rest forever. The thought of you will be a 
 new motive for every right action. You are an 
 other human being whom I know, and might not 
 our topic be as broad as the universe ? What 
 have we to do with petty rumbling news ? We 
 have our own great affairs. Some times in Con 
 cord I found my actions dictated, as it were, by 
 your influence, and though it lead almost to trivial 
 Hindoo observances, yet it was good and elevat 
 ing. To hear that you have sad hours is not sad 
 to me. I rather rejoice at the richness of your 
 experience. Only think of some sadness away in 
 Pekin, unseen and unknown there. What a 
 mine it is ! Would it not weigh down the Celes 
 tial Empire, with all its gay Chinese ? Our sad 
 ness is not sad, but our cheap joys. Let us be 
 sad about all we see and are, for so we demand 
 and pray for better. It is the constant prayer and 
 whole Christian religion. I could hope that you 
 would get well soon, and have a healthy body for 
 this world, but I know this cannot be ; and the 
 
26 LETTERS. 
 
 Fates, after all, are the accomplishes of our hopes. 
 Yet I do hope that you may find it a worthy 
 struggle, and life seem grand still through the 
 clouds. 
 
 What wealth is it to have such friends that we 
 cannot think of them without elevation ! And we 
 can think of them any time and anywhere, and it 
 costs nothing but the lofty disposition. I cannot 
 tell you the joy your letter gives me, which will 
 not quite cease till the latest time. Let me ac 
 company your finest thought. 
 
 I send my love to my other friend and brother, 
 whose nobleness I slowly recognize. 
 
 HENRY. 
 
 TO MB. E. 
 
 STATEN ISLAND, August 7, 1843. 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND : 
 
 I fear I have nothing to send you worthy of so 
 good an opportunity. Of New York I still know 
 but little, though out of so many thousands there 
 are no doubt many units whom it would be worth 
 my while to know. Mr. James talks of going 
 to Germany soon with his wife to learn the lan 
 guage. He says he must know it ; can never 
 learn it here ; there he may absorb it ; and is 
 very anxious to learn beforehand where he had 
 best locate himself to enjoy the advantage of the 
 
LETTERS. 27 
 
 highest culture, learn the language in its purity, 
 and not exceed his limited means. I referred him 
 to Longfellow. Perhaps you can help him. 
 
 I have had a pleasant talk with Channing ; and 
 Greeley, too, it was refreshing to meet. They 
 were both much pleased with your criticism on 
 Carlyle, but thought that you had overlooked 
 what chiefly concerned them in the book, its 
 practical aim and merits. 
 
 I have also spent some pleasant hours with W. 
 and T. at their counting-room, or rather intelli 
 gence office. 
 
 I must still reckon myself with the innumerable 
 army of invalids, undoubtedly in a fair field they 
 would rout the well, though I am tougher than 
 formerly. Methinks I could paint the sleepy god 
 more truly than the poets have done, from more 
 intimate experience. Indeed, I have not kept my 
 eyes very steadily open to the things of this world 
 of late, and hence have little to report concerning 
 them. However, I trust the awakening will come 
 before the last trump, and then perhaps I may 
 remember some of my dreams. 
 
 I study the aspects of commerce at its Narrows 
 here, where it passes in review before me, and this 
 seems to be beginning at the right end to under 
 stand this Babylon. I have made a very rude 
 translation of the Seven against Thebes, and 
 Pindar too I have looked at, and wish he was 
 better worth translating. f"l believe even the best 
 
28 LETTERS. 
 
 things are not equal to their fame. Perhaps it 
 would be better to translate fame itself, or is 
 not that what the poets themselves do ?J How 
 ever, I have not done with Pindar yet. I sent a 
 long article on Etzler s book to the Democratic 
 Review six weeks ago, which at length they 
 have determined not to accept, as they could not 
 subscribe to all the opinions, but asked for other 
 matter, purely literary, I suppose. O Sullivan 
 wrote me that articles of this kind have to be re 
 ferred to the circle, who, it seems, are represented 
 by this journal, and said something about " col 
 lective we," and " homogeneity." 
 
 Pray don t think of Bradbury and Soden any 
 more, 
 
 " For good deed done through praiere 
 Is sold and bought too dear, I wis, 
 To herte that of great valor is." 
 
 I see that they have given up their shop here. 
 
 Say to Mrs. E that I am glad to remember 
 
 how she too dwells there in Concord, and shall 
 send her anon some of the thoughts that belong to 
 her. As for Edith, I seem to see a star in the east 
 over where the young child is. Remember me to 
 
 Mrs. B . 
 
 Your friend, 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
LETTERS. 29 
 
 TO MRS. E. 
 
 STATEX ISLAND, October 16, 1843. 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND: 
 
 I promised you some thoughts long ago, but it 
 would be hard to tell whether these are the ones. 
 I suppose that the great questions of " Fate, Free 
 will, Foreknowledge absolute," which used to be 
 discussed at Concord, are still unsettled. And 
 here comes C banning, with his " Present," to vex 
 the world again, a rather galvanic movement, I 
 think. However, I like the man all the better, 
 though his schemes the less. I am sorry for his 
 confessions. Faith never makes a confession. 
 
 Have you had the annual berrying party, or sat 
 on the Cliffs a whole day this summer? I sup 
 pose the flowers have fared quite as well since I 
 was not there to scoff at them ; and the hens, 
 without doubt, keep up their reputation. 
 
 I have been reading lately what of Quarles s 
 poetry I could get. He was a contemporary of 
 Herbert, and a kindred spirit. I think you would 
 like him. It is rare to find one who was so much 
 of a poet and so little of an artist. He wrote long 
 poems, almost epics for length, about Jonah, Es 
 ther, Job, Samson, and Solomon, interspersed with 
 meditations after a quite original plan, Shep 
 herd s Oracles, Comedies, Romances, Fancies, and 
 Meditations, the quintessence of meditation, 
 and Enchiridions of Meditation, all divine, 
 
30 LETTERS. 
 
 and what he calls his Morning Muse ; besides 
 prose works as curious as the rest. He was an 
 unwearied Christian, and a reformer of some old 
 school withal. Hopelessly quaint, as if he lived 
 all alone and knew nobody but his wife, who ap 
 pears to have reverenced him. He never doubts 
 his genius ; it is only he and his God in all the 
 world. He uses language sometimes as greatly 
 as Shakespeare ; and though there is not much 
 straight grain in him, there is plenty of tough, 
 crooked timber. In an age when Herbert is re- 
 
 O 
 
 vived, Quarles surely ought not to be forgotten. 
 
 I. will copy a few such sentences, as I should 
 read to you if there. Mrs. Brown, too, may find 
 some nutriment in them. 
 
 How does the Saxon Edith do ? Can vou tell 
 yet to which school of philosophy she belongs, 
 whether she will be a fair saint of some Christian 
 order, or a follower of Plato and the heathen ? 
 Bid Ellen a good night or a good morning from 
 me, and see if she will remember where it comes 
 
 from ; and remember me to Mrs. B , and your 
 
 mother, and E H . 
 
 Your friend, 
 
 HENKY. 
 
LElHRS. 31 
 
 TO MRS. THOREAU. 
 
 STATEN ISLAND, July 7, 1843. 
 
 DEAR MOTHER : 
 
 I was very glad to get your letter and papers. 
 Tell father that circumstantial letters make very 
 substantial reading, at any rate. I like to know 
 even how the sun shines and garden grows with 
 you. Tell Sophia that I have pressed some blos 
 soms of the tulip-tree for her. They look some 
 what like white lilies. 
 
 Pray, have you the seventeen-year locust in 
 Concord ? The air here is filled with their din. 
 They come out of the ground at first in an imper 
 fect state, and, crawling up the shrubs and plants, 
 the perfect insect burst out through the back. 
 They are doing great damage to the fruit and for 
 est trees. The latter are covered with dead 
 twigs, which in the distance look like the blossoms 
 of the chestnut. They bore every twig of last 
 year s growth in order to deposit their eggs in it. 
 In a few weeks the eggs will be hatched, and the 
 worms fall to the ground and enter it, and in 1860 
 make their appearance again. I conversed about 
 their coming this season before they arrived. 
 They do no injury to the leaves, but, beside bor 
 ing the twigs, suck their sap for sustenance. 
 Their din is heard by those who sail along the 
 shore from the distant woods. Phar-r-r-aoh. 
 Phar-r-r-aoh. They are departing now. Dogs, 
 
32 LITERS. 
 
 cats, and chickens subsist mainly upon them in 
 some places. 
 
 I have not been to New York for more than 
 three weeks. I have had an interesting letter 
 from Mr. Lane, describing their new prospects. 
 My pupil and I are getting on apace. He is re 
 markably well advanced in Latin, and is well 
 advancing. 
 
 Your letter has just arrived. I was not aware 
 that it was so long since I wrote home ; I only 
 knew that I had sent five or six letters to the 
 town. It is very refreshing to hear from you, 
 though it is not all good news. But I trust that 
 Stearns Wheeler is not dead. I should be slow to 
 believe it. He was made to work very well in this 
 world. There need be no tragedy in his death. 
 
 The demon which is said to haunt the Jones 
 family, hovering over their eyelids with wings 
 steeped in juice of poppies, has commenced an 
 other campaign against me. I am "clear Jones " 
 in this respect at least. But he finds little encour 
 agement in my atmosphere, I assure you, for I do 
 not once fairly lose myself, except in those hours 
 of truce allotted to rest by immemorial custom. 
 However, this skirmishing interferes sadly with my 
 literary projects, and I am apt to think it a good 
 day s work if I maintain a soldier s eye till night 
 fall. Very well, it does not matter much in what 
 wars we serve, whether in the Highlands or the 
 Lowlands. Everywhere we get soldiers pay still. 
 
LETTERS. 33 
 
 Give my love to Aunt Louisa, whose benignant 
 face I sometimes see right in the wall, as naturally 
 and necessarily shining on my path as some star 
 of unaccountably greater age and higher orbit 
 than myself. Let it be inquired by her of George 
 Minott, as from me, for she sees him, if he 
 has seen any pigeons yet, and tell him there are 
 plenty of jack-snipes here. As for William P., 
 the " worthy young man," as I live, my eyes have 
 not fallen on him yet. 
 
 I have not had the influenza, though here are 
 its head- quarters, unless my first week s cold 
 was it. Tell Helen I shall write to her soon. I 
 have heard Lucretia Mott. This is badly writ 
 ten ; but the worse the writing the sooner you 
 get it this time from 
 
 Your affectionate son, 
 
 H. D. T. 
 
 TO MISS THOREAU. 
 
 STATEN ISLAND, July 21, 1843. 
 
 DEAR HELEN : 
 
 I have pretty much explored this island, inland 
 and along the shore, finding my health inclined 
 me to the peripatetic philosophy. I have visited 
 Telegraph Stations, Sailors Snug Harbors, Sea 
 man s Retreats, Old Elm-Trees, where the Hu 
 guenots landed, Britton s Mills, and all the vil- 
 
 2* C 
 
34 LETTERS. 
 
 lages on the island. Last Sunday I walked over to 
 Lake Island Farm, eight or nine miles from here, 
 where Moses Prichard lived, and found the pres 
 ent occupant, one Mr. Davenport, formerly from 
 Massachusetts, with three or four men to help 
 him, raising sweet potatoes and tomatoes by the 
 acre. It seemed a cool and pleasant retreat, but 
 a hungry soil. As I was coming away, I took my 
 toll -out of the soil in the shape of arrow-heads, 
 which may after all be the surest crop, certainly 
 not affected by drought. 
 
 I am well enough situated here to observe one 
 aspect of the modern world at least. I mean the 
 migratory, the Western movement. Sixteen 
 hundred immigrants arrived at quarantine ground 
 on the 4th of July, and more or less every day 
 since I have been here. I see them occasionally 
 
 . washing their persons and clothes, or men, wo 
 men, and children gathered on an isolated quay 
 near the shore, stretching their limbs and taking 
 the air ; the children running races and swinging 
 on this artificial piece of the land of liberty, while 
 their vessels are undergoing purification. They 
 are detained but a day or two, and then go up to 
 the city, for the most part without having landed 
 here. 
 
 / In the city I have seen since I wrote last, 
 W. H. Channing, at whose house, in Fifteenth 
 Street, I spent a few pleasant hours, discussing 
 the all-absorbing question "what to do for the 
 
LETTERS. . 35 
 
 race. / (He is sadly in earnest about going up 
 - tfie river to rusticate for six weeks, and issues 
 a new periodical called " The Present " in Sep 
 tember.) Also Horace Greelej, editor of the 
 " Tribune," who is cheerfully in earnest, at his 
 office of all work, a hearty New Hampshire boy 
 as one would wish to meet, and says, " Now be 
 neighborly," and believes only, or mainly, first, 
 in the Sylvania Association, somewhere in Penn 
 sylvania ; and, secondly, and most of all, in a new 
 association to go into operation soon in New Jer-J 
 sey, with which he is connected. Edward Palmer 
 came down to see me Sunday before last. As 
 
 for W and T , we have strangely dodged 
 
 one another, and have not met for some weeks. 
 
 I believe I have not told you anything about 
 Lucretia Mott. It was a good while ago that I 
 heard her at the Quaker Church in Hester Street. 
 She is a preacher, and it was advertised that she 
 would be present on that day. I liked all the pro 
 ceedings very well, their plainly greater harmony 
 and sincerity, than elsewhere. They do nothing 
 in a hurry. Every one that walks up the aisle in 
 his square coat and expansive hat has a history, 
 and comes from a house to a house. The women 
 come in one after another in their Quaker bon 
 nets and handkerchiefs, looking all like sisters or 
 so many chickadees. At length, after a long 
 silence waiting for the Spirit Mrs. Mott 
 rose, took off her bonnet, and began to utter very 
 
36 LETTERS. 
 
 deliberately what the Spirit suggested. Her self- 
 possession was something to say, if all else failed ; 
 but it did not. Her subject was, " The Abuse of 
 the Bible," and thence she straightway digressed 
 to slavery and the degradation of woman. It was 
 a good speech, transcendentalism in its mildest 
 form. She sat down at length, and, after a long 
 and decorous silence, in which some seemed to be 
 really digesting her words, the elders shook hands, 
 and the meeting dispersed. On the whole, I 
 liked their ways and the plainness of their meet 
 ing-house. It looked as if it was indeed made for 
 
 o 
 
 service. 
 
 I think that Stearns Wheeler has left a gap in 
 the community not easy to be filled. Though he 
 did not exhibit the highest qualities of the scholar, 
 he promised, in a remarkable degree, many of the 
 essential and rarer ones ; and his patient industry 
 and energy, his reverent love of letters, and his 
 proverbial accuracy, will cause him to be associ 
 ated in my memory even with many venerable 
 names of former days. It was not w r holly unfit 
 that so pure a lover of books should have ended 
 his pilgrimage at the great book-mart of the world. 
 I think of him as healthy and brave, and am con 
 fident that if he had lived, he would have proved 
 useful in more ways than I can describe. He 
 would have been authority on all matters of fact, 
 and a sort of connecting link between men and 
 scholars of different walks and tastes. The liter- 
 
LETTERS. 37 
 
 ary enterprises he was planning for himself and 
 friends, remind me of an older and more studious 
 time. So much, then, remains for us to do who 
 survive. Tell all my friends in Concord that I do 
 not send my love, but retain it still. 
 
 Your affectionate brother, 
 
 H. D. T. 
 
 TO MKS. THOREAU. 
 
 STATEN ISLAND, August 6, 1843. 
 
 DEAR MOTHER : 
 
 I am chiefly indebted to. your letters for what 
 I have learned of Concord and family news, 
 and am very glad when I get one. I should 
 have liked to be in Walden woods with you, 
 but not with the railroad. I think of you all 
 very often, and wonder if you are still separated 
 from me only by so many miles of earth, or so 
 many miles of memory. This life we live is a 
 strange dream, and I don t believe at all any ac 
 count men give of it. Methinks I should be con 
 tent to sit at the back-door in Concord, under the 
 poplar- tree, henceforth forever. Not that I am 
 homesick at all for places are strangely indif 
 ferent to me but Concord is still a cynosure to 
 my eyes, and I find it hard to attach it, even in 
 imagination, to the rest of the globe, and tell 
 where the seam is. 
 
38 LETTERS. 
 
 I fancy that this Sunday evening you are poring 
 over some select book, almost transcendental per 
 chance, or else " Burgh s Dignity," or Massillon, 
 or the Christian Examiner. Father has just taken 
 one more look at the garden, and is now absorbed 
 in Chaptelle, or reading the newspaper quite ab 
 stractedly, only looking up occasionally over his 
 spectacles to see how the rest are engaged, and 
 not to miss any newer news that may not be in 
 
 the paper. H has slipped in for the fourth 
 
 time to learn the very latest item. S , I sup 
 pose, is at Bangor ; but Aunt L , without 
 
 doubt, is just flitting away to some good meeting, 
 to save the credit of you all. 
 
 It is still a cardinal virtue with me to keep 
 awake. I find it impossible to write or read ex 
 cept at rare intervals, but am, generally speaking, 
 tougher than formerly. I could make a pedestrian 
 tour round the world, and sometimes think it 
 would perhaps be better to do at once the things 
 I can, rather than be trying to do what at present 
 I cannot do well. However, I shall awake sooner 
 or later. 
 
 I have been translating some Greek, and read 
 ing English poetry, and a month ago sent a paper 
 to the Democratic Review, which, at length, 
 they were sorry they could not accept ; but they 
 could not adopt the sentiments. However, they 
 were very polite, and earnest that I should send 
 them something else, or reform that. 
 
LETTERS. 39 
 
 I go moping about the fields and woods here as 
 I did in Concord, and, it seems, am thought to be 
 a surveyor, an Eastern man inquiring narrowly 
 into the condition -and value of land, &c. here, 
 preparatory to an extensive speculation. One 
 neighbor observed to me, in a mysterious and half 
 inquisitive way, that he supposed I must be pretty 
 well acquainted with the state of things ; that I 
 kept pretty close : he did n t see any surveying 
 instruments, but perhaps I had them in my pocket, j 
 
 I have received H s note, but have not 
 
 heard of F H yet. She is a faint 
 hearted writer who could not take the responsi 
 bility of blotting one sheet alone. However, I 
 like very well the. blottings I get. Tell her I 
 have not seen Mrs. Child nor Mrs. Sedgwick. 
 
 Love to all from 
 
 Your affectionate son, 
 
 HENKY D. THOREAU. 
 
 TO MISS THOREAU. 
 
 STATEN ISLAND, October 18, 1843. 
 
 DEAR H : 
 
 What do you mean by saying that " we have 
 written eight times by private opportunity ? " 
 Is n t it the more the better ? And am I not 
 glad of it ? But people have a habit of not let- 
 
40 LETTERS. 
 
 ting me know it when they go to Concord from 
 New York. I endeavored to get you " The 
 Present " when I was last in the city, but they 
 were all sold ; and now another is out, which I 
 will send, if I get it. I did not send the Demo 
 cratic Review, because I had no copy, and my 
 piece was not worth fifty cents. You think that 
 Channing s words would apply to me too, as liv 
 ing more in the natural than the moral world ; but 
 I think that you mean the world of men and wo 
 men rather, and reformers generally. My ob 
 jection to the Editors and all that fraternity is, 
 that they need and deserve sympathy themselves 
 rather than are able to render it to others. They 
 want faith, and mistake their, private ail for an 
 infected atmosphere ; but let any one of them re 
 cover hope for a moment, and right his particular 
 grievance, and he will no longer train in that com 
 pany. To speak or do anything that shall concern 
 mankind, one must speak and act as if well, or 
 from that grain of health which he has left. This 
 " Present" book indeed is blue, but the hue of its 
 thoughts is yellow. I say these things with the 
 less hesitation, because I have the jaundice my 
 self; but I also know what it is to be well. But 
 do not think that one can escape from mankind 
 who is one of them, and is so constantly deal 
 ing with them. 
 
 I could not undertake to form a nucleus of an 
 institution for the development of infant minds, 
 
LETTERS. 41 
 
 where none already existed. It would be too 
 cruel. And then, as if looking all this while one 
 way with benevolence, to walk off another about 
 one s own affairs suddenly ! Something of this 
 kind is an unavoidable objection to that. 
 
 I am very sorry to hear such bad news about 
 Aunt M ; but I think that the worst is al 
 ways the least to be apprehended, for nature is 
 averse to it as well as we. I trust to hear that 
 she is quite well soon. I send love to her and 
 
 Aunt J . For three months I have not 
 
 known whether to think of Sophia as in Bangor 
 or Concord, and now you say that she is going di 
 rectly. Tell her ta^vrite to me, and establish her 
 whereabouts, and also to get well directly. And 
 see that she has something worthy to do when she 
 gets down there, for that s the best remedy for 
 disease. 
 
 Your affectionate brother, 
 
 II. D. THOREAU. 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, March 27, 1848. 
 
 I AM glad to hear that any words of mine, 
 though spoken so long ago that I can hardly 
 claim identity with their author, have reached 
 you. It gives me pleasure, because I have there- 
 
42 LETTERS. 
 
 fore reason to suppose that I have uttered what 
 concerns men, and that it is not in vain that 
 man speaks to man. This is the value of litera 
 ture. Yet those days are so distant, in every 
 sense, that I have had to look at that page again, 
 to learn what was the tenor of my thoughts then. 
 I should value that article, however, if only be 
 cause it was the occasion of your letter. 
 
 I do believe that the outward and the inward 
 life correspond ; that if any should succeed to live 
 a higher life, others would not know of it ; that 
 difference and distance are one. To set about 
 living a true life is to go a journey to a distant 
 country, gradually to find o^selves surrounded 
 by new scenes and men ; and as long as the old 
 are around me, I know that I am not in any true 
 sense living a new or a better life. The outward 
 is only the outside of that which is within. Men 
 are not concealed under habits, but are revealed 
 by them ; they are their true clothes. I care not 
 how curious a reason they may give for their abid 
 ing by them. Circumstances are not rigid and 
 unyielding, but our habits are rigid. We are 
 apt to speak vaguely sometimes, as if a divine life 
 were to be grafted on to or built over this present 
 as a suitable foundation. This might do if we 
 could so build over our old life as to exclude from 
 it all the warmth of our affection, and addle it, as 
 the thrush builds over the cuckoo s egg, and lays 
 her own atop, and hatches that only ; but the fact 
 
LETTERS. 43 
 
 is, we so there is the partition hatch them 
 both, and the cuckoo s always by a day first, and 
 that young bird crowds the young thrushes out of 
 the nest. No. Destroy the cuckoo s egg, or 
 build a new nest. 
 
 Change is change. No new life occupies the 
 old bodies ; they decay. It is born, and grows, 
 and flourishes. Men very pathetically inform the 
 old, accept and wear it. Why put up with the 
 almshouse when you may go to Heaven ? It is 
 embalming, no more. Let alone your ointments 
 and your linen swathes, and go into an infant s 
 body. You see in the catacombs of Egypt the 
 result of that experiment, that is the end of it. 
 
 I do belie ve in simplicity. It is astonishing a.s~~~J 
 well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the 
 wisest man thinks he must attend to in a day ; 
 how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. 
 When the mathematician would solve a difficult 
 problem, he first frees the equation of all encum 
 brances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So 
 simplify the problem of life, distinguish the neces 
 sary and the real. Probe the earth to see where 
 your main roots run. I would stand upon facts. 
 Why not see, use our eyes ? Do men know 
 nothing? I know many men who, in common 
 things, are not to be deceived ; who trust no 
 moonshine ; who count their money correctly, and 
 know how to invest it ; who are said to be pru 
 dent and knowing, who yet will stand at a desk the 
 
44 LETTERS. 
 
 greater part of their lives, as cashiers in banks, 
 and glimmer and rust and finally go out there. 
 If they know anything, what under the sun do 
 they do that for ? Do they know what bread is ? 
 or what it is for ? Do they know what life is ? 
 If they knew something, the places which know 
 them now would know them no more forever^J 
 
 This, our respectable daily life, in which the 
 man of common sense, the Englishman of the 
 world, stands so squarely, and on which our insti 
 tutions are founded, is in fact the veriest illusion, 
 and will vanish like the baseless fabric of a vision ; 
 but that faint glimmer of reality which sometimes 
 illuminates the darkness of daylight for all men, 
 reveals something more solid and enduring than 
 adamant, which is in fact the corner-stone of the 
 world. 
 
 .Men cannot conceive of a state of things so fail- 
 that it cannot be realized. Can any man honestly 
 consult his experience and say that it is so ? Have 
 we any facts to appeal to when we say that our 
 dreams are premature ? Did you ever hear of a 
 man who had striven all his life faithfully and 
 singly toward an object and in no measure ob 
 tained it ? If a man constantly aspires, is he not 
 elevated ? Did ever a man try heroism, magna 
 nimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was 
 no advantage in them ? that it was a vain en 
 deavor ? Of course we do not expect that our para 
 dise will be a garden. I We know not what we ask. 
 
LETTERS. 45 
 
 To look at literature ; how many fine thoughts 
 has every man had ! how few fine thoughts are 
 expressed ! Yet we never have a fantasy so 
 subtile and ethereal, but that talent merely, with 
 more resolution and faithful persistency, after a 
 thousand failures, might fix and engrave it in dis 
 tinct and enduring words, and we should see that 
 our dreams are the solidest facts that we know. 
 But I speak not of dreams. 
 
 What can be expressed in words can be ex 
 pressed in life. 
 
 My actual life is a fact, in view of which I have 
 no occasion to congratulate myself; but for my 
 faith and aspiration I have respect. It is from 
 these that I speak. Every man s position is in fact 
 too simple to be described. I have sworn no oath. 
 I have no designs on society, or Nature, or God. 
 I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I 
 live in the present. I only remember the past, 
 and anticipate the future. I love to live. ( I love 
 reform better than its modes. There is no history 
 of how bad became better. I believe something, 
 and there is nothing else but that. I know that I 
 am. I know that another is who knows more 
 than I, who takes interest in me, whose creature, 
 and yet whose kindred, in one sense, am I. I 
 know that the enterprise is worthy. I know that 
 things work well. I have heard no bad news. 
 
 As for positions, combinations, and details, 
 what are they ? In clear weather, when we 
 
4b LETTERS. 
 
 look into the heavens, what do we see but the sky 
 and the sun ? 
 
 If you would convince a man that he does 
 wrong, do right. But do not care to convince 
 him. Men will believe what they see. Let them 
 see. 
 
 Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round 
 your life, as a dog does his master s chaise. Do 
 what you love. Know your own bone : gnaw at 
 it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. Do riot 
 be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of 
 much life so. Aim above morality. Be not 
 simply good ; be good for something. All fables, 
 indeed, have their morals ; but the innocent enjoy 
 the story. Let nothing come between you and 
 the light. Respect men as brothers only. When 
 you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of 
 introduction. When you knock, ask to see God, 
 none of the servants. In what concerns you 
 much, do not think that you have companions : 
 know that you are alone in the world./ 
 
 Thus I write at random. I need to see you, 
 and I trust I shall, to correct my mistakes. Per 
 haps you have some oracles for me. 
 
 HENRY THOKEAU. 
 
(\J 
 
 LETTERS. 47 
 
 K 
 
 K 
 
 TO ME. B. 
 
 CONCORD, May 2, 1848. 
 
 " We must have our bread." But what is 
 our bread ? Is it baker s bread ? Methinks it 
 should be very home-made bread. What is our 
 meat ? Is it butcher s meat ? What is that 
 which we must have ? Is that bread which we 
 are now earning sweet ? Is it not bread which has 
 been suffered to sour, and then been sweetened 
 with an alkali, which has undergone the vinous, 
 acetous, and sometimes the putrid fermentation, 
 and then, been whitened with vitriol ? Is this the 
 bread which we must have ? Man must earn his 
 bread by the sweat of his brow, truly, but also 
 by the sweat of his brain within his brow. The 
 body can feed the body only. I have tasted but 
 little bread in my life. It has been mere grub 
 and provender for the most part. Of bread that 
 nourished the brain and the heart, scarcely any. 
 There is absolutely none even on the tables of the 
 rich. 
 
 There is not one kind of food for all men. You 
 must and you will feed those faculties which you 
 exercise. The laborer whose body is weary does 
 not require the same food with the scholar whose 
 brain is weary. Men should not labor foolishly 
 like brutes, but the brain and the body should al 
 ways, or as much as possible, work and rest to 
 gether, and then the work will be of such a kind 
 
48 LETTERS. 
 
 that when the body is hungry the brain will bo 
 hungry also, and the same food will suffice for 
 both ; otherwise the food which repairs the waste 
 energy of the over-wrought body will oppress the 
 sedentary brain, and the degenerate scholar will 
 come to esteem all food vulgar, and all getting a 
 living drudgery. 
 
 How shall we earn our bread is a grave ques 
 tion ; yet it is a sweet and inviting question. Let 
 us not shirk it, as is usually done. It is the most im 
 portant and practical question which is put to man. 
 Let us not answer it hastily. Let us not be con 
 tent to get our bread in some gross, careless, and 
 hasty manner. Some men go a-hunting, some 
 a-fishing, some a-gaming, some to war ; but none 
 have so pleasant a time as they who in earnest seek 
 to earn their bread. It is true actually as it is true 
 really ; it is true materially as it is true spirit 
 ually, that they who seek honestly and sincerely, 
 with all their hearts and lives and strength, to earn 
 their bread, do earn it, and it is sure to be very 
 sweet to them. A very little bread, a very 
 few crumbs are enough, if it be of the right qual 
 ity, for it is infinitely nutritious. Let each man, 
 then, earn at least a crumb of bread for his body 
 before he dies, and know the taste of it, that it 
 is identical with the bread of life, and that they 
 both go down at one swallow. 
 
