Letters to a Spiritual Seeker

[From Harrison G. O. Blake; March 1848; Worcester, Massachusetts] 

[ .G. O. 1848 3 ]

In March 1848 Henry David Thoreau (1817—1862) was thirty years of age, Harrison Gray Otis Blake (1816—1898) a year older. After residing at Walden twenty-six months, Thoreau had left his retreat at the pond on September 6, 1847, six months before receiving this letter. While there he had written most of the manuscript for his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, which would not see publication until May 1849, and had written a complete draft of his second and most famous book, Walden, which remained unpublished until August 1854. Those were the only two books he published during his lifetime. As he mentions in Letter 3, he was at this time living in the Emerson¹ household, where he kept Lidian Emerson (1802—1892) company and served as handyman while her husband Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882) lectured in England. Forty-two years after writing this letter Blake remarked, "Perhaps the best definite service I ever performed for my fellow-men was, like our best services generally, the unintended one of simply recognizing Thoreau at a time when he was yet so little recognized, giving him, as he said, 'an opportunity to live,' making by my letters an occasion for his…” I have added the paragraph breaks to this letter.

1848 3 . . 1817—186230 .G. O. 1816—1898 26 1847 9 6 6 ————1849 5 1854 8 . 1802—1892. . 1803—188242 “‘’……”

It [Thoreau's essay "Aulus Persius Flaccus"] has revived in me a haunting impression of you, which I carried away from some spoken words of yours… 

……

When I was last in Concord, you spoke of retiring farther from our civilization. I asked you if you would feel no longings for the society of your friends. Your reply was in substance, "No, I am nothing." 

“”

That reply was memorable to me. It indicated a depth of resources, a completeness of renunciation, a poise and repose in the universe, which to me is almost inconceivable; which in you seemed domesticated, and to which I look up with veneration. I would know of that soul which can say "I am nothing." I would be roused by its words to a truer and purer life.

“”

Upon me seems to be dawning with new significance the idea that God is here; that we have but to bow before Him in profound submission at every moment, and He will fill our souls with his presence. In this opening of the soul to God, all duties seem to centre; what else have we to do? … 

……

If I understand rightly the significance of your life, this is it: You would sunder yourself from society, from the spell of institutions, customs, conventionalities, that you may lead a fresh, simple life with God. Instead of breathing a new life into the old forms, you would have a new life without and within. There is something sublime to me in this attitude,—far as I may be from it myself… 

——……

Speak to me in this hour as you are prompted… 

……

I honor you because you abstain from action, and open your soul that you may be somewhat. Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, "I will simply be." Could I plant myself at once upon the truth, reducing my wants to their minimum, … I should at once be brought nearer to nature, nearer to my fellow-men,—and life would be infinitely richer. But, alas! I shiver on the brink… 

“”……——……

(1) 1803—1882

March 27, 1848, Monday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1848 3 27

Concord, March 27, 1848.

1848 3 27

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 therefore 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 literature. 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 because 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 [on] a journey to a distant country, gradually to find ourselves 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 abiding 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 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 it 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 believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as 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 encumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary 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 prudent and knowing, who yet will stand at a desk the 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.

——4 44 44 4

This, our respectable daily life, in which the man of common sense, the Englishman of the world, stands so squarely, and on which our institutions 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 fair 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 obtained it? If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them? that it was a vain endeavor? Of course we do not expect that our paradise will be a garden. We know not what we ask. 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 distinct 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 expressed 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—as for combinations and details—what are they? In clear weather when we 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 not 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. Perhaps you have some oracles for me.

Henry Thoreau.

.

May 2, 1848, Tuesday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1848 5 2

The quotation beginning this letter—"We must have our bread"—is the first clear indication that Thoreau often and perhaps usually wrote on topics of Blake's choosing. In other words, his letters should be understood as one side of what was actually a dialogue between the two men.

“”

Concord, May 2, 1848.

1848 5 2

"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 always, or as much as possible, work and rest together, and then the work will be of such a kind that when the body is hungry the brain will be hungry also, and the same food will suffice for both; otherwise the food which repairs the waste energy of the overwrought 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 question; yet it is a sweet and inviting question. Let us not shirk it, as is usually done. It is the most important and practical question which is put to man. Let us not answer it hastily. Let us not be content 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 spiritually, 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. Avery little bread,—a very few crumbs are enough, if it be of the right quality, 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 life¹, 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 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 eye. 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 detects. The heavens are as deep as our aspirations 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 perfectly 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?

4 4

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 expecting more 1ight, but having light enough. If we confidently expect more, then let us wait for it. 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 unconsciously even at first; in fact, that was his broad and scarlet sin²,—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 act³. When once we thus fall behind ourselves, there is no accounting 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 decalogue 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 they are nothing,—that is, they originate in a kind of sleep and forget fullness of the soul when it is 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 regrets. The place of sorrow is supplied, perchance, by a certain hard and proportionately barren indifference. 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 thespirit,"⁴ 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 woodchucks.

“”——“”

Methinks I am never quite committed, never wholly the creature of my moods, being always to some extent their critic. My only integral experience 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 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. Emerson's absence.

You will perceive that I am as often talking to myself, perhaps, as speaking to you.

(1) . 6 35“”

(2) . 1 18“”

(3)

(4) . 3 1“”

April 17, 1849, Tuesday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1849 4 17

During the preceding five months Thoreau had on six occasions delivered one or another of his three Walden lectures in Portland, Maine, and in the Massachusetts towns of Concord, Lincoln, Salem, and Gloucester. Blake had probably arranged for him to deliver all three Walden lectures in Worcester on three successive Friday evenings at 7:30 p.m., the first in City Hall on April 20, the other two in Brinley Hall on April 27 and May 3. The previous month Thoreau contracted with James Munroe and Company of Boston to publish A Week at his own expense, with Walden to be published shortly afterward. He had also agreed to write up his February 1848 lecture on "Resistance to Civil Government" (later retitled "Civil Disobedience") for publication in May. So during this time he was extremely busy preparing his manuscripts and correcting proofs. His older sister Helen was also struggling through a final bout with tuberculosis at this time. She succumbed to the disease on June 14 . Thoreau rode the Fitchburg Railroad fifteen miles northwest to Groton, Massachusetts, where he changed to the Worcester & Nashua Railroad. The mention of Emerson is explained by the fact that Emerson traveled extensively as a professional lecturer and was therefore very familiar with railroad schedules and routes.

7 30 4 20 4 27 5 3 . 1848 2 5 6 14 15

Concord Apr. 17th 1849 

1849 4 17

Dear Sir, 

It is my intention to leave Concord for Worcester, via Groton, at 12 o'clock on Friday of this week. Mr. Emerson tells me that it will take about two hours to go by this way. At any rate I shall try to secure 3 or 4 hours in which to see you & Worcester before the lecture.

12

Yrs in haste Henry D. Thoreau 

.D.

August 10, 1849, Friday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1849 8 10

After sending off his corrected proofs of A Week, which had been published at the end of May, Thoreau had returned with redoubled energy to his manuscript of Walden, whose publication had been announced on a page at the end of A Week. But the commercial failure of A Week, perhaps not yet apparent in early August, was to delay Walden's appearance until August 1854.

5 8 1854 8

Concord, August 10, 1849 

1849 8 10

Mr. Blake,— 

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, etc., 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 meanness be our footstool, not our cushion. In the midst of this labyrinth let us live a thread¹ 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 dilemma? The laws of earth are for the feet, or inferior man; the laws of heaven are for the head, or superior man; the latter are the former sublimed and expanded, even as radii from the earth's centre go on diverging into space. Happy the man who observes the heavenly and the terrestrial 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 book² 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.

5 26

Will you remember me to Mr. Brown³, when you see him next: he is well remembered by 

Henry Thoreau.

.

I still owe you a worthy answer.

(1)

(2) A Weekon the Concord andMerrimcok Rivers1849 5 30 5 26.

(3) 1811—18791828

November 20, 1849, Tuesday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1849 11 20

This fall and winter was an incredibly busy and important time for Thoreau. As he mentions in this letter, he had established a productive routine of reading and writing during mornings and evenings with along walk in the afternoon. But that routine must have been regularly disrupted as a consequence of the commercial failure of A Week, which by November was a settled fact and which left Thoreau with a debt of almost three hundred dollars—about a year's wages for the average working male at the time. To begin paying off his debt (it was not fully paid until late 1853) he worked long hours in his family's pencil factory and peddled finished pencils as well. Although he seriously considered speculating in cranberries, he dropped that scheme when he found that it would not pay. Instead, he announced his services as a professional surveyor. He had purchased surveying equipment years before, when teaching with his older brother John (1814—1842), in order to give his students a practical application of mathematics, and he had used the equipment while at Walden to produce a highly detailed survey of the pond. He had even done a small surveying job for Emerson in May 1849. But now he purchased a surveyor's handbook and took on two large surveying jobs, one of which lasted throughout the winter. The previous month he and William Ellery Channing (1817—1901) had gone on a five-day excursion to Cape Cod, and he immediately began drafting a lecture based on the trip, completing a draft by December. In September he had requested and received borrowing privileges at the Harvard College Library. He used those privileges to begin researching early New England history, in part to supplement his Cape Cod lectures. In 1843 he had conducted research on graphite, the principal ingredient used to make pencils, and had dramatically improved the graphite-grinding machinery in the family's mill. As a result of his ingenuity, the family business by 1849 had effected a transition from the manufacture of pencils to supplying powdered graphite to electrotypers, a transition which resulted in sufficient prosperity for the family to purchase a commodious house on Main Street in Concord. Although they purchased the house in November 1849, repairs and improvements delayed the move for a year. Finally, during this difficult period Thoreau's relationship with Emerson degenerated badly. Emerson had encouraged Thoreau to publish A Week at his own expense but had criticized the book after it was published. Naturally, Thoreau felt betrayed by his erstwhile mentor, and although they continued to be on fairly good terms, their friendship never fully recovered.

11 300 ——18531814—18421849 5 .E. 1817—19015 12 91843 1849 1849 11

Concord Nov. 20th 1849 

1849 11 20

Mr. Blake, 

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 behooves me, if I would reply, to speak out of the rarest part of myself.

At present I am subsisting on certain wild flowers which Nature wafts to me, which unaccountably 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 distant. I am astonished at the wonderful retirement through which I move, rarely meeting a man in these excursions, never seeing one similarly engaged, unless it be my companion¹, 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, disengaged from every kind of chains, those who have practiced the yoga gather in Brahma the certain fruit of their works."² Depend upon it that rude and careless as I am, I would fain practise the yoga faithfully.

“‘’”“”

"The yogin, absorbed in contemplation, contributes in his degree to creation: he breathes a divine perfume, he hears wonderful things. Divine forms traverse him without tearing him, and united to the nature which is proper to him, he goes, he acts, as animating original matter."³ 

“”

To some extent, and at rare intervals, even I am a yogin.

I know little about the affairs of Turkey, but I am sure that I know something about barberries and chest nuts 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—how Turkey by this time looks determined, & 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 newspaper 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 case be entertaining. If words are invented to conceal thought, I think that newspapers are a great improvement on 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 have the advantage of you, for I chose my own mood, and in one sense your mood too, that is a quiet and attentive 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 Concord 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. Thoreau 

.D.

P.S. It is so long since I have seen you, that as you will perceive, I have to speak as it were in vacuum, as if I were sounding hollowly for an echo, & it did not make much odds what kind of a sound I made. But the gods do not hear my rude or discordant sound, as we learn from the echo; and I know that the nature toward which I launch these sounds is so rich that it will modulate anew and wonderfully improve my rudest strain.

(1) Channing1780—1842

(2)

(3)

April 3, 1850, Wednesday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1850 4 3

Thoreau's studies in early New England history broadened into a serious interest in early Native American history that was to last the remainder of his life. He had begun recording notes from his reading on these topics in two notebooks, his "Indian Book" notes quickly spilling into several successive notebooks. During this same period he also began maintaining a "Commonplace Book" to record extracts from his reading in natural history, another lifelong interest. With the failure of A Week, he had laid his Walden manuscript aside, going back to it only occasionally to revise it slightly. His surveying business proved lucrative enough to enable him to purchase additional equipment this spring, and during the winter he had delivered his "Excursion to Cape Cod" lecture on four occasions, receiving pay for only two of those. Blake, in an effort to increase his own income, had by this time moved from Worcester, where there were not enough students to enable him to make a decent living, to Milton, Massachusetts, six miles south of downtown Boston. He taught in Milton with Christopher A. Greene (1816—1853), who had edited the short-lived reform journal Plain Speaker, was a friend of Thoreau's friend and townsman the educator Amos Bronson Alcott (1799—1888), and had partnered in 1841 with William M. Chace or Chase (1814—1862) in a utopian farm community.

“”“”“”.A. 1816—1853.B. 1799—18881841 .M. 1814—1862

Concord, April 3, 1850.

1850 4 3

Mr. Blake,— 

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 our bodies we cease to support them; we recline on the lap of earth. So, when we would rest our spirits, we must recline on the Great Spirit¹. 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, if it be only one poor frozenthawed apple² 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 distance. 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 does not imply that we are to follow foolishly, falling into sloughs and over precipices, for it is not foolishness, but understanding, which is to follow, which the Muse is appointed to lead, as a fit guide of a fit follower.

——

Will you live? or will you be embalmed? Will you live, though it be astride of a sunbeam;³ or will you repose safely in the catacombs for a thousand years? In the former case, the worst accident 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 according to that demand. It is much ado about nothing⁴. 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 nothing remarkable,—not so much as a prince in disguise; lived in the golden age a hired man; visited Olympus⁵ even, but fell asleep after dinner, and did not hear the conversation of the gods. I lived in Judæa 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.

——1800

I am glad to know that you find what I have said on Friendship⁶ 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?

(1)

(2) “‘’”“……”

(3) 1799—1850 “

(4) 1598

(5)

(6) “”“”

May 28, 1850, Tuesday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1850 5 28

Concord May 28 1850 

1850 5 28

Mr. Blake, 

I "never found any contentment in the life which the newspapers record"—any thing of more value than the cent which they cost. Contentment 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 & 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 charity give their coffee-grounds to the poor! We demanding news, and putting up with such news! Is it a new convenience or a new accident or rather a new perception of the truth that we want?

“ ”————————

You say that "the serene hours in which Friendship, Books, Nature, Thought, seem above primary considerations, visit you but faintly"—Is not the attitude of expectation somewhat divine?—a sort of homemade 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.¹ 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 remarks 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 cartpath leads—but where you mount alone with your hoe—where the life-ever-lasting grows—you raise a crop which needs not to be brought 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 attained by one & the same means—that indeed 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 hearing as much as the lecturer would otherwise embarrass 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 Saturday next and spend Sunday with you, if you wish it. Say so if you do.

Drink deep or taste not of the Pierian spring². Be not deterred by melancholy on the path which leads to immortal health & joy. When they tasted of the water of the river over which they were to go, they thought that tasted a little bitterish to the palate, but it proved sweeter when it was own.³ 

H. D. T 

(1) 1850 6 8“…”"dream"“”

(2) “”“ ……”

(3) . John Bunyan1 6 2 8— 1 6 8 8 “ ”

August 9, 1850, Friday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1850 8 9

Probably to supplement his lectures, Thoreau had visited Cape Cod again in late June, this time alone. He described the ocean in his lectures as a "vast morgue," an association that was doubtless heightened when, at Emerson's request, he left Concord on July 23 to search for the remains and personal effects of the well-known author Margaret Fuller (1810—1850), who with her husband, Giovanni Angelo, the Marquis of Ossoli (d. 1850), and their young son, Angelo (1848—1850), had perished in a shipwreck on July 19 off the coast of Fire Island, a barrier island off Long Island. The bodies of Fuller and Ossoli were never recovered. By the time Thoreau arrived, Angelo had already been buried and the ship's wreckage had been plundered, so his search was largely fruitless. He returned to Concord on July 29. Late in August the Thoreau family moved to the newly remodeled house on Main Street, where Thoreau occupied the third-floor attic. He continued, for the most part, to ignore his Walden manuscript. Although one scholar believes that Blake moved from Milton back to Worcester between July 22 and August 11, the fact that Blake's colleague in Milton, Christopher Greene, hand-carried this letter to Blake suggests that the move did not take place until a somewhat later date.

6 7 23. 1810—1850“”. . 1850 1848—18507 19 7 29 8 7 22 8 11 .

H. G. O. Blake 

H. G. O.

Care of Mr. C. A. Greene 

C. A.

Milton Mass.

Concord Aug. 9th 1850 

1850 8 9

Mr Blake, 

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 prevented my answering it before. It is wisest to speak when you are spoken to. I will now endeavor 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 & death—and affect me less than my dreams. This petty stream which from time to time swells & 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 interests 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.

————————————

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 without 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 entertain 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 nobody 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 have repeatedly to 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 & shoes. I have hardly a shift. Just as shabby as I am in my outward apparel, aye, 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.

——

Would it not be worth the 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 materials 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 & frogs & mosquitoes in it. I prefer even 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 rendezvous? While each wanders his own way through the wood, without anxiety, aye with serene joy, though it be on his hands & knees over rocks and fallen trees, he cannot but be on the right way.—There is no wrong way to him. How can he be said to miss his friends, whom the fruits still nourish and the elements sustain? A man who missed his friends at a turn, went on buoyantly, dividing the friendly air, & 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 does¹ in that line of business. It will prove a failure. Just as successfully can you walk against a sharp steel edge which divides you cleanly right and left.² 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 conscience sawing transversely—almost any timber will give way.

——————

I do not dare invite you earnestly to come to Concord, because I know too well that the berries are not thick in my field, and we should have to take it out in viewing the landscape. But come on every account, and we will see—one another.

——

Henry D. Thoreau 

.D.

(1) . 6 3 “”

(2) “ ”

July 21, 1852, Wednesday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1852 7 21

A great deal had occurred in the two years since Thoreau's last letter. He and Channing had traveled to Montreal and Quebec in the fall of 1850, an excursion which Thoreau wrote up and lectured on in December 1851, one of fourteen lectures he had delivered since his last letter. The sectional strife that would tear the country apart in less than a decade accelerated dramatically with the passage of the Compromise of 1850, the most contentious part of which was the Fugitive Slave Law. This component of the omnibus bill mandated federal resources for the remanding of escaped slaves, but Americans at this time were highly skeptical of provisions allowing the federal government to infringe upon a state's sovereignty by forcibly removing anyone from within the state's borders. The April 1851 rendition of Anthony Sims from Boston ignited the wrath of Northerners, driving many into antislavery ranks. Thoreau himself responded by stepping up his participation in the Underground Railroad, sheltering escaped slaves and helping them on their way to Canada. He delivered the earliest version of his "Walking" lecture in April 1851, prefacing the lecture with a caustic remark about the Fugitive Slave Law. In this lecture he first uttered what may be his most famous proclamation, “[I]n Wildness is the preservation of the world." Later he would note that he regarded this lecture as "a sort of introduction to all I may write hereafter," a reference to the large natural history projects he would take up later in the decade and would continue working on for the remainder of his life. At the end of the following month, May 1851, after being fitted with false teeth, he delivered the lecture in Worcester, staying on three days to visit with Blake, Brown, and his other Worcester friends. His surveying business had been keeping him busier than he wished, although he continued to need the money to pay down his debt for A Week. Late in 1851 he finally got back to work on his Walden manuscript and would continue to steadily refine it until publication in August 1854. Since the fall of 1850 or so he had been putting considerable effort into learning botany, and studying the woods and fields of his hometown more systematically. At the time of this letter he was particularly interested in tracking the seasons more carefully, as the first note for this letter indicates. Blake was by this time once again back in Worcester after having taught in Boston during the fall of 1851 and perhaps into the spring of 1852.