 Our bread need. not ever be sour or hard to 
 digest. What Nature is to the mind she is also to 
 
LETTERS. 49 
 
 the body. As she feeds my imagination, she will 
 feed my body ; for what she says she means, and 
 is ready to do. She is not simply beautiful to the 
 poet s ey&. Not only the rainbow and sunset are 
 beautiful, but to be fed and clothed, sheltered and 
 warmed aright, are equally beautiful and inspiring. 
 There is not necessarily any gross and ugly fact 
 which may not be eradicated from the life of man. 
 We should endeavor practically in our lives to 
 correct all the defects which our imagination de 
 tects. The heavens are as deep as our aspira 
 tions are high. So high as a tree aspires to grow, 
 so high it will find an atmosphere suited to it. 
 Every man should stand for a force which is per 
 fectly irresistible. How can any man be weak 
 who dares to be at all ? Even the tenderest plants 
 force their way up through the hardest earth, and 
 the crevices of rocks ; but a man no material 
 power can resist. What a wedge, what a beetle, 
 what a catapult, is an earnest man ! What can 
 resist him ? 
 
 It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, 
 or he may be bad; his life may be true, or it may 
 be false ; it may be either a shame or a glory to 
 him. The good man builds himself up; the bad 
 man destroys himself. 
 
 But whatever we do we must do confidently (if 
 we are timid, let us, then, act timidly), not ex 
 pecting more light, but having light enough. If 
 we confidently expect more, then let us wait for it. 
 
 3 D 
 
50 LETTERS. 
 
 But what is this which we have ? Have we not 
 already waited ? Is this the beginning of time ? 
 Is there a man who does not see clearly beyond, 
 though only a hair s breadth beyond where he at 
 any time stands ? 
 
 If one hesitates in his path, let him not proceed. 
 Let him respect his doubts, for doubts, too, may 
 have some divinity in them. That we have but 
 little faith is not sad, but that we have but little 
 faithfulness. By faithfulness faith is earned. When, 
 in the progress of a life, a man swerves, though 
 only by an angle infinitely small, from his proper 
 and allotted path (and this is never done quite un 
 consciously even at first ; in fact, that was his 
 broad and scarlet sin, ah, he knew of it more 
 than he can tell), then the drama of his life turns 
 to tragedy, and makes haste to its fifth act. When 
 once we thus fall behind ourselves, there is no ac 
 counting for the obstacles which rise up in our 
 path, and no one is so wise as to advise, and no 
 one so powerful as to aid us while we abide on 
 that ground. Such are cursed with duties, and 
 the neglect of their duties. For such the deca 
 logue was made, and other far more voluminous 
 and terrible codes. 
 
 These departures, who have not made them ? 
 for they are as faint as the parallax of a fixed 
 star, and at the commencement we say thev are 
 nothing, that is, they originate in a kind of 
 sleep and forgetfulness of the soul when it is 
 
LETTERS. 51 
 
 naught. A man cannot be too circumspect in 
 order to keep in the straight road, and be sure 
 that he sees all that he may at any time see, that 
 so he may distinguish his true path. 
 
 You ask if there is no doctrine of sorrow in my 
 philosophy. Of acute sorrow I suppose that I 
 know comparatively little. My saddest and most 
 genuine sorrows are apt to be but transient re 
 grets. The place of sorrow is supplied, perchance, 
 by a certain hard and proportionably barren in 
 difference. I am of kin to the sod, and partake 
 largely of its dull patience, in winter expecting 
 the sun of spring. 
 
 In my cheapest moments I am apt to think that 
 it is not my business to be " seeking the spirit," 
 but as much its business to be seeking me. 
 
 I know very well what Goethe meant when he 
 said that he never had a chagrin, but he made a 
 poem out of it. I have altogether too much 
 patience of this kind. I am too easily contented 
 with a slight and almost animal happiness. My 
 happiness is a good deal like that of the wood- 
 chucks. 
 
 Methinks I am never quite committed, never 
 wholly the creature of my moods, being always to 
 some extent their critic. My only integral ex 
 perience is in my vision. I see, perchance, with 
 more integrity than I feel. 
 
 But I need not tell you what manner of man I 
 am, my virtues or my vices. You can guess if 
 
52 LETTERS. 
 
 it is worth the while ; and I do not discriminate 
 them well. 
 
 I do not write this time at my hut in the woods. 
 I am at present living with Mrs. Emerson, whose 
 house is an old home of mine, for company during 
 Mr. E. s absence. 
 
 You will perceive that I am as often talking to 
 myself, perhaps, as speaking to you. 
 
 HENRY THOREAU. 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, August 10, 1849. 
 
 MR. B : 
 
 I write now chiefly to say, before it is too late, 
 that I shall be glad to see you in Concord, and 
 will give you a chamber, &c., in my father s house, 
 and as much of my poor company as you can 
 bear. 
 
 I am in too great haste this time to speak to 
 your, or out of my, condition. I might say, 
 you might say, comparatively speaking, be not 
 anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth 
 of the universe may be securely invested. What 
 a pity if we do not live this short time according 
 to the laws of the long time, the eternal laws ! 
 Let us see that we stand erect here, and do not 
 lie along by our whole length in the dirt. Let our 
 
LETTERS. 53 
 
 meanness be our footstool, not our cushion. In 
 the midst of this labyrinth let us live a thread of 
 life. We must act with so rapid and resistless 
 a purpose in one direction, that our vices will 
 necessarily trail behind. The nucleus of a comet 
 is almost a star. Was there ever a genuine dilem 
 ma? The laws of earth are for the feet, or in 
 ferior man ; the laws of heaven are for the head, 
 or superior man ; the latter are the former sub 
 limed and expanded, even as radii from the earth s 
 centre go on diverging into space. Happy the 
 man who observes the heavenly and the terres 
 trial law in just proportion ; whose every faculty, 
 from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, 
 obeys the law of its level ; who neither stoops nor 
 goes on tiptoe, but lives a balanced life, acceptable 
 to nature and to God. 
 
 These things I say ; other things I do. 
 
 I am sorry to hear that you did not receive my 
 book earlier. I addressed it and left it in Munroe s 
 shop to be sent to you immediately, on the twenty- 
 sixth of May, before a copy had been sold. 
 
 Will you remember me to Mr. when 
 
 you see him next : he is well remembered by 
 
 HENRY THOREAU. 
 
 I still owe you a worthy answer. 
 
54 LETTERS. 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, November 20. 1S49. 
 
 MR. B : 
 
 I have not forgotten that I am your debtor. 
 When I read over your letters, as I have just 
 done, I feel that I am unworthy to have received 
 or to answer them, though they are addressed, as 
 I would have them, to the ideal of me. It be 
 hoves me, if I would reply, to speak out of the 
 rarest part of myself. 
 
 At present I am subsisting on certain wild fla 
 vors which nature wafts to me, which unaccount 
 ably sustain me, and make my apparently poor 
 life rich. Within a year my walks have extended 
 themselves, and almost every afternoon (I read, 
 or write, or make pencils in the forenoon, and by 
 the last means get a living for my body) I visit 
 some new hill, or pond, or wood, many miles dis 
 tant. I am astonished at the wonderful retirement 
 through which I move, rarely meeting a man in 
 these excursions, never seeing one similarly en 
 gaged, unless it be my companion, when I have 
 one. I cannot help feeling that of all the human 
 inhabitants of nature hereabouts, only we two have 
 leisure to admire and enjoy our inheritance. 
 
 " Free in this world as the birds in the air, dis-- 
 engaged from every kind of chains, those who 
 have practised the yoga gather in Brahma the 
 certain fruit of their works." 
 
LETTERS. 55 
 
 Depend upon it, that, rude and careless as I am, 
 I would fain practise the yoga faithfully. 
 / " The yogi, absorbed in contemplation, con 
 tributes in his degree to creation : he breathes a 
 divine perfume, he hears wonderful things. Di 
 vine forms traverse him without tearing him, and, 
 united to the nature which is proper to him, he 
 goes, he acts as animating original matter." 
 
 To some extent, and at rare intervals, even I 
 am a yogi. 
 
 I know little about the affairs of Turkey, but I 
 am sure that I know something about barberries 
 and chestnuts, of which I have collected a store 
 this fall. When I go to see my neighbor, he will 
 formally communicate to me the latest news from 
 Turkey, which he read in yesterday s mail, 
 " Now Turkey by this time looks determined, and 
 
 Lord Palmerston " Why, I would rather 
 
 talk of the bran, which, unfortunately, was sifted 
 out of my bread this morning, and thrown away. 
 It is a fact which lies nearer to me. The news 
 paper gossip with which our hosts abuse our ears 
 is as far from a true hospitality as the viands 
 which they set before us. We did not need them 
 to feed our bodies, and the news can be bought for 
 a penny. We want the inevitable news, be it sad 
 - or cheering, wherefore and by what means they 
 are extant this new day. If they are well, let 
 them whistle and dance ; if they are dyspeptic, it 
 is their duty to complain, that so they may in any 
 
56 LETTEKS. 
 
 case be entertaining. If words were invented to 
 conceal thought, I think that newspapers are a 
 great improvement or a bad invention. Do not 
 [ suffer your life to be taken by newspapers. 
 
 I thank you for your hearty appreciation of my 
 book. I am glad to have had such a long talk 
 with you, and that you had patience to listen to 
 me to the end. I think that I had the advantage 
 of you, for I chose my own mood, and in one 
 sense your mood too, that is, a quiet and atten 
 tive reading mood. Such advantage has the writer 
 over the talker. I am sorry that you did not 
 come to Concord in your vacation. Is it not time 
 for another vacation ? I am here yet, and Con 
 cord is here. 
 
 You will have found out by this time who it is 
 that writes this, and will be glad to have you write 
 to him, without his subscribing himself 
 
 HENRY D. TIIOREAU. 
 
 P. S. It is so long since I have seen you, 
 that, as you will perceive, I have to speak, as it 
 were, in vacuo, as if I were sounding hollowly for 
 an echo, and it did not make much odds what 
 kind of a sound I made. But the gods do not 
 hear any rude or discordant sound, as we learn 
 from the echo ; and I know that the nature to 
 ward which I launch these sounds is so rich, that 
 it will modulate anew and wonderfully improve 
 my rudest strain. 
 
LETTERS. 57 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, April 3, 1850. 
 
 MR. B : 
 
 I thank you for your letter, and I will endeavor 
 to record some of the thoughts which it suggests^ 
 whether pertinent or not. You speak of poverty 
 and dependence. Who are poor and dependent ? 
 Who are rich and independent ? When was it 
 that men agreed to respect the appearance and 
 not the reality ? Why should the appearance 
 appear? Are we well acquainted, then, with the 
 reality ? There is none who does not lie hourly 
 in the respect he pays to false appearance. How 
 sweet it would be to treat men and things, for 
 an hour, for just what they are ! We wonder 
 that the sinner does not confess his sin. When 
 we are weary with travel, we lay down our load 
 and rest by the wayside. So, when we are weary 
 with the burden of life, why do we not lay down 
 this load of falsehoods which we have volunteered 
 to sustain, and be refreshed as never mortal was ? 
 Let the beautiful laws prevail. Let us not weary 
 ourselves by resisting them. When we would 
 rest #ur bodies we cease to support them ; we re 
 cline on the lap of earth. So, when we would 
 rest our spirits, we must recline on the Great 
 Spirit. Let things alone ; let them weigh what 
 they will ; let them soar or fall. To succeed in 
 letting only one thing alone in a winter morning, 
 
 3* 
 
58 LETTERS. 
 
 if it be only one poor, frozen-thawed apple that 
 hangs on a tree, what a glorious achievement! 
 Methinks it lightens through the dusky universe. 
 What an infinite wealth we have discovered ! 
 God reigns, i. e. when we take a liberal view, 
 
 when a liberal view is presented us. 
 
 Let God alone if need be. Methinks, if I 
 loved him more, I should keep him, I should 
 keep myself rather, at a more respectful dis 
 tance. It is not when I am going to meet him, 
 but when I am just turning away and leaving him 
 alone, that I discover that God is. I say, God. I 
 am not sure that that is the name. You will 
 know whom I mean. 
 
 If for a moment we make way with our petty 
 selves, wish no ill to anything, apprehend no ill, 
 cease to be but as the crystal which reflects a ray, 
 
 what shall we not reflect! What a universe 
 will appear crystallized and radiant around us ! 
 
 I should say, let the muse lead the muse, let 
 the understanding lead the understanding, though 
 in any case it is the farthest forward which leads 
 them both. If the muse accompany, she is no 
 muse, but an amusement. The muse should lead 
 like a star which is very far off ; but that doe^s not 
 imply that we are to follow foolishly, falling into 
 sloughs and over precipices, for it is not foolish 
 ness, but understanding, which is to follow, which 
 the muse is appointed to lead, as a fit guide of a 
 fit follower. 
 
LETTERS. 59 
 
 -^ 
 
 Will you live ? or will you be embalmed ? Will 
 you live, though it be astride of a sunbeam ; or 
 will you repose safely in the catacombs for a thou 
 sand years ? In the former case, the worst acci 
 dent that can happen is that you may break your 
 neck. Will you break your heart, your soul, to 
 save your neck ? Necks and pipe-stems are 
 fated to be broken. Men make a great ado 
 about the folly of demanding too much of life (or 
 of eternity?), and of endeavoring to live accord 
 ing to that demand. It is much ado about noth 
 ing. No harm ever came from that quarter. I 
 am not afraid that I shall exaggerate the value 
 and significance of life, but that I shall not be up 
 to the occasion which it is. I shall be sorry to 
 remember that I was there, but noticed noth 
 ing remarkable, not so much as a prince in 
 disguise ; lived in the golden age a hired man ; 
 visited Olympus even, but fell asleep after dinner, 
 and did not hear the conversation of the gods. I 
 lived in Judaea eighteen hundred years ago, but I 
 never knew that there was such a one as Christ 
 among my contemporaries ! If there is anything 
 more glorious than a congress of men a-framing 
 or amending of a constitution going on, which I 
 suspect there is, I desire to see the morning 
 papers. I am greedy of the faintest rumor, though 
 it were got by listening at the key-hole. I will 
 dissipate myself in that direction, j 
 
 I am glad to know that you find what I have 
 
60 LETTERS. 
 
 said on Friendship worthy of attention. I wish I 
 could have the benefit of your criticism ; it would 
 be a rare help to me. Will you not communicate 
 
 it? 
 
 HENRY D. THOKEAU 
 
 TO ME. B. 
 
 CONCORD, May 28 1850. 
 
 MR. B : 
 
 " I never found any contentment in the life 
 which the newspapers record," anything of more 
 value than the cent which they cost. Content 
 ment in being covered with dust an inch deep ! 
 We who walk the streets, and hold time together, 
 are but the refuse of ourselves, and that life is for 
 the shells of us, of our body and our mind, 
 for our scurf, a thoroughly scurvy life. It is 
 coffee made of coffee-grounds the twentieth time, 
 which was only coffee the first time, while the 
 living water leaps and sparkles by our doors. I 
 know some who, in their chanty, give their coffee- 
 grounds to the poor ! We, demanding news, and 
 putting up with such news ! Is it a new conven 
 ience, or a new accident, or, rather, a new per 
 ception of the truth that we want ! 
 
 You say that " the serene hours in which friend 
 ship, books, nature, thought, seem alone primary 
 
LETTERS. 61 
 
 considerations, visit you but faintly." Is not the 
 attitude of expectation somewhat divine ? a sort 
 of home-made divineness ? Does it not compel a 
 kind of sphere-music to attend on it? And do 
 not its satisfactions merge at length, by insensible 
 degrees, in the enjoyment of the thing expected ? 
 
 What if I should forget to write about my not 
 writing ? It is not worth the while to make that 
 a theme. It is as if I had written every day. It 
 is as if I had never written before. I wonder that 
 you think so much about it, for not writing is the 
 most like writing, in my case, of anything I know. 
 
 Why will you not relate to me your dream ? 
 That would be to realize it somewhat. You tell 
 me that you dream, but not what you dream. I 
 can guess what comes to pass. So do the frogs 
 dream. Would that I knew what. I have never 
 found out whether they are awake or asleep, 
 whether it is day or night with them. 
 
 I am preaching, mind you, to bare walls, that 
 is, to myself; and if you have chanced to come 
 in and occupy a pew, do not think that my re 
 marks are directed at you particularly, and so 
 slam the seat in disgust. This discourse was 
 written long before these exciting times. 
 
 Some absorbing employment on your higher 
 ground, your upland farm, whither no cart- 
 path leads, but where you mount alone with your 
 hoe, where the life everlasting grows ; there 
 you raise a crop which needs not to be brought 
 
62 LETTERS. 
 
 down into the valley to a market ; which you 
 barter for heavenly products. 
 
 Do you separate distinctly enough the support 
 of your body, from that of your essence ? By 
 how distinct a course commonly are these two 
 ends attained ! Not that they should not be at 
 tained by one and the same means, that, in 
 deed, is the rarest success, but there is no half 
 and half about it. 
 
 I shall be glad to read my lecture to a small 
 audience in Worcester such as you describe, and 
 will only require that my expenses be paid. If 
 only the parlor be large enough for an echo, and 
 the audience will embarrass themselves with hear 
 ing as much as the lecturer would otherwise em 
 barrass himself with reading. But I warn you 
 that this is no better calculated for a promiscuous 
 audience than the last two which I read to you. 
 It requires, in every sense, a concordant audience. 
 
 I will come on next and spend Sunday 
 
 with you if you wish it. Say so if you do. 
 
 " Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring." 
 
 Be not deterred by melancholy on the path which 
 leads to immortal health and joy. When they 
 tasted of the water of the river over which they 
 were to go, they thought it tasted a little bitter 
 ish to the palate, but it proved sweeter when it 
 
 was down. 
 
 H. D. T. 
 
LETTERS. b6 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, August 9, 1850. 
 MR. B : 
 
 I received your letter just as I was rushing to 
 Fire Island beach to recover what remained of 
 Margaret Fuller, and read it on the way. That 
 event and its train, as much as anything, have pre 
 vented my answering it before. It is wisest to 
 speak when you are spoken to. I will now en 
 deavor to reply, at the risk of having nothing to 
 say. 
 
 I find that actual events, notwithstanding the 
 singular prominence which we all allow them, are 
 far less real than the creations of my imagination. 
 They are truly visionary and insignificant, all 
 that we commonly call life and death, and affect 
 me less than my dreams. This petty stream which 
 from time to time swells and carries away the 
 mills and bridges of our habitual life, and that 
 mightier stream or ocean on which we securely 
 float, what makes the difference between them ? 
 I have in my pocket a button which I ripped off 
 the coat of the Marquis of Ossoli, on the sea-shore, 
 the other day. Held up, it intercepts the light, 
 an actual button, and yet all the life it is 
 connected with is less substantial to me, and inter 
 ests me less, than my faintest dream. Our 
 thoughts are the epochs in our lives: all else is 
 but as a journal of the winds that blew while we 
 were here. 
 
64 LETTERS. 
 
 I say to myself, Do a little more of that work 
 which you have confessed to be good. You are 
 neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with yourself, with 
 out reason. Have you not a thinking faculty of 
 inestimable value ? If there is an experiment 
 which you would like to try, try it. Do not en 
 tertain doubts if they are not agreeable to you. 
 Remember that you need not eat unless you are 
 hungry. Do not read the newspapers. Improve 
 every opportunity to be melancholy. As for 
 health, consider yourself well. Do not engage to 
 find things as you think they are. Do what no 
 body else can do for you. Omit to do anything 
 else. It is not easy to make our lives respectable 
 by any course of activity. We must repeatedly 
 withdraw into our shells of thought, like the 
 tortoise, somewhat helplessly ; yet there is more 
 than philosophy in that. 
 
 Do not waste any reverence on my attitude. I 
 merely manage to sit up where I have dropped. I 
 am sure that my acquaintances mistake me. They 
 ask my advice on high matters, but they do not 
 know even how poorly on t I am for hats and shoes. 
 I have hardly a shift. Just as shabby as I am in 
 my outward apparel, ay, and more lamentably 
 shabby am I in my inward substance. If I should 
 turn myself inside out, my rags and meanness 
 would indeed appear. I am something to him 
 that made me, undoubtedly, but not much to any 
 other that he has made. 
 
LETTERS. 65 
 
 Would it not be worth while to discover nature 
 in Milton ? be native to the universe ? I, too, 
 love Concord best, but I am glad when I discover, 
 in oceans and wildernesses far away, the material 
 of a million Concords : indeed, I am lost, unless I 
 discover them. I see less difference between a 
 city and a swamp than formerly. It is a swamp, 
 however, too dismal and dreary even for me, 
 and I should be glad if there were fewer owls, and 
 frogs, and mosquitoes in it. I prefer ever a more 
 cultivated place, free from miasma and crocodiles. 
 I am so sophisticated, and I will take my choice. 
 
 As for missing friends, what if we do miss 
 one another ? have we not agreed on a rendez 
 vous ? While each wanders his own way through 
 the wood, without anxiety, ay, with serene joy, 
 though it be on his hands and knees, over rocks 
 and fallen trees, he cannot but be in the right 
 way. There is no wrong way to him. How can 
 he be said to miss his friend, whom the fruits still 
 nourish and the elements sustain? A man who 
 missed his friend at a turn, went on buoyantly, 
 dividing the friendly air, and humming a tune to 
 himself, ever and anon kneeling with delight to 
 study each little lichen in his path, and scarcely 
 made three miles a day for friendship. As for 
 conforming outwardly, and living your own life 
 inwardly, I do not think much of that. Let not 
 your right hand know what your left hand does in 
 that line of business. It will prove a failure. 
 
66 LETTERS. 
 
 Just as successfully can you walk against a sharp 
 steel edge which divides you cleanly right and 
 left. Do you wish to try your ability to resist 
 distension ? It is a greater strain than any soul 
 can long endure. When you get God to pulling 
 one way, and the devil the other, each having his 
 feet well braced, to say nothing of the con 
 science sawing transversely, almost any timber 
 will give way._j/ 
 
 I do not dare invite you earnestly to come to 
 Concord, because I know too well that the berries 
 are not thick in my fields, and we should have to 
 take it out in viewing the landscape. But come, 
 on every account, and we will see one another. 
 
 HEXRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 TO SOPHIA THOEEAU. 
 
 CONCORD, July 13, 1852. 
 
 DEAR SOPHIA : 
 
 I am not on the trail of any elephants or mas 
 todons, but have succeeded in trapping only a few 
 ridiculous mice, which cannot feed my imagina 
 tion. I have become sadly scientific. I would 
 rather come upon the vast valley-like " spore " 
 only of some celestial beast which this world s 
 woods can no longer sustain, than spring my net 
 over a bushel of moles. You must do better in 
 
LETTERS. 67 
 
 those woods where you are. You must have 
 some adventures to relate and repeat for years 
 to come, which will eclipse even mother s voyage 
 to Goldsborough and Sissiboo. 
 
 Concord is just as idiotic as ever in relation to 
 the spirits and their knockings. Most people here 
 believe in a spiritual world which no respectable 
 junk bottle, which had not met with a slip, 
 would condescend to contain even a portion of for 
 a moment, whose atmosphere would extinguish 
 a candle let down into it, like a well that wants 
 airing ; in spirits which the very bull-frogs in our 
 meadows would blackball. Their evil genius is 
 seeing how low it can degrade them. The hoot 
 ing of owls, the croaking of frogs is celestial wis 
 dom in comparison. If I could be brought to 
 believe in the things which they believe, I should 
 make haste to get rid of my certificate of stock in 
 this and the next world s enterprises, and buy a 
 share in the first Immediate Annihilation Com 
 pany that offered. I would exchange my im 
 mortality for a glass of small beer this hot weather. 
 Where are the heathen ? Was there ever any 
 superstition before? And yet I suppose there 
 may be a vessel this very moment setting sail 
 from the coast of North America to that of Af 
 rica with a missionary on board! Consider the 
 dawn and the sunrise, the rainbow and the 
 evening, the words of Christ and the aspira 
 tions of all the saints ! Hear music ! see, smell, 
 
68 LETTERS. 
 
 taste, feel, hear, anything, and then hear 
 these idiots, inspired by the cracking of a rest 
 less board, humbly asking, " Please, Spirit, if you 
 cannot answer by knocks, answer by tips of the 
 
 table." !!!!!! 
 
 Yours, 
 
 H. D. THOREAU. 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, July 21, 1852. 
 MR. B : 
 
 I am too stupidly well these days to write to 
 you. My life is almost altogether outward, all 
 shell and no tender kernel ; so that I fear the re 
 port of it would be only a nut for you to crack, 
 with no meat in it for you to eat. Moreover, you 
 have not cornered me up, and I enjoy such large 
 liberty in writing to you, that I feel as vague as 
 the air. However, I rejoice to hear that you have 
 attended so patiently to anything which I have 
 said heretofore, and have detected any truth in 
 it. It encourages me to say more, not in this 
 letter, I fear, but in some book which I may write 
 one day. I am glad to know that I am as much 
 to any mortal as a persistent and consistent scare 
 crow is to a farmer, such a bundle of straw in 
 a man s clothing as I am, with a few bits of tin to 
 sparkle in the sun dangling about me, as if I were 
 
LETTERS. 69 
 
 hard at work there in the field. However, if this 
 kind of life saves any man s corn, why, he is the 
 gainer. I am not afraid that you will flatter me 
 as long as you know what I am, as well as what I 
 think, or aim to be, and distinguish between these 
 two, for then it will commonly happen that if you 
 praise the last you will condemn the first. 
 
 I remember that walk to Asneburnskit very 
 well, a fit place to go to on a Sunday ; one of 
 the true temples of the earth. A temple, you 
 know, was anciently " an open place without a 
 roof," whose walls served merely to shut out the 
 world and direct the mind toward heaven ; but a 
 modern meeting-house shuts out the heavens, while 
 it crowds the world into still closer quarters. 
 Best of all is it when, as on a mountain-top, you 
 have for all walls your own elevation and deeps 
 of surrounding ether. The partridge-berries, wa 
 tered with mountain dews which are gathered 
 there, are more memorable to me than the words 
 which I last heard from the pulpit at least ; and 
 for my part, I would rather look toward Rutland 
 than Jerusalem. Rutland, modern town, land 
 of ruts, trivial and worn, not too sacred, 
 with no holy sepulchre, but profane green fields 
 and dusty roads, and opportunity to live as holy a 
 life as you can, where the sacredness, if there 
 is any, is all in yourself and not in the place. 
 
 I fear that your Worcester people do not often 
 enough go to the hill- tops, though, as I am told, 
 
70 LETTERS. 
 
 the springs lie nearer to the surface on your hills 
 than in your valleys. They have the reputation 
 of being Free-Soilers. Do they insist on a free 
 atmosphere too, that is, on freedom for the head 
 or brain as well as the feet ? If I were con 
 sciously to join any party, it would be that which 
 is the most free to entertain thought. 
 
 All the world complain now-a-days of a press 
 of trivial duties and engagements, which prevents 
 their employing themselves on some higher ground 
 they know of; but, undoubtedly, if they were 
 made of the right stuff to work on that higher 
 ground, provided they were released from all 
 those engagements, they would now at once fulfil 
 the superior engagement, and neglect all the rest, as 
 naturally as they breathe. They would never be 
 caught saying that they had no time for this, when 
 the dullest man knows that this is all that he has 
 time for. No man who acts from a sense of duty 
 ever puts the lesser duty above the greater. No 
 man has the desire and the ability to work on high 
 things, but he has also the ability to build himself 
 a high staging. 
 
 As for passing through any great and glorious 
 experience, and rising above it, as an eagle might 
 fly athwart the evening sky to rise into still 
 brighter and fairer regions of the heavens, I can 
 not say that I ever sailed so creditably, but my 
 bark ever seemed thwarted by some side wind, 
 and went off over the edge, and now only occa- 
 
LETTERS. 71 
 
 sionally tacks back toward the centre of that sea 
 again. I have outgrown nothing good, but, I do 
 not fear to say, fallen behind by whole continents 
 of virtue, which should have been passed as 
 islands in my course ; but I trust what else can 
 I trust that, with a stiff wind, some Friday, 
 when I have thrown some of my cargo overboard, 
 I may make up for all that distance lost. 
 
 Perchance the time will come when we shall 
 not be content to go back and forth upon a raft to 
 some huge Homeric or Shakespearian Indiaman 
 that lies upon the reef, but build a bark out of 
 that wreck and others that are buried in the sands 
 of this desolate island, and such new timber as 
 may be required, in which to sail away to whole 
 new worlds of light and life, where our friends 
 are. 
 
 Write again. There is one respect in which 
 you did not finish your letter : you did not write 
 it with ink, and it is not so good, therefore, against 
 or for you in the eye of the law, nor in the eye of 
 
 H. D. T. 
 
 TO MK. B. 
 
 September, 1852. 
 
 MR. B : 
 
 Here come the sentences which I promised you. 
 You may keep them, if you will regard and use 
 
72 LETTERS. 
 
 them as the disconnected fragments of what I may 
 find to be a completer essay, on looking over my 
 journal, at last, and may claim again. 
 
 I send you the thoughts on Chastity and Sensu 
 ality with diffidence and shame, not knowing how 
 far I speak to the condition of men generally, or 
 how far I betray my peculiar defects. Pray en 
 lighten me on this point if you can. 
 
 LOVE. 
 
 What the essential difference between man and 
 woman is that they should be thus attracted to 
 one another, no one has satisfactorily answered. 
 Perhaps we must acknowledge the justness of the 
 distinction which assigns to man the sphere of 
 wisdom, and to woman that of love, though 
 neither belongs exclusively to either. Man is 
 continually saying to woman, Why will you not 
 be more wise? Woman is continually saying to 
 man, Why will you not be more loving? It is 
 not in their wills to be wise or to be loving ; but, 
 unless each is both wise and loving, there can be 
 neither wisdom nor love. 
 
 All transcendent goodness is one, though ap 
 preciated in different ways, or by different senses. 
 In beauty we see it, in music we hear it, in fra 
 grance we scent it, in the palatable the pure 
 palate tastes it, and in rare health the whole body 
 feels it. The variety is in the surface or manifes- 
 
LETTERS. 73 
 
 tatlon ; but the radical identity we fail to express. 
 The lover sees in the glance of his beloved the 
 same beauty that in the sunset paints the western 
 skies. It is the same daimon, here lurking under 
 a human eyelid, and there under the closing 
 eyelids of the day. Here, in small compass, is 
 the ancient and natural beauty of evening and 
 morning. What loving astronomer has ever fath 
 omed the ethereal depths of the eye ? 
 