1850 1851 1850 1851 4 . “”1851 4 “”“”1851 5 1851 1854 8 1850 18511852

Concord July 21st '52.

1852 7 21

Mr. Blake, 

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 report 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 truths 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 scarecrow is to a farmer—such a bundle of straw in a man's clothing as I am—with a few bits of tin¹ to sparkle in the sun dangling about me. As if I were 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 f latter me as long as you know what I am, as well as what I think, or aim to be, & 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 Asnebumskit² very well;—a fit place to go 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 Mt. top you have for all walls your own elevations and deeps of surrounding ether³. The partridge berries watered with Mt. 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 walk toward Rutland⁴ than Jerusalem. Rutland—modern town—land of ruts—trivial and worn—not too sacred—with no holy sepulchre, but prophane 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 hilltops, though, as I am told, the springs lie nearer to the surface on your hills than in your valleys. They have the reputation of being Free Soilers⁵—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 consciously to join any party it would be that which is the most free to entertain thought.

“”——

All the world complain nowadays of a press of trivial duties & 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 fulfill 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 & fairer regions of the heavens, I cannot 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 occasionally tacks back toward the center 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 over board, I may make up for all that distance lost.

——————

Perchance the time will come when we shall not be content to go back & forth upon a raft to some huge Homeric or Shakspearean India-man 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 & 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 law⁶, nor in the eye of 

H. D. T 

(1)

(2) 6

(3)

(4) 10

(5) 18481854 1854

(6)

September 1852; Concord, Massachusetts 

1852 9

In July 1852, Blake and one of his longtime students, Nancy Pope Howe Conant (1829—1872) decided they would marry during the forthcoming autumn. At thirty-six years of age, Blake had been a widower and single parent for six years. His fiancée was thirteen years his junior and from a wealthy family in Sterling, a small town twelve miles north of downtown Worcester. The couple married at a Unitarian church in Sterling on October 27, 1852. The marriage brought Blake financial security—a Worcester newspaper two years later reported that he paid tax on $20,590, whereas before he had been struggling to make ends meet—but more importantly it allied him to a woman who seems to have been as high-minded as he was. In late August 1852 he wrote to both Thoreau and Amos Bronson Alcott asking them, as he wrote in his letter to Alcott, how they thought a man and a woman could "help each other to be more truly solitary in the good & beautiful sense, to be more truly free, to be nearer the common Friend that we could be, apart? For we aim, I think, at nothing less than that. How shall we treat each other, with what reserve, with what Holy Reverence, so that the Mystery, the Poetry, & Beauty which hang about the dawning of love, may not be changed by too close an intercourse, by sharing, in common, the cares of daily life, into a prosaic & vulgar familiarity." His letter makes clear that he had conferred with his fiancée on these matters. Clearly, then, the high moral purpose of marital union was suggested by Blake and his fiancée just as much as it was assumed by Thoreau. Although Thoreau's cover letter for the two enclosures is undated, he would probably have needed two or three weeks to gather the "disconnected fragments" on "Love" and "Chastity and Sensuality" from his journal. Probably he sent them during September 1852. Just two passages from "Love" are extant in his early journal, the passages dating from the late summer and early autumn of 1849; all the other passages making up the two enclosures were probably torn out of the manuscript notebooks during the writing process. Reading these enclosures containing materials from 1849within the context of Thoreau's letters of 1852 gives one a clear sense of how dramatically his interests and prose style had changed during that three-year period.

1852 7 . . . 1829—187236 6 13 12 1852 10 27 ——20590 1852 8 . . “”“”“”“”1852 9 1849 1852 1849

Mr. Blake, 

Here come the sentences which I promised you. You may keep them if you will regard & use 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 & sensuality 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 enlighten me on this point if you can.

Henry D. Thoreau 

.D.

September 1852; Concord, Massachusetts 

1852 9

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 appreciated in different ways, or by different senses. In beauty we see it, in music we hear it, in fragrance 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 manifestation; 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 fathomed 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 averred 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 aeolian 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 influence 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 intensest actual love, which prevents entire abandonment 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.

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 obedience 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 common sense had been consulted how many marriages would never have taken place; if uncommon 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 surely make her more your friend? Is she retained, is she attracted, by more nobleness in you, by more of that virtue which is peculiarly yours, or is she indifferent 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 f ine perceptions is more truly feminine 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 outraged the other will be estranged. It is commonly the imagination which is wounded first, rather than the heart,—it is so much the more sensitive.

——

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 clipt, and it cannot fly, even descendingly. Our "blundering hearts!" some poet says. The imagination never forgets, it is a remembering. It is not foundationless, but most reasonable, and it alone uses all the knowledge of the intellect.

——“”

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 moles¹.

The relation may be profaned in many ways. The parties may not regard it with equal sacredness. What if the lover should learn that his beloved dealt in incantations and philters! What if he should hear that she consulted a clairvoyant! The spell would be instantly broken.

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 thou love with thy mind, 

And reason with thy heart?

Canst thou be kind, 

And from thy darling part?

Canst thou 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.

O 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.

It is not enough that we are truthful; we must cherish and carry our 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 related, as she to us. We should have no reserve; we should give the whole of ourselves to that society; 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, commonly, 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 companion in your walks, or to walk alone with hinds and villains and carles². Would not a friend enhance 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, and the cranberries in the meadow. The flowers would bloom, and the birds sing, with a new impulse. 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.

(1) . BaronFrederick von derTrenck1745—1794 . 1792 “ ”“ ‘”

(2) "churl""villain"

September 1852; Concord, Massachusetts 

1852 9

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 interesting of all human facts is veiled more completely than any mystery. It is treated with such secrecy and awe, as surely do not go to any religion. 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 Shakers¹ 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 without having anything worthy to say; but it is plain that the education of man has hardly commenced,—there is so little genuine intercommunication.

——

In a pure society, the subject of copulation would not be so often avoided from shame and not from reverence, winked out of sight, and hinted at only, but treated naturally simply,—perhaps simply avoided, like the kindred mysteries. 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 marriage a slight degree at least of sensuality; but every lover, the world over, believes in its inconceivable purity.

If it is the result of a pure love, there can be nothing sensual in marriage. Chastity is something 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 be more awful to the lover than that 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 nerve sand braces its enjoyer. Warm your body by healthful 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 answer 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 beverage. So he must not hear sweetened and colored 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 natures, and then there is lust. It is not necessary that this be deliberate, hardly even conscious; but, in the close contact of affection, there is danger that we may stain and pollute one another, 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 "descended to meet"², 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 elevate 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 fragrance, 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 f lower, and by an impure marriage the virgin is deflowered. Whoever loves flowers, loves virgins and chastity. Love and lust are as far asunder as a flower garden is from a brothel.

J. Biberg, in the Amenitates Botanice, edited by Linnӕus, observes (I translate from the Latin): "The organs of generation, which, in the animal kingdom, are for the most part concealed by nature as if they were to be ashamed of, in the vegetable 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 beholder, refreshing the senses with the most agreeable color and the sweetest odor; and, at the same time, bees and other insects, not to mention the hummingbird, extract honey from their nectaries, and gather wax from their effete pollen." Linnӕus himself calls the calyx the thalamus, or bridal chamber; and the corolla the aulaeum, or tapestry of it, and proceeds to explain thus every part of the flower.

J. “”

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 nuptials 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 experience. 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 improvement. 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 them³.

(1) “”“”. 1736—1784

(2) 1841 “ ”

(3) . 7 19—20 “ ”

February 27, 1853, Sunday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1853 2 27

The essay versions of Thoreau's "Excursion to Canada" lectures began to appear serially in the new Putnam's Monthly Magazine of American Literature, Science, and Art in January 1853 but publication was halted after the third installment (March) because Thoreau refused to allow George William Curtis (182———1892), the editor, to remove certain passages he regarded as "heresies." Still needing to pay down his debt for A Week, Thoreau stayed busy surveying, as he mentions at the beginning of this letter. He had delivered no lectures during the preceding nine months and would not deliver another till December. He continued work on his Walden manuscript and continued extracting passages from the books he was reading into his notebooks on Indians and natural history.

1853 1 3 . . 1824—1892“”12

Concord Feb. 27 '53 

1853 2 27

Mr. Blake, 

I have not answered your letter before because I have been almost constantly in the fields surveying of late. It is long since I have spent so many days so profitably in a pecuniary sense; so unprofitably, it seems to me, in a more important sense. I have earned just a dollar a day for 76 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 book¹ which I printed. I have not only cheap hours, but cheap weeks and months, i.e. 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 maintenance for the work of my head alone, I feel that it would be a dangerous temptation.

76 ——

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 have the coldest confidence in the last. There is only such hesitation as the appetites feel in following 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 enterprise 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 76 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, knight², 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?

“”“”——76

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 Assyria³ they look to me now a New Englander. The higher the mt. 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 & 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 farther below or approach nearer to my standard, whether Pierce or Scott⁴ is elected,—not a new scintillation of light f lashes on me, but ever and anon, though with longer intervals, the same surprising & everlastingly new light dawns tome, 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 fellowmen." Sometimes, it may be when my thoughts for 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 perchance 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 preventing fires which are not yet kindled. What a foul subject is this, of doing good⁵, 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 & smell & taste sweet and refresh all mankind to the extent of our capacity & 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 material wealth is increased, whether that needle they tell of was a gate-way or not,—since the problem 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 talents⁶ 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 difficulty ever is that I do not improve my opportunities, 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, aye you must be selecting your seeds forthwith and doing what winter work you can; and while others are raising potatoes and Baldwin⁷ apples for you, you must be raising apples of the Hesperides⁸ for them. (Only hear how he preaches!) No man can suspect 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 alone gave it to us. Men may in effect put us in the debtor's 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 carrier will tell you that he has no stock in his bank.

——

How prompt we are to satisfy the hunger & thirst of our bodies; how slow to satisfy the hunger & thirst of our souls. Indeed we who would be practical folks cannot use this word without blushing 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 on his dog who hasn'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 support of the body. But he alone is the truly enterprising & practical man who succeeds in maintaining his soul here. Haven't we our everlasting life to get? And isn't that the only excuse at last for eating drinking sleeping or even carrying 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.

I am much indebted to you because you look so steadily at the better side, or rather the true center of me (for our true center may & perhaps oftenest 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 ref lected from you to me, because we stand at the right angle to one another; and so it goes, zig-zag, to what successive reflecting surfaces, before it is all dissipated, or absorbed by the more unreflecting, or differently 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 Mts.⁹, slanted at the right angle, reflects the heavens to us. But in the slow geological depressions & upheavals, these mutual angles are disturbed, these suns set & new ones rise to us. That ideal which I worshipped was a greater stranger to the mica than tome. It was not the hero I admired but the reflection from his epaulet or helmet. It is nothing (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. There are the spangles that adorn a man. The highest union—the only un-ion (don't laugh) or central oneness, is the coincidence of visual rays. Our clubroom was an apartment in a constellation where our visual rays met (and there was no debate 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 Your-self? If you have met with him & know him it is all I have done, and surely where there is a mutual acquaintance the my & thy make a distinction without a difference.

“”“”

I do not wonder that you do not like my Canada story. It concerns me but little, and probably 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 excursion. It has come to an end at any rate, they will print no more, but return me my mss. when it is but little more than half done—as well as another I had sent them, because the editor Curtis requires the liberty to omit the heresies without consulting me—a privilege California is not rich enough to bid for.

————

I thank you again 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 most indefinite waking dream. The very green dust on the walls is an organized vegetable; the atmosphere has its fauna & flora floating in it; & shall we think that dreams are but dust & ashes, are always disintegrated & crumbling thoughts and not dust like thoughts trooping to its 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 retains with his bed and his pig, i.e. his idleness & sensuality. Men go to the opera because they hear there a faint expression in sound of this news which is never quite distinctly proclaimed. Suppose 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 & infinite value for a relative &finite one—to gain the whole world & 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 supply my side of the triangle.

Tell Mr Brown that I remember him & trust that he remembers me.

Yrs 

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 requested the subjects.

————

(1)

(2) 1547—1616 . . “”

(3)

(4) 1804—18691786—18661852 14

(5) . 6 9 “”

(6) "talent"

(7) 1744—1807 1784

(8)

(9) “”“”“”

April 10, 1853, Sunday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1853 4 10

Concord, April 10, 1853.

1853 4 10

Mr. Blake,— 

Another singular kind of spiritual foot-ball,—really nameless, handleless, homeless, like myself,—a mere arena for thoughts and feelings; definite 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 being 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 clash of vapor that I am will be what is called asleep,—resting! forsooth from what? Hard work? and thought? The hard work of the dandelion down, which floats over the meadow all day; the hard work of a pismire that labors to raise a hillock all day, and even by moonlight. Suddenly I can come forward 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 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 I 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.¹I read of something happening to another the other day: how happens it that nothing ever happens to me? A dandelion down that never alights, —settles,—blown off by a boy to see if his mother wanted him²,—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 shouldn't wonder if the owner set his dog on me next. I could remember something not much to the purpose, 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 neighbor, even with a bedfellow, whom we respect but very little; but as soon as it comes to this, 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 myself; 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 Blake, Blake. Never mind the rats in the wall; the cat will take care of them. All 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 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 above himself he can 

“

Erect himself , how poor a thing is man!"³ 

”

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 doing? Are we chiefly under obligations to the devil, like Tom Walker?⁴ 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 halfway to dawn yet.

.

As for the lectures, I feel that I have something to say, especially on Traveling, Vagueness, and Poverty; but I cannot come now. 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 Haverhill tomorrow, surveying, for a week or more. You met me on my last errand thither.

I trust that you realize what an exaggerater I am,—that I lay myself out to exaggerate whenever I have an opportunity,—pile Pelion upon Ossa, to reach heaven so⁵. 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 isn'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.

(1) “”

(2) “”

(3) . 1562—1619

(4) . . 1800 . .

(5) Odyssey2

December 19 and 22, 1853, Monday and Thursday; 

1853 12 19 22

Concord, Massachusetts 

In September Thoreau had made his second trip into the Maine woods, where he was accompanied by his cousin George Thatcher and the Indian guide Joseph Aitteon. He quickly wrote the excursion up as a lecture and delivered it before his townsmen on December 14. An expanded version of this lecture is the second chapter, "Chesuncook," in his posthumously published book The Maine Woods. At the end of October he received the 706 unsold copies of A Week (of 1,000 printed),the debt for which he had still not quite paid. Having carried them up two flights of stairs to his attic apartment and observed their vast bulk, he remarked wryly in his journal, "I now have a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself." An entry in Emerson's journal of this period appears to relate to this particular letter: "H. D. T charged Blake, if he could not do hard tasks, to take the soft ones, & when he liked anything, if it was only a picture or a tune, to stay by it, find out what he liked, & draw that sense or meaning out of it, & do that: harden it, somehow, & make it his own. Blake thought & thought on this, & wrote afterwards to Henry, that he had got his first glimpse of heaven." Emerson later added the remark, "Henry was a good physician." 

9. . 12 14 “”10 706 1000 “900 700 ”“”“”

Concord, December 19, 1853.

1853 12 19

Mr. Blake,— 

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 engagements, having a lecture to write for last Wednesday, and surveying more than usual besides. 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.

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 treadmill? And, indeed, some sort of revolving is necessary to produce a center and nucleus of being. What exercise is to the body, employment is to the mind and morals. 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 when 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!"¹ And the work 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?

————4——4“————”

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. 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 yourself on account of failure?

1,000 1,000

If you are going into that line,—going to besiege the city of God,—you must not only be strong in engines, but prepared with provisions to 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, without 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 gentleman 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 breakfast), to say nothing of the flocks and herds of Admetus² afterward.

————28 6.5

It is the art of mankind to polish the world, and everyone 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-tree³. It is straighter than a ray of light; flexibility is not known for one of its qualities.

December 22.

1222

So far I had got when I was called off to survey. 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 refreshing, 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 abstraction to a degree unknown to Europeans. If we cannot sing of health 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 business.

“”

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 winding 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!” 

“————”

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. Digus 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 as 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?

100

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.

(1) . ThomasH o o d, 1 7 9 9—1845“ —— —— ”

(2)

(3)

January 21, 1854, Saturday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1854 1 21

Thoreau left for Worcester at noon on January 23 and returned to Concord at noon on January 25. From 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on January 24 , which Thoreau noted in his journal was "a very cold day," he and Blake walked the six miles or so from Blake's house near downtown Worcester north to the small town of Holden and back. Thoreau was at this date almost done with his Walden manuscript, which he would soon present to the Boston publishers Ticknor and Fields.

1 23 1 25 1 24 “”9 6 4

Concord Jan 21st ‘54 

1854 1 21

Mr. Blake, 

My coat is at last done, and my mother & sister allow that I am so far in a condition to go abroad. I feel as if I had gone abroad the moment 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 innocent indifference not to say insolence to wear it. Ah, the process by which we get overcoats is not what it should be. Though the church declare it righteous & its priest pardons me, my own Good Genius tells me that it is hasty & coarse & false. I expect a time when, or rather an integrity by which a man will get his coat as honestly, 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, & to some extent react on us and poison us like that shirt which Hercules put on.¹ 

4 4——

I think to come & 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.

Ah! what foreign countries there are, greater in extent than the U. S. or Russia, and with no more souls to a square mile—stretching away one very 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 or kitchens of some with whom my business brings me—I was going to say in contact—(business, like misery, makes strange bedfellows²) I feel a sort of awe and as forlorn as if I were cast away on a desolate shore—I think of Riley's Narrative³ & his sufferings. 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 amorphous squab—divested of your air-inflated pinions. (By the way, excuse this writing, for I amusing the stub of the last feather I chance to possess.) You travel on, however, through this dark & desert world. You see in the distance an intelligent & sympathizing picture,—stars come forth in the dark &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 & naked characters they are. How we use & tolerate pretension; how the judge is clothed with dignity which does not belong to him, and the trembling witness with humility that does not belong 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 & 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 & 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 & makes a consistent stuff.

——

I mean merely to suggest how much the station affects the demeanor & self-respectability of the parties, & that the difference between the judge's coat of cloth & the criminal's is insignificant compared with—or only partially significant of—the difference between the coats which their respective stations permits them to wear. What airs the judge may put on over his coat which the criminal may not! The judge's opinion(sententia) of the criminal sentences him & is read by the clerk of the court, & published to the world, & executed by the sheriff—but the criminal's opinion of the judge has the weight of a sentence & is published &executed only in the supreme court of the universe—a court not of common pleas. How much juster is the one than the other? Men are continually sentencing each other, but whether we be judges or criminals, the sentence is ineffectual unless we condemn ourselves.

——————

I am glad to hear that I do not always limit your vision when you look this way—that you sometimes see the light through me, that I am here & there windows & 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 

(1)

(2) 161142“”

(3) 1777—18401815

August 8, 1854, Tuesday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1854 8 8

Thoreau wrote this letter the day before Walden was published. In late May, at about the time he had completed his work on the proofs of his new book, Anthony Burns was arrested in Boston under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law. With about 50,000 citizens lining the streets, Burns was escorted by federal troops from the Boston courthouse to a federal frigate, which remanded him to his owner in Virginia. A month later, on Independence Day, Thoreau read an extract from his essay "Slavery in Massachusetts" at an antislavery gathering in Framingham, Massachusetts. The full essay was given wide exposure by being reprinted in The Liberator on July 21 and on August 2 in the New York Tribune. At the same gathering and on the same stage, the fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (1805—1879) burned a copy of the U.S. Constitution, declaring it "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell" because of its provisions allowing slavery to stand. As he mentions at the beginning of the next letter, the day after he wrote this letter he took the train into Boston to pick up his author's copies of Walden from the publisher, Ticknor and Fields, and had the publisher send a copy of the book to Blake.