 The maiden conceals a fairer flower and sweeter 
 fruit than any calyx in the field ; and, if she goes 
 with averted face, confiding in her purity and high 
 resolves, she will make the heavens retrospective, 
 and all nature humbly confess its queen. 
 
 Under the influence of this sentiment, man is a 
 string of an JEolian harp, which vibrates with the 
 zephyrs of the eternal morning. 
 
 There is at first thought something trivial in the 
 commonness of love. So many Indian youths and 
 maidens along these banks have in ages past 
 yielded to the influence of this great civilizer. 
 Nevertheless, this generation is not disgusted nor 
 discouraged, for love is no individual s experience ; 
 and though we are imperfect mediums, it does not 
 partake of our imperfection ; though we are finite, 
 it is infinite and eternal ; and the same divine in 
 fluence broods over these banks, whatever race 
 may inhabit them, and perchance still would, even 
 if the human race did not dwell here. 
 
 Perhaps an instinct survives through the intens- 
 
 4 
 
74 LETTERS. 
 
 est actual love, which prevents entire abandon 
 ment and devotion, and makes the most ardent 
 lover a little reserved. It is the anticipation of 
 change. For the most ardent lover is not the less 
 practically wise, and seeks a love which will last 
 forever. 
 
 K Considering how few poetical friendships there 
 are, it is remarkable that so many are married. 
 It would seem as if men yielded too easy an obe 
 dience to nature without consulting their genius. 
 One may be drunk with love without being any 
 nearer to finding his mate^ There is more of good 
 nature than of good sense at the bottom of most 
 marriages. But the good nature must have the 
 counsel of the good spirit or Intelligence. If com 
 mon sense had been consulted, how many mar 
 riages would never have taken place ; if uncom 
 mon or divine sense, how few marriages such as 
 we witness would ever have taken place ! 
 
 Our love may be ascending or descending. 
 What is its character, if it may be said of it, 
 " We must respect the souls above. 
 But only those below we love." 
 
 Love is a severe critic. Hate can pardon more 
 than love. They who aspire to love worthily, 
 subject themselves to an ordeal more rigid than 
 any other. 
 
 Is your friend such a one that an increase of 
 worth on your part will rarely make her more 
 your friend ? Is she retained, is she attracted, 
 
LETTERS. 75 
 
 by more nobleness in you, by more of that 
 virtue which is peculiarly yours ; or is she indif 
 ferent and blind to that ? Is she to be flattered 
 and won by your meeting her on any other than 
 the ascending path ? Then duty requires that you 
 separate from her. 
 
 Love must be as much a light as a flame. 
 
 Where there is not discernment, the behavior 
 even of the purest soul may in effect amount to 
 coarseness. 
 
 A man of fine perceptions is more fruly fem 
 inine than a merely sentimental woman. The 
 heart is blind ; but love is not blind. None of the 
 gods is so discriminating. 
 
 In love and friendship the imagination is as 
 much exercised as the heart ; and if either is out 
 raged the other will be estranged. It is commonly 
 the imagination which is wounded first, rather 
 than the heart, it is so much the more sensi 
 tive. 
 
 Comparatively, we can excuse any offence against 
 the heart, but not against the imagination. The 
 imagination knows nothing escapes its glance 
 from out its eyry and it controls the breast. My 
 heart may still yearn toward the valley, but my 
 imagination will not permit me to jump off the 
 precipice that debars me from it, for it is wounded, 
 its wings are dipt, and it cannot fly, even descend- 
 ingly. Our " blundering hearts ! " some poet says. 
 The imagination never forgets ; it is a re-member- 
 
76 LETTERS. 
 
 ing. It is not foundationless, but most reasonable, 
 and it alone uses all the knowledge of the intel 
 lect. 
 
 Love is the profoundest of secrets. Divulged, 
 even to the beloved, it is no longer Love. As 
 if it were merely I that loved you. When love 
 ceases, then it is divulged. 
 
 In our intercourse with one we love, we wish 
 to have answered those questions at the end of 
 which we do not raise our voice ; against which 
 we put no interrogation-mark, answered with 
 the same unfailing, universal aim toward every 
 point of the compass. 
 
 I require that thou knowest everything without 
 being told anything. I parted from my beloved 
 because there was one thing which I had to tell 
 her. She questioned me. She should have known 
 all by sympathy. That I had to tell it her was the 
 difference between us, the misunderstanding. 
 
 A lover never hears anything that is told, for 
 that is commonly either false or stale ; but he 
 hears things taking place, as the sentinels heard 
 Trenck mining in the ground, and thought it was 
 moles. 
 
 The relation may be profaned in many ways. 
 The parties may not regard it with equal sacred- 
 ness. What if the lover should learn that his 
 beloved dealt in incantations and philters ! What 
 if he should hear that she consulted a clairvoy 
 ant ! The spell would be instantly broken. 
 
LETTERS. 77 
 
 If to chaffer and higgle are bad in trade, they 
 are much worse in Love. It demands directness 
 as of an arrow. 
 
 There is danger that we lose sight of what our 
 friend is absolutely, while considering what she is 
 to us alone. 
 
 The lover wants no partiality. He says, Be so 
 kind as to be just. 
 
 Canst them love with thy mind, 
 
 And reason with thy heart ? 
 Canst thoxi be kind, 
 
 And from thy darling part ? 
 
 Can st them range earth, sea, and air, 
 
 And so meet me everywhere "? 
 Through all events I will pursue thee, 
 
 Through all persons I will woo thee. 
 
 I need thy hate as much as thy love. Thou 
 wilt not repel me entirely when thou repellest 
 what is evil in me. 
 
 Indeed, indeed, I cannot tell, 
 Though I ponder on it well, 
 "Which were easier to state, 
 All my love or all my hate. 
 Surely, surely, thou wilt trust me 
 When I say thou dost disgust me 
 I hate thee with a hate 
 That would fain annihilate ; 
 Yet, sometimes, against my will, 
 My dear Friend, I love thee still. 
 It were treason to our love, 
 And a sin to God above, 
 One iota to abate 
 Of a pure, impartial hate. 
 
78 LETTERS. 
 
 It is not enough that we are truthful ; we must 
 cherish and carry out high purposes to be truthful 
 about. 
 
 It must be rare, indeed, that we meet with one 
 to whom we are prepared to be quite ideally re 
 lated, as she to us. We should have no reserve ; 
 we should give the whole of ourselves to that so 
 ciety ; we should have no duty aside from that. 
 One who could bear to be so wonderfully and 
 beautifully exaggerated every day. I would take 
 my friend out of her low self and set her higher, 
 infinitely higher, and there know her. But, com 
 monly, men are as much afraid of love as of hate. 
 They have lower engagements. They have near 
 ends to serve. They have not imagination enough 
 to be thus employed about a human being, but 
 must be coopering a barrel, forsooth. 
 
 What a difference, whether, in all your walks, 
 you meet only strangers, or in one house is one 
 who knows you, and whom you know. To have 
 a brother or a sister ! To have a gold mine on 
 your farm ! To find diamonds in the gravel heaps 
 before your door ! How rare these things are ! 
 To share the day with you, to people the earth. 
 Whether to have a god or a goddess for com 
 panion in your walks, or to walk alone with hinds 
 and villains and carles. Would not a friend en 
 hance the beauty of the landscape as- much as a 
 deer or hare ? Everything would acknowledge 
 and serve such a relation ; the corn in the field, 
 
LETTERS. 79 
 
 and the cranberries in the meadow. The flowers 
 would bloom, and the birds sing, with a new im 
 pulse. There would be more fair days in the 
 year. 
 
 The object of love expands and grows before us 
 to eternity, until it includes all that is lovely, and 
 we become all that can love. 
 
 CHASTITY AND SENSUALITY. 
 
 The subject of sex is a remarkable one, since, 
 though its phenomena concern us so much, both 
 directly and indirectly, and, sooner or later, it 
 occupies the thoughts of all, yet all mankind, as it 
 were, agree to be silent about it, at least the sexes 
 commonly one to another. One of the most in 
 teresting of all human facts is veiled more com 
 pletely than any mystery. It is treated with such 
 secrecy and awe, as surely do not go to any re 
 ligion. I believe that it is unusual even for the 
 most intimate friends to communicate the pleasures 
 and anxieties connected with this fact, much as the 
 external affair of love, its comings and goings, are 
 bruited. The Shakers do not exaggerate it so much 
 by their manner of speaking of it, as all mankind 
 by their manner of keeping silence about it. Not 
 that men should speak on this or any subject with-, 
 out having anything worthy to say ; but it i 
 plain that the education of man has hardly com 
 menced, there is so little genuine intercom 
 munication. 
 
80 LETTERS. 
 
 In a pure society, the subject of marriage 
 would not be so often avoided from shame and 
 not from reverence, winked out of sight, and 
 hinted at only, but treated naturally and simply, 
 perhaps simply avoided, like the kindred mys 
 teries. If it cannot be spoken of for shame, how 
 can it be acted of? But, doubtless, there is far 
 more purity, as well as more impurity, than is 
 apparent. 
 
 Men commonly couple with their idea of mar 
 riage a slight degree at least of sensuality ; but 
 every lover, the world over, believes in its incon 
 ceivable purity. 
 
 If it is the result of a pure love, there can be 
 nothing sensual in marriage. Chastity is some 
 thing positive, not negative. It is the virtue of 
 the married especially. All lusts or base pleasures 
 must give place to loftier delights. They who 
 meet as superior beings cannot perform the deeds 
 of inferior ones. The deeds of love are less 
 questionable than any action of an individual can 
 be, for, it being founded on the rarest mutual 
 respect, the parties incessantly stimulate each 
 other to a loftier and purer life, and the act in 
 which they are associated must be pure and noble 
 indeed, for innocence and purity can have no 
 equal. In this relation we deal with one whom 
 we respect more religiously even than we respect 
 our better selves, and we shall necessarily conduct 
 as in the presence of God. What presence can 
 
LETTERS. 81 
 
 be more awful to the lover than the presence of 
 his beloved ? 
 
 If you seek the warmth even of affection from 
 a similar motive to that from which cats and dogs 
 and slothful persons hug the fire, because your 
 temperature is low through sloth, you are on 
 the downward road, and it is but to plunge yet 
 deeper into sloth. Better the cold affection of the 
 sun, reflected from fields of ice and snow, or his 
 warmth in some still wintry dell. The warmth 
 of celestial love does not relax, but nerves and 
 braces its enjoyer. Warm your body by health 
 ful exercise, not by cowering over a stove. 
 Warm your spirit by performing independently 
 noble deeds, not by ignobly seeking the sympathy 
 of your fellows who are no better than yourself. 
 A man s social and spiritual discipline must an 
 swer to his corporeal. He must lean on a friend 
 who has a hard breast, as he would lie on a hard 
 bed. He must drink cold water for his only bev 
 erage. So he must not hear sweetened and col- 
 
 o 
 
 ored words, but pure and refreshing truths. He 
 must daily bathe in truth cold as spring water, not 
 warmed by the sympathy of friends. 
 
 Can love be in aught allied to dissipation ? Let 
 us love by refusing, not accepting one another. 
 Love and lust are far asunder. The one is good, 
 the other bad. When the affectionate sympathize 
 by their higher natures, there is love ; but there is 
 danger that they will sympathize by their lower 
 
 4* F 
 
82 LETTERS. 
 
 natures, and then there is lust. It is not ne 
 cessary that this he deliberate, hardly even con 
 scious ; hut, in the close contact of affection, there 
 is danger that we may stain and pollute one an 
 other, for we cannot embrace but with an entire 
 embrace. 
 
 We must love our friend so much that she shall 
 be associated with our purest and holiest thoughts 
 alone. When there is impurity, we have " de 
 scended to meet," though we knew it not. 
 
 The luxury of affection, there s the danger. 
 There must be some nerve and heroism in our 
 love, as of a winter morning. In the religion of 
 all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, 
 men never attain to. We may love and not ele 
 vate one another. The love that takes us as it 
 finds us degrades us. What watch we must keep 
 over the fairest and purest of our affections, lest 
 there be some taint about them. May we so love 
 as never to have occasion to repent of our love. 
 
 There is to be attributed to sensuality the loss 
 to language of how many pregnant symbols ? 
 Flowers, which, by their infinite hues and fra 
 grance, celebrate the marriage of the plants, are 
 intended for a symbol of the open and unsuspected 
 beauty of all true marriage, when man s flowering 
 season arrives. 
 
 Virginity, too, is a budding flower, and by an 
 impure marriage the virgin is deflowered. Who 
 ever loves flowers, loves virgins and chastity. 
 
LETTERS. 83 
 
 Love and lust are as far asunder as a flower- 
 garden is from a brothel. 
 
 J. Biberg, in the Amcenitates Botanicce, edited 
 by Linnaeus, observes (I translate from the Latin) : 
 " The organs of generation, which, in the animal 
 kingdom, are for the most part concealed by Na 
 ture, as if they were to be ashamed of, in the veg 
 etable kingdom are exposed to the eyes of all ; 
 and, when the nuptials of plants are celebrated, it 
 is wonderful what delight they afford to the be 
 holder, refreshing the senses with the most agree 
 able color and the sweetest odor ; and, at the 
 same time, bees and other insects, not to mention 
 the humming-bird, extract honey from their nec 
 taries, and gather wax from their effete pollen. " 
 Linnaeus himself calls the calyx the thdlamus, or 
 bridal chamber ; and the corolla the aulceum, or 
 tapestry of it, and proceeds to explain thus every 
 part of the flower. 
 
 Who knows but evil spirits might corrupt the 
 flowers themselves, rob them of their fragrance 
 and their fair hues, and turn their marriage into 
 a secret shame and defilement ? Already they are 
 of various qualities, and there is one whose nup 
 tials fill the lowlands in June with the odor of 
 carrion. 
 
 The intercourse of the sexes, I have dreamed, 
 is incredibly beautiful, too fair to be remembered. 
 I have had thoughts about it, but they are among 
 the most fleeting and irrecoverable in my experi- 
 
84 LETTERS. 
 
 ence. It is strange that men will talk of miracles, 
 revelation, inspiration, and the like, as things past, 
 while love remains. 
 
 A true marriage will differ in no wise from 
 illumination. In all perception of the truth there 
 is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of 
 joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed 
 virgin. The ultimate delights of a true marriage 
 are one with this. 
 
 No wonder that, out of such a union, not as 
 end, but as accompaniment, comes the undying 
 race of man. The womb is a most fertile soil. 
 
 Some have asked if the stock of men could not 
 be improved, if they could not be bred as 
 cattle. Let Love be purified, and all the rest 
 will follow. A pure love is thus, indeed, the 
 panacea for all the ills of the world. 
 
 The only excuse for reproduction is improve 
 ment. Nature abhors repetition. Beasts merely 
 propagate their kind; but the offspring of noble 
 men and women will be superior to themselves, 
 as their aspirations are. By their fruits ye shall 
 know them. 
 
LETTERS. 85 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, February 27, 1853. 
 
 MR. B : 
 
 I have not answered your letter before because 
 I have been almost constantly in the fields survey 
 ing of late. It is long since I have spent so many 
 days so profitably in a pecuniary sense ; so un- 
 profitably, it seems to me, in a more important 
 sense. I have earned just a dollar a day for 
 seventy-six days past ; for, though I charge at a 
 higher rate for the days which are seen to be 
 spent, yet so many more are spent than appears. 
 This is instead of lecturing, which has not offered, 
 to pay for that book which I printed. I have not 
 only cheap hours, but cheap weeks and months, 
 that is, weeks which are bought at the rate I have 
 named. Not that they are quite lost to me, or 
 make me very melancholy, alas ! for I too often take 
 a cheap satisfaction in so spending them, weeks 
 of pasturing and browsing, like beeves and deer, 
 which give me animal health, it may be, but 
 create a tough skin over the soul and intellectual 
 part. Yet, if men should offer my body a main 
 tenance for the work of my head alone, I feel that 
 it would be a dangerous temptation. 
 
 As to whether what you speak of as the 
 " world s way " (which for the most part is my 
 way), or that which is shown me, is the better, 
 the former is imposture, the latter is truth. I 
 
86 LETTERS. 
 
 have the coldest confidence in the last. There is 
 only such hesitation as the appetites feel in follow 
 ing the aspirations. The clod hesitates because it 
 is inert, wants animation. The one is the way of 
 death, the other of life everlasting. My hours 
 are not " cheap in such a way that I doubt 
 whether the world s way would not have been 
 better," but cheap in such a way, that I doubt 
 whether the world s way, which I have adopted 
 for the time, could be worse. The whole en 
 terprise of this nation, which is not an upward, 
 but a westward one, toward Oregon, California, 
 Japan, &c., is totally devoid of interest to me, 
 whether performed on foot, or by a Pacific railroad. 
 It is not illustrated by a thought ; it is not warmed 
 by a sentiment ; there is nothing in it which one 
 should lay down his life for, nor even his gloves, 
 hardly which one should take up a newspaper for. 
 It is perfectly heathenish, a filibustering toward 
 heaven by the great western route. No; they 
 may go their way to their manifest destiny, which 
 I trust is not mine. May my seventy-six dollars, 
 whenever I get them, help to carry me in the 
 other direction. I see them on their winding way, 
 but no music is wafted from their host, only the 
 rattling of change in their pockets. I would 
 rather be a captive knight, and let them all pass 
 by, than be free only to go whither they are 
 bound. What end do they propose to themselves 
 beyond Japan ? What aims more lofty have they 
 than the prairie dogs ? 
 
LETTERS. 87 
 
 As it respects these things, I have not changed 
 an opinion one iota from the first. As the stars 
 looked to me when I was a shepherd in Assyria, 
 they look to me now a New-Englander. The 
 higher the mountain on which you stand, the less 
 change in the prospect from year to year, from 
 age to age. Above a certain height there is no 
 change. I am a Switzer on the edge of the 
 glacier, with his advantages and disadvantages, 
 goitre, or what not. (You may suspect it to be 
 some kind of swelling at any rate.) I have had 
 but one spiritual birth (excuse the word), and 
 now whether it rains or snows, whether I laugh or 
 cry, fall further below or approach nearer to my 
 standard ; whether Pierce or Scott is elected, 
 not a new scintillation of light flashes on me, but 
 ever and anon, though with longer intervals, the 
 same surprising and everlastingly new light dawns 
 to me, with only such variations as in the coming 
 of the natural day, with which, indeed, it is often 
 coincident. 
 
 As to how to preserve potatoes from rotting, 
 your opinion may change from year to year ; but 
 as to how to preserve your soul from rotting, I 
 have nothing to learn, but something to practise. 
 
 Thus I declaim against them ; but I in my folly 
 am the world I condemn. 
 
 I very rarely, indeed, if ever, " feel any itching 
 to be what is called useful to my fellow-men." 
 Sometimes, it may be when my thoughts for 
 
88 LETTEKS. 
 
 want of employment fall into a beaten path or 
 humdrum, I have dreamed idly of stopping a 
 man s horse that was running away ; but, per 
 chance, I wished that he might run, in order that 
 I might stop him ; or of putting out a fire ; but 
 then, of course, it must have got well a-going. 
 Now, to tell the truth, I do not dream much of 
 acting upon horses before they run, or of prevent 
 ing fires which are not yet kindled. What a foul 
 subject is this of doing good, instead of minding 
 one s life, which should be his business ; doing 
 good as a dead carcass, which is only fit for 
 manure, instead of as a living man, instead of 
 taking care to flourish, and smell, and taste sweet, 
 and refresh all mankind to the extent of our 
 capacity and quality. People will sometimes try 
 to persuade you that you have done something 
 from that motive, as if you did not already know 
 enough about it. If I ever did a man any good, in 
 their sense, of course it was something exceptional 
 and insignificant compared with the good or evil 
 which I am constantly doing by being what I am. 
 As if you were to preach to ice to shape itself into 
 burning-glasses, which are sometimes useful, and 
 so the peculiar properties of ice be lost. Ice that 
 merely performs the office of a burning-glass does 
 not do its duty. 
 
 The problem of life becomes, one cannot say by 
 how many degrees, more complicated as our ma 
 terial wealth is increased, whether that needle 
 
LETTERS. 89 
 
 they tell of was a gateway or not, since the prob 
 lem is not merely nor mainly to get life for our 
 bodies, but by this or a similar discipline to get life 
 for our souls ; by cultivating the lowland farm on 
 right principles, that is, with this view, to turn it 
 into an upland farm. You have so many more 
 talents to account for. If I accomplish as much 
 more in spiritual work as I am richer in worldly 
 goods, then I am just as worthy, or worth just as 
 much, as I was before, and no more. I see that, 
 in my own case, money might be of great service 
 to me,. but probably it would not be, for the diffi 
 culty now is, that I do not improve my opportuni 
 ties, and therefore I am not prepared to have my 
 opportunities increased. Now, I warn you, if it 
 be as you say, you have got to put on the pack 
 of an upland farmer in good earnest the coming 
 spring, the lowland farm being cared for ; ay, you 
 must be selecting your seeds forthwith, and doing 
 what winter work you can ; and, while others are 
 raising potatoes and Baldwin apples for you, you 
 must be raising apples of the Hesperides for them. 
 (Only hear how he preaches !) No man can sus 
 pect that he is the proprietor of an upland farm, 
 upland in the sense that it will produce nobler 
 crops, and better repay cultivation in the long 
 run, but he will be perfectly sure that he ought 
 to cultivate it. 
 
 Though we are desirous to earn our bread, we 
 need not be anxious to satisfy men for it, though 
 we shall take care to pay them, but God, who 
 
90 LETTERS. 
 
 alone gave it to us. Men may in effect put us in 
 the debtors jail for that matter, simply for paying 
 our whole debt to God, which includes our debt to 
 them, and though we have his receipt for it, for his 
 paper is dishonored. The cashier will tell you 
 that he has no stock in his bank. 
 
 How prompt we are to satisfy the hunger and 
 thirst of our bodies ; how slow to satisfy the hun 
 ger and thirst of our souls. Indeed, we would-be- 
 practical folks cannot use this world without blush 
 ing because of our infidelity, having starved this 
 substance almost to a shadow. We feel it to be as 
 absurd as if a man were to break forth into a 
 eulogy oh his dog, who has n t any! An ordinary 
 man will work every day for a year at shovelling 
 dirt to support his body, or a family of bodies ; 
 but he is an extraordinary man who will work a 
 whole day in a year for the support of his soul. 
 Even the priests, the men of God, so called, for 
 the most part confess that they work for the sup 
 port of the body. But he alone is the truly en 
 terprising and practical man who succeeds in 
 maintaining his soul here. Have not we our ever 
 lasting life to get ? and is not that the only excuse 
 at last for eating, drinking, sleeping, or even carry 
 ing an umbrella when it rains ? A man might as 
 well devote himself to raising pork, as to fattening 
 the bodies, or temporal part merely, of the whole 
 human family. If we made the true distinction, 
 we should almost all of us be seen to be in the 
 almshouse for souls. 
 
LETTERS. 91 
 
 I am much indebted to you because you look so 
 steadily at the better side, or rather the true centre 
 of me (for our true centre may, and perhaps often- 
 est does, lie entirely aside from us, and we are in 
 fact eccentric), and, as I have elsewhere said, 
 "give me an opportunity to live." You speak as 
 if the image or idea which I see were reflected 
 from me to you, and I see it again reflected from 
 you to me, because we stand at the right angle to 
 one another ; and so it goes zigzag to what suc 
 cessive reflecting surfaces, before it is all dissipated 
 or absorbed by the more unreflecting, or differ 
 ently reflecting, who knows ? Or, perhaps, 
 what you see directly, you refer to me. What a 
 little shelf is required, by which we may impinge 
 upon another, and build there our eyrie in the 
 clouds, and all the heavens we see above us we 
 refer to the crags around and beneath us. Some 
 piece of mica, as it were, in the face or eyes of 
 one, as on the delectable mountains, slanted at the 
 right angle, reflects the heavens to us. But, in 
 the slow geological upheavals and depressions, these 
 mutual angles are disturbed, these suns set, and 
 new ones rise to us. That ideal which I wor 
 shipped was a greater stranger to the mica than 
 to me. It was not the hero I admired, but the 
 reflection from his epaulet or helmet. It is noth 
 ing (for us) permanently inherent in another, 
 but his attitude or relation to what we prize, that 
 we admire. The meanest man may glitter with 
 micacious particles to his fellow s eye. These are 
 
92 LETTERS. 
 
 the spangles that adorn a man. The highest 
 union, the only un-ion (don t laugh), or cen 
 tral oneness, is the coincidence of visual rays. Our 
 club-room was an apartment in a constellation 
 where our visual rays met (and there was no de 
 bate about the restaurant). The way between 
 us is over the mount. 
 
 Your words make me think of a man of my 
 acquaintance whom I occasionally meet, whom 
 you, too, appear to have met, one Myself, as 
 he is called. Yet, why not call him Yourself? 
 If you have met with him and know him, it is 
 all I have done; and surely, where there is a 
 mutual acquaintance, the my and thy make a 
 distinction without a difference. 
 
 I do not wonder that you do not like my Can 
 ada story. It concerns me but little, and prob 
 ably is not worth the time it took to tell it. Yet 
 I had absolutely no design whatever in my mind, 
 but simply to report what I saw. I have inserted 
 all of myself that was implicated, or made the ex 
 cursion. It has come to an end, at any rate ; they 
 will print no more, but return me my MS. when 
 it is but little more than half done, as well as an 
 other I had sent them, because the editor requires 
 the liberty to omit the heresies without consulting 
 me, a privilege California is not rich enough to 
 bid for. 
 
 I thank you again and again for attending to 
 me ; that is to say, I am glad that you hear me, 
 and that you also are glad. Hold fast to your 
 
LETTERS. 93 
 
 most indefinite, waking dream. The very green 
 dust on the walls is an organized vegetable ; the 
 atmosphere has its fauna and flora floating in it ; 
 and shall we think that dreams are but dust and 
 ashes, are always disintegrated and crumbling 
 thoughts, and not dust-like thoughts trooping to 
 their standard with music, systems beginning to be 
 organized ? These expectations, these are roots, 
 these are nuts, which even the poorest man has in 
 his bin, and roasts or cracks them occasionally in 
 winter evenings, which even the poor debtor re 
 tains with his bed and his pig, i. e. his idleness 
 and sensuality. Men go to the opera because they 
 hear there a faint expression in sound of this news 
 which is never quite distinctly proclaimed. Sup 
 pose a man were to sell the hue, the least amount 
 of coloring matter in the superficies of his thought, 
 for a farm, were to exchange an absolute and 
 infinite value for a relative and finite one, to gain 
 the whole world and lose his own soul ! 
 
 Do not wait as long as I have before you write. 
 If you will look at another star, I will try to sup 
 ply my side of the triangle. 
 
 Tell Mr. , that I remember him, and trust 
 
 that he remembers me. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 H. D. T. 
 
 P. S. Excuse this rather flippant preaching, 
 which does not cost me enough ; and do not think 
 that I mean you always, though your letter re 
 quested the subjects. 
 
94 LETTERS. 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, April 10, 1853. 
 
 Mfi. B : 
 
 Another singular kind of spiritual foot-ball, 
 really nameless, handleless, homeless, like myself, 
 a mere arena for thoughts and feelings ; defi 
 nite enough outwardly, indefinite more than enough 
 inwardly. But I do not know why we should be 
 styled misters or masters : we come so near to be 
 ing anything or nothing, and seeing that we are 
 mastered, and not wholly sorry to be mastered, by 
 the least phenomenon. It seems to me that we 
 are the mere creatures of thought, one of the 
 lowest forms of intellectual life, we men, as the 
 sunfish is of animal life. As yet our thoughts 
 have acquired no definiteness nor solidity ; they 
 are purely molluscous, not vertebrate ; and the 
 height of our existence is to float upward in an 
 ocean where the sun shines, appearing only like a 
 vast soup or chowder to the eyes of the immortal 
 navigators. It is wonderful that I can be here, 
 and you there, and that we can correspond, and 
 do many other things, when, in fact, there is so 
 little of us, either or both, anywhere. In a few 
 minutes, I expect, this slight film or dash of vapor 
 that I am will be what is called asleep, resting ! 
 forsooth from what ? Hard work ! and thought ! ! 
 
 5 
 
 The hard work of the dandelion down, which 
 floats over the meadow all day ; the hard work of 
 
LETTERS. 95 
 
 a pismire, that labors to raise a hillock all day, 
 and even by moonlight. Suddenly I can come for 
 ward into the utmost apparent distinctness, and 
 speak with a sort of emphasis to you ; and the 
 next moment I am so faint an entity, and make so 
 slight an impression, that nobody can find the 
 traces of me. I try to hunt myself up, and find that 
 the little of me that is discoverable is falling asleep, 
 and then I assist and tuck it up. It is getting 
 late. How can I starve or feed ? Can / be said 
 to sleep ? There is not enough of me even for 
 that. If you hear a noise, t aint I, t aint I, 
 
 as the dog says with a tin-kettle tied to his tail. 
 I read of something happening to another the 
 other day : how happens it that nothing ever hap 
 pens to me ? A dandelion down that never alights, 
 
 settles, blown off by a boy to see if his moth 
 er wanted him, some divine boy in the upper 
 pastures. 
 
 Well, if there really is another such a meteor 
 sojourning in these spaces, I would like to ask you 
 if you know whose estate this is that we are on ? 
 For my part, I enjoy it well enough, what with 
 the wild apples and the scenery ; but I should n t 
 wonder if the owner set his dog on me next. I 
 could remember something not much to the pur 
 pose, probably ; but if I stick to what I do know, 
 
 then 
 
 "It is worth the while to live respectably unto 
 ourselves. We can possibly get along with a 
 
96 LETTERS. 
 
 neighbor, even with a bedfellow, whom we re 
 spect but very little ; but as soon as it comes to 
 that, that we do not respect ourselves, then we do 
 not get along at all, no matter how much money 
 we are paid for halting. There are old heads in 
 the world who cannot help me by their example 
 or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to my 
 self ; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate 
 myself this very hour above the common level of 
 my life. It is better to have your head in the 
 clouds, and know where you are, if indeed you 
 cannot get it above them, than to breathe the 
 clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you 
 are in paradise. 
 