. 5 “”7 21 8 2 W. L. 1805—1879“”

Concord, August 8, 1854.

1854 8 8

Mr. Blake,— 

Methinks I have spent a rather unprofitable summer thus far. I have been too much with the world, as the poet might say.¹ The completest 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. Laterly, I have heard the very flies buzz too distinctly, 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 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;² only reaping an unprofitable calm and stagnation. Our conversation is a smooth, and civil, and never-ending speculation merely. I take up the thread of it again in the morning, with very much such courage as the invalid takes his prescribed Seidlitz powders³. 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 desperates, were Giant Despairs⁴. 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; and when I think that they have sufficiently relaxed, 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.

————“”4 4

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 Bonaparte sent out his horsemen in the Red Sea on all sides to find shallow water,⁵ so I sent forth my mounted thoughts to find deep water. I left the village and paddled up the river to Fair Haven Pond.⁶ 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 like a dead dog. Vast hollow chambers of silence stretched away on every side, and my being expanded 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 goodfight?⁷ 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 nowadays? 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 country 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.

“”

(1) . William Wordsworth1770—1850

(2) . 8 7“……”

(3)

(4) “”1 7

(5) 1798—1799 179812 28

(6)

(7) . 6 12 “ ”

September 21, 1854, Thursday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1854 9 21

By this date at least sixty-two reviews of Walden had appeared, mostly in newspapers, as was most common for the time, and most of there views were highly laudatory. Thinking that he could capitalize on the apparent success of his new book, Thoreau began planning a lecture tour to the West. At this time, however, he only had his long "Walking" lecture to work with, so he split that into four sections and began working each into a separate lecture. The "introductory" lecture to the course he tided "Moonlight"; the other three lectures he titled "Walking" and "The Wild," which required very little work, and "What Shall It Prof it," which required a great deal of work and was not actually completed until late November or early December.

62“”11 12

Concord, September 21, 1854.

1854 9 21

Blake,— 

I have just read your letter, but do not mean now to answer it, solely for want of time to say what I wish. I directed a copy of "Walden" to you at Ticknor's, on the day of its publication, and it should have reached you before. I am encouraged to know that it interests you as it now stands,—a printed book, for you apply a very severe test to it,—you make the highest demand on me. As for the excursion you speak of, I should like it right well,—indeed I thought of proposing the same thing to you and Brown, some months ago. Perhaps it would have been better if I had done so then; for in that case I should have been able to enter into it with that infinite margin to my views,—spotless of all engagements,—which I think so necessary. As it is, I have agreed to go a-lecturing to Plymouth, Sunday after next (October 1), and to Philadelphia in November, and thereafter to the West, if they shall want me; and, as I have prepared nothing in that shape, I feel as if my hours were spoken for. However, I think that, after having been to Plymouth, I may take a day or two—if that date will suit you and Brown. At any rate I will write you then.

————————10 1 11 ——

October 5, 1854, Thursday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1854 10 5

Thomas Cholmondeley (b.1823?) had arrived in Concord with letters of introduction to Emerson, who suggested he board at the Thoreau family home. According to Thoreau's biographer, Walter Harding, "Cholmondeley immediately took to Thoreau and lost all interest in Emerson." When Cholmondeley finally left for England, he asked Thoreau to accompany him, but according to Harding, Thoreau responded that "he was too attached to his native Concord to think of going abroad." 

. 1823 ?. “”“”

Concord Oct. 5 '54 

1854 10 5

Mr. Blake, 

After I wrote to you Mr. Watson postponed my going to Plymouth one week i.e. till next Sunday, and now he wishes me to carry my instruments & survey his grounds, to which he has been adding. Since I want a little money, though I contemplate but a short excursion, I do not feel at liberty to decline this work. I do not know exactly how long it will detain me—but there is plenty of time yet—& I will write to you again—perhaps from Plymouth— 

————

There is a Mr. Thomas Cholmondeley (pronounced Chumly), a young English author, staying at our house at present—who asks me to teach him botany—i.e, anything which I know—and also to make an excursion to some mountain with him. He is a well-behaved person, and possibly I may propose his taking that run to Wachusett with us—if it will be agreeable to you. Nay. If I do not hear any objection from you I will consider myself at liberty to invite him.

. ————————

In haste, 

H. D. Thoreau 

H. D.

October 14, 1854, Saturday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1854 10 14

Thoreau delivered his new "Moonlight" lecture at Leyden Hallin Plymouth, Massachusetts, on Sunday evening, October 7.Accompanied by both Blake and Cholmondeley, he ascended Mount Wachusett on Thursday, October 19. Westminster and Princeton Center are the nearest towns north and south of Mount Wachusett, respectively.

10 7 10 19

Concord Sat. pm. Oct 14 '54 

1854 10 14

Blake, 

I have just returned from Plymouth, where I have been detained surveying much longer than I expected.

What do you say to visiting Wachusett next Thursday? I will start at 7:15 a.m. unless there is a prospect ora stormy day, go by cars to Westminster, & thence on foot 5 or 6 miles to the mt tops, where I may engage to meet you at (or before) 12 m.

7 15 12 12

If the weather is unfavorable, I will try again—on Friday,—& again on Monday.

————

If a storm comes on after starting, I will seek you at the tavern in Princeton Center, as soon as circumstances will permit.

I shall expect an answer to clinch the bargain.

Yrs 

Henry D. Thoreau.

.D.

December 19, 1854, Tuesday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1854 12 19

Because he had not received enough invitations to make it worth his while, Thoreau was forced to give up his plans for a lecture tour to the West and instead began accepting engagements nearer to home. He had delivered his new "What Shall It Profit" lecture in Railroad Hall in Providence, Rhode Island, on December 6, meeting Theo Brown while in town and thereby setting up the pun which begins this letter.

12 6

Concord, December 19, 1854.

1854 12 19

Mr. Blake,— 

:

I suppose you have heard of my truly providential¹ meeting with Mr T. Brown; 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 correspond with him through you.

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, however, that in the long run things correspond to my original idea,—that they correspond to nothing 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, before 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 our 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 football to be kicked, when a bladder will do as well.

——

When an Indian is burned, his body may be broiled, it may be no more than a beefsteak. 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.

4——

If a man were to place himself in an attitude to bear manfully the greatest evi² that can be inflicted 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 Tλἣμ.)³ 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 Churchs 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 us incessantly telling us how we should behave. But we wait for the neighbor without to tell us of some false, easier way.

They have a census-table in which they put 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, "Ah! 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!⁴ Pray to be in earnest, where is Sevastopol? Who is Menchik off and Nicholas behind there? 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 Minié 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 wasn'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 question be, "What did you do while you were 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 instant you read this,—and happy or unhappy, according to your deserts.

————

(1) "providential" “”

(2)

(3) "priv.""pleon." “ ”“”“Τλἣμ” “”

(4)

December 22, 1854, Friday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1854 12 22

At all three of the lectures Thoreau mentions in this letter—in the seaport city of New Bedford, on the island of Nantucket south of Cape Cod, and in Worcester—he delivered "What Shall It Prof it," the essay version of which was posthumously published as "Life without Principle." Daniel Ricketson (1813—1898), his host in New Bedford, was an eccentric, independently wealthy Quaker, sometime historian, and nature lover whom Thoreau describes well in Letter 25. Ricketson had read Walden immediately upon its publication and had written Thoreau an admiring letter on August 12. Although most scholars believe that the highly flattering review of Walden which appeared in the National Anti-Slavery Standard on December 16, 1854, was written by novelist, editor, journalist, scholar, and ardent antislavery activist Lydia Maria Child (1802—1880), a few sentences in the review suggest Blake may have been the author. One such sentence reads: "It is refreshing to find…the sentiments of one man whose aim manifestly is to live and not to waste his time upon the externals of living." The abbreviation "inst." (for "instant") in the second paragraph means "during the present or current month." 

————. 1813—189825 8 12 1854 12 16 . . 1802—1880“4 4……”"inst.""instant"“”

Concord Dec. 22nd '54 

1854 12 22

Mr. Blake, 

I will lecture for your Lyceum on the 4th of January next and I hope that I shall have time for that good day out of doors. Mr. Cholmondeley is in Boston, yet perhaps I may write him to accompany me.

1 4

I have engaged to lecture at New Bedford on the 26 inst. stopping with Daniel Ricketson 3 miles out of town; and Nantucket on the 28th; so that I shall be gone all next week. They say there is some danger of being weather-bound at Nantucket, but I see that others run the same risk.

26 . 28

You had better acknowledge the receipt of this at any rate, though you should write nothing else, otherwise I shall not know whether you get it; but perhaps you will not wait till you have seen me to answer my letter. I will tell you what I think of lecturing when I see you.

Did you see the notice of Walden in the last Anti-Slavery Standard? You will not be surprised if I tell you that it reminded me of you.

Yrs, 

Henry D. Thoreau 

.D.

June 27, 1855, Wednesday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1855 6 27

The weakness in his legs that Thoreau suffered throughout the remainder of this year and into the next was very likely a symptom of tuberculosis. Given his known susceptibility to psychosomatic illness (he suffered acutely from sympathetic lockjaw in the weeks after his older brother John died of the disease), one suspects that the weakness may have been brought about by Walden not being as well received as he had hoped. In any case, the debility caused him to postpone what would have been his third trip to Maine; instead he went on what amounted to a convalescent excursion to Cape Cod with Channing shortly after writing this letter. Neither Blake nor Brown was able to join him during his two week stay on the Cape. Essay versions of his earlier lecture course "An Excursion to Cape Cod" began appearing serially in Pumam's Monthly for June but halted peremptorily after the August issue, ostensibly because Curtis, still the editor, had not realized that "the Cape Cod paper 'was to be expanded into a book,'" by which he apparently meant that the whole was longer than he was willing to accommodate.