 Once you were in Milton doubting what to do. 
 To live a better life, this surely can be done. 
 Dot and carry one. Wait not for a clear sight, 
 for that you are to get. What you see clearly 
 you may omit to do. Milton and Worcester ! It 
 
 is all B , B . Never mind the rats in 
 
 the wall; the cat will take care of them. AIL 
 that men have said or are is a very faint rumor, 
 and it is not worth the while to remember or refer 
 to that. If you are to meet God, will you refer 
 to anybody out of that court? How shall men 
 know how I succeed, unless they are in at the life ? 
 I did not see the " Times " reporter there. 
 
 Is it not delightful to provide one s self with 
 the necessaries of life, to collect dry wood for 
 the fire when the weather grows cool, or fruits 
 
LETTERS. 97 
 
 when we grow hungry ? not till then. And 
 then we have all the time left for thought ! 
 
 Of what use were it, pray, to get a little wood 
 to burn to warm your body this cold weather, if 
 there were not a divine fire kindled at the same 
 time to warm your spirit ? -Unless he can 
 
 " Erect himself above himself, 
 How poor a thing is man." 
 
 I cuddle up by my stove, and there I get up another 
 fire which warms fire itself. Life is so short that 
 it is not wise to take roundabout ways, nor can 
 we spend much time in waiting. Is it absolutely 
 necessary, then, that we should do as we are do 
 ing ? Are we chiefly under obligations to the 
 devil, like Tom Walker? Though it is late to 
 leave off this wrong way, it will seem early the 
 moment we begin in the right way; instead of 
 mid-afternoon, it will be early morning with us. 
 We have not got half-way to dawn yet. 
 
 As for the lectures, I feel that I have something 
 to say, especially on Travelling, Vagueness, and 
 Poverty ; but I cannot come now r . I will wait 
 till I am fuller, and have fewer engagements. 
 Your suggestions will help me much to write 
 them when I am ready. I am going to Haver- 
 hill to-morrow surveying, for a week or more. 
 You met me on my last errand thither. 
 
 I trust that you realize what an exaggerator I 
 am, that I lay myself out to exaggerate when- 
 
98 LETTERS. 
 
 ever I have an opportunity, pile Pelion upon 
 Ossa, to reach heaven so. Expect no trivial truth 
 from me, unless I am on the witness-stand. I will 
 come as near to- lying as you can drive a coach- 
 and-four. If it is n t thus and so with me, it is 
 with something. I am not particular whether I 
 get the shells or meat, in view of the latter s 
 worth. 
 
 I see that I have not at all answered your letter, 
 but there is time enough for that. 
 
 H. D. THOREAU. 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD. December 19, 1853. 
 
 MR. B : 
 
 My debt has accumulated so that I should have 
 answered your last letter at once, if I had not 
 been the subject of what is called a press of en 
 gagements, having a lecture to write for last 
 Wednesday, and surveying more than usual be 
 sides. It has been a kind of running fight with 
 me, the enemy not always behind me, I trust. 
 
 True, a man cannot lift himself by his own 
 waistbands, because he cannot get out of himself ; 
 but he can expand himself (which is better, there 
 being no up nor down in nature), and so split his 
 waistbands, being already within himself. 
 
LETTERS. 99 
 
 You speak of doing and being, and the vanity, 
 real or apparent, of much doing. The suckers 
 I think it is they make nests in our river in 
 the spring of more than a cart-load of small stones, 
 amid which to deposit their ova. The other day 
 I opened a muskrat s house. It was made of 
 weeds, five feet broad at base, and three feet high, 
 and far and low within it was a little cavity, only 
 a foot in diameter, where the rat dwelt. It may 
 seem trivial, this piling up of weeds, but so the 
 race of muskrats is preserved. We must heap up 
 a great pile of doing, for a small diameter of being. 
 Is it not imperative on us that we do something, 
 if we only work in a tread-mill? And, indeed, 
 some sort of revolving is necessary to produce a 
 centre and nucleus of being. What exercise is 
 to the body, employment is to the mind and mor 
 als. Consider what an amount of drudgery must 
 be performed, how much humdrum and prosaic 
 labor goes to any work of the least value. There 
 are so many layers of mere white lime in every 
 shell to that thin inner one so beautifully tinted. 
 Let not the shell-fish think to build his house of 
 that alone ; and pray, what are its tints to him ? 
 Is it not his smooth, close-fitting shirt merely, 
 whose tints are not to him, being in the dark, but 
 only wlien he is gone or dead, and his shell is 
 heaved up to light, a wreck upon the beach, do 
 they appear. With him, too, it is a song of the 
 shirt, " Work, work, work ! " And the work 
 
100 LETTERS. 
 
 is not merely a police in the gross sense, but in the 
 higher sense, a discipline. If it is surely the 
 means to the highest end we know, can any work 
 be humble or disgusting ? Will it not rather be 
 elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are 
 translated ? 
 
 How admirably the artist is made to accomplish 
 his self-culture by devotion to his art ! The wood- 
 sawyer, through his effort to do his work well, 
 becomes not merely a better wood-sawyer, but 
 measurably a better man. Few are the men that 
 can work on their navels, only some Brahmins 
 that I have heard of. To the painter is given 
 some paint and canvas instead ; to the Irishman a 
 hog, typical of himself. In a thousand apparently 
 humble ways men busy themselves to make some 
 right take the place of some wrong, if it is only 
 to make a better paste-blacking, and they are 
 themselves so much the better morally for it. 
 
 You say that you do not succeed much. Does 
 it concern you enough that you do not ? Do you 
 work hard enough at it ? Do you get the benefit 
 of discipline out of it ? If so, persevere. Is it a 
 more serious thing than to walk a thousand miles 
 in a thousand successive hours ? Do you get any 
 corns by it ? Do you ever think of hanging your 
 self on account of failure ? 
 
 If you are going into that line, going to be 
 siege the city of God, you must not only be 
 strong in engines, but prepared with provisions to 
 
LETTERS. 101 
 
 starve out the garrison. An Irishman came to see 
 me to-day, who is endeavoring to get his family out 
 to this New World. He rises at half past four, 
 milks twenty-eight cows (which has swollen the 
 joints of his fingers), and eats his breakfast, with 
 out any milk in his tea or coffee, before six ; and 
 so on, day after day, for six and a half dollars a, 
 month ; and thus he keeps his virtue in him, if he 
 does not add to it ; and he regards me as a gentle 
 man able to assist him ; but if I ever get to be a 
 gentleman, it will be by working after my fashion 
 harder than he does. If my joints are not swollen, 
 it must be because I deal with the teats of celestial 
 cows before breakfast (and the milker in this case 
 is always allowed some of the milk for his break 
 fast), to say nothing of the flocks and herds of 
 Admetus afterward. 
 
 It is the art of mankind to polish the world, 
 and every one who works is scrubbing in some 
 part. 
 
 If the work is high and far, you must not only 
 aim aright, but draw the bow with all your might. 
 You must qualify yourself to use a bow which no 
 humbler archer can bend. 
 
 " Work, work, work ! " 
 
 Who shall know it for a bow ? It is not of yew- 
 tree. It is straighter than a ray of light; flexi 
 bility is not known for one of its qualities. 
 
102 LETTERS. 
 
 December 22. 
 
 So far I had got when I was called off to sur 
 vey. Pray read the life of Haydon the painter, 
 if you have not. It is a small revelation for these 
 latter days ; a great satisfaction to know that he 
 has lived, though he is now dead. Have you met 
 with the letter of a Turkish cadi at the end of 
 Layard s "Ancient Babylon " ? that also -is refresh 
 ing, and a capital comment on the whole book 
 which precedes it, the Oriental genius speaking 
 through him. 
 
 Those Brahmins put it through. They come 
 off, or rather stand still, conquerors, with some 
 withered arms or legs at least to show ; and they 
 are said to have cultivated the faculty of abstrac 
 tion to a degree unknown to Europeans. If we 
 cannot sing of faith and triumph, we will sing our 
 despair. We will be that kind of bird. There 
 are day owls, and there are night owls, and each is 
 beautiful and even musical while about its busi 
 ness. 
 
 Might you not find some positive work to do 
 with your back to Church and State, letting your 
 back do all the rejection of them ? Can you not 
 go upon your pilgrimage, Peter, along the wind 
 ing mountain path whither you face ? A step 
 more will make those funereal church bells over 
 your shoulder sound far and sweet as a natural 
 sound. 
 
 Work, work, work ! " 
 
LETTERS. 103 
 
 Why not make a very large mud-pie and bake it in 
 the sun ! Only put no Church nor State into it, 
 nor upset any other pepper-box that way. Dig 
 out a woodchuck, for that has nothing to do 
 with rotting institutions. Go ahead. 
 
 Whether a man spends his day in an ecstasy or 
 despondency, he must do some work to show for 
 it, even s there are flesh and bones to show for 
 him. We are superior to the joy we experience. 
 
 Your last two letters, methinks, have more 
 nerve and will in them than usual, as if you had 
 erected yourself more. Why are not they good 
 work, if you only had a hundred correspondents 
 to tax you ? 
 
 Make your failure tragical by the earnestness 
 and steadfastness of your endeavor, and then it 
 will not differ from success. Prove it to be the 
 inevitable fate of mortals, of one mortal, if 
 you can. 
 
 You said that you were writing on immortality. 
 I wish you would communicate to me what you 
 know about that. You are sure to live while that 
 is your theme. 
 
 Thus I write on some text which a sentence of 
 your letters may have furnished. 
 
 I think of coming to see you as soon as I get a 
 new coat, if I have money enough left. I will 
 write to you again about it. 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
104 LETTERS. 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, January 21, 1854. 
 
 MR. B : 
 
 My coat is at last done, and my mother and 
 sister allow that I am so far in a condition to go 
 abroad. I feel as if I had gone abroad the mo 
 ment I put it on. It is, as usual, a production 
 strange to me, the wearer, invented by some 
 Count D Orsay, and the maker of it was not 
 acquainted with any of my real depressions or 
 elevations. He only measured a peg to hang it 
 on, and might have made the loop big enough to 
 go over my head. It requires a not quite inno 
 cent indifference, not to say insolence, to wear it. 
 Ah ! the process by which we get our coats is not 
 what it should be. Though the Church declares 
 it righteous, and its priest pardons me, my own 
 good genius tells me that it is hasty, and coarse, 
 and false. I expect a time when, or rather an 
 integrity by which a man will get his coat as hon 
 estly and as perfectly fitting as a tree its bark. 
 Now our garments are typical of our conformity to 
 the ways of the world, i. e. of the devil, and to 
 some extent react on us and poison us, like that 
 shirt which Hercules put on. 
 
 I think to come and see you next week, on 
 Monday, if nothing hinders. I have just returned 
 from court at Cambridge, whither I was called as 
 a witness, having surveyed a water-privilege, about 
 which there is a dispute, since you were here. 
 
LETTERS. 105 
 
 Ah ! what foreign countries there are, greater 
 in extent than the United States or Russia, and 
 with no more souls to a square mile, stretching 
 away on every side from every human being, with 
 whom you have no sympathy. Their humanity 
 affects me as simply monstrous. Rocks, earth, 
 brute beasts, comparatively, are not so strange to 
 me. When I sit in the parlors and kitchens of 
 some with whom my business brings me I was 
 going to say in contact (business, like misery, 
 makes strange bedfellows), I feel a sort of awe, 
 and as forlorn as if I were cast away on a desolate 
 shore. I think of Riley s narrative and his suffer 
 ings. You, who soared like a merlin with your 
 mate through the realms of ether, in the presence 
 of the unlike, drop at once to earth, a mere amor 
 phous squab, divested of your air-inflated pinions. 
 (By the way, excuse this writing, for I am using 
 the stub of the last feather I chance to possess.) 
 You travel on, however, through this dark and 
 desert world ; you see in the distance an intelli 
 gent and sympathizing lineament ; stars come forth 
 in the dark, and oases appear in the desert. 
 
 But (to return to the subject of coats), we are 
 well nigh smothered under yet more fatal coats, 
 which do not fit us, our whole lives long. Consider 
 the cloak that our employment or station is ; how 
 rarely men treat each other for what in their true 
 and naked characters they are ; how we use and 
 tolerate pretension ; how the judge is clothed with 
 
 5* 
 
106 LETTERS. 
 
 dignity which does not belong to him, and the 
 trembling witness with humility that does not be 
 long to him, and the criminal, perchance, with 
 shame or impudence which no more belong to 
 him. It does not matter so much, then, what is 
 the fashion of the cloak with which we cloak these 
 cloaks. Change the coat; put the judge in the 
 criminal-box, and the criminal on the bench, and 
 you might think that you had changed the men. 
 
 No doubt the thinnest of all cloaks is conscious 
 deception or lies ; it is sleazy and frays out ; it is 
 not close-woven like cloth ; but its meshes are a 
 coarse net-work. A man can afford to lie only at 
 the intersection of the threads ; but truth puts in 
 the filling, and makes a consistent stuff. 
 
 I mean merely to suggest how much the station 
 affects the demeanor and self-respectability of the 
 parties, and that the difference between the judge s 
 coat of cloth and the criminal s is insignificant, 
 compared with, or only partially significant of, the 
 difference between the coats which their respective 
 stations permit them to wear. What airs the 
 judge may put on over his coat which the crim 
 inal may not! The judge s opinion (sententict) 
 of the criminal sentences him, and is read by the 
 clerk of the court, and published to the world, 
 and executed by the sheriff; but the criminal s 
 opinion of the judge has the weight of a sentence, 
 and is published and executed only in the supreme 
 court of the universe, a court not of common 
 
LETTERS. 107 
 
 pleas. How much juster is the one than the 
 other ? Men are continually sentencing each 
 other ; but, whether we be judges or crimi 
 nals, the sentence is ineffectual unless we con 
 tinue ourselves. 
 
 I am glad to hear that I do not always limit 
 your vision when you work this way; that you 
 sometimes see the light through me ; that I am 
 here and there windows, and not all dead wall. 
 Might not the community sometimes petition a* 
 man to remove himself as a nuisance, a darkener 
 
 of the day, a too large mote ? 
 
 H. D. T. 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, August 8, 1854. 
 
 MR. B : 
 
 Methinks I have spent a rather unprofitable 
 summer thus far. I have been too much with 
 the world, as the poet might say. The complet- 
 est performance of the highest duties it imposes 
 would yield me but little satisfaction. Better the 
 neglect of all such, because your life passed on a 
 level where it was impossible to recognize them. 
 Latterly, I have heard the very flies buzz too dis 
 tinctly, and have accused myself because I did not 
 still this superficial din. We must not be too 
 easily distracted by the crying of children or of 
 dynasties. The Irishman erects his sty, and gets 
 
108 LETTERS. 
 
 drunk, and jabbers more and more under my 
 eaves, and I am responsible for all that filth and 
 folly. I find it, as ever, very unprofitable to have 
 much to do with men. It is sowing the wind, but 
 not reaping even the whirlwind ; only reaping an 
 unprofitable calm and stagnation. Our conversa 
 tion is a smooth, and civil, and never-ending spec 
 ulation merely. I take up the thread of it again 
 in the morning, with very much such courage as 
 the invalid takes his prescribed Seidlitz powders. 
 Shall I help you to some of the mackerel ? It 
 would be more respectable if men, as has been 
 said before, instead of being such pigmy despe 
 rates, were Giant Despairs. Emerson says that 
 his life is so unprofitable and shabby for the most 
 part, that he is driven to all sorts of resources, and, 
 among the rest, to men. I tell him that we differ 
 only in our resources. Mine is to get away from 
 men. They very rarely affect me as grand or 
 beautiful ; but I know that there is a sunrise and a 
 sunset every day. In the summer, this world is a 
 mere watering-place, a Saratoga, drinking so 
 many tumblers of Congress water; and in the 
 winter, is it any better, with its oratorios ? I have 
 seen more men than usual, lately ; and, well as 
 I was acquainted with one, I am surprised to find 
 what vulgar fellows they are. They do a little 
 business commonly each day, in order to pay their 
 board, and then they congregate in sitting-rooms, 
 and feebly fabulate and paddle in the social slush ; 
 
LETTERS. 109 
 
 and when I think that they have sufficiently re 
 laxed, and am prepared to see them steal away to 
 their shrines, they go unashamed to their beds, 
 and take on a new layer of sloth. They may 
 be single, or have families in their faineancy. I 
 do not meet men who can have nothing to do 
 with me because they have so much to do with 
 themselves. However, I trust that a very few 
 cherish purposes which they never declare. Only 
 think, for a moment, of a man about his affairs ! 
 How we should respect him ! How glorious he 
 would appear! Not working for any corporation, 
 its agent, or president, but fulfilling the end of his 
 being ! A man about his business would be the 
 cynosure of all eyes. 
 
 The other evening I was determined that I 
 would silence this shallow din ; that I would walk 
 in various directions and see if there was not to be 
 found any depth of silence around. As Bona 
 parte sent out his horsemen in the Red Sea on all 
 sides to find shallow water, so I sent forth my 
 mounted thoughts to find deep water. I left the 
 village and paddled up the river to Fair Haven 
 Pond. As the sun went down, I saw a solitary 
 boatman disporting on the smooth lake. The 
 falling dews seemed to strain and purify the air, 
 and I was soothed with an infinite stillness. I 
 got the world, as it were, by the nape of the neck, 
 and held it under in the tide of its own events, till 
 it was drowned, and then I let it go down stream 
 
110 LETTERS. 
 
 like a dead dog. Vast hollow chambers of silence 
 stretched away on every side, and my being ex 
 panded in proportion, and filled them. Then first 
 could I appreciate sound, and find it musical. 
 
 But now for your news. Tell us of the year. 
 Have you fought the good fight? What is the 
 state of your crops? Will your harvest answer 
 well to the seed-time, and are you cheered by the 
 prospect of stretching cornfields ? Is there any 
 blight on your fields, any murrain in your herds ? 
 Have you tried the size and quality of your potatoes ? 
 It does one good to see their balls dangling in the 
 lowlands. Have you got your meadow hay before 
 the fall rains shall have set in ? Is there enough 
 in your barns to keep your cattle over ? Are you 
 killing weeds now-a-days? or have you earned 
 leisure to go a-fishing ? Did you plant any Giant 
 Regrets last spring, such as I saw advertised ? It 
 is not a new species, but the result of cultivation 
 and a fertile soil. They are excellent for sauce. 
 How is it with your marrow squashes for winter 
 use ? Is there likely to be a sufficiency of fall 
 feed in your neighborhood ? What is the state of 
 the springs ? I read that in your county there is 
 more water on the hills than in the valleys. Do 
 you find it easy to get all the help you require ? 
 Work early and late, and let your men and teams 
 rest at noon. Be careful not to drink too much 
 sweetened water, while at your hoeing, this hot 
 weather. You can bear the heat much better for it. 
 
 H. D. T. 
 
LETTERS. Ill 
 
 TO MB. D. K. 
 
 CONCORD, October 1, 1854. 
 
 DEAR SIR: 
 
 I had duly received your very kind and frank 
 letter, but delayed to answer it thus long, because 
 I have little skill as a correspondent, and wished 
 to send you something more than my thanks. I 
 was gratified by your prompt and hearty accept 
 ance of my book. Your s is the only word of 
 greeting I am likely to receive from a dweller in 
 the woods like myself, from where the whip-poor- 
 will and cuckoo are heard, and there are better 
 than moral clouds drifting over, and real breezes 
 blowing. 
 
 Your account excites in me a desire to see the 
 Middleboro Ponds, of which I had already heard 
 somewhat ; as also some very beautiful ponds on 
 the Cape, in Harwich, I think, near which I 
 once passed. I have sometimes also thought of 
 visiting that remnant of our Indians still living 
 near you. But then, you know, there is nothing 
 like one s native fields and lakes. The best news 
 you send me is, not that Nature with you is so 
 fair and genial, but that there is one there who 
 likes her so well. That proves all that was 
 asserted. 
 
 Homer, of course, you include in your list of 
 lovers of Nature ; and, by the way, let me men 
 tion here, for this is my thunder " lately," 
 
112 LETTERS. 
 
 William Gilpin s long series of books on the Pic 
 turesque, with their illustrations. If it chances 
 that, you have not met with these, I cannot just 
 now frame a better wish than that you may one 
 day derive as much pleasure from the inspection 
 of them as I have. 
 
 Much as you have told me of yourself, you have 
 still, I think, a little the advantage of me in this 
 correspondence, for I have told you still more in 
 my book. You have therefore the broadest mark 
 to fire at. 
 
 A young Englishman, Mr. Cholmondeley, is 
 just now waiting for me to take a walk with him ; 
 therefore excuse this very barren note from 
 Yours, hastily at last, 
 
 HENRY D. THOKEAU. 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, December 19, 1854. 
 MR. B : 
 
 I suppose you have heard of my truly provi 
 dential meeting with Mr. , providential 
 
 because it saved me from the suspicion that my 
 words had fallen altogether on stony ground, when 
 it turned out that there was some Worcester soil 
 there. You will allow me to consider that I cor 
 respond with him through you. 
 
LETTERS. 113 
 
 I confess that I am a very bad correspondent, 
 so far as promptness of reply is concerned ; but 
 then I am sure to answer sooner or later. The 
 longer I have forgotten you, the more I remember 
 you. For the most part I have not been idle 
 since I saw you. How does the world go with 
 you ? or rather, how do you get along without it ? 
 I have not yet learned to live, that I can see, and 
 I fear that I shall not very soon. I find, how 
 ever, that in the long run things correspond to 
 my original idea, that they correspond to noth 
 ing else so much ; and thus a man may really be 
 a true prophet without any great exertion. The 
 day is never so dark, nor the night even, but that 
 the laws at least of light still prevail, and so may 
 make it light in our minds if they are open to the 
 truth. There is considerable danger that a man 
 will be crazy between dinner and supper ; but it 
 will not directly answer any good purpose that I 
 know of, and it is just as easy to be sane. We 
 have got to know what both life and death are, be 
 fore we can begin to live after our own fashion. 
 Let us be learning our a-b-c s as soon as possible. 
 I never yet knew the sun to be knocked down and 
 rolled through a mud-puddle ; he comes out honor- 
 bright from behind every storm. Let us then 
 take sides with the sun, seeing we have so much 
 leisure. Let us not put all we prize into a foot 
 ball to be kicked, when a bladder will do as well. 
 
 When an Indian is burned, his body may be 
 
114 LETTERS. 
 
 broiled, it may be no more than a beef-steak. 
 What of that ? They may broil his heart, but 
 they do not therefore broil his courage^ his 
 principles. Be of good courage ! That is the 
 main thing. 
 
 ?jlf a man were to place himself in an attitude 
 to bear manfully the greatest evil that can be in 
 flicted on him, he would find suddenly that there 
 was no such evil to bear ; his brave back would 
 go a-begging. When Atlas got his back made 
 up, that was all that was required. (In this case 
 a priv., not pleon., and rA^A".) The world rests 
 on principles. The wise gods will never make 
 underpinning of a man. But as long as he 
 crouches, and skulks, and shirks his work, every 
 creature that has weight will be treading on his 
 toes, and crushing him ; he will himself tread with 
 one foot on the other foot. 
 
 The monster is never just there where we think 
 he is. What is truly monstrous is our cowardice 
 and sloth. 
 
 Have no idle disciplines like the Catholic Church 
 and others ; have only positive and fruitful ones. 
 Do what you know you ought to do. Why should 
 we ever go abroad, even across the way, to ask a 
 neighbor s advice ? There is a nearer neighbor 
 within is incessantly telling us how we should be 
 have. But we wait for the neighbor without to 
 tell us of some false, easier way. 
 
 They have a census-table in which they put 
 
LETTERS. 115 
 
 down the number of the insane. Do you believe 
 that they put them all down there ? Why, in 
 every one of these houses there is at least one 
 man fighting or squabbling a good part of his time 
 with a dozen pet demons of his own breeding and 
 cherishing, which are relentlessly gnawing at his 
 vitals ; and if perchance he resolve at length that 
 he will courageously combat them, he says, " Ay ! 
 ay! I will attend to you after dinner!" And, 
 when that time comes, he concludes that he is 
 good for another stage, and reads a column or two 
 about the Eastern War ! Pray, to be in earnest, 
 where is Sevastopol? Who is Menchikoff? and 
 Nicholas behind these? who the Allies? Did 
 not we fight a little (little enough to be sure, but 
 just enough to make it interesting) at Alma, at 
 Balaclava, at Inkermann ? We love to fight far 
 from home. Ah ! the Minie musket is the king 
 of weapons. Well, let us get one then. 
 
 I just put another stick into my stove, a 
 pretty large mass of white oak. How many men 
 will do enough this cold winter to pay for the fuel 
 that will be required to warm them ? I suppose I 
 have burned up a pretty good-sized tree to-night, 
 - and for what ? I settled with Mr. Tarbell for it 
 the other day ; but that was n t the final settlement. 
 I got off cheaply from him. At last, one will say, 
 " Let us see, how much wood did you burn, sir ? " 
 And I shall shudder to think that the next ques 
 tion will be, " What did you do while you were 
 
116 LETTERS. 
 
 warm ? " Do we think the ashes will pay for it ? 
 that God is an ash-man ? It is a fact that we 
 have got to render an account for the deeds done 
 in the body. 
 
 Who knows but we shall be better the next year 
 than we have been the past ? At any rate, I wish 
 you a really new year, commencing from the in 
 stant you read this, and happy or unhappy, ac 
 cording to your deserts. 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, September 26, 1855. 
 
 The other day I thought that my health must 
 be better, that I gave at last a sign of vitality, 
 because I experienced a slight chagrin. But I 
 do not see how strength is to be got into my legs 
 again. These months of feebleness have yielded 
 few, if any, thoughts, though they have not passed 
 without serenity, such as our sluggish Musketa- 
 quid suggests. I hope that the harvest is to come. 
 I trust that you have at least warped up the stream 
 a little daily, holding fast by your anchors at night, 
 since I saw you, and have kept my place for me 
 while I have been absent. 
 
 Mr. R , of New Bedford, has just made me 
 
LETTERS. 117 
 
 a visit of a day and a half, and I have had a quite 
 
 good time with him. He and C have got on 
 
 particularly well together. He is a man of very 
 simple tastes, notwithstanding his wealth ; a lover 
 of nature ; but, above all, singularly frank and 
 plain-spoken. I think that you might enjoy meet 
 ing him. / Sincerity is a great but rare virtue, and 
 we pardon to it much complaining, and the be 
 trayal of many weaknesses.- R says of him 
 self, that he sometimes thinks that he has all the in 
 firmities of genius, without the genius; is wretch 
 ed without a hair-pillow, &c. ; expresses a great 
 and awful uncertainty with regard to " God," 
 "Death," his "immortality"; says, " If I only 
 knew," &c. He loves Cowper s Task better than 
 anything else ; and thereafter, perhaps, Thomson, 
 Gray, and even Howitt. He has evidently suffered 
 for want of sympathizing companions. He says that 
 he sympathizes with much in my books, but much 
 in them is naught to him, " namby-pamby," 
 "stuff," "mystical." Why will not I, having 
 common sense, write in plain English always ; 
 teach men in detail how to live a simpler life, &c. ; 
 
 not go off into ? But I say that I have no 
 
 scheme about it, no designs on men at all ; and, 
 if I had, my mode would be to tempt them with 
 the fruit, and not with the manure. To what end 
 do I lead a simple life at all, pray ? That I may 
 teach others to simplify their lives ? and so all 
 our lives be simplified merely, like an algebraic for- 
 
118 LETTERS. 
 
 mula ? Or not, rather, that I may make use of 
 the ground I have cleared, to live more worthily 
 and profitably ? I would fain lay the most stress 
 forever on that which is the most important, 
 imports the most to me, though it were only 
 (what it is likely to be) a vibration in the air. As 
 a preacher, I should be prompted to tell men, not 
 so much how to get their wheat-bread cheaper, as 
 of the bread of life compared with which that is 
 bran. Let a man only taste these loaves, and he 
 becomes a skilful economist at once. He 11 not 
 waste much time in earning those. Don t spend 
 your time in drilling soldiers, who may turn out 
 hirelings after all, but give to undrilled peasantry 
 a country to fight for. The schools begin with 
 what they call the elements, and where do they 
 end? 
 
 I was glad to hear the other day that H 
 
 and were gone to Katahdin ; it must be so 
 
 much better to go to than a Woman s Rights or 
 Abolition Convention ; better still, to the delect 
 able primitive mounts within you, which you have 
 dreamed of from your youth up, and seen, per 
 haps, in the horizon, but never climbed. 
 
 But how do you do ? Is the air sweet to you? 
 Do you find anything at which you can work, 
 accomplishing something solid from day to day ? 
 Have you put sloth and doubt behind consider 
 ably ? had one redeeming dream this summer ? 
 I dreamed, last night, that I could vault over any 
 
LETTERS. 119 
 
 height it pleased me. That was something ; and 
 I contemplated myself with a slight satisfaction 
 in the morning for it. 
 
 Methinks I will write to you. Methinks you 
 will be glad to hear. We will stand on solid 
 foundations to one another, ~ la column planted 
 on this shore, you on that. We meet the same 
 sun in his rising. We were built slowly, and have 
 come to our bearing. We will not mutually fall 
 over that we may meet, but will grandly and eter 
 nally guard the straits. Methinks I see an in 
 scription on you, which the architect made, the 
 stucco being worn off to it. The name of that 
 ambitious worldly king is crumbling away. I see 
 it toward sunset in favorable lights. Each must 
 read for the other, as might a sailer by. Be sure 
 you are star-y-pointing still. How is it on your 
 side ? 
 
 I will not require an answer until you think I 
 have paid my debts to you. 
 
 I have just got a letter from R , urging me 
 
 to come to New Bedford, which possibly I may 
 do. He says I can wear my old clothes there. 
 
 Let me be remembered in your quiet house. 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
120 LETTERS. 
 