6 8 “‘’”

Concord June 27th 1855 

1855 6 27

Mr. Blake, 

I have been sick and good for nothing but to lie on my back and wait for something to turn up, for two or three months. This has compelled me to postpone several things, among them writing to you to whom I am so deeply in debt, and inviting you and Brown to Concord—not having brains adequate to such an exertion. I should feel a little less ashamed if I could give any name to my disorder, but I cannot, and our doctor cannot help me to it, and I will not take the name of any disease in vain. However, there is one consolation in being sick, and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before. I expected in the winter to be deep in the woods of Maine in my canoe long before this, but I am so far from that that I can only take a languid walk in Concord streets.

——

I do not know how the mistake arose about the Cape Cod excursion. The nearest I have come to that with anybody is that about a month ago Channing proposed to me to go to Truro on Cape Cod, with him& board there awhile, but I declined. For a week past however I have been a little inclined to go there & sit on the sea-shore a week or more, but I do not venture to propose myself as the companion of him or of any peripatetic man. Not that I should not rejoice to have you and Brown or C. sitting there also. I am not sure that C. really wishes to go now—and as I go simply for the medicine of it, while I need it, I should not think it worth the while to notify him when I am about to take my bitters.

——

Since I began this, or within 5 minutes, I have begun to think that I will start for Truro next Saturday morning—the 30th. I do not know at what hour the packet leaves Boston, nor exactly what kind of accommodation I shall find at Truro.

——30

I should be singularly favored if you and Brown were there at the same time, and though you speak of the 20th of July, I will be so bold as to suggest your coming to Concord Friday night (when, by the way Garrison & Phillips¹ hold forth here) & going to the Cape with me. Though we take short walks together there we can have long talks, and you & Brown will have time enough for your own excursions besides.

7 20

I received a letter from Cholmondeley last winter, which I should like to show you, as well as his book. He said that he had "accepted the offer of a captaincy in the Salop Militia," and was hoping to take an active part in the war before long.

“”

I thank you again and again for the encouragement your letters are to me. But I must stop this writing, or I shall have to pay for it.

Yours Truly 

H. D. Thoreau 

H. D.

(1) 1805—18791811—1884

July 8, 1855, Sunday; North Truro, Massachusetts 

1855 7 8

The Highland Lighthouse is on the Atlantic side of the Cape in the town of North Truro at about the same latitude as the southern most part of Provincetown (42.0405°N), which is on the southern or bayside shore of the northern extremity of the Cape. Commerce Street seems to be an error for Commercial Street; Boston maps of the time show no Commerce Street but a Commercial Street paralleling the harbor from the foot of Long Wharf on the eastern side of the Boston peninsula around the northern tip of the peninsula to the Charles River (now Charlestown) Bridge. T Wharf was an extension jutting northward from about the center of Long Wharf and then running parallel to Long Wharf in an easterly direction. Long Wharf was and still is an extension into the harbor of State Street. As one might expect, "good livers" are those who know how to enjoy the pleasures of life.

42.0405 “”“”“”“”T “”

North Truro, July 8, 1855.

1855 7 8

There being no packet, I did not leave Boston till last Thursday, though I came down on Wednesday, and Channing with me. There is no public house here; but we are boarding with Mr. James Small, the keeper, in a little house attached to the Highland Lighthouse. It is true the table is not so clean as could be desired, but I have found it much superior in that respect to the Provincetown hotel. They are what is called "good livers." Our host has another larger and very good house, within a quarter of a mile, unoccupied, where he say she can accommodate several more. He is a very good man to deal with,—has often been the representative of the town, and is perhaps the most intelligent man in it. I shall probably stay here as much as ten days longer: board $3.50 per week. So you and Brown had better come down forthwith. You will find either the schooner Melrose or another, or both, leaving Commerce Street, or else T Wharf, at 9 A.M.(it commonly means 10), Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays,—if not other days. We left about 10 A. M., and reached Provincetown at 5 P. M.,—a very good run. A stage runs up the Cape every morning but Sunday, starting at 4:30 A.M., and reaches the post office in North Truro, seven miles from Provincetown, and one from the lighthouse, about 6 o'clock. If you arrive at P. before night, you can walk over, and leave your baggage to be sent. You can also come by cars from Boston to Yarmouth, and thence by stage forty miles more,—through everyday, but it costs much more, and is not so pleasant. Come by all means, for it is the best place to see the ocean in these States. I hope I shall be worth meeting.

. “”——3.5 “”9 10 T ——10 5 ——4 6 ——

July 14, 1855, Saturday; North Truro, Massachusetts 

1855 7 14

Thoreau and Channing did indeed return to Concord from the Capeon Wednesday, July 18. To go "before the mast" means to serve as a common sailor and therefore be quartered in the forward part of a ship, as opposed to the officers, mares, and passengers, whose quarters were behind the mast. Richard Henry Dana (1815—1882), who graduated from Harvard College the same year as Thoreau 1837, had published his well-known travel book Two Years before the Mast in 1840.

7 18 “”4 4.H. 1815—188218371840

July, 14.

7 14

You say that you hope I will excuse your frequent writing. I trust you will excuse my infrequent and curt writing until I am able to resume my old habits, which for three months I have been compelled to abandon. Methinks I am beginning to be better. I think to leave the Cape next Wednesday, and so shall not see you here; but I shall be glad to meet you in Concord, though I may not be able to go before the mast, in a boating excursion. This is an admirable place for coolness and sea-bathing and retirement. You must come prepared for cool weather and fogs.

P. S.—There is no mail up till Monday morning.

——

September 26, 1855, Wednesday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1855 9 26

The weakness Thoreau continued to experience in his legs portended ill for his artistry because, as he often suggested in his journal, his literary output was in fairly direct proportion to his peripatetic exertions. He appears not to have felt quite himself again until the spring.

Concord, September 26, 1855.

1855 9 26

Mr. Blake,— 

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 Musketaquid¹ 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. Ricketson of New Bedford has just made me a visit of a day and a half, and I have had a quite good time with him. He and Channing 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 meeting him.

Sincerity is a great but rare virtue, and we pardon to it much complaining, and the betrayal of many weaknesses. R. says of himself, that he sometimes thinks that he has all the infirmities of genius without the genius; is wretched without a hair-pillow, etc.; expresses a great and awful uncertainty with regard to "God," "Death," his "immortality"; says, "If I only knew," etc. He loves Cowper's "Task" better than anything else; and thereafter, perhaps, Thomson, Gray, and even Howitt². 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, etc.; not go off into—? But I say that I have no scheme about it,—node signs 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 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 tome,—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 life³ compared with which that is bran. Let a man only taste these loaves, and he becomes a skillful economist at once. He'll not waste much time in earning those. Don't spend your time in drilling soldiers, who may turn our 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 Higginson⁴ and Brown were gone to Ktaadn; it must be so much better to go to than a Woman's Rights or Abolition Convention; better still, to the delectable primitive mounts within you, which you have dreamed of from your youth up, and seen, perhaps, 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, considerably?—had one redeeming dream this summer? I dreamed, last night, that I could vault over any height it pleased me. That was something; and I contemplated myself with a slight satisfaction in the morning for it.

4——

Methinks I will write to you. Methinks you will be glad to hear. We will stand on solid foundations to one another,—I a 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 eternally guard the straits. Methinks I see an inscription 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 Ricketson, 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.

(1) “”

(2) . William Howitt1 7 9 2—1 8 9 7 . Mary Howitt1 7 9 9—1 8 8 8

(3) . 6 35“”

(4) 1823—1911

December 9, 1855, Sunday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1855 12 9

Thoreau took Blake in his boat up the Assabet River in Concordon November 9, both to collect wood for the coming winter (a highly significant annual ritual for Thoreau, one discussed in the "Housewarming" chapter of Walden as well as in this letter) and to salvage from the river planks and driftwood with which to build a suitable bookshelf for the books Cholmondeley had sent from England. As Thoreau remarks, the books arrived on November 30—appropriately enough, aboard a ship named Asia.

11 9 “”11 30——“”

Concord, December 9, 1855.

1855 12 9

Mr. Blake,— 

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. There are many more such voyages, and longer ones, to be made on that river, for it is the water of life. The Ganges¹ 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 shallowness,—that hay-carts can be driven through it at midsummer; its depth passeth my understanding. 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-dam² again. If there is any depthin me, there is a corresponding 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 bursting into flower, and resounding as if Orpheus³ had just left them,—these shall be our fuel, and we still prefer to chaffer with the wood-merchant!

——

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 came, and whither it goes? Does aught that flows come from a higher source? Many things drift downward on its surface which would 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 industry, 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 ashman, 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 in the summer I made an axletree, and on this I rolled my boat out.

11 27

Miss Mary Emerson⁴ is here,—the youngest person in Concord, though about eighty,—and the most apprehensive of a genuine thought; earnest 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.

. ——80——

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 illuminated. They are in English, French, Latin, Greek, and Sanscrit. I have not made out the significance of this godsend yet.

11 30 “”

Farewell, and bright dreams to you!

(1) , Nehru, 1889—1964“”

(2) ,

(3)

(4) . (1774—1863. .

March 13, 1856, Thursday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1856 3 13

Thoreau's exploration in this letter of the spring sugaring season's metaphorical implications shows his frame of mind as he went out the following day, March 14, to see if he could find sap flowing in maple trees. After using his knife to tap several white maples, none of which flowed, he discovered a red maple whose "limb was moistened by sap trickling along the bark. Tapping this, I was surprised to find it flow freely." He spent the entire week tapping maples, collecting sap, and boiling the sap down for sugar. At the end of the week he got into a dispute with his father, who pointed out that the time-consuming process kept Thoreau from his studies. "I made it my study," Thoreau replied. "I felt as if I had been to a university." 