 TO MR. D. R. 
 
 CONCORD, September 27, 1855. 
 
 FRIEND R : 
 
 I am sorry that you were obliged to leave Con 
 cord without seeing more of it, its river and 
 woods, and various pleasant walks, and its worthies. 
 I assure you that I am none the worse for my 
 walk with you, but on all accounts the better. 
 Methinks I am regaining my health ; but I would 
 like to know first what it was that ailed me. 
 
 I have not yet conveyed your message to Mr. 
 
 H , but will not fail to do so. That idea of 
 
 occupying the old house is a good one, quite 
 feasible, and you could bring your hair-pillow 
 with you. It is an inn in Concord which I had 
 not thought of, a philosopher s inn. That large 
 chamber might make a man s idea expand propor- 
 tionably. It would be well to have an interest in 
 some old chamber in a deserted house in every 
 part of the country which attracted us. There 
 would be no such place to receive one s guests 
 as that. If old furniture is fashionable, why not 
 go the whole house at once? I shall endeavor 
 
 to make Mr. H believe that the old house is 
 
 the chief attraction of his farm, and that it is his 
 duty to preserve it by all honest appliances. You 
 might take a lease of it in perpetuo, and done 
 with it. 
 
 I am so wedded to my way of spending a day, 
 
LETTERS. 121 
 
 require such broad margins of leisure, and such 
 a complete wardrobe of old clothes, that I am ill- 
 fitted for going abroad. Pleasant is it sometimes 
 to sit at home, on a single egg all day, in your 
 own nest, though it may prove at last to be an egg 
 of chalk. The old coat that I wear is Concord ; 
 it is my morning-robe and study-gown, my work 
 ing dress and suit of ceremony, and my night 
 gown after all. Cleave to the simplest ever. 
 Home, home, home. Cars sound like cares 
 to me. 
 
 I am accustomed to think very long of going 
 anywhere, am slow to move. I hope to hear a 
 response of the oracle first. 
 
 However, I think that I will try the effect of 
 your talisman on the iron horse next Saturday, 
 and dismount at Tarkiln Hill. Perhaps your sea 
 air will be good for me. 
 
 I conveyed your invitation to C , but he 
 
 apparently will not come. 
 
 Excuse my not writing earlier ; but I had not 
 decided. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
122 LETTERS. 
 
 TO ME. D. K. 
 
 CONCORD, October 12, 1855. 
 
 MR. E : 
 
 I fear that you had a lonely and disagreeable 
 ride back to New Bedford, through the Carver 
 woods and so on, perhaps in the rain too, and I 
 am in part answerable for it. I feel very much 
 in debt to you and your family for the pleasant 
 
 days I spent at Brooklawn. Tell A and 
 
 W that the shells which they gave me are 
 
 spread out, and make quite a show to inland eyes. 
 Methinks I still hear the strains of the piano, the 
 violin, and the flageolet blended together. Ex 
 cuse me for the noise which I believe drove you to 
 take refuge in the shanty. That shanty is indeed 
 a favorable place to expand in, which I fear I did 
 not enough improve. 
 
 On my way through Boston, I inquired for 
 Gilpin s works at Little, Brown, & Co. s, Mon 
 roe s, Ticknor s, and Burnham s. They have 
 not got them. They told me at Little, Brown, 
 and Co. s that his works (not complete), in twelve 
 vols., 8vo, were imported and sold in this country 
 five or six years ago for about fifteen dollars. 
 Their terms for importing are ten per cent on 
 the cost. I copied from the " London Catalogue 
 of Books, 1816-51," at their shop, the following 
 list of Gilpin s Works : 
 
LETTERS. 123 
 
 Gilpin, (Wm.) Dialogues on Various Subjects. 8vo. 9s. Cadell. 
 
 Essays on Picturesque Subjects. 8vo. 15s. Cadell. 
 
 Exposition of the New Testament. 2 vols. 8vo. 
 
 16s. Longman. 
 
 Forest Scenery, by Sir T. D. Lauder. 2 vols. 8vo. 
 
 18s. Smith &E. 
 
 Lectures on the Catechism. 12mo. 3s. 6c?. Longman. 
 
 Lives of the Reformers. 2 vols. 12mo. 8s. Rivington. 
 
 Sermons Illustrative and Practical. 8vo. 12 s. 
 
 Hatchavd. 
 
 Sermons to Country Congregations. 4 vols. 8vo. 
 
 1 16s. Longman. 
 
 Tour in Cambridge, Norfolk, &c. 8vo. 18s. Cadell. 
 
 Tour of the River Wye. 12mo. 4s. With plates. 
 
 8vo. 17s. Cadell. 
 
 Gilpin, (W. S. (?) ) Hints on Landscape Gardening. Royal 
 
 8vo. 1. Cadell. 
 
 Beside these, I remember to have read one 
 volume on Prints ; his Southern Tour (1775) ; 
 Lakes of Cumberland, two vols. ; Highlands of 
 Scotland and West of England, two vols. N. B. 
 There must be plates in every volume. 
 
 I still see an image of those Middleborough 
 Ponds in my mind s eye, broad shallow lakes, 
 with an iron mine at the bottom, comparatively 
 unvexed by sails, only by Tom Smith and his 
 squaw, Sepits, " Sharper." I find my map of the 
 state to be the best I have seen of that district. 
 It is a question whether the islands of Long Pond 
 or Great Quitticus offer the greatest attractions to 
 a Lord of the Isles. That plant which I found on 
 the shore of Long Pond chances to be a rare and 
 beautiful flower, the Sabbatia chloroides, re 
 ferred to Plymouth. 
 
124 LETTERS. 
 
 In a Description of Middleborough in the Hist. 
 Coll., Vol. III., 1810, signed Nehemiah Bennet, 
 Middleborough, 1793, it is said: "There is on the 
 easterly shore of Assawampsitt Pond, on the shore 
 of Betty s Neck, two rocks which have curious 
 marks thereon (supposed to be done by the In 
 dians), which appear like the steppings of a person 
 with naked feet which settled into the rocks ; like 
 wise the prints of a hand on several places, with a 
 number of other marks ; also there is a rock on a 
 high hill a little to the eastward of the old stone 
 fishing wear, where there is the print of a person s 
 hand in said rock." 
 
 It would be well to look at those rocks again 
 more carefully ; also at the rock on the hill. 
 
 I should think that you would like to explore 
 Sinpatuct Pond in Rochester, it is so large and 
 near. It is an interesting fact that the alewives 
 used to ascend to it, if they do not still, both 
 from Mattapoisett and through Great Quitticus. 
 
 There will be no trouble about the chamber 
 in the old house, though, as I told you, Mr. 
 Hosmer may expect some compensation for it. 
 
 He says, " Give my respects to Mr. R , and 
 
 tell him that I cannot be at a large expense to 
 preserve an antiquity or curiosity. Nature must 
 do its work." " But," say I, " he asks you only 
 not to assist Nature." 
 
 Yours, 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
LETTERS. 125 
 
 TO MK. D. K. 
 
 CONCORD, October 16, 1855. 
 
 FRIEND RICKETSON : 
 
 I have got both your letters at once. You must 
 
 not think Concord so barren a place when C 
 
 is away. There are the river and fields left yet ; 
 and I, though ordinarily a man of business, should 
 have some afternoons and evenings to spend with 
 you, I trust, that is, if you could stand so much 
 of me. If you can spend your time profitably 
 here, or without ennui, having an occasional ram 
 ble or tete-a-tete with one of the natives, it will 
 give me pleasure to have you in the neighborhood. 
 You see I am preparing you for our awful un 
 social ways, keeping in our dens a good part of 
 the day, sucking our claws perhaps. But then 
 we make a religion of it, and that you cannot but 
 respect. 
 
 If you know the taste of your own heart, and 
 like it, come to Concord, and I ll warrant you 
 enough here to season the dish with, ay, even 
 
 though C and E* and I were all away. 
 
 We might paddle quietly up the river. Then 
 there are one or two more ponds to be seen, &c. 
 
 I should very much enjoy further rambling with 
 you in your vicinity, but must postpone it for the 
 present. To tell the truth, I am planning to get 
 seriously to work after these long months of ineffi 
 ciency and idleness. I do not know whether you 
 
126 LETTERS. 
 
 are haunted by any such demon which puts you 
 on the alert to pluck the fruit of each day as it 
 passes, and store it safely in your bin. True, it is 
 well to live abandonedly from time to time ; but, 
 to our working hours that must be as the spile to 
 the bung. So for a long season I must enjoy only 
 a low slanting gleam in my mind s eye from the 
 Middleborough Ponds far away. 
 
 Metliinks I am getting a little more strength 
 into those knees of mine ; and, for my part, I 
 believe that God does delight in the strength of a 
 
 man s legs. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, December 9, 1855. 
 
 MR. B : 
 
 Thank you ! thank you for going a-wooding 
 with me, and enjoying it; for being warmed 
 by my wood fire. I have indeed enjoyed it much 
 alone. I see how I might enjoy it yet more with 
 company, how we might help each other to 
 live. And to be admitted to Nature s hearth 
 costs nothing. None is excluded ; but excludes 
 himself. You have only to push aside the curtain. 
 
 I am glad to hear that you were there too. 
 
LETTERS. 127 
 
 There are many more such voyages, and longer 
 ones, to be made on that river, for it is the water 
 of life. The Ganges is nothing to it. Observe 
 its reflections, no idea but is familiar to it. 
 That river, though to dull eyes it seems terrestrial 
 wholly, flows through Elysium. What powers 
 bathe in it invisible to villagers ! Talk of its shal- 
 lowness, that hay-carts can be driven through it 
 at midsummer : its depth passeth my understand 
 ing. If, forgetting the allurements of the world, I 
 could drink deeply enough of it ; if cast adrift 
 from the shore, I could with complete integrity 
 float on it, I should never be seen on the mill-dam 
 again. If there is any depth in me, there is a cor 
 responding depth in it. It is the cold blood of the 
 gods. I paddle and bathe in their artery. 
 
 I do not want a stick of wood for so trivial a 
 use as to burn even ; but they get it over night, 
 and carve and gild it that it may please my eye. 
 What persevering lovers they are ! What infinite 
 pains to attract and delight us ! They will supply 
 us with fagots wrapped in the daintiest packages, 
 and freight paid ; sweet-scented woods, and bufst- 
 ing into flower, and resounding as if Orpheus 
 had just left them, these shall be our fuel, 
 and we still prefer to chaffer with the wood-mer 
 chant. 
 
 The jug we found still stands draining bottom 
 up on the bank, on the sunny side of the house. 
 That river, who shall say exactly whence it 
 
128 LETTERS. 
 
 came, and whither it goes ? Does aught that 
 flows come from a higher source ? Many things 
 drift downward on its surface which w r ould enrich 
 a man. If you could only be on the alert all day, 
 and every day. And the nights are as long as the 
 days. 
 
 Do you not think you could contrive thus to 
 get woody fibre enough to bake your wheaten 
 bread with? Would you not perchance have 
 tasted the sweet crust of another kind of bread in 
 the mean while, which ever hangs ready baked on 
 the bread-fruit trees of the world ? 
 
 Talk of burning your smoke after the wood has 
 been consumed ! There is a far more important 
 and warming heat, commonly lost, which precedes 
 the burning of the wood. It is the smoke of in 
 dustry, which is incense. I had been so thoroughly 
 warmed in body and spirit, that when at length 
 my fuel was housed, I came near selling it to the 
 ash-man, as if I had extracted all its heat. 
 
 You should have been here to help me get in my 
 boat. The last time I used it, November 27th, 
 paddling up the Assabet, I saw a great round pine 
 log sunk deep in the water, and with labor got it 
 aboard. When I was floating this home so gently, 
 it occurred to me why I had found it. It was to 
 make wheels with to roll my boat into winter 
 .quarters upon. So I sawed off two thick rollers 
 from one end, pierced them for wheels, and then 
 of a joist which I had found drifting on the river 
 
LETTERS. 129 
 
 in the summer, I made an axle-tree, and on this I 
 rolled my boat out. 
 
 Miss Mary Emerson is here, the youngest 
 person in Concord, though about eighty, and 
 the most apprehensive of a genuine thought ; ear 
 nest to know of your inner life ; most stimulating 
 society ; and exceedingly witty withal. She says 
 they called her old when she was young, and she 
 has never grown any older. I wish you could see 
 her. 
 
 My books did not arrive till November 30th, 
 the cargo of the Asia having been complete when 
 they reached Liverpool. I have arranged them in 
 a case which I made in the mean while, partly of 
 river boards. I have not dipped far into the new 
 ones yet. One is splendidly bound and illumi 
 nated. They are in English, French, Latin, Greek, 
 and Sanscrit. I have not made out the signifi 
 cance of this Godsend yet. 
 
 Farewell, and bright dreams to you ! 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 6* 
 
130 LETTERS. 
 
 TO MR. D. E. 
 
 CONCORD, December 25, 1865. 
 
 FRIEND R : 
 
 Though you have not shown your face here, I 
 trust that you did not interpret my last note to 
 my disadvantage. I remember that, among other 
 things, I wished to break it to you, that, owing to 
 engagements, I should not be able to show you so 
 much attention as I could wish, or as you had 
 shown to me. How we did scour over the coun 
 try ! I hope your horse will live as long as one 
 which I hear just died in the south of France at 
 the age of forty. Yet I had no doubt you would 
 get quite enough of me. Do not give it up so 
 easily. The old house is still empty, and Hosmer 
 is easy to treat with. 
 
 C was here about ten days ago. I told 
 
 him of my visit to you, and that he too must go 
 and see you and your country. This may have 
 suggested his writing to you. 
 
 That island lodge, especially for some weeks in 
 a summer, and new explorations in your vicinity, 
 are certainly very alluring ; but such are my en 
 gagements to myself, that I dare not promise to 
 wend your way, but will for the present only 
 heartily thank you for your kind and generous 
 offer. When my vacation comes, then look out. 
 
 My legs have grown considerably stronger, and 
 that is all that ails me. 
 
LETTERS. 131 
 
 But I wish now above all to inform you, 
 though I suppose you will not be particularly in 
 terested, that Cholmondeley has gone to the 
 Crimea, " a complete soldier," with a design, 
 when he returns, if he ever returns, to buy a 
 cottage in the South of England, and tempt me 
 over ; but that, before going, he busied himself in 
 buying, and has caused to be forwarded to me by 
 Chapman, a royal gift, in the shape of twenty-one 
 distinct works (one in nine volumes, forty-four 
 volumes in all), almost exclusively relating to an 
 cient Hindoo literature, and scarcely one of them 
 to be bought in America. I am familiar with 
 many of them, and know how to prize them. 
 
 I send you information of this as I might of the 
 birth of a child. 
 
 Please remember me to all your family. 
 Yours truly, 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 TO MR. D. R. 
 
 CONCORD, March 5, 1856. 
 
 DEAR SIR : 
 
 I have been out of town, else I should have 
 acknowledged your letter before. Though not in 
 the best mood for writing, I will say what I can 
 now. You plainly have a rare, though a cheap, 
 
132 LETTERS. 
 
 resource in your shanty. Perhaps the time will 
 come when every country-seat will have one, 
 when every country-seat will be one. I would ad 
 vise you to see that shanty business out, though 
 you go shanty-mad. Work your vein till it is ex 
 hausted, or conducts you to a broader one ; so that 
 
 C shall stand before your shanty, and say, 
 
 " That is your house." 
 
 This has indeed been a grand winter for me, 
 and for all of us. I am not considering how much 
 I have enjoyed it. What matters it how happy or 
 unhappy we have been, if we have minded our 
 business and advanced our affairs. I have made it 
 a part of my business to wade in the snow, and 
 take the measure of the ice. The ice on our pond 
 was just two feet thick on the first, of March ; and 
 I have to-day been surveying a wood-lot, where I 
 sank about two feet at every step. 
 
 It is high time that you, fanned by the warm 
 breezes of the Gulf stream, had begun to " lay" 
 for even the Concord hens have, though one won 
 ders where they find the raw material of egg-shell 
 here. Beware how you put off your laying to any 
 later spring, else your cackling will not have the 
 inspiring early spring sound. 
 
 As for visiting you in April, though I am in 
 clined enough to take some more rambles in your 
 neighborhood, especially by the seaside, I dare not 
 engage myself, nor allow you to expect me. The 
 truth is, I have my enterprises now as ever, at 
 
LETTERS. 133 
 
 which I tug with ridiculous feebleness, but admi 
 rable perseverance, and cannot say when I shall be 
 sufficiently fancy-free for such an excursion. 
 
 You have done well to write a lecture on 
 Covvper. In the expectation of getting you to 
 read it here, I applied to the curators of our Ly 
 ceum ; but, alas ! our Lyceum has been a failure 
 this winter for want of funds. It ceased some 
 weeks since, with a debt, they tell me, to be car 
 ried over to the next year s account. Only one 
 more lecture is to be read by a Signor Somebody, 
 an Italian, paid for by private subscription, as a 
 deed of charity to the lecturer. They are not rich 
 enough to offer you your expenses even, though 
 probably, a month or two ago, they would have 
 been glad of the chance. 
 
 However, the old house has not failed yet. 
 That offers you lodging for an indefinite time 
 after you get into it ; and in the mean while I offer 
 you bed and board in my father s house, always 
 excepting hair-pillows and new-fangled bedding. 
 
 Remember me to your family. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 H. D. T. 
 
134 LETTERS. 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, March 13, 1856. 
 
 MR. B : 
 
 It is high time I sent you a word. I have 
 not heard from Harrisburg, since offering to go 
 there, and have not been invited to lecture any 
 where else the past winter. So you see I am fast 
 growing rich. This is quite right, for such is my 
 relation to the lecture-goers, I should be sur 
 prised and alarmed if there were any great call for 
 me. I confess that I am considerably alarmed 
 even when I hear that an individual wishes to 
 meet me, for my experience teaches me that we 
 shall thus only be made certain of a mutual 
 strangeness, which otherwise we might never 
 have been aware of. 
 
 I have not yet recovered strength enough for 
 such a walk as you propose, though pretty well 
 again for circumscribed rambles and chamber 
 work. Even now, I am probably the greatest 
 walker in Concord, to its disgrace be it said. I 
 remember our walks and talks and sailing in the 
 past with great satisfaction, and trust that we shall 
 have more of them erelong, have more wood- 
 ings-up, for even in the spring we must still 
 seek " fuel to maintain our fires." 
 
 As you suggest, we would fain value one an 
 other for what we are absolutely, rather than 
 
LETTERS. 135 
 
 relatively. How will this do for a symbol of 
 sympathy ? 
 
 As for compliments, even the stars praise me, 
 and I praise them. They and I sometimes belong 
 to a mutual admiration society. Is it not so with 
 you ? I know you of old. Are you not tough 
 and earnest to be talked at, praised or blamed ? 
 Must you go out of the room because you are the 
 subject of conversation ? Where will you go to, 
 pray ? Shall we look into the " Letter Writer " 
 to see what compliments are admissible ? I am 
 not afraid of praise, for I have practised it on my 
 self. As for my deserts, I never took an account 
 of that stock, and in this connection care not 
 whether I am deserving or not. When I hear 
 praise coming, do I not elevate and arch myself to 
 hear it like the sky, and as impersonally ? Think 
 I appropriate any of it to my weak legs ? No. 
 Praise away till all is blue. 
 
 I see by the newspapers that the season for 
 making sugar is at hand. Now is the time, 
 whether you be rock, or white-maple, or hick 
 ory. I trust that you have prepared a store of 
 sap-tubs and sumach-spouts, and invested largely 
 in kettles. Early the first frosty morning, tap 
 your maples, the sap will not run in summer, 
 
136 LETTEKS. 
 
 you know. It matters not how little juice you 
 get, if you get all you can, and boil it down. 
 I made just one crystal of sugar once, one-twen 
 tieth of an inch cube, out of a pumpkin, and 
 it sufficed. Though the yield be no greater than 
 that, this is not less the season for it, and it will be 
 not the less sweet, nay, it will be infinitely the 
 sweeter. 
 
 Shall, then, the maple yield sugar, and not 
 man ? Shall the farmer be thus active, and surely 
 have so much sugar to show for it, before this 
 very March is gone, while I read the news 
 paper ? While he works in his sugar-camp let 
 me work in mine, for sweetness is in me, and 
 to sugar it shall come, it shall not all go to 
 leaves and wood. Am I not a sugar-maple man, 
 then? 
 
 Boil down the sweet sap which the spring 
 causes to flow within you. Stop not at syrup, 
 go on to sugar, though you present the world with 
 but a single crystal, a crystal not made from 
 trees in your yard, but from the new life that stirs 
 in your pores. Cheerfully skim your kettle, and 
 watch it set and crystallize, making a holiday of it 
 if you will. Heaven will be propitious to you as 
 to him. 
 
 Say to the farmer, There is your crop ; here 
 is mine. Mine is a sugar to sweeten sugar with. 
 If you will listen to me, I will sweeten your whole 
 load, your whole life. 
 
LETTERS. 137 
 
 Then will the callers ask, Where is B ? 
 
 He is in his sugar-camp on the mountain-side. 
 Let the world await him. 
 
 Then will the little boys bless you, and the great 
 boys too, for such sugar is the origin of many con 
 diments, B ians in the shops of Worcester, of 
 
 new form, with their mottos wrapped up in them. 
 
 Shall men taste only the sweetness of the maple 
 and the cane, the coming year ? 
 
 A walk over the crust to Asnybumskit, stand 
 ing there in its inviting simplicity, is tempting to 
 think of, making a fire on the snow under some 
 rock ! The very poverty of outward nature im 
 plies an inward wealth in the walker. What a 
 Golconda is he conversant with, thawing his fin 
 gers over such a blaze ! But, but 
 
 Have you read the new poem, " The Angel in 
 the House " ? Perhaps you will find it good for 
 
 you. 
 
 H. D. T. 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, May 21, 1856. 
 MR. B : 
 
 I have not for a long time been putting such 
 thoughts together as I should like to read to the 
 company you speak of. I have enough of that 
 sort to say, or even read, but not time now to 
 
138 LETTERS. 
 
 arrange it. Something I have prepared might 
 prove for their entertainment or refreshment per 
 chance ; but I would not like to have a hat car 
 ried round for it. I have just been reading some 
 papers to see if they would do for your company ; 
 but though I thought pretty well of them as long 
 as I read them to myself, when I got an auditor to 
 try them on, I felt that they would not answer. 
 How could I let you drum up a company to hear 
 them? In fine, what I have is either too scat 
 tered or loosely arranged, or too light, or else is 
 too scientific and matter of fact (I run a good deal 
 into that of late) for so hungry a company. 
 
 I am still a learner, not a teacher, feeding some 
 what omnivorously, browsing both stalk and 
 leaves ; but I shall perhaps be enabled to speak 
 with the more precision and authority by and by, 
 if philosophy and sentiment are not buried under 
 a multitude of details. 
 
 I do not refuse, but accept your invitation, only 
 changing the time. I consider myself invited to 
 Worcester once for all, and many thanks to the 
 inviter. 
 
 As for the Harvard excursion, will you let me 
 
 suggest another? Do you and B come to 
 
 Concord on Saturday, if the weather promises 
 well, and spend the Sunday here on the river or 
 hills, or both. So we shall save some of our money 
 (which is of next importance to our souls), and 
 lose I do not know what. You say you talked 
 
LETTERS. 139 
 
 of coming here before, now do it. I do not pro 
 pose this because I think that I am worth your 
 spending time with, but because I hope that we 
 may prove flint and steel to one another. It is 
 at most only an hour s ride farther, and you can 
 at any rate do what you please when you get here. 
 
 Then we will see if we have any apology to 
 offer for our existence. So come to Concord, 
 come to Concord, come to Concord ! or 
 your suit shall be defaulted. 
 
 As for the dispute about solitude and society, 
 any comparison is impertinent. It is an idling 
 down on the plain at the base of a mountain, in 
 stead of climbing steadily to its top. Of course 
 you will be glad of all the society you can get to 
 go up with. Will you go to glory with me ? is 
 the burden of the song. I love society so much 
 that I swallowed it all at a gulp, that is, all that 
 came in my way. It is not that we love to be 
 alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do 
 soar, the company grows thinner and thinner till 
 there is none at all. It is either the tribune on the 
 plain, a sermon on the mount, or a very private 
 ecstasy still higher up. We are not the less to 
 aim at the summits, though the multitude does not 
 ascend them. Use all the society that will abet 
 you. But perhaps I do not enter into the spirit 
 
 of your talk. 
 
 H. D. T. 
 
140 LETTERS. 
 
 TO MR. A. 
 
 CONCORD, September 1, 1856. 
 
 MB. A : 
 
 I remember, that, in the spring, you invited me 
 to visit you. I feel inclined to spend a day or two 
 with you and on your hills at this season, return 
 ing, perhaps, by way of Brattleboro. What if I 
 should take the cars for Walpole next Friday 
 morning? Are you at home? And will it be 
 convenient and agreeable to you to see me then ? 
 I will await an answer. 
 
 I am but poor company, and it will not be 
 worth the while to put yourself out on my ac 
 count ; yet from time to time I have some thoughts 
 which would be the better for an airing. I also 
 wish to get some hints from September on the 
 Connecticut to help me understand that season on 
 the Concord ; to snuff the musty fragrance of the 
 decaying year in the primitive woods. There is 
 considerable cellar-room in my nature for such 
 stores ; a whole row of bins waiting to be filled, 
 before I can celebrate my thanksgiving. Mould 
 in the richest of soils, yet I am not mould. It 
 will always- be found that one flourishing institu 
 tion exists and battens on another mouldering one. 
 The Present itself is parasitic to this extent. 
 Your fellow-traveller, 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
LETTERS. 141 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 EAGLESWOOD, November 19, 1850. 
 
 MR. B : 
 
 I have been here much longer than I expected, 
 but have deferred answering you, because I could 
 not foresee when I should return. I do not know 
 yet within three or four days. This uncertainty 
 makes it impossible for me to. appoint a day to 
 meet you, until it shall be too late to hear from 
 you again. I think, therefore, that I must go 
 straight home. I feel some objection to reading 
 that " What shall it profit " lecture again in 
 Worcester ; but if you are quite sure that it will 
 be worth the while (it is a grave consideration), I 
 will even make an independent journey from Con 
 cord for that purpose. I have read three of my old 
 lectures (that included) to the Eagleswood peo 
 ple, and, unexpectedly, with rare success, i. e. 
 I was aware that what I was saying was silently 
 taken in by their ears. 
 
 You must excuse me if I write mainly a busi 
 ness letter now, for I am sold for the time, am 
 merely Thoreau the surveyor here, and solitude 
 is scarcely obtainable in these parts. 
 
 Alcott has been here three times, and, Sunday 
 before hist, I went with him and Greeley, by invi 
 tation of the last, to G. s farm, thirty-six miles 
 north of New York. The next day, A. and I 
 heard Beecher preach ; and what was more, we 
 
142 LETTERS. 
 
 visited W the next morning, (A. had already 
 
 seen him,) and were much interested and pro 
 voked. He is apparently the greatest democrat 
 the world has seen. Kings and Aristocracy go by 
 the board at once, as they have long deserved to. 
 A remarkably strong though coarse nature, of a 
 sweet disposition, and much prized by his friends. 
 Though peculiar and rough in his exterior, his 
 skin (all over ( ? ) ) red, he is essentially a gentle 
 man. I am still somewhat in a quandary about 
 him, feel that he is essentially strange to me, at 
 any rate ; but I am surprised by the sight of him. 
 He is very broad, but, as I have said, not fine. 
 He said that I misapprehended him. I am not 
 quite sure that I do. He told us that he loved to 
 ride up and down Broadway all day on an omni 
 bus, sitting beside the driver, listening to the roar 
 of the carts, and sometimes gesticulating and de 
 claiming Homer at the top of his voice. He has 
 long been an editor and writer for the newspapers, 
 was editor of the New Orleans Crescent once ; 
 but now has no employment but to read and write 
 in the forenoon, and walk in the afternoon, like all 
 the rest of the scribbling gentry. 
 
 I shall probably be in Concord next week ; so 
 you can direct to me there. 
 In haste, 
 
 H. D. THOREAU. 
 
LETTERS. 143 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, December 6, 1856. 
 
 MR. B : 
 
 I trust that you got a note from me at Eagles- 
 wood, about a fortnight ago. I passed through 
 Worcester on the morning of the 25th of Novem 
 ber, and spent several hours (from 3.30 to 6.20) 
 in the travellers room at the depot, as in a dream, 
 it now seems. As the first Harlem train unex 
 pectedly connected with the first from Fitchburg, 
 I did not spend the forenoon with you as I had 
 anticipated, on account of baggage, &c. If it had 
 been a seasonable hour, I should have seen you, 
 i. e. if you had not gone to a horse-race. But 
 think of making a call at half past three in the 
 morning ! (would it not have implied a three 
 o clock in the morning courage in both you and 
 me ? ) as it were, ignoring the fact that mankind 
 are really not at home, are not out, but so 
 deeply in that they cannot be seen, nearly half 
 their hours at this season of the year. 
 
 I walked up and down the main street, at half 
 past five, in the dark, and paused long in front of 
 
 s store, trying to distinguish its features ; 
 
 considering whether I might safely leave his 
 " Putnam " in the door-handle, but concluded 
 not to risk it. Meanwhile a watchman (?) 
 seemed to be watching me, and I moved off. 
 Took another turn round there, and had the very 
 
144 LETTERS. 
 
 earliest offer of the Transcript from an urchin be 
 hind, whom I actually could not see, it was so 
 dark. So I withdrew, wondering if you and B. 
 would know that I had been there. You little 
 dream who is occupying Worcester when you are 
 all asleep. Several things occurred there that 
 night which I will venture to say were not put 
 into the Transcript. A cat caught a mouse at the 
 depOt, and gave it to her kitten to play with. So 
 that world-famous tragedy goes on by night as 
 well as by day, and nature is emphatically wrong. 
 Also I saw a young Irishman kneel before his 
 mother, as if in prayer, while she wiped a cinder 
 out of his eye with her tongue ; and I found that 
 it was never too late (or early?) to learn some 
 thing. These things transpired while you and B. 
 were, to all practical purposes, nowhere, and good 
 for nothing, not even for society, not for 
 horse-races, nor the taking back of a Putnam s 
 Magazine. It is true, I might have recalled you 
 to life, but it would have been a cruel act, con 
 sidering the kind of life you would have come 
 back to. 
 
 However, I would fain write to you now by 
 broad daylight, and report to you some of my life, 
 such as it is, and recall you to your life, which is 
 not always lived by you, even by daylight. 
 
 B ! B ! are you awake ? are you aware 
 
 what an ever-glorious morning this is, what 
 long-expected, never-to-be-repeated opportunity is 
 now offered to get life and knowledge ? 
 
LETTERS. 145 
 
 For my part, I am trying to wake up, to 
 wring slumber out of my pores ; for, generally, I 
 take events as unconcernedly as a fence post, 
 absorb wet and cold like it, and am pleasantly 
 tickled with lichens slowly spreading over me. 
 Could I not be content, then, to be a cedar post, 
 which lasts twenty-five years ? Would I not 
 rather be that than the farmer that set it ? or he 
 that preaches to that farmer ? and go to the heaven 
 of posts at last ? I think I should like that as well 
 as any would like it. But I should not care if I 
 sprouted into a living tree, put forth leaves and 
 flowers, and bore fruit. 
 
 I am grateful for what I am and have. My 
 thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how 
 contented one can be with nothing definite, only 
 a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. 
 I am ready to try this for the next ten thousand 
 years, and exhaust it. How sweet to think of ! 
 my extremities well charred, and my intellectual 
 part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot 
 for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O 
 how I laugh when I think of my vague, indefinite 
 riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my 
 wealth is not possession but enjoyment. 
 
 What are all these years made for? and now 
 another winter come, so much like the last ? Can t 
 we satisfy the beggars once for all ? 
 
 Have you got in your wood for this winter ? 
 What else have you got in ? Of what use a great 
 7 j 
 
146 LETTERS. 
 
 fire on the hearth, and a confounded little fire in 
 the heart ? Are you prepared to make a decisive 
 campaign, to pay for your costly tuition, to 
 pay for the suns of past summers, for happi 
 ness and unhappiness lavished upon you ? 
 
 Does not Time go by swifter than the swiftest 
 equine trotter or racker ? 
 
 Stir up . Remind him of his duties, which 
 
 outrun the date and span of Worcester s years past 
 and to come. Tell him to be sure that he is on 
 the main street, however narrow it may be, and to 
 have a lit sign, visible by night as well as by day. 
 
 Are they not patient waiters, they who wait 
 for us ? But even they shall not be losers. 
 
 December 7. 
 
 That Walt Whitman, of whom I wrote to you, 
 is the most interesting fact to me at present. I 
 have just read his second edition (which he gave 
 me), and it has done me more good than any read 
 ing for a long time. Perhaps I remember best the 
 poem of Walt Whitman, an American, and the 
 Sun-Down Poem. There are two or three pieces 
 in the book which are disagreeable, to say the 
 least ; simply sensual. He does not celebrate love 
 at all. It is as if the beasts spoke. I think that 
 men have not been ashamed of themselves without 
 reason. No doubt there have always been dens 
 where such deeds were unblushingly recited, and 
 it is no merit to compete with their inhabitants. 
 
LETTERS. 147 
 
 But even on this side he has spoken more truth 
 than any American or modern that I know. I 
 have found his poem exhilarating, encouraging. 
 As for its sensuality, and it may turn out to 
 be less sensual than it appears, I do not so much 
 wish that those parts were not written, as that 
 men and women were so pure, that they could read 
 them without harm, that is, without understanding 
 them. One woman told me that no woman could 
 read it, as if a man could read what a woman 
 could not. Of course Walt Whitman can com 
 municate to us no experience, and if we are 
 shocked, whose experience is it that we are re 
 minded of ? 
 
 On the whole, it sounds to me very brave and 
 American, after whatever deductions. I do not 
 believe that all the sermons, so called, that have 
 been preached in this land put together are equal 
 to it for preaching. 
 
 We ought to rejoice greatly in him. He occa 
 sionally suggests something a little more than 
 human. You can t confound him with the other 
 inhabitants of Brooklyn or New York. How 
 they must shudder when they read him ! He is 
 awfully good. 
 
 To be sure I sometimes feel a little imposed 
 on. By his heartiness and broad generalities he 
 puts me into a liberal frame of mind prepared to 
 see wonders, as it were, sets me upon a hill or 
 in the midst of a plain, stirs me well up, and 
 
148 LETTERS. 
 
 then throws in a thousand of brick. Though 
 
 rude and sometimes ineffectual, it is a great prim 
 itive poem, an alarum or trumpet-note ringing 
 through the American camp. Wonderfully like 
 the Orientals, too, considering that when I asked 
 him if he had read them, he answered, " No : 
 tell me about them." 
 
 I did not get far in conversation with him, 
 two more being present, and among the few 
 things which I chanced to say, I remember that 
 one was, in answer to him as representing Amer 
 ica, that I did not think much of America or of 
 politics, and so on, which may have been some 
 what of a damper to him. 
 
 Since I have seen him, I find that I am not dis 
 turbed by any brag or egoism in his book. He 
 may turn out the least of a braggart of all, having 
 a better right to be confident. 
 
 He is a great fellow. 
 
 H. T. D. 
 
 TO MR. W. 
 
 CONCORD, December 12, 1856. 
 
 MR. W : 
 
 It is refreshing to hear of your earnest purpose 
 with respect to your culture, and I can send you 
 no better wish than that you may not be thwarted 
 
LETTERS. 149 
 
 by the cares and temptations of life. Depend on 
 it, now is the accepted time, and probably you will 
 never find yourself better disposed or freer to 
 attend to your culture than at this moment. 
 When They who inspire us with the idea are 
 ready, shall not we be ready also? 
 
 I do not remember anything which Confucius 
 has said directly respecting man s "origin, pur 
 pose, and destiny." He was more practical than 
 that. Pie is full of wisdom applied to human rela 
 tions, to the private life, the family, gov 
 ernment, &c. It is remarkable that, according to 
 his own account, the sum and substance of his 
 teaching is, as you know, to do as you would be 
 done by. 
 
 He also said (I translate from the French), 
 " Conduct yourself suitably toward the persons of 
 your family, then you will be able to instruct and 
 to direct a nation of men." 
 
 " To nourish one s self with a little rice, to drink 
 water, to have only his bended arm to support his 
 head, is a state which has also its satisfaction. To 
 be rich and honored by iniquitous means, is for 
 me as the floating cloud which passes." 
 
 " As soon as a child is born he must respect its 
 faculties : the knowledge which will come to it by 
 and by does not resemble at all its present state. 
 If it arrive at the age of forty or fifty years, with 
 out having learned anything, it is no more worthy 
 of any respect." This last, I think, will speak to 
 your condition. 
 
150 LETTERS. 
 
 But at this rate, I might fill many letters. 
 
 Our acquaintance with the ancient Hindoos is 
 not at all personal. The full names that can be 
 relied upon are very shadowy. It is, however, 
 tangible works that we know. The best I think of 
 are the Bhagvat Geeta (an episode in an ancient 
 heroic poem called the Mahabarat), the Vedas, the 
 Vishnu Purana, the Institutes of Menu, &c. 
 
 I cannot say that Swede nborg has been directly 
 and practically valuable to me, for I have not been 
 a reader of him, except to a slight extent ; but I 
 have the highest regard for him, and trust that I 
 shall read his works in some world or other. He 
 had a wonderful knowledge of our interior and 
 spiritual life, though his illuminations are occasion 
 ally blurred by trivialities. He comes nearer to 
 answering, or attempting to answer, literally, 
 your questions concerning man s origin, purpose, 
 and destiny, than any of the worthies I have re 
 ferred to. But I think that that is not altogether 
 a recommendation ; since such an answer to these 
 questions cannot be discovered any more than per 
 petual motion, for which no reward is now offered. 
 The noblest man it is, methinks, that knows, and 
 by his life suggests, the most about these things. 
 Crack away at these nuts, however, as long as 
 you can, - the very exercise will ennoble you, 
 and you may get something better than the an 
 swer you expect. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 H. D. THOREAU. 
 
LETTERS. 151 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, December 31, 1856. 
 
 MR. B : 
 
 I think it will not be worth the while for 
 me to come to Worcester to lecture at all this 
 year. It will be better to wait till I am perhaps 
 unfortunately more in that line. My writing 
 has not taken the shape of lectures, and therefore 
 I should be obliged to read one of three or four 
 old lectures, the best of which I have read to some 
 of your auditors before. I carried that one which 
 I call " Walking, or the Wild," to Amherst, N. H., 
 the evening of that cold Thursday, and I am to 
 read another at Fitchburg, February 3. I am 
 simply their hired man. This will probably be 
 the extent of my lecturing hereabouts. 
 
 I must depend on meeting Mr. W some 
 
 other time. 
 
 Perhaps it always costs me more than it comes 
 to to lecture before a promiscuous audience. It is 
 an irreparable injury done to my modesty even, 
 I become so indurated. 
 
 O solitude ! obscurity ! meanness ! I never 
 triumph so as when I have the least success in 
 my neighbor s eyes. The lecturer gets fifty dol 
 lars a night; but what becomes of his winter? 
 What consolation will it be hereafter to have fifty 
 thousand dollars for living in the world ? I should 
 like not to exchange any of my life for money. 
 
152 LETTERS. 
 
 These, you may think, are reasons for not lec 
 turing, when you have no great opportunity. It is 
 even so, perhaps. I could lecture on dry oak 
 leaves, I could ; but who could hear me ? If I 
 were to try it on any large audience, I fear it 
 would be no gain to them, and a positive loss to 
 me. I should have behaved rudely toward my 
 rustling friends. 
 
 I am surveying, instead of lecturing at present. 
 Let me have a skimming from your u pan of un- 
 
 wrinkled cream." 
 
 H. D. T. 
 
 TO MR. R. 
 
 COKCORD, April 1, 1857. 
 
 DEAR R : 
 
 I got your note of welcome, night before last. 1 
 expect, if the weather is favorable, to take the 4.30 
 train from Boston to-morrow, Thursday, p. M., for 
 I hear of no noon train, and shall be glad to find 
 your wagon at Tarkile Hill, for I see it will be 
 rather late for going across lots. 
 
 I have seen all the spring signs you mention, 
 and a few more, even here. Nay, I heard one frog 
 peep nearly a week ago, metbinks the very first 
 one in all this region. I wish that there were a 
 few more signs of spring in myself; however, I 
 take it that there are as many within us as we 
 think we hear without us. I am decent for a 
 
LETTERS. 153 
 
 steady pace, but not yet for a race. I have a little 
 cold at present, and you speak of rheumatism 
 about the head and shoulders. Your frost is not 
 quite out. I suppose that the earth itself has a 
 little cold and rheumatism about these times ; but 
 all these things together produce a very fair general 
 result. In a concert, you know, we must sing our 
 parts feebly sometimes, that we may not injure the 
 general effect. I shouldn t wonder if my ...two- 
 year-old invalidity had been a positively charming 
 feature to some amateurs favorably located. Why 
 not a blasted man as well as a blasted tree, on your 
 lawn ? 
 
 If you should happen not to see me by the train 
 named, do not go again, but wait at home for me, 
 or a note from 
 
 Yours, 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU, 
 
 TO MR. W. 
 
 CONCORD, April 26, 1857. 
 MR. W : 
 
 I see that you are turning a broad furrow among 
 the books, but I trust that some very private jour 
 nal all the while holds its own through their midst. 
 Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often 
 as they do us this service, we lay them aside. I 
 7* 
 
154 LETTERS. 
 
 should say,- read Goethe s Autobiography, by all 
 means, also Gibbon s, Haydon the Painter s, and 
 our Franklin s of course ; perhaps also Alfieri s, 
 Benvenuto Cellini s, and De Quincey s Confessions 
 of an Opium Eater, since you like autobiog 
 raphy. I think you must read Coleridge again, 
 and further, skipping all his theology, i. e. if you 
 value precise definitions and a discriminating use 
 of language. By the way, read De Quincey s 
 Reminiscences of Coleridge and Wordsworth. 
 
 How shall we account for our pursuits, if they 
 are original ? We get the language with which 
 to describe our various lives out of a common 
 mint. If others have their losses which they are 
 busy repairing, so have I mine, and their hound 
 and horse may perhaps be the symbols of some of 
 them. But also I have lost, or am in danger of 
 losing, a far finer and more ethereal treasure, 
 which commonly no loss of, which they are con 
 scious, will symbolize. This I answer hastily and 
 with some hesitation, according as I now under 
 stand my words 
 
 Methinks a certain polygamy with its troubles 
 is the fate of almost all men. They are 
 married to two wives : their genius (a celestial 
 muse), and also to some fair daughter of the 
 earth. Unless these two were fast friends before 
 marriage, and so are afterward, there will be but 
 little peace in the house. 
 
LETTERS. 155 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, August 18, 1857. 
 
 MR. B : 
 
 Fifteentlily. It seems to me that you need some 
 absorbing pursuit. It does not matter much what it 
 is, so it be honest. Such employment will be favor 
 able to your development in more characteristic and 
 important directions. You know there must be 
 impulse enough for steerage way, though it be not 
 toward your port, to prevent your drifting help 
 lessly on to rocks or shoals. Some sails are set 
 for this purpose only. There is the large fleet of 
 scholars and men of science, for instance, always 
 to be seen standing off and on on every coast, and 
 saved thus from running on to reefs, who will at 
 last run into their proper haven, we trust. 
 
 It is a pity you were not here with and 
 
 . I think that in this case, for a rarity, the 
 
 more the merrier. 
 
 You perceived that I did not entertain the idea 
 of our going together to Maine on such an excur 
 sion as I had planned. The more I thought of it, 
 the more imprudent it appeared to me. I did 
 think to have written to you before going, though 
 not to propose your going also ; but I went at last 
 very suddenly, and could only have written a busi 
 ness letter, if I had tried, when there was no busi 
 ness to be accomplished. I have now returned, 
 and think I have had a quite profitable journey, 
 
156 LETTERS. 
 
 chiefly from associating with an intelligent Indian. 
 My companion, E H , also found his ac 
 count in it, though he suffered considerably from 
 being obliged to carry unusual loads over wet and 
 rough " carries," in one instance five miles 
 through a swamp, where the water was frequently 
 up to our knees, and the fallen timber higher than 
 our heads. He went over the ground three times, 
 not being able to carry all his load at once. This 
 prevented his ascending Ktaadn. Our best nights 
 were those when it rained the hardest, on account 
 of the mosquitos. I speak of these things, which 
 were not unexpected, merely to account for my 
 not inviting you. 
 
 Having returned, I flatter myself that the world 
 appears in some respects a little larger, and not, as 
 usual, smaller and shallower, for having extended 
 my range. I have made a short excursion into 
 the new world which the Indian dwells in, or is. 
 He begins where we leave off. It is worth the 
 while to detect new faculties in man, he is so 
 much the more divine ; . and anything that fairly 
 excites our admiration expands us. The Indian, 
 who can find his way so wonderfully in the woods, 
 possesses so much intelligence which the white 
 man does not, and it increases my own capacity, 
 as well as faith, to observe it. I rejoice to find that 
 intelligence flows in other channels than I knew. 
 
 o 
 
 It redeems for me portions of what seemed brut 
 ish before. 
 
LETTERS. 157 
 
 It is a great satisfaction to find that your oldest 
 convictions are permanent. With regard to essen 
 tials, I have never had occasion to change my 
 mind. The aspect of the world varies from year 
 to year, as the landscape is differently clothed, 
 but I find that the truth is still true, and I never 
 regret any emphasis which it may have inspired. 
 Ktaadn is there still, but much more surely my old 
 conviction is there, resting with more than moun 
 tain breadth and weight on the world, the source 
 still of fertilizing streams, and affording glorious 
 views from its summit, if I can get up to it again. 
 As the mountains still stand on the plain, and far 
 more unchangeable and permanent, stand still 
 grouped around, farther or nearer to my maturer 
 eye, the ideas which I have entertained, the ever 
 lasting teats from which we draw our nourishment. 
 
 H. D. T. 
 
 TO MR., D. R. 
 
 CONCORD, August 18, 1857. 
 
 DEAR SIR : 
 
 Your Wilson Flagg seems a serious person, and 
 it is encouraging to hear of a contemporary who 
 recognizes Nature so squarely, and selects such a 
 theme as "Barns." (I would rather "Mount 
 Auburn" were omitted.) But he is not alert 
 enough. He wants stirring up with a pole. He 
 
158 LETTERS. 
 
 should practise turning a series of somersets rap 
 idly, or jump up and see how many times he can 
 strike his feet together before coming down. Let 
 him make the earth turn round now the other 
 way, and whet his wits on it, whichever way it 
 goes, as on a grindstone ; in short, see how many 
 ideas he can entertain at once. 
 
 His style, as I remember, is singularly vague (I 
 refer to the book), and, before I got to the end of 
 the sentences, I was off the track. If you indulge 
 in long periods, you must be sure to have a snap 
 per at the end. As for style of writing, if one has 
 anything to say, it drops from him simply and 
 directly, as a stone falls to the ground. There 
 are no two ways about it, but down it comes, and 
 he may stick in the points and stops wherever he 
 can get a chance. New ideas come into this world 
 somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an 
 explosion, and perhaps somebody s castle-roof per 
 forated. To try to polish the stone in its descent, to 
 give it a peculiar turn, and make it whistle a tune, 
 perchance, would be of no use, if it were possible. 
 Your polished stuff turns out not to be meteoric, 
 but of this earth. However, there is plenty of 
 time, and Nature is an admirable schoolmistress. 
 
 Speaking of correspondence, you ask me if I 
 " cannot turn over a new leaf in that line." I 
 certainly could if I were to receive it ; but just 
 then I looked up and saw that your page was 
 dated " May 10," though mailed in August, and 
 
LETTERS. . 159 
 
 it occurred to me that I had seen you since that 
 date this year. Looking again, it appeared that 
 your note was written in 56 ! ! However, it was 
 a new leaf to me, and I turned it over with as much 
 interest as if it had heen written the day before. 
 Perhaps you kept it so long, in order that the 
 manuscript and subject-matter might be more in 
 keeping with the old-fashioned paper on which it 
 was written. 
 
 I travelled the length of Cape Cod on foot, soon 
 after you were here, and, within a few days, have 
 returned from the wilds of Maine, where I have 
 made a journey of three hundred and twenty-five 
 miles with a canoe and an Indian, and a single 
 
 white companion, E H , Esq., of this 
 
 town, lately from California, traversing the 
 headwaters of the Kennebeck, Penobscot, and St. 
 John s. 
 
 Can t you extract any advantage out of that de 
 pression of spirits you refer to ? It suggests to me 
 cider-mills, wine-presses, &c., &c. All kinds of 
 pressure or power should be used and made to 
 turn some kind of machinery. 
 
 C was just leaving Concord for Plymouth 
 
 when I arrived, but said he should be here again in 
 two or three days. 
 
 Please remember me to your family, and say 
 that I have at length learned to sing Tom Bowlin 
 according to the notes. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
160 LETTERS. 
 
 TO MR. D. K. 
 
 CONCORD, September 9, 1857. 
 
 FRIEND R : 
 
 I thank you for your kind invitation to visit 
 you, but I have taken so many vacations this 
 year, at New Bedford, Cape Cod, and Maine, 
 that any more relaxation call it rather dis 
 sipation will cover me with shame and disgrace. 
 I have not earned what I have already enjoyed. 
 As some heads cannot carry much wine, so it 
 would seem that I cannot bear so much society as 
 you can. I have an immense appetite for solitude, 
 like an infant for sleep, and if I don t get enough 
 of it this year, I shall cry all the next. 
 
 My mother s house is full at present ; but if it 
 were not, I would have no right to invite you 
 hither, while entertaining such designs as I have 
 hinted at. However, if you care to storm the 
 town, I will engage to take some afternoon walks 
 with you, retiring into profoundest solitude the 
 most sacred part of the day. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 H. D. T. 
 
LETTERS. 161 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, November 16, 1857. 
 
 MR. B : 
 
 You have got the start again. It was I that 
 owed you a letter or two, if I mistake not. 
 
 They make a great ado now-a-days about hard 
 times ; but I think that the community generally, 
 ministers and all, take a wrong view of the mat 
 ter, though, some of the ministers preaching ac 
 cording to a formula, may pretend to take a right 
 one. This general failure, both private and pub 
 lic, is rather occasion for rejoicing, as reminding us 
 whom we have at the helm, that justice is al 
 ways done. If our merchants did not most of 
 them fail, and the banks too, my faith in the old 
 laws of the world would be staggered. The state 
 ment that ninety-six in a hundred doing such busi 
 ness surely break down, is perhaps the sweetest 
 fact that statistics have revealed, exhilarating as 
 the fragrance of sallows in spring. Does it not 
 say somewhere, " The Lord reigneth, let the earth 
 rejoice"? If thousands are thrown out of em 
 ployment, it suggests that they were not well 
 employed. Why don t they take the hint ? It is 
 not enough to be industrious ; so are the ants. 
 What are you industrious about ? 
 
 The merchants and company have long laughed 
 at transcendentalism, higher laws, &c., crying, 
 " None of your moonshine," as if they were an- 
 
162 LETTERS 
 
 cliored to something not only definite, but sure 
 and permanent. If there was any institution 
 which was presumed to rest on a solid and secure 
 basis, and more than any other represented this 
 boasted common sense, prudence, and practical 
 talent, it was the bank ; and now those very banks 
 are found to be mere reeds shaken by the w r ind. 
 Scarcely one in the land has kept its promise. It 
 would seem as if you only need live forty years 
 in any age of this world, to see its most promising 
 government become the government of Kansas, 
 and banks nowhere. Not merely the Brook 
 Farm and Fourierite communities, but now the 
 community generally has failed. But there is the 
 moonshine still, serene, beneficent, and unchanged. 
 Hard times, I say, have this value, among others, 
 that they show us what such promises are worth, 
 where the sure banks are. I heard some mer 
 chant praised the other day, because he had paid 
 some of his debts, though it took nearly all he 
 had (why, I ve done as much as that myself many 
 times, and a litttle more), and then gone to board. 
 What if he has ? I hope he s got a good boarding- 
 place, and can pay for it. It s not everybody that 
 can. However, in my opinion, it is cheaper to 
 keep house, i. e. if you don t keep too big a one. 
 
 Men will tell you sometimes that " money s 
 hard." That shows it was not made to eat, I 
 say. Only think of a man in this new world, in 
 his log cabin, in the midst of a corn and potato 
 
LETTERS. 163 
 
 patch, with a sheepfold on one side, talking about 
 money being hard ! So are flints hard ; there is 
 no alloy in them. What has that to do with his 
 raising his food, cutting his wood (or breaking it), 
 keeping in-doors when it rains, and, if need be, 
 spinning and weaving his clothes ? Some of those 
 who sank with the steamer the other day found 
 out that money was heavy too. Think of a man s 
 priding himself on this kind of wealth, as if it 
 greatly enriched him. As if one struggling in 
 mid-ocean with a bag of gold on his back should 
 gasp out, " I am worth a hundred thousand dol 
 lars." I see them struggling just as ineffectually 
 on dry land, nay, even more hopelessly, for, in the 
 former case, rather than sink, they w r ill finally let 
 the bag go ; but in the latter they are pretty sure 
 to hold and go down with it. I see them swim 
 ming about in their great-coats, collecting their 
 rents, really getting their dues, drinking bitter 
 draughts which only increase their thirst, be 
 coming more and more water-logged, till finally 
 they sink plumb down to the bottom. But enough 
 of this. 
 
 Have you ever read Ruskin s books ? If not, I 
 would recommend you to try the second and third 
 volumes (not parts) of his Modern Painters. I 
 am now reading the fourth, and have read most of 
 his other books lately. They are singularly good 
 and encouraging, though not without crudeness 
 and bigotry. The themes in the volumes referred 
 
164 LETTERS. 
 
 to are Infinity, Beauty, Imagination, Love of Na 
 ture, &c., all treated in a very living manner. 
 I am rather surprised by them. It is remarkable 
 that these things should be said with reference 
 to painting chiefly, rather than literature. The 
 Seven Lamps of Architecture, too, is made of good 
 stuff; but, as I remember, there is too much about 
 art in it for me and the Hottentots. We want to 
 know about matters and things in general. Our 
 house is as yet a hut. 
 
 You must have been enriched by your solitary 
 walk over the mountains. I suppose that I feel the 
 same awe when on their summits that many do on 
 entering a church. To see what kind of earth that 
 is on which you have a house and garden some 
 where, perchance ! It is equal to the lapse of 
 many years. You must ascend a mountain to 
 learn your relation to matter, and so to your own 
 body, for it is at home there, though you are not. 
 It might have been composed there, and will have 
 no further to go to return to dust there, than in 
 your garden ; but your spirit inevitably comes 
 away, and brings your body with it, if it lives. 
 Just as awful really, and as glorious, is your gar 
 den. See how I can play with my fingers ! They 
 are the funniest companions I have ever found. 
 Where did they come from ? What strange con 
 trol I have over them! Who am I? What are 
 they? those little peaks call them Madison, 
 Jefferson, Lafayette. What is the matter f My 
 
LETTERS. 165 
 
 fingers ten, I say. Why, erelong, they may 
 form the topmost crystal of Mount Washington. 
 I go up there to see my body s cousins. There 
 are some fingers, toes, bowels, &c., that I take an 
 interest in, and therefore I am interested in all 
 their relations. 
 
 Let me suggest a theme for you : to state to 
 yourself precisely and completely what that walk 
 over the mountains amounted to for you, re 
 turning to this essay again and again, until you 
 are satisfied that all that was important in your 
 experience is in it. Give this good reason to your 
 self for having gone over the mountains, for man 
 kind is ever going over a mountain. Don t suppose 
 that you can tell it precisely the first dozen times 
 you try, but at em again, especially when, after a 
 sufficient pause, you suspect that you are touching 
 the heart or summit of the matter, reiterate your 
 blows there, and account for the mountain to your 
 self. Not that the story need be long, but it will 
 take a long while to make it short. It did not take 
 very long to get over the mountain, you thought ; 
 but have you got over it indeed ? If you have been 
 to the top of Mount Washington, let me ask, 
 what did you find there ? That is the way they 
 prove witnesses, you know. Going up there and 
 being blown on is nothing. We never do much 
 climbing while we are there, but we eat our 
 luncheon, &c., very much as at home. It is after 
 we get home that we really go over the mountain, 
 
166 LETTERS. 
 
 if ever. What did the mountain say ? What 
 did the mountain do ? 
 
 I keep a mountain anchored off eastward a little 
 way, which I ascend in my dreams both awake 
 and asleep. Its broad base spreads over a village 
 or two, which do not know it; neither does it 
 know them, nor do I when I ascend it. I can see 
 its general outline as plainly now in my mind as 
 that of Wachuset. I do not invent in the least, 
 but state exactly what I see. I find that I go up 
 it when I am light-footed and earnest. It ever 
 smokes like an altar with its sacrifice. I am not 
 aware that a single villager frequents it or knows 
 of it. I keep this mountain to ride instead of a 
 horse. 
 
 Do you not mistake about seeing Moosehead 
 Lake from Mount Washington? That must be 
 about one hundred and twenty miles distant, or 
 nearly twice as far as the Atlantic, which last 
 some doubt if they can see thence. Was it not 
 Umbagog ? 
 
 Dr. Solger has been lecturing in the ves-try in 
 this town on Geography, to Sanborn s scholars, for 
 
 several months past, at five P. M. E and 
 
 A have been to hear him. I was surprised 
 
 when the former asked me, the other day, if I was 
 not going to hear Dr. Solger. What, to be sitting 
 in a meeting-house cellar at that time of day, 
 when you might possibly be out-doors ! I never 
 thought of such a thing. What was the sun made 
 
LETTERS. 167 
 
 for ? If he does not prize daylight, I do. Let 
 him lecture to owls and dormice. He must be a 
 wonderful lecturer indeed who can keep me in 
 doors at such an hour, when the night is coming 
 in which no man can walk. 
 
 Are you in want of amusement now-a-days ? 
 Then play a little at the game of getting a living. 
 There never was anything equal to it. Do it tem 
 perately, though, and don t sweat. Don t let this 
 secret out, for I have a design against the Opera. 
 OPERA ! ! Pass along the exclamations, devil. 
 
 Now is the time to become conversant with 
 your wood-pile (this comes under Work for the 
 Month), and be sure you put some warmth into it 
 by your mode of getting it. Do not consent to 
 be passively warmed. An intense degree of that 
 is the hotness that is threatened. But a positive 
 warmth within can withstand the fiery furnace, as 
 the vital heat of a living man can withstand the 
 heat that cooks meat. 
 
 HENKY D. THOREAU. 
 
168 LETTERS. 
 
 TO MR. D. R. 
 
 CONCORD, June 30, 1858. 
 
 FRIEND K : 
 
 I am on the point of starting for the White 
 
 Mountains in a wagon with my neighbor E 
 
 II , and I write to you now rather to apologize 
 
 for not writing, than to answer worthily your 
 three notes. I thank you heartily for them. You 
 will not care for a little delay in acknowledging 
 them, since your date shows that you can afford to 
 wait. Indeed, my head has been so full of com 
 pany, &c., that I could not reply to you fitly be 
 fore, nor can I now. 
 
 As for preaching to men these days in the Wai- 
 den strain, is it of any consequence to preach to 
 an audience of men who can fail, or who can be 
 revived ? There are few beside. Is it any success 
 to interest these parties ? If a man has speculated 
 and failed, he will probably do these things again, 
 in spite of you or me. 
 
 I confess that it- is rare that I rise to sentiment 
 in my relations to men, ordinarily to a mere 
 patient, or may be wholesome good-will. I can 
 imagine something more, but the truth compels 
 me to regard the ideal and the actual as two 
 things. 
 