3 14 “”“”“”

Concord Mar. 13 1856.

1856 3 13

Mr. Blake— 

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 anywhere 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 surprised 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 &chamber work. Even now I am probably the greatest walker in Concord—to its disgrace be it said. I remember our walks & talks &sailing in the past, with great satisfaction, and trust that we shall have more of them ere long—have more woodings-up—for even in the spring we must still seek "fuel to maintain our fires."¹ 

——————“”

As you suggest, we would fain value one another for what we are absolutely, rather than relatively. How will this do for a symbol of sympathy?

As for compliments,—even the stars praise me, and I praise them,—they & I sometimes belong to a mutual admiration society. Is it not so with you? I know you of old. Are you not tough & 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"² to see what compliments are admissible. I am not afraid of praise for I have practised it on myself. 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 & 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.

————4————

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 hickory. 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, 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 twentieth of an inch cube out of a pumpkin, & it sufficed. Though the yield be no greater than that,—this is not less the reason for it, & it will be not the less sweet,—nay, it will be infinitely the sweeter.

——————1/20————

Shall then the maple yield sugar, & not man? Shall the farmer be thus active, & surely have so much sugar to show for it before this very March is gone,—while I read the newspaper? While he works in his sugar camp, let me work in mine—for sweetness is in me, & to sugar it shall come;—it shall not all go to leaves & 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, & watch it set & crystalize—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 sugar to sweeten sugar with. If you will listen to me, I will sweeten your whole load,—your whole life.

——————

Then will the callers ask—Where is Blake?—He is in his sugar-camp on the Mt. side.—Let the world await him.

——————

Then will the little boys bless you, & the great boys too,—for such sugar is the origin of many condiments—Blakeians, in the shops of Worcester, of new form, with their mottos wrapped up in them.³ 

————

Shall men taste only the sweetness of the maple & the cane, the coming year?

A walk over the crust to Asnybumskit, standing 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 implies an inward wealth in the walker. What a Golconda is he conversant with, thawing his fingers 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 

(1) . . Susanna StricklandMoodie1803—188412 “”

(2) 1832C.

(3) 1846.

May 21, 1856, Wednesday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1856 5 21

The day after Thoreau wrote this letter, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina used a walking cane to beat Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts into unconsciousness on the floor of the Senate chambers. Sumner had delivered a strident speech on "Bleeding Kansas," where pro- and antislavery forces were violently contending with one another, and Brooks felt that Sumner had impugned the integrity of a relative. It took Sumner over three years to recover from his injuries. Thoreau does not mention this event in his journal, where he continued to concentrate heavily on observations of nature, although surely the event was a topic of conversation with Blake and Brown when they visited Concord on May 25. On the way to Fair Haven Pond, an expansion of the Sudbury River, the trio stopped at Clamshell Hill, where Thoreau found five Indian arrowheads. He had a special knack for finding arrowheads and other stone implements, in part because he knew where to look, having now studied Indian history for so many years. Thoreau reciprocated his friends' visit with an extended stay in Worcester the following month, June 13-19, rooming first at Brown's house and then at Blake's. While in Worcester he sat for a photograph at the rooms of the daguerreotypist Benjamin Maxham.

. . 5 25 5 6 13 6 19 .

Concord May 21st '56 

1856 5 21

Mr. Blake, 

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 arrange it. Something I have prepared might prove for their entertainment or refreshment perchance, but I would not like to have a hat carried 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 scattered 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 somewhat omnivorously, browsing both stalk & leaves—but I shall perhaps be enabled to speak with the more precision & authority by & by—if philosophy & 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—& many thanks to the inviter.

——————

As for the Harvard excursion, will you let me suggest another? Do you& Brown 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 of coming here before, now do it. I do not propose this because I think that I am worth your spending time with—but because I hope that we may prove f lint &steel to one another. It is at most only an hour's ride further, & 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 & society any comparison is impertinent. It is an idling down on the plain at the base of a mountain instead 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—i.e. 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 & 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 

November 19, 1856, Wednesday; Perth Amboy, New Jersey 

1856 11 19

In 1852 the wealthy Quaker abolitionist Marcus Spring (1810—1874 ) had purchased 268 acres a little over a mile southwest of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, on the shore of Raritan Bay near the mouth of Raritan River, as the home for a cooperative community, the Raritan Bay Union. Like other utopian communities of the time, however, it faltered, failing completely in 1860. But in 1856, having renamed the area Eagleswood, Spring decided as a fiscal stopgap to subdivide the land and sell of flots. Thoreau's friend the educator and writer Amos Bronson Alcott(1799—1888) was a friend of Spring's and during a visit to Eagleswood in October 1856 suggested that Thoreau be commissioned to survey the land and, during his visit, deliver a few lectures. On the way to Eagleswood, on October 24, Thoreau stopped off in Worcester, but because Blake had gone to a horse race in Boston, the two did not meet. Thoreau instead spent the afternoon with Brown and Higginson before continuing his journey. While at Eagles wood he lectured on "Walking," "What Shall It Profit," and "Moose hunting," the latter of which he had called "An Excursion to Moosehead Lake" in December1853. He mentions in a letter to his sister Sophia that Blake had asked him "to stop at Worcester & lecture on my return," apparently asking specifically for a repeat of "What Shall It Profit," which he had delivered in Worcester on January 4, 1855. The three other individual she mentions in this letter are the famous editor of the New-York Tribune, Horace Greeley (1811—1872), who had for many years served him as an informal literary agent; the fiery abolitionist minister and extremely popular orator the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher (1813—1887), of whom he later wrote in his journal, "If Henry Ward Beecher knows so much more about God than another, if he has made some discovery of truth in this direction, I would thank him to publish it in Silliman's Journal [a scientific publication], with as few flourishes as possible”; and most particularly the poet Walt Whitman (1819—1892), whom he met at Whitman's Brooklyn home on November 10. It must have been an electric moment, this meeting of two giants of American literature, with Alcott and Whitman's mother also being present. Whitman recollected that Thoreau said to him during their meeting, "Whitman, do you have any idea that you are rather bigger and outside the average—may perhaps have immense significance?" He also recalled Thoreau confessing, "There is much in you to which I cannot accommodate myself: the defect may be mine: but the objections are there." Although it is easy to see how Victorian-era readers of Leaves of Grass, published in July 1855, would have found Whitman's "sensuality" and "egotism" offensive, it is to Thoreau's credit that he was able to recognize Whitman's genius despite his objections. Years later Whitman remarked of Thoreau that he "was a surprising fellow—he is not easily grasped—is elusive: yet he is one of the native forces—stands for a fact, a movement, an upheaval: Thoreau belongs to America, to the transcendental, to the protestors... One thing about Thoreau keeps him very near to me: I refer to his lawlessness—his dissent—his going his own absolute road let hell blaze all it chooses." As Thoreau notes, Whitman maintained a routine precisely like his own: morning study and writing followed by an afternoon walk.

1852 . 1810—1874268 1860 1856 A. B. 1799—18881856 10 10 24 1853 12 “”1855 14 . 1811—1872. . 1813—1887“”. 1819—189211 10 “——”“”1855 7 “”“”“——————……————”

Eagleswood, N. J., November 19, 1856.

1856 11 19

Mr. Blake,— 

I have been here much longer than I expected, but have deferred answering you, because I could not foresee when I shall 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 Concord for that purpose. I have read three of my old lectures (that included) to the Eagles wood people, and, unexpectedly, with rare success—i.e., I was aware that what I was saying was silently taken in by their ears.

4——

You must excuse me if I write mainly a business 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, Saturday before last, I went with him and Greeley, by invitation 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 visited Whitman the next morning (A. had already seen him), and were much interested and provoked. 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 gentleman. 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 omnibus, sitting beside the driver, listening to the roar of the carts, and sometimes gesticulating and declaiming 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.

36 ————

I shall probably be in Concord next week; so you can direct to me there.

December 6 and 7, 1856, Saturday and Sunday; 

1856 12 6 7

Concord, Massachusetts 

When Thoreau left Eagleswood, he brought some of its stationery away with him and used it to write this letter, less the letterhead engraving, as he mentions.

Concord Dec 6 '56 

1856 12 6

Mr. Blake, 

What is wanting above is merely an engraving of Eagleswood, which I have used. I trust that you got a note from me at Eagleswood about a fortnight ago. I passed thru' Worcester on the morning of the 25th of November, 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 unexpectedly 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 been gone to a horse-race. But think of making a call at half past three in the morning! (Would it not have implied a 3 o'clock in the morning courage in both you & 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 & down the Main Street at half past 5 in the dark, and paused long in front of Brown'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, & I moved off. Took another turn around there, a little later, and had the very earliest offer of the Transcript from an urchin behind, whom I actually could not see, it was so dark. So I with drew, wondering if you & 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,& gave it to her kitten to play with. So that world famous tragedy goes on by night as well as by day, & 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 something.—These things transpired while you and B. were, to all practical purposes, no where, & good for nothing—not even for society,—not for horseraces,—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, considering the kind of life you would have come back to.

11 25 330 620——————————————

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 day light.

Blake! Blake! 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 & knowledge?

For my part I am trying to wake up,—to wring slumber out of pores;—for, generally, I take events as unconcernedly as a fence post,—absorb wet & 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 25 years? Would I not rather be that than the farmer that set it? or he that preaches to that farmer?—& 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 &flowers, & have fruit.

——————25 ——

I am grateful for what I am & have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite—only a sense of (Eagleswood again all cut off!) existence. Well anything for variery. I am ready to try this for the next 1000 years, & 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 along 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 comes, 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 fire on the hearth & 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 happiness & unhappiness lavished upon you?

————

Does not Time go by swifter than the swiftest equine trotter or racket?