 Channing has come, and as suddenly gone, and 
 left a short poem, " Near Home," published (?) 
 or printed by Monroe, which I have hardly had 
 
LETTERS. 169 
 
 time to glance at. As you may guess, I learn 
 nothing of you from him. 
 
 You already foresee my answer to your invita 
 tion to make you a summer visit : I am bound for 
 the mountains. But I trust that you have van 
 quished, ere this, those dusky demons that seem to 
 lurk around the Head of the River. You know 
 that this warfare is nothing but a kind of night 
 mare, and it is our thoughts alone which give 
 those tmworthies any body or existence. 
 
 I made an excursion with B , of Worcester, 
 
 to Monadnock, a few weeks since. We took our 
 blankets and food, spent two nights on the moun 
 tain, and did not go into a house. 
 
 A has been very busy for a long time re 
 pairing an old shell of a house, and I have seen 
 very little of him. I have looked more at the 
 
 houses which birds build. W made us all 
 
 very generous presents from his nursery in the 
 spring. Especially did he remember A . 
 
 Excuse me for not writing any more at present, 
 and remember me to your family. 
 Yours, 
 
 H. D. THOEEAU. 
 
170 LETTERS. 
 
 TO MR. D. R. 
 
 CONCORD. November 6, 1858. 
 
 FRIEND R : 
 
 I was much pleased with your lively and life 
 like account of your voyage. You were more 
 than repaid for your trouble after all. The coast 
 of Nova Scotia, which you sailed along from 
 Windsor westward, is particularly interesting to 
 the historian of this country, having been settled 
 earlier than Plymouth. Your " Isle of Haut " is 
 properly " Isle Haute," or the High Island of 
 Champlain s map. There is another off the coast 
 of Maine. By the way, the American elk, of 
 American authors, (Cervus Canadensis,) is a dis 
 tinct animal from the moose (Cervus alces), though 
 the latter is also called elk by many. 
 
 You drew a very vivid portrait of the Australian, 
 short and stout, with a pipe in his mouth, and 
 his book inspired by beer, Pot First, Pot Second, 
 &c. I suspect that he must be pot-bellied withal. 
 Methinks I see the smoke going up from him as 
 from a cottage on the moor. If he does not 
 quench his genius with his beer, it may burst into 
 a clear flame at last. However, perhaps he inten 
 tionally adopts the low style. 
 
 What do you mean by that ado about smoking, 
 and my " purer tastes " ? I should like his pipe 
 as well as his beer, at least. Neither of them is 
 so bad as to be " highly connected," which you say 
 
LETTERS. 171 
 
 he is, unfortunately. No ! I expect nothing but 
 pleasure in " smoke from your pipe." 
 
 You and the Australian must have put your 
 heads together when you concocted those titles, 
 with pipes in your mouths over a pot of beer. I 
 suppose that your chapters are, Whiff the First, 
 Whiff the Second, &c. But of course it is a more 
 modest expression for " Fire from my Genius." 
 
 You must have been very busy since you came 
 back, or before you sailed, to have brought out 
 your History, of whose publication I had not 
 heard. I suppose that I have read it in the Mer 
 cury. Yet I am curious to see how it looks in a 
 volume, with your name on the title-page. 
 
 I am more curious still about the poems. Pray 
 put some sketches into the book : your shanty for 
 
 frontispiece ; A and W s boat (if you 
 
 can) running for Cuttyhunk in a tremendous 
 gale ; not forgetting " Be honest boys," &c., near 
 by ; the Middleborough Ponds, with a certain 
 island looming in the distance ; the Quaker meet 
 ing-house, and the Brady House, if you like ; the 
 villagers catching smelts with dip-nets in the 
 twilight, at the Head of the River, &c., &c. Let 
 it be a local and villageous book as much as pos 
 sible. Let some one make a characteristic selec 
 tion of mottoes from your shanty walls, and 
 sprinkle them in an irregular manner, at all angles, 
 over the fly leaves and margins, as a man stamps 
 his name in a hurry ; and also canes, pipes, and 
 
172 LETTERS. 
 
 jackknives, of all your patterns, about the frontis 
 piece. I can think of plenty of devices for tail 
 pieces. Indeed, I should like to see a hair-pillow, 
 accurately drawn, for one ; a cat, with a bell on, for 
 another ; the old horse, with his age printed in the 
 hollow of his back ; half a cocoa-nut shell by a 
 spring ; a sheet of blotted paper ; a settle occupied 
 by a settler at full length, &c., &c., &c. Call all 
 the arts to your aid. 
 
 Don t wait for the Indian summer, but bring it 
 
 with you. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 H. D. T. 
 
 P. S. Let me ask a favor. I am trying to write 
 something about the autumnal tints, and I wish to 
 
 know how much our trees differ from Eno-lish and 
 
 & 
 
 European ones in this respect. Will you observe, 
 or learn for me, what English or European trees, 
 if any, still retain their leaves in Mr. Arnold s 
 garden (the gardener will supply the true names) ; 
 and also if the foliage of any (and what) Euro 
 pean or foreign trees there have been brilliant the 
 past month. If you will do this you will greatly 
 oblige me. I return the newspaper with this. 
 
LETTERS. 173 
 
 TO ME. B. 
 
 COXCORD, January 1, 1859. 
 
 It may interest you to hear that C has been 
 
 this way again, via Montreal and Lake Huron, go 
 ing to the West Indies, or rather to Weiss-nicht- 
 wo, whither he urges me to accompany him. He 
 is rather more demonstrative than before, and, on 
 the whole, what would be called " a good fellow," 
 is a man of principle, and quite reliable, but 
 very peculiar. I have been to New Bedford with 
 
 him, to show him a whaling town and R . I 
 
 was glad to hear that you had called on R . 
 
 How did you like him ? I suspect that you did 
 not see one another fairly. 
 
 I have lately got back to that glorious society, 
 called Solitude, where we meet our Friends con 
 tinually, and can imagine the outside world also to 
 be peopled. Yet some of my acquaintance would 
 fain hustle me into the almshouse for the sake of 
 society, as if I were pining for that diet, when I 
 seem to myself a most befriended man, and find 
 constant employment. However, they do not be 
 lieve a word I say. They have got a club, the 
 handle of which is in the Parker House at Boston, 
 and with this they beat me from time to time, ex 
 pecting to make me tender or minced meat so, fit 
 for a club to dine off. 
 
174 LETTERS. 
 
 " Hercules with his club 
 The Dragon did drub ; 
 But More of More Hall, 
 With nothing at all, 
 He slew the Dragon of Wantley." 
 
 Ah ! that More of More Hall knew what fair play 
 
 was. C , who wrote to me about it once, 
 
 brandishing the club vigorously, being set on by 
 another, probably, says now, seriously, that he is 
 sorry to find by my letters that I am " absorbed 
 in politics," and adds, begging my pardon for his 
 plainness, " Beware of an extraneous life ! " and so 
 he does his duty, and washes his hands of me. I 
 tell him that it is as if he should say to the sloth, 
 that fellow that creeps so slowly along a tree, and 
 cries ai from time to time, " Beware of dancing ! " 
 
 The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering 
 for want of society. Was never a case like it ? 
 First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. 
 Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought 
 it was indigestion of the society I got. 
 
 As for the Parker House, I went there once, 
 when the Club was away, but I found it hard to see 
 through the cigar smoke, and men were deposited 
 about in chairs over the marble floor, as thick as 
 legs of bacon in a smoke-house. It was all smoke, 
 and no salt, attic or other. The only room in 
 Boston which I visit with alacrity, is the Gentle 
 men s Room at the Fitchburg Dep8t, where I wait 
 for the cars, sometimes for, two hours, in order to 
 get out of town. It is a paradise to the Parker 
 
LETTERS. 175 
 
 House, for no smoking is allowed, and there is far 
 more retirement. A large and respectable club of 
 us hire it (Town and Country Club), and I am 
 pretty sure to find some one there whose face is 
 set the same w r ay as my own. 
 
 My last essay, on which I am still engaged, is 
 called Autumnal Tints. I do not know how read 
 able (i. e. by me to others) it will be. 
 
 I met Mr. J the other night at Emerson s, 
 
 at an Alcottian conversation, at which, however, 
 
 A did not talk much, being disturbed by 
 
 J "s opposition. The latter is a hearty man 
 
 enough, with whom you can differ very satisfac 
 torily, on account of both his doctrines and his 
 good temper. He utters quasi philanthropic dog 
 mas in a metaphysic dress ; but they are for all 
 practical purposes very crude. He charges society 
 with all the crime committed, and praises the 
 criminal for committing it. But I think that all 
 the remedies he suggests out of his head, for 
 he goes no farther, hearty as he is, would leave 
 us about where we are now. For, of course, it is 
 not by a gift of turkeys on Thanksgiving Day that 
 he proposes to convert the criminal, but by a true 
 sympathy with each one, with him, among the 
 rest, who lyingly tells the world from the gallows 
 that he has never been treated kindly by a single 
 mortal since he was born. But it is not so easy a 
 thing to sympathize with another, though you may 
 have the best disposition to do it. There is Dob- 
 
176 LETTERS. 
 
 son over the hill. Have not you and I and all 
 the world been trying, ever since he was born, to 
 sympathize with him ? (as doubtless he with us,) 
 and yet we have got no further than to send him 
 to the House of Correction once at least ; and he, 
 on the other hand, as I hear, has sent us to an 
 other place several times. This is the real state 
 of things, as I understand it, as least so far as 
 J s remedies go. We are now, alas! exer 
 cising what chanty we actually have, and new 
 laws would not give us any more. But, per 
 chance, we might make some improvements in the 
 House of Correction. You and I are Dobson ; 
 what will J do for us ? 
 
 Have you found at last in your wanderings a 
 place where the solitude is sweet ? 
 
 What mountain are you camping on now-a- 
 days ? Though I had a good time at the moun 
 tains, I confess that the journey did not bear any 
 fruit that I know of. I did not expect it would. 
 The mode of it was not simple and adventurous 
 enough. You must first have made an infinite de 
 mand, and not unreasonably, but after a corre 
 sponding outlay, have an all-absorbing purpose, 
 and at the same time that your feet bear you 
 hither and thither, travel much more in imagina 
 tion. 
 
 To let the mountains slide, live at home like 
 a traveller. It should not be in vain that these 
 things are shown us from day to day. Is not 
 
LETTERS. 177 
 
 each withered leaf that I see in my walks some 
 thing which I have travelled to find? travelled, 
 who can tell how far ? What a fool he must be 
 who thinks that his El Dorado is anywhere but 
 where he lives ! 
 
 We are always, methinks, in some kind of ra 
 vine, though our bodies may walk the smooth 
 streets of Worcester. Our souls (I use this word 
 for want of a better) are ever perched on its rocky 
 sides, overlooking that lowland. (What a more 
 than Tuckerman s Ravine is the body itself, in 
 which the " soul" is encamped, when you come to 
 look into it ! However, eagles always have chosen 
 such places for their eyries.) 
 
 Thus is it ever with your fair cities of the 
 plain. Their streets may be paved with silver 
 and gold, and six carriages roll abreast in them, 
 but the real homes of the citizens are in the Tuck 
 erman s Ravines which ray out from that centre 
 into the mountains round about, one for each man, 
 woman, and child. The masters of life have so 
 ordered it. That is their beau-ideal of a country 
 seat. There is no danger of being "tuckered" 
 out before you get to it. 
 
 So we live in Worcester and in Concord, each 
 man taking his exercise regu]arly in his ravine, 
 like a lion in his cage, and sometimes spraining his 
 ancle there. We have very few clear days, and a 
 great many small plagues which keep us busy. 
 Sometimes, I suppose, you hear a neighbor halloo 
 
178 LETTERS. 
 
 (B , may be) and think it is a bear. Never 
 theless, on the whole, we think it very grand and 
 exhilarating, this ravine life. It is a capital ad 
 vantage withal, living so high, the excellent drain 
 age of that city of God. Routine is but a shal 
 low and insignificant sort of ravine, such as the 
 ruts are, the conduits of puddles. But these ra 
 vines are the source of mighty streams, precipi 
 tous, icy, savage, as they are, haunted by bears 
 and loup-cerviers, there are born not only Sacos 
 and Amazons, but prophets who will redeem the 
 world. The at last smooth and fertilizing water 
 at which nations drink and navies supply them 
 selves, begins with melted glaciers, and burst 
 thunder-spouts. Let us pray, that, if we are not 
 flowing through some Mississippi valley which we 
 fertilize, and it is not likely we are, we may 
 know ourselves shut in between grim and mighty 
 mountain walls amid the clouds, falling a thousand 
 feet in a mile, through dwarfed fir and spruce, 
 over the rocky insteps of slides, being exercised in 
 our minds, and so developed. 
 
 H. D. T. 
 
LETTERS. 179 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, September 26, 1859. 
 MR. B : 
 
 I am not sure that I am in a fit mood to write 
 to you, for I feel and think rather too much like a 
 business man, having some very irksome affairs to 
 attend to these months and years on account of 
 my family. This is the way I am serving King 
 Admetus, confound him ! If it were not for my 
 relations, I would let the wolves prey on his flocks 
 to their bellies content. Such fellows you have to 
 deal with ! herdsmen of some other king, or of the 
 same, who tell no tale, but in the sense of count 
 ing their flocks, and then lie drunk under a hedge. 
 How is your grist ground ? Not by some mur 
 muring stream, while you lie dreaming on the 
 bank ; but, it seems, you must take hold with 
 your hands, and shove the wheel round. You 
 can t depend on streams, poor feeble things ! You 
 can t depend on worlds, left to themselves ; but 
 you ve got to oil them and goad them along. In 
 short, you ve got to carry on two farms at once, 
 the farm on the earth and the farm in your 
 mind. Those Crimean and Italian battles were 
 mere boys play, they are the scrapes into 
 which truants get. But what a battle a man 
 must fight everywhere to maintain his standing 
 army of thoughts, and march with them in orderly 
 array through the always hostile country ! How 
 
180 LETTERS. 
 
 many enemies there are to sane thinking ! Every 
 soldier has succumbed to them before he enlists for 
 those other battles. Men may sit in chambers, 
 seemingly safe and sound, and yet despair, and 
 turn out at last only hollowness and dust within, 
 like a Dead Sea apple. A standing army of nu 
 merous, brave, and well-disciplined thoughts, and 
 you at the head of them, marching straight to 
 your goal ! How to bring this about is the prob 
 lem, and Scott s Tactics will not help you to it. 
 Think of a poor fellow begirt only with a sword- 
 belt, and no such staff of athletic thought ! his 
 brains rattling as he walks and talks ! These are 
 your pretorian guard. It is easy enough to main 
 tain a family, or a state, but it is hard to maintain 
 these children of your brain (or say, rather, these 
 guests that trust to enjoy your hospitality), they 
 make such great demands ; and yet, he who does 
 only the former, and loses the power to think 
 originally, or as only he ever can, fails misera 
 bly. Keep up the fires of thought, and all will go 
 well. 
 
 Zouaves ? pish ! How you can overrun a 
 country, climb any rampart, and carry any for 
 tress, with an army of alert thoughts I. thoughts 
 that send their bullets home to heaven s door, 
 with which you can take the whole world, without 
 paying for it, or robbing anybody. See, the con 
 quering hero comes ! You fail in your thoughts, 
 or you prevail in your thoughts only. Provided 
 
LETTERS. 181 
 
 you think well, the heavens falling, or the earth 
 gaping, will be music for you to march by. No 
 foe can ever see you, or you him ; you cannot so 
 much as think of him. Swords have no edges, 
 bullets no penetration, for such a contest. In your 
 mind must be a liquor which will dissolve the 
 w r orld whenever it is dropt in it. There is no 
 universal solvent but this, and all things together 
 cannot saturate it. It will hold the universe in 
 solution, and yet be as translucent as ever. The 
 vast machine may indeed roll over our toes, and we 
 not know it, but it would rebound and be staved 
 to pieces like an empty barrel, if it should strike 
 fair and square on the smallest and least angular 
 of a man s thoughts. 
 
 You seem not to have taken Cape Cod the right 
 way. I think that you should have persevered in 
 walking on the beach and on the bank, even to 
 the land s end, however soft, and so, by long 
 knocking at Ocean s gate, have gained admittance 
 at last, better, if separately, and in a storm, not 
 knowing where you would sleep by night, or eat 
 by day. Then you should have given a day to 
 the sand behind Provincetown, and ascended the 
 hills there, and been blown on considerably. I 
 hope that you like to remember the journey better 
 than you did to make it. 
 
 I have been confined at home all this year, but 
 I am not aware that I have grown any rustier 
 than was to be expected. One while I explored 
 
182 LETTERS. 
 
 the bottom of the river pretty extensively. I 
 have engaged to read a lecture to Parker s Society 
 on the 9th of October next. 
 I am off a barberrying. 
 
 II. D. T. 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, May 20, 1860. 
 MR. B : 
 
 I must endeavor to pay some of my debts to 
 you. 
 
 To begin where we left off, then. 
 
 The presumption is that we are always the 
 same ; our opportunities, and Nature herself, fluc 
 tuating. Look at mankind. No great difference 
 between two, apparently ; perhaps the same height, 
 and breadth, and weight ; and yet, to the man who 
 sits most east, this life is a weariness, routine, dust 
 and ashes, and he drowns his imaginary cards ( ! ) 
 (a sort of friction among his vital organs) in a 
 bowl. But to the man who sits most west, his con 
 temporary ( !), it is a field for all noble endeavors, 
 an elysium, the dwelling-place of heroes and demi 
 gods. The former complains that he has a thou 
 sand affairs to attend to ; but he does not realize 
 that his affairs (though they may be a thousand) 
 and he are one. 
 
 Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades 
 
LETTERS. 183 
 
 but how to make men of themselves. They learn 
 to make houses ; but they are not so well housed, 
 they are not so contented in their houses, as the 
 woodchucks in their holes. What is the use of a 
 house if you have n t got a tolerable planet to put 
 it on ? if you cannot tolerate the planet it is on ? 
 Grade the ground first. If a man believes and 
 expects great things of himself, it makes no odds 
 where you put him, or what you show him (of 
 course you cannot put him anywhere, nor show 
 him anything), he will be surrounded by grand 
 eur. He is in the condition of a healthy and 
 hungry man, who says to himself, How sweet 
 this crust is ! If he despairs of himself, then 
 Tophet is his dwelling-place, and he is in the con 
 dition of a sick man who is disgusted with the 
 fruits of finest flavor. 
 
 Whether he sleeps or wakes, whether he runs 
 or walks, whether he uses a microscope or a 
 telescope, or his naked eye, a man never dis 
 covers anything, never overtakes anything, or 
 leaves anything behind, but himself. Whatever 
 he says or does, he merely reports himself. If he 
 is in love, he loves ; if he is in heaven, he enjoys ; 
 if he is in hell, he suffers. It is his condition that 
 determines his locality. 
 
 The principal, the only thing a man makes, is 
 his condition or fate. Though commonly he does 
 not know it, nor put up a sign to this effect, " My 
 own destiny made and mended here." [Not 
 
184 LETTERS. 
 
 yours.~\ He is a master-workman in the business. 
 He works twenty-four hours a day at it, and gets 
 it done. Whatever else he neglects or botches, no 
 man was ever known to neglect this work. A 
 great many pretend to make shoes chiefly, and 
 would scout the idea that they make the hard 
 times which they experience. 
 
 Each reaching and aspiration is an instinct with 
 which all nature consists and co-operates, and 
 therefore it is not in vain. But alas ! each relax 
 ing and desperation is an instinct too. To be 
 active, well, happy, implies rare courage. To be 
 ready to fight in a duel or a battle, implies des 
 peration, or that you hold your life cheap. 
 
 If you take this life to be simply what old re 
 ligious folks pretend, (I mean the effete, gone to 
 seed in a drought, mere human galls stung by the 
 devil once,) then all your joy and serenity is re 
 duced to grinning and bearing it. The fact is, 
 you have got to take the world on your shoulders 
 like Atlas, and put along with it. You will do 
 this for an idea s sake, and your success will be in 
 proportion to your devotion to ideas. It may 
 make your back ache occasionally, but you will 
 have the satisfaction of hanging it or twirling it to 
 suit yourself. Cowards suffer, heroes enjoy. After 
 a long day s walk with it, pitch it into a hollow 
 place, sit down and eat your luncheon. Unex 
 pectedly, by some immortal thoughts, you will be 
 compensated. The bank whereon you sit will be 
 
LETTERS. 185 
 
 a fragrant and flowery one, and your world in the 
 hollow a sleek and light gazelle. 
 
 Where is the " unexplored land " but in our 
 own untried enterprises ? To an adventurous 
 spirit any place London, New York, Worces 
 ter, or his own yard is " unexplored land," to 
 seek which Fremont and Kane travel so far. To 
 a sluggish and defeated spirit even the Great 
 Basin and the Polaris are trivial places. If they 
 can get there (and, indeed, they are there now), 
 they will want to sleep, and give it up, just as they 
 always do. These are the regions of the Known 
 and of the Unknown. What is the use of going 
 right over the old track again ? There is an 
 adder in the path which your own feet have 
 worn. You must make tracks into the Unknown. 
 That is what you have your board and clothes for. 
 Why do you ever mend your clothes, unless that, 
 wearing them, you may mend your ways. 
 
 Let us sing. 
 
 H. D. T. 
 
186 LETTERS. 
 
 TO MR. D. R. 
 
 CONCORD, November 4, 1860. 
 
 FRIEND R : 
 
 I thank you for the verses. They are quite 
 too good to apply to me. However, I know what 
 a poet s license is, and will not get in the way. 
 
 But what do you mean by that prose ? Why 
 will you waste so many regards on me, and not 
 know what to think of my silence ? Infer from 
 it what you might from the silence of a dense pine 
 wood. It is its natural condition, except when 
 the winds blow, and the jays scream, and the 
 chickaree winds up his clock. My silence is just 
 as inhuman as that, and no more. 
 
 You know that I never promised to correspond 
 with you, and so, when I do, I do more than I 
 promised. 
 
 Such are my pursuits and habits, that I rarely 
 go abroad ; and it is quite a habit with me to de 
 cline invitations to do so. Not that I could not 
 enjoy such visits, if I were not otherwise occupied. 
 I have enjoyed very much my visits to you, and 
 my rides in your neighborhood, and am sorry that 
 I cannot enjoy such things oftener ; but life is 
 short, and there are other things also to be done. 
 I admit that you are more social than I am, and 
 far more attentive to " the common courtesies of 
 life ; but this is partly for the reason that you have 
 fewer or less exacting private pursuits. 
 
LETTERS. 187 
 
 Not to have written a note for a year, is with 
 me a very venial offence. I think that I do not 
 correspond with any one so often as once in six 
 months. 
 
 I have a faint recollection of your invitation re 
 ferred to ; hut I suppose that I had no new nor 
 particular reason for declining, and so made no 
 new statement. I have felt that you would be 
 glad to see me almost whenever I got ready to 
 come ; but I only offer myself as a rare visitor, 
 and a still rarer correspondent. 
 
 I am very busy, after my fashion, little as there 
 is to show for it, and feel as if I could not spend 
 many days nor dollars in travelling ; for the short 
 est visit must have a fair margin to it, and the 
 days thus affect the w r eeks, you know. Neverthe 
 less, we cannot forego these luxuries altogether. 
 
 You must not regard me as a regular diet, but 
 at most only as acorns, which, too, are not to be 
 despised, which, at least, we love to think are 
 edible in a bracing walk. We have got along 
 pretty well together in several directions, though 
 we are such strangers in others. 
 
 I hardly know what to say in answer to your 
 letter. 
 
 Some are accustomed to write many letters, 
 others very few. I am one of the last. At any 
 rate, we are pretty sure, if we write at all, to send 
 those thoughts which we cherish, to that one, who, 
 we believe, will most religiously attend to them. 
 
188 LETTERS. 
 
 This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction. 
 I do not feel addressed by this letter of yours. It 
 suggests only misunderstanding. Intercourse may 
 be good ; but of what use are complaints and apol 
 ogies ? Any complaint I have to make is too 
 serious to be uttered, for the evil cannot be 
 mended. 
 
 Turn over a new leaf. 
 
 My out-door harvest this fall has been one Can 
 ada lynx, a fierce-looking fellow, which, it seems, 
 we have hereabouts ; eleven barrels of apples from 
 trees of my own planting ; and a large crop of 
 \vhite-oak acorns, which I did not raise. 
 
 Please remember me to your family. I have a 
 very pleasant recollection of your fireside, and I 
 trust that I shall revisit it ; also of your shanty 
 and the surrounding regions. 
 Yours truly, 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, November 4, I860. 
 
 MR. B : 
 
 I am glad to hear any particulars of your excur 
 sion. As for myself, I looked out for you some 
 what on that Monday, when, it appears, you 
 
LETTERS. 189 
 
 passed Monadnock ; turned my glass upon several 
 parties that were ascending the mountain half a 
 mile on one side of us. In short, I came as near 
 to seeing you as you to seeing me. I have no 
 doubt that we should have had a good time if you 
 had come, for I had, all ready, two good spruce 
 houses, in which you could stand up, complete in 
 all respects, half a mile apart, and you and B. 
 could have lodged by yourselves in one, if not 
 with us. 
 
 We made an excellent beginning of our moun 
 tain life. You may remember that the Saturday 
 previous was a stormy day. Well, we went up 
 in the rain, wet through, and found ourselves 
 in a cloud there at mid-afternoon, in no situation 
 to look about for the best place for a camp. So 
 I proceeded at once, through the cloud, to that 
 memorable stone, "chunk yard," in which we 
 made our humble camp once, and there, after 
 putting our packs under a rock, having a good 
 hatchet, I proceeded to build a substantial house, 
 which C. declared the handsomest he ever saw. 
 (He never camped out before, and was, no doubt, 
 prejudiced in its favor.) This was done about 
 dark, and by that time we were nearly as wet as 
 if we had stood in a hogshead of water. We then 
 built a fire before the door, directly on the site of 
 our little camp of two years ago, and it took a long 
 time to burn through its remains to the earth be 
 neath. Standing before this, and turning round 
 
190 LETTERS. 
 
 slowly, like meat that is roasting, we were as dry, 
 if not drier, than ever, after a few hours, and so, 
 at last, we " turned in." 
 
 This was a great deal better than going up there 
 in fair weather, and having no adventure (not 
 knowing how to appreciate either fair weather or 
 foul) but dull, commonplace sleep in a useless 
 house, and before a comparatively useless fire, 
 such as we get every night. Of course, we 
 thanked our stars, when we saw them, which was 
 about midnight, that they had seemingly with 
 drawn for a season. We had the mountain all to 
 ourselves that afternoon and night. There was 
 nobody going up that day to engrave his name on 
 the summit, nor to gather blueberries. The 
 genius of the mountains saw us starting from 
 Concord, and it said, There come two of our 
 folks. Let us get ready for them. Get up a 
 serious storm, that will send a-paeking these holi 
 day guests. (They may have their say another 
 time.) Let us receive them with true mountain 
 hospitality, kill the fatted cloud. Let them 
 know the value of a spruce roof, and of a fire of 
 dead spruce stumps. Every bush dripped tears 
 of joy at our advent. Fire did its best, and re 
 ceived our thanks. What could fire have done 
 in fair weather ? Spruce roof got its share of our 
 blessings. And then, such a view of the wet 
 rocks, with the wet lichens on them, as we had the 
 next morning, but did not get again ! 
 
LETTERS. 191 
 
 We and the mountain had a sound season, as 
 the saying is. How glad we were to be wet, in 
 order that we might be dried ! How glad we 
 were of the storm which made our house seem 
 like a new home to us ! This day s experience 
 was indeed lucky, for we did not have a thunder- 
 shower during all our stay. Perhaps our host 
 reserved this attention in order to tempt us to 
 come again. 
 
 Our next house was more substantial still. 
 One side was rock, good for durability ; the floor 
 the same ; and the roof which I made would have 
 upheld a horse. I stood on it to do the shingling. 
 
 I noticed, when I was at the White Mountains 
 last, several nuisances which render travelling 
 thereabouts unpleasant. The chief of these was 
 the mountain houses. I might have supposed that 
 the main attraction of that region, even to citizens, 
 lay in its wildness and unlikeness to the city, and 
 yet they make it as much like the city as they can 
 afford to. I heard that the Crawford House was 
 lighted with gas, and had a large saloon, with its 
 band of music, for dancing. But give me a spruce 
 house made in the rain. 
 
 An old Concord farmer tells me that he ascend 
 ed Monadnock once, and danced on the top. How 
 did that happen ? Why, he being up there, a 
 party of young men and women came up, bring 
 ing boards and a fiddler ; and, having laid down 
 the boards, they made a level floor, on which they 
 
192 LETTERS. 
 
 danced to the music of the fiddle. I suppose the 
 tune was " Excelsior." This reminds me of the 
 fellow who climbed to the top of a very high spire, 
 stood upright on the ball, and hurrahed for 
 what? Why, for Harrison and Tyler. That s 
 the kind of sound which most ambitious people 
 emit when they culminate. They are wont to be 
 singularly frivolous in the thin atmosphere ; they 
 can t contain themselves, though our comfort and 
 their safety require it; it takes the pressure of 
 many atmospheres to do this; and hence they 
 helplessly evaporate there. It would seem, that, 
 as they ascend, they breathe shorter and shorter, 
 and, at each expiration, some of their wits leave 
 them, till, when they reach the pinnacle, they are 
 so light-headed as to be fit only to show how the 
 
 wind sits. I suspect that E s criticism called 
 
 " Monadnock " was inspired, not by remembering 
 the inhabitants of New Hampshire as they are in 
 the valleys, so much as by meeting some of them 
 on the mountain-top. 
 
 After several nights experience, C. came to the 
 conclusion that he was " lying out-doors," and in 
 quired what was the largest beast that might nib 
 ble his legs there. I fear that he did not improve 
 all the night, as he might have done, to sleep. I 
 had asked him to go and spend a week there. 
 We spent five nights, being gone six days, for C. 
 suggested that six working days made a week, and 
 I saw that he was ready to de-camp. However, 
 he found his account in it as well as I. 
 
LETTERS. 193 
 
 We were seen to go up in the rain, grim and 
 silent, like two genii of the storm, by Fassett s 
 men or boys ; but we were never identified after 
 ward, though we were the subject of some con 
 versation which we overheard. Five hundred 
 persons at least came on to the mountain while we 
 were there, but not one found our camp. We 
 saw one party of three ladies and two gentlemen 
 spread their blankets and spend the night on the 
 top, and heard them converse ; but they did not 
 know that they had neighbors, who were compara 
 tively old settlers. We spared them the chagrin 
 which that knowledge would have caused them, 
 and let them print their story in a newspaper 
 accordingly. 
 
 Yes, to meet men on an honest and simple foot 
 ing, meet with rebuffs, suffer from sore feet, as 
 you did, ay, and from a sore heart, as perhaps 
 you also did, all that is excellent. What a pity 
 that that young prince could not enjoy a little of 
 the legitimate experience of travelling, be dealt 
 with simply and truly, though rudely. He might 
 have been invited to some hospitable house in the 
 country, had his bowl of bread and milk set be 
 fore him, with a clean pinafore ; been told that 
 there were the punt and the fishing-rod, and he 
 could amuse himself as he chose; might have 
 swung a few birches, dug out a woodchuck, and 
 had a regular good time, and finally been sent to 
 bed with the boys, and so never have been in- 
 
194 LETTERS. 
 
 troduced to Mr. Everett at all. I have no doubt 
 that this would have been a far more memorable 
 and valuable experience than he got. 
 
 The snow-clad summit of Mount Washington 
 must have been a very interesting sight from Wa- 
 chusett. How wholesome winter is, seen far or 
 near; how good, above all mere sentimental, 
 warm - blooded, short - lived, soft - hearted, moral 
 goodness, commonly so-called. Give me the good 
 ness w y hich has forgotten its own deeds, which 
 God has seen to be good, and let be. None of 
 your just made perfect, pickled eels ! All that 
 will save them will be their picturesqueness, as 
 with blasted trees. Whatever is, and is not 
 ashamed to be, is good. I value no moral good 
 ness or greatness unless it is good or great, even 
 as that snowy peak is. Pray, how could thirty 
 feet of bowels improve it ? Nature is goodness 
 crystallized. You looked into the land of promise. 
 Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is dis 
 tant, serene, and cold, the purer and more durable 
 it is. It is better to warm ourselves with ice than 
 with fire. 
 
 Tell B that he sent me more than the price 
 
 of the book, viz., a word from himself, for which 
 I am greatly his debtor. 
 
 H. D. T. 
 
LETTERS. 195 
 
 TO MR. P. 
 
 CONCORD, April 10, 1861. 
 
 FRIEND P : 
 
 I am sorry to say that I have not a copy of 
 " Walden " which I can spare ; and know of none, 
 unless possibly Ticknor and Fields may have one. 
 I send, nevertheless, a copy of " The Week," 
 the price of which is one dollar and twenty-five 
 cents, which you can pay at your convenience. 
 
 As for your friend, my prospective reader, I 
 hope he ignores Fort Sumter, and " Old Abe," 
 and all that; for that is just the most fatal, and, 
 indeed, the only fatal weapon you can direct 
 against evil, ever : for, as long as you know of it, 
 you are particeps criminis. What business have 
 you, if you are " an angel of light," to be ponder 
 ing over the deeds of darkness, reading the New 
 York Herald and the like ? 
 
 I do not so much regret the present condition 
 of things in this country (provided I regret it at 
 all), as I do that I ever heard of it. I know one 
 or two, who have this year, for the first time, read 
 a President s Message ; but they do not see that 
 this implies a fall in themselves, rather than a rise 
 in the President. Blessed were the days before you 
 read a President s Message. Blessed are the young, 
 for they do not read the President s Message. 
 Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for 
 they shall see Nature, and, through her, God. 
 
196 LETTERS. 
 
 But, alas ! I have heard of Sumter and Pick- 
 ens, and even of Buchanan (though I did not read 
 his Message). 
 
 I also read the New York Tribune ; but then, I 
 am reading Herodotus and Strabo, and Blodget s 
 Climatology, and " Six Years in the Desert of 
 North America," as hard as I can, to counterbal 
 ance it. 
 
 By the way, Alcott is at present our most pop 
 ular and successful man, and has just published 
 a volume in size, in the shape of the Annual 
 School Report, which I presume he has sent to 
 you. 
 
 Yours, for remembering all good things, 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 TO MR. B. 
 
 CONCORD, May 3, 1861. 
 
 MR. B : 
 
 I am still as much an invalid as when you and 
 
 B were here, if not more of one, and at this 
 
 rate there is danger that the cold weather may 
 come again, before I get over my bronchitis. The 
 doctor accordingly tells me that I must " clear 
 out " to the West Indies, or elsewhere, he does 
 not seem to care much where. But I decide 
 against the West Indies, on account of their muggy 
 
LETTERS. 197 
 
 heat in the summer, and the South of Europe, on 
 account of the expense of time and money, and 
 have at last concluded that it will be most ex 
 pedient for me to try the air of Minnesota, say 
 somewhere about St. Paul s. I am only wait 
 ing to be well enough to start. Hope to get off 
 within a week or ten days. 
 
 The inland air may help me at once, or it may 
 not. At any rate, I am so much of an invalid, 
 that I shall have to study my comfort in travelling 
 to a remarkable degree, stopping to rest, &c., 
 &c., if need be. I think to get a through ticket 
 to Chicago, with liberty to stop frequently on the 
 way, making my first stop of consequence at Ni 
 agara Falls, several days or a week, at a private 
 boarding-house ; then a night or day at Detroit ; 
 and as much at Chicago as my health may re 
 quire. 
 
 At Chicago I can decide at what point (Fulton, 
 Dunleith, or another) to strike the Mississippi, and 
 take a boat to St. Paul s. 
 
 I trust to find a private boarding-house in one 
 or various agreeable places in that region, and 
 spend my time there. 
 
 I expect, and shall be prepared to be gone 
 three months ; and I would like to return by a 
 different route, perhaps Mackinaw and Mon 
 treal. 
 
 I have thought of finding a companion, of 
 course, yet not seriously, because I had no right 
 
198 LETTERS. 
 
 to offer myself as a companion to anybody, having 
 such a peculiarly private and all-absorbing but 
 miserable business as my health, and not altogether 
 his, to attend to, causing me to stop here and go 
 there, &c., &c., unaccountably. 
 
 Nevertheless, I have just now decided to let 
 you know of my intention, thinking it barely pos 
 sible that you might like to make a part or the 
 whole of this journey at the same time, and that 
 perhaps your own health may be such as to be 
 benefited by it. 
 
 Pray let me know if such a statement offers any 
 temptations to you. I write in great haste for the 
 mail, and must omit all the moral. 
 
 H. D. THOREAU. 
 
 TO MR. S. 
 
 REDWING, Minnesota, June 26, 1861. 
 
 MR. S : 
 
 I was very glad to find awaiting me, on my ar 
 rival here on Sunday afternoon, a letter from you. 
 I have performed this journey in a very dead and 
 alive manner, but nothing has come so near wak 
 ing me up as the receipt of letters from Concord. 
 I read yours, and one from my sister (and Horace 
 M his four), near the top of a remarkable, 
 
LETTERS. 199 
 
 isolated bluff here, called Barn Bluff, or the 
 Grange, or Redwing Bluff, some four hundred and 
 fifty feet high, and half a mile long, a bit of the 
 main bluff or bank standing alone. The top, as 
 you know, rises to the general level of the sur 
 rounding country, the river having eaten out so 
 much. Yet the valley just above and below this, 
 (we are at the head of Lake Pepin,) must be three 
 or four miles wide. 
 
 I am not even so well informed as to the pro 
 gress of the war as you suppose. I have seen but 
 one Eastern paper (that, by the way, was the 
 Tribune) for five weeks. I have not taken much 
 pains to get them ; but, necessarily, I have not 
 seen any paper at all for more than a week at a 
 time. The people of Minnesota have seemed to 
 me more cold, to feel less implicated in this war 
 than the people of Massachusetts. It is apparent 
 that Massachusetts, for one State at least, is doing 
 much more than her share in carrying it on. 
 However, I have dealt partly with those of South 
 ern birth, and have seen but little way beneath 
 the surface. I was glad to be told yesterday that 
 there was a good deal of weeping here at Red 
 wing the other day, when the volunteers stationed 
 at Fort Snelling followed the regulars to the 
 seat of the war. They do not weep when their 
 children go up the river to occupy the deserted 
 forts, though they may have to fight the Indians 
 there. 
 
200 LETTERS. 
 
 I ao not even know what the attitude of Eng 
 land is at present. 
 
 The grand feature hereabouts is, of course, the 
 Mississippi River. Too much can hardly be said 
 of its grandeur, and of the beauty of tins portion 
 of it (from Dunleith, and probably from Rock 
 Island to this place). St. Paul is a dozen miles 
 below the Falls of St. Anthony, or near the head 
 of uninterrupted navigation on the main stream, 
 about two thousand miles from its mouth. There 
 is not a " rip " below that, and the river is almost 
 as wide in the upper as the lower part of its course. 
 Steamers go up to the Sauk Rapids, above the 
 Falls, near a hundred miles farther, and then you 
 are fairly in the pine-woods and lumbering coun 
 try. Thus it flows from the pine to the palm. 
 
 The lumber, as you know, is sawed chiefly at 
 the Falls of St. Anthony (what is not rafted in 
 the log to ports far below), having given rise to 
 the towns of St. Anthony, Minneapolis, &c., &c. 
 In coming up the river from Dunleith, you meet 
 with great rafts of sawed lumber and of logs, 
 twenty rods or more in length, by five or six wide, 
 floating down, all from the pine region above the 
 Falls. An old Maine lumberer, who has followed 
 the same business here, tells me that the sources of 
 the Mississippi were comparatively free from rocks 
 and rapids, making easy work for them ; but he 
 thought that the timber was more knotty here than 
 in Maine. 
 
LETTERS. 201 
 
 It has chanced that about half the men whom I 
 have spoken with in Minnesota, whether travellers 
 or settlers, were from Massachusetts. 
 
 After spending some three weeks in and about 
 St. Paul, St. Anthony, and Minneapolis, we made 
 an excursion in a steamer some three hundred or 
 more miles up the Minnesota (St. Peter s) River, 
 to Redwood, or the Lower Sioux Agency, in order 
 to see the plains, and the Sioux, who were to re 
 ceive their annual payment there. This is emi 
 nently the river of Minnesota, (for she shares the 
 Mississippi with Wisconsin,) and it is of incalcu 
 lable value to her. It flows through a very fertile 
 country, destined to be famous for its wheat ; but 
 it is a remarkably winding stream, so that Red 
 wood is only half as far from its mouth by land as 
 by water. There was not a straight reach a mile 
 in length as far as we went, generally you could 
 not see a quarter of a mile of water, and the boat 
 was steadily turning this way or that. At the 
 greater bends, as the Traverse des Sioux, some of 
 the passengers were landed, and walked across to 
 be taken in on the other side. Two or three times 
 you could have thrown a stone across the neck 
 of the isthmus, while it was from one to three 
 miles around it. It was a very novel kind of 
 navigation to me. The boat was perhaps the 
 largest that had been up so high, and the water 
 was rather low (it had been about fifteen feet 
 higher). In making a short turn, we repeatedly 
 9* 
 
202 LETTERS. 
 
 and designedly ran square into the steep and soft 
 bank, taking in a cart-load of earth, this being 
 more effectual than the rudder to fetch us about 
 again ; or the deeper water was so narrow and 
 close to the shore, that we were obliged to run 
 into and break down at least fifty trees which 
 overhung the water, when we did not cut them 
 off, repeatedly losing a part of our outworks, 
 though the most exposed had been taken in. I 
 could pluck almost any plant on the bank from 
 the boat. We very frequently got aground, and 
 then drew ourselves along with a windlass and 
 a cable fastened to a tree, or we swung round in 
 the current, and completely blocked up and block 
 aded the river, one end of the boat resting on each 
 shore. And yet we would haul ourselves round 
 again with the windlass and cable in an hour or 
 two, though the boat was about one hundred and 
 sixty feet long, and drew some three feet of water, 
 or, often, water and sand. It was one consolation 
 to know that in such a case we were all the while 
 damming the river, and so raising it. We once 
 ran fairly on to a concealed rock, with a shock 
 that aroused all the passengers, and rested there, 
 and the mate went below with a lamp, expecting 
 to find a hole, but he did not. Snags and saw 
 yers were so common that I forgot to mention 
 them. The sound of the boat rumbling over one 
 was the ordinary music. However, as long as the 
 boiler did not burst, we knew that no serious ac- 
 
LETTERS. 203 
 
 cident was likely to happen. Yet this was a 
 singularly navigable river, more so than the Mis 
 sissippi above the Falls, and it is owing to its very 
 crookedness. Ditch it straight, and it would not 
 only be very swift, but soon run out. It was from 
 ten to fifteen rods wide near the mouth, and from 
 eight to ten or twelve at Redwood. Though the 
 current was swift, I did not see a " rip " on it, and 
 only three or four rocks. For three months in the 
 year, I am told that it can be navigated by small 
 steamers about twice as far as we went, or to 
 its source in Big Stone Lake ; and a former 
 Indian agent told me that at high water it was 
 thought that such a steamer might pass into the 
 Red River. 
 
 In short, this river proved so very long and 
 navigable, that I was reminded of the last letter 
 or two in the voyage of the Baron la Hontan 
 (written near the end of the seventeenth century, 
 I thinlc), in which he states, that, after reaching 
 the Mississippi (by the Illinois or Wisconsin), the 
 limit of previous exploration westward, he voyaged 
 up it with his Indians, and at length turned up a 
 great river coming in from the west, which he 
 called " La Riviere Longue " ; and he relates 
 various improbable things about the country and 
 its inhabitants, so that this letter has been regard 
 ed as pure fiction, or, more properly speaking, a 
 lie. But I am somewhat inclined now to recon 
 sider the matter. 
 
204 LETTERS. 
 
 The Governor of Minnesota (Ramsay), the 
 superintendent of Indian affairs in this quarter, 
 and the newly-appointed Indian agent were on 
 board ; also a German band from St. Paul, a small 
 cannon for salutes, and the money for the Indians 
 (ay, and the gamblers, it was said, who were to 
 bring it back in another boat). There were 
 about one hundred passengers, chiefly from St. 
 Paul, and more or less recently from the North 
 eastern States ; also half a dozen young educated 
 Englishmen. Chancing to speak with one who 
 sat next to me, when the voyage was nearly half 
 over, I found that he was the son of the Rev. 
 Samuel May, and a classmate of yours, and had 
 been looking for us at St. Anthony. 
 
 The last of the little settlements on the river 
 was New Ulm, about one hundred miles this side 
 of Redwood. It consists wholly of Germans. 
 We left them one hundred barrels of salt, which 
 will be worth something more when the water is 
 lowest than at present. 
 
 Redwood is a mere locality, scarcely an In 
 dian village, where there is a store, and some 
 houses have been built for them. We were now 
 fairly on the great plains, and looking south ; 
 and, after walking that way three miles, could 
 see no tree in that horizon. The buffalo was 
 said to be feeding within twenty-five or thirty 
 miles. 
 
 A regular council was held with the Indians, 
 
LETTERS. 205 
 
 who had come in on their ponies, and speeches 
 were made on both sides through an interpreter, 
 quite in the described mode, the Indians, as 
 usual, having the advantage in point of truth and 
 earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. 
 
 The most prominent chief was named Little 
 Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white 
 man s treatment of them, and probably have rea 
 son to be so. This council was to be continued 
 for two or three days, the payment to be made 
 the second day ; and another payment to other 
 bands a little higher up, on the Yellow Medicine 
 (a tributary of the Minnesota), a few days there 
 after. 
 
 In the afternoon, the half-naked Indians per 
 formed a dance, at the request of the Governor, 
 for our amusement and their own benefit ; and 
 then we took leave of them, and of the officials 
 who had come to treat with them. 
 
 Excuse these pencil marks, but my inkstand is 
 unscrewdble, and I can only direct my letter at the 
 bar. I could tell you more, and perhaps more in 
 teresting things, if I had time. 
 
 I am considerably better than when I left home, 
 but still far from well. 
 
 Our faces are already set toward home. Will 
 you please let my sister know that we shall prob 
 ably start for Milwaukee and Mackinaw in a day 
 or two (or as soon as we hear from home) via 
 Prairie du Chien, and not La Crosse. 
 
206 LETTERS. 
 
 I am glad to hear that you have written to 
 Cholmondoley, as it relieves me of some respon 
 sibility. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 TO MR. M. B. B. 
 
 CONCORD, March 21, 1862. 
 
 DEAR SIR : 
 
 I thank you for your very kind letter, which, 
 ever since I received it, I have intended to answer 
 before I died, however briefly. I am encouraged 
 to know, that, so far as you are concerned, I have 
 not written my books in vain. I was particularly 
 gratified, some years ago, when one of my friends 
 and neighbors said, " I wish you would write an 
 other book, write it for me." He is actually 
 more familiar with what I have written than I am 
 myself. 
 
 The verses you refer to in Conway s Dial, were 
 written by F. B. Sanborn of this town. I never 
 wrote for that journal. 
 
 I am pleased when you say that in " The Week " 
 you like especially " those little snatches of poetry 
 interspersed through the book," for these, I sup 
 pose, are the least attractive to most readers. I 
 have not been engaged in any particular work on 
 
LETTERS. 207 
 
 Botany, or the like, though, if I were to live, I 
 should have much to report on Natural History 
 generally. 
 
 You ask particularly after my health. I sup 
 pose that I have not many months to live ; but, 
 of course, I know nothing about .it. I may add 
 that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and 
 regret nothing. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU, 
 by SOPHIA E. THOREAU. 
 
POEMS. 
 
SYMPATHY. 
 
 LATELY, alas ! I knew a gentle boy, 
 Whose features all were cast in Virtue s mould, 
 As one she had designed for Beauty s toy, 
 But after manned him for her own stronghold. 
 
 On every side he open was as day, 
 That you might see no lack of strength within ; 
 For walls and ports do only serve alway 
 For a pretence to feebleness and sin. 
 
 Say not that Caesar was victorious, 
 With toil and strife who stormed the House of Fame, 
 In other sense this youth was glorious, 
 Himself a kingdom, wheresoe er he came. 
 
 No strength went out to get him victory, 
 When all was income of its own accord ; 
 For where he went none other was to see, 
 But all were parcel of their noble lord. 
 
212 POEMS. 
 
 He forayed like the subtle haze of summer, 
 That stilly shows fresh landscapes to our eyes, 
 And revolutions works without a murmur, 
 Or rustling of a leaf beneath the skies. 
 
 So was I taken unawares by this, 
 
 I quite forgot my homage to confess ; 
 
 Yet now am forced to know, though hard it is, 
 
 I might have loved him, had I loved him less. 
 
 Each moment as we nearer drew to each, 
 A stern respect withheld us farther yet, 
 So that we seemed beyond each other s reach, 
 And less acquainted than when first we met. 
 
 We two were one while we did sympathize, 
 So could we not the simplest bargain drive ; 
 And what avails it, now that we are wise, 
 If absence doth this doubleness contrive ? 
 
 Eternity may not the chance repeat ; 
 But I must tread my single way alone, 
 In sad remembrance that we once did meet, 
 And know that bliss irrevocably gone. 
 
POEMS. 213 
 
 The spheres henceforth my elegy shall sing, 
 For elegy has other subject none ; 
 Each strain of music in my ears shall ring 
 Knell of departure from that other one. 
 
 Make haste and celebrate my tragedy ; 
 
 With fitting strain resound, ye woods and fields ; 
 
 Sorrow is dearer in such case to me 
 
 Than all the joys other occasion yields. 
 
 Is t then too late the damage to repair ? 
 Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp has reft 
 The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare, 
 But in my hands the wheat and kernel left. 
 
 If I but love that virtue which he is, 
 Though it be scented in the morning air, 
 Still shall we be truest acquaintances, 
 Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare. 
 
214 POEMS. 
 
 ROMANS, COUNTRYMEN, AND 
 LOVERS." 
 
 LET such pure hate still underprop 
 Our love, that we may be 
 Each other s conscience, 
 And have our sympathy 
 Mainly from thence. 
 
 We 11 one another treat like gods, 
 And all the faith we have 
 In virtue and in truth, bestow 
 On either, and suspicion leave 
 To gods below. 
 
 Two solitary stars, 
 Unmeasured systems far 
 Between us roll ; 
 But by our conscious light we are 
 Determined to one pole. 
 
POEMS. 215 
 
 What need confound the sphere, 
 
 Love can afford to wait ; 
 
 For it no hour s too late 
 
 That witnesseth one duty s end, 
 
 Or to another doth beginning lend. 
 
 It will subserve no use, 
 More than the tints of flowers ; 
 Only the independent guest 
 Frequents its bowers, 
 Inherits its bequest. 
 
 No speech, though kind, has it ; 
 But kinder silence doles 
 Unto its mates : 
 By night consoles, 
 By day congratulates. 
 
 What saith the tongue to tongue ? 
 What heareth ear of ear ? 
 By the decrees of fate 
 From year to year, 
 Does it communicate. 
 
 Pathless the gulf of feeling yawns ; 
 No trivial bridge of words, 
 
216 POEMS. 
 
 Or arch of boldest span, 
 Can leap the moat that girds 
 The sincere man. 
 
 No show of bolts and bars 
 Can keep the foeman out, 
 Or scape his secret mine, 
 Who entered with the doubt 
 That drew the line. 
 
 No warder at the gate 
 Can let the friendly in : 
 But, like the sun, o er all 
 He will the castle win, 
 And shine alono; the wall. 
 
 O 
 
 There s nothing in the world I know 
 That can escape from love, 
 For every depth it goes below, 
 And every height above. 
 
 It waits, as waits the sky, 
 Until the clouds go by, 
 Yet shines serenely on 
 With an eternal day, 
 Alike when they are gone, 
 And when they stay. 
 
POEMS. 217 
 
 Implacable is Love, 
 Foes may be bought or teased 
 From their hostile intent, 
 But he goes unappeased 
 Who is on kindness bent. 
 
 10 
 
218 POEMS. 
 
 INSPIRATION. 
 
 IF with light head erect I sing, 
 
 Though^ all the Muses lend their force. 
 
 From my poor love of anything, 
 
 The verse is weak and shallow as its source. 
 
 But if with bended neck I grope 
 
 Listening behind me for my wit, 
 
 With faith superior to hope, 
 
 More anxious to keep back than forward it ; 
 
 Making my soul accomplice there 
 
 Unto the flame my heart hath lit, 
 
 Then will the verse forever wear, 
 
 Time cannot bend the line which God has writ. 
 
 I hearing get, who had but ears, 
 
 And sight, who had but eyes before ; 
 
 I moments live, who lived but years, 
 
 And truth discern, who knew but learning s lore. 
 
POEMS. 219 
 
 Now chiefly is my natal hour, 
 
 And only now my prime of life, 
 
 Of manhood s strength it is the flower, 
 
 T is peace s end, and war s beginning strife. 
 
 It comes in summer s broadest noon, 
 By a gray wall, or some chance place, 
 Unseasoning time, insulting June, 
 And vexing day with its presuming face. 
 
 I will not doubt the love untold 
 Which not my worth nor want hath bought, 
 Which wooed me young, and wooes me old, 
 And to this evening hath me brought. 
 
220 POEMS. 
 
 THE FISHER S BOY. 
 
 MY life is like a stroll upon the beach, 
 As near the ocean s edge as I can go ; 
 
 My tardy steps its waves sometimes o erreach, 
 Sometimes I stay to let them overflow. 
 
 My sole employment is, and scrupulous care, 
 To place my gains beyond the reach of tides, 
 
 Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare, 
 Which Ocean kindly to my hand confides. 
 
 I have but few companions on the shore : 
 
 They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea ; 
 
 Yet oft I think the ocean they ve sailed o er 
 Is deeper known upon the strand to me. 
 
 The middle sea contains no crimson dulse, 
 Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view ; 
 
 Along the shore my hand is on its pulse, 
 
 And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew. 
 
POEMS. 221 
 
 MOUNTAINS. 
 
 WITH frontier strength ye stand your ground, 
 
 With grand content ye circle round, 
 
 Tumultuous silence for all sound, 
 
 Ye distant nursery of rills, 
 
 Monadnock, and the Peterboro hills ; 
 
 Like some vast fleet 
 
 Sailing through rain and sleet, 
 
 Through winter s cold and summer s heat ; 
 
 Still holding to your high emprise, 
 
 Until ye find a shore amid the skies ; 
 
 Not skulking close to land, 
 
 With cargo contraband ; 
 
 For they who sent a venture out by ye 
 
 Have set the sun to see 
 
 Their honesty. 
 
 Ships of the line, each one, 
 
 Ye to the westward run, 
 
 Always before the gale, 
 
 Under a press of sail, 
 
222 POEMS. 
 
 With weight of metal all untold ; 
 
 I seem to feel ye in my firm seat here, 
 
 Immeasurable depth of hold, 
 
 And breadth of beam and length of running gear. 
 
 Methinks ye take luxurious pleasure 
 
 In your novel Western leisure ; 
 
 So cool your brows, and freshly blue, 
 
 As time had nought for ye to do ; 
 
 For ye lie at your length, 
 
 An unappropriated strength, 
 
 Unhewn primaeval timber 
 
 For knees so stiff, for masts so limber ; 
 
 The stock of which new earths are made, 
 
 One day to be our Western trade, 
 
 Fit for the stanchions of a world 
 
 Which through the seas of space is hurled. 
 
 While we enjoy a lingering ray, 
 Ye still o ertop the Western day, 
 Reposing yonder on God s croft, 
 Like solid stacks of hay. 
 Edged with silver and with gold, 
 The clouds hang o er in damask fold, 
 And with fresh depth of amber light 
 
POEMS. 223 
 
 The west is dight, 
 
 Where still a few rays slant, 
 
 That even heaven seems extravagant. 
 
 On the earth s edge, mountains and trees 
 
 Stand as they were on air graven, 
 
 Or as the vessels in a haven 
 
 Await the morning breeze. 
 
 I fancy even 
 
 Through your defiles windeth the way to heaven ; 
 
 And yonder still, in spite of history s page, 
 
 Linger the golden and the silver age ; 
 
 Upon the laboring gale 
 
 The news of future centuries is brought, 
 
 And of new dynasties of thought, 
 
 From your remotest vale. 
 
 But special I remember thee, 
 Wachusett ! who, like me, 
 Standest alone without society. 
 Thy far blue eye, 
 A remnant of the sky, 
 Seen through the clearing of the gorge, 
 Or from the windows on the forge, 
 Doth leaven all it passes by. 
 Nothing is true, 
 
224 POEMS. 
 
 But stands " tween me and you, 
 
 Thou western pioneer, 
 
 Who know st not shame nor fear, 
 
 By venturous spirit driven 
 
 Under the eaves of heaven, 
 
 And can st expand thee there, 
 
 And breathe enough of air ; 
 
 Upholding heaven, holding down earth, 
 
 Thy pastime from thy birth, 
 
 Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other, 
 
 May I approve myself thy worthy brother ! 
 
POEMS. 225 
 
 SMOKE. 
 
 LIGHT-WIXGED Smoke ! Icarian bird, 
 Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight ; 
 Lark without song, and messenger of dawn, 
 Circling above the hamlets as thy nest ; 
 Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form 
 Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts ; 
 By night star-veiling, and by day 
 Darkening the light and blotting out the sun ; 
 Go thou, my incense, upward from this hearth, 
 And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame. 
 
226 POEMS. 
 
 SMOKE IN WINTER. 
 
 ".;;""* t. - 
 
 THE sluggish smoke curls up from some deep dell, 
 The stiffened air exploring in the dawn, 
 And making slow acquaintance with the day ; 
 Delaying now upon its heavenward course, 
 In wreathed loiterings dallying with itself, 
 With as uncertain purpose and slow deed, 
 As its half-wakened master by the hearth, 
 Whose mind, still slumbering, and sluggish thoughts 
 Have not yet swept into the onward current 
 Of the new day ; and now it streams afar, 
 The while the chopper goes with step direct, 
 And mind intent to wield the early axe. 
 
 First in the dusky dawn he sends abroad 
 His early scout, his emissary, smoke, 
 The earliest, latest pilgrim from his roof, 
 To feel the frosty air, inform the day ; 
 And, while he crouches still beside the hearth, 
 Nor musters courage to unbar the door, 
 
POEMS. 227 
 
 It has gone down the glen with the light wind, 
 And o er the plain unfurled its venturous wreath, 
 Draped the tree-tops, loitered upon the hill, 
 And warmed the pinions of the early bird ; 
 And now, perchance, high in the crispy air, 
 Has caught sight of the day o er the earth s edge, 
 And greets its master s eye at his low door, 
 As some refulgent cloud in the upper sky. 
 
 7 
 
228 POEMS. 
 
 MIST. 
 
 LOW-ANCHORED cloud, 
 
 Newfoundland air, 
 
 Fountain-head and source of rivers, 
 
 Dew-cloth, dream-drapery, 
 
 And napkin spread by fays ; 
 
 Drifting meadow of the air, 
 
 Where bloom the daisied banks and violets, 
 
 And in whose fenny labyrinth 
 
 The bittern booms and heron wades ; 
 
 Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers, 
 
 Bear only perfumes and the scent 
 
 Of healing herbs to just men s fields. 
 
POEMS. 229 
 
 HAZE. 
 
 WOOF of the fen, ethereal gauze, 
 Woven of Nature s richest stuffs, 
 Visible heat, air-water, and dry sea, 
 Last conquest of the eye ; 
 Toil of the day displayed, sun-dust, 
 Aerial surf upon the shores of earth, 
 Ethereal estuary, frith of light, 
 Breakers of air, billows of heat, 
 Fine summer spray on inland seas ; 
 Bird of the sun, transparent-winged, 
 Owlet of noon, soft-pinioned, 
 From heath or stubble rising without song, 
 Establish thy serenity o er the fields. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 
 
RETURN 
 
 RECALL 
 63405