Stir up Brown—Remind him of his duties, which outrun the date & span of Worcester's years past & to come. Tell him to be sure that he is on the Main Street, however narrow it may be—& 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.

——

Dec. 7 

12 7

That Walt Whitman, of whom I wrote to you, is the most interesting fact to me at present. I have just read his 2nd editions (which he gave me) and it has done me more good than any reading for a long time. Perhaps I remember best "the poem of Walt Whitman an American"& the "Sun Down Poem". There are 2 or 3 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 a shamed 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. 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,—& it may turn out to be less sensual than it appeared—I do not so much wish that those parts were not written, as that men & 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 communicate to us no experience, and if we are shocked, whose experience is it that we are reminded of?

. “. ”“”————.

On the whole it sounds to me very brave & 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 occasionally 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 awefully good.

To be sure I sometimes feel a little imposed on. By his heartiness & 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 then—throws in a thousand of brick. Though rude & sometimes ineffectual, it is a great primitive poem,—an alarm or trumpet-note tinging 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 America, that I did not think much of America or of politics, and so on, which may have been somewhat of a damper to him.

————

Since I have seen him, I find that I am not disturbed 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.

December 31, 1856, Wednesday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1856 12 31

Thoreau had delivered "Walking, or the Wild" in the basement vestry of the Congregational Church in Amherst, New Hampshire, on Thursday, December 16, noting in his journal afterward that he trusted his lecture "helped to undermine" that orthodox establishment. He had spent the two days previous to writing this letter in the field surveying the large farm of Davis Elwell near the confluence of the Sudbury and Assabet Rivers, a task he completed the following day.

12 16 “”.

Concord, December 31, 1856.

1856 12 31

Mr. Blake,— 

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, Februar 3. I am simply their hired man. This will probably be the extent of my lecturing hereabouts.

————2 3

I must depend on meeting Mr. Wasson¹ some other time.

Perhaps it always costs me more than it comes 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 dollars 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.

50

These, you may think, are reasons for not lecturing, 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 "pan of unwrinkled cream."² 

“”

H. D. T.

(1) 1823—1887

(2) “ ”

February 6, 1857, Friday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1857 2 6

Contrary to his statement in the previous letter, Thoreau delivered "Walking, or the Wild," not "another" lecture, in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, on February 3. He had delivered an earlier version of the lecture in Worcester on May 31, 1851, but had "divided it into two" separate lectures, one on "Walking," the other on "The Wild," in the weeks after the publication of Walden.

2 3 “”1851 5 31 “”“”“”

Concord Feb. 6th 57 

1857 2 6

Mr. Blake, 

I will come to you on Friday Feb. 13th with that lecture. You may call it "The Wild"—or "Walking" or both—whichever you choose. I told Brown that it had not been much altered since I read it in Worcester, but now I think of it, much of it must have been new to you, because, having since divided it into two, I am able to read what before I omitted. Nevertheless, I should like to have it understood by those whom it concerns, that I am invited to read in public (if it be so) what I have already read, in part, to a private audience.

2 13 ————

Henry D. Thoreau.

.D.

April 17, 1857, Friday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1857 4 17

The abolitionist fighter John Brown (1800-1859) visited Concord in March 1857 during a tour to raise funds for his military efforts in Kansas. He dined at the Thoreau family table, and Thoreau spoke with him at some length about his (Brown's) childhood, young manhood, and the Battle of Black Jack in Kansas the previous June. Thoreau heard him lecture in the Concord Town Hall and donated a small sum to Brown's cause. Thoreau had spent two full weeks at Ricketson's house in New Bedford, leaving Concord on April 2 without having informed Blake, who came to visit while Thoreau was away.

. 1800—18591857 3( ) 6 4 2

Concord Ap. 17th 1857 

1857 4 17

Mr. Blake, 

I returned from New Bedford night before last. I met Alcott there & learned from him that probably you had gone to Concord. I am very sorry that I missed you. I had expected you earlier, & at last thought that I should get back before you came, but I ought to have notified you of my absence. However, it would have been too late, after I had made up my mind to go. I hope you lost nothing by going a little round.

I took out the Celtis seeds at your request, at the time we spoke of them, and left them in the chamber on some shelf or other. If you have found them, very well; if you have not found them, very well; but tell Hale¹ of it, if you see him.

My mother says that you & Brown & Rogers² & Wasson (titles left behind) talk of "coming down on" me some day. Do not fail to come one & all, and within a week or two, if possible, else I may be gone again. Give me a short notice, and then come & spend a day on Concord River—or say that you will come if it is fair, unless you are confident of bringing fair weather with you. Come & be Concord, as I have been Worcestered.

——

Perhaps you came nearer to me for not finding me at home, for trains of thought the more connect when trains of cars do not. If I had actually met you, you would have gone again, but now I have not yet dismissed you.

I hear what you say about personal relations with joy. It is as if you were to say, I value the best & finest part of you, & not the worst. I can even endure your very near & real approach, & prefer it to a shake of the hand. This intercourse is not subject to time or distance.

I have a very long new and faithful letter from Cholmondeley which I wish to show you. He speaks of sending me more books!!

!!

If I were with you now I could tell you much of Ricketson, and my visit to New Bedford, but I do not know how it will be by & by. I should like to have you meet R—who is the frankest man I know. Alcott & he get along very well together.

——

Channing has returned to Concord with me, probably for a short visit only.

Consider this a business letter, which you know counts nothing in the game we play.

Remember me particularly to Brown.

(1) 1822—1909

(2) 1823—18931850

June 6, 1857, Saturday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1857 6 6

Thoreau left for the Cape with Channing on June 12 and, as he mentions in the next letter, returned June 22. It was to be his last visit there.

6 12 6 22

Concord, June 6, 1857, 3 p.m.

1857 6 6 3

Mr. Blake,— 

I have just got your note, but I am sorry to say that this very morning I sent a note to Channing, stating that I would go with him to Cape Cod next week on an excursion which we have been talking of for some time. If there were time to communicate with you, I should ask you to come to Concord on Monday, before I go; but as it is, I must wait till I come back, which I think will be about ten days hence. I do not like this delay, but there seems to be a fate in it. Perhaps Mr. Wasson will be well enough to come by that time. I will notify you of my return, and shall depend on seeing you all.

June 23, 1857, Tuesday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1857 6 23

On Monday morning, June 29, Thoreau and Blake went boating on the Assabet River in Concord, apparently unaccompanied by others. Probably he italicized "Mediterranean" to call attention to the word's etymology: "in the middle of land" or "surrounded by land." Cholmondeley's long letter to Thoreau dated May 26 has not yet been published; it contains, among other matters, his responses to the four books Thoreau sent.

6 29 “”“”“”5 26 4

Concord Tuesday Morning June 23d 1857 

1857 6 23

Mr. Blake, 

I returned from Cape Cod last evening, and now take the first opportunity to invite you men of Worcester to this quiet Mediterranean shore. Can you come this week on Friday or next Monday? I mention the earliest days on which I suppose you can be ready. If more convenient name some other time within ten days. I shall be rejoiced to see you, and to act the part of skip per in the contemplated voyage. I have just got another letter from Cholmondeley, which may interest you somewhat.

H. D. T.

August 18, 1857, Tuesday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1857 8 18

Thoreau hosted Theo Brown and Seth Rogers in Concord on July 4.On July 11 he wrote letters to Eben J. Loomis (1818—1912), a friend in nearby Cambridge, and to his cousin George Thatcher, who lived in Bangor, Maine, inquiring whether they would like to accompany him on an excursion into the woods of Maine. In his letter to Thatcher he mentioned a friend who wanted to go as well but who had "neither woodcraft nor strength enough." That friend was Blake, whom one suspects was upset with Thoreau for failing to invite him along. In any case, neither Loomis nor Thatcher was able to accompany Thoreau on such short notice, but he was able to get Edward Hoar (1823—1893),the son of Concord's leading citizen, Judge Samuel Hoar (1778—1856),to make the trip with him. When the two reached Maine they hired Joe Polis (1809—1884) of Old town as their guide. The trip lasted from July 20 to August 8. It was to be Thoreau's final excursion to the Maine woods; his account of it was published posthumously as the third chapter of The Maine Woods.

7 4 . . 7 11 .J. 1818—1912. “”. 1823—1893. 1778—1856. 1809—18847 20 88

H. G. O. Blake 

H. G. O.

Worcester Mass 

Concord Aug. 18th 1857.

1857 8 18

Mr. Blake, 

XVth ly 

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 favorable 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 helplessly—on to rocks or shoals. Some sails are set for this purpose only. There is the large fleet of scholars & 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 havens, we trust.

————

It is a pity you were not here with Brown and Rogers. 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 excursion 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 business letter, if I had tried, when there was no business to be accomplished.

I have now returned, and think I have had a quite profitable journey, chiefly from associating with an intelligent Indian¹. My companion, Edward Hoar, also found his account in it, though he Suffered considerably from being obliged to carry unusual loads over wet &rough "carries,"—in one instance five miles through a swamp, where the water was frequently up to our knees & 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 Ktadn. Our best nights were those when it rained the hardest on account of the mosquitoes. I speak of these things, which were not unexpected, merely to account for my not inviting you.

. “”——5 3

Having returned, I flatter myself that the world appears in some respects a little larger, and not, as usual, smaller & 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 f lows in other channels than I knew—It redeems for me portions of what seemed brutish before.

——————

It is a great satisfaction to find that your oldest convictions are permanent. With regard to essentials 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,& I never regret any emphasis which it may have inspired. Ktadn is there still, but much more surely my old conviction is there, resting with more than mountain breadth & weight on the world, the source still of fertilizing streams, & affording glorious views from its summit, if I can get up to it again. As the mts. still stand on the plain, and far more unchangeable & permanent, stand still grouped around, farther or nearer to my maturer eye, the ideas which I have entertained—the everlasting teats from which we draw our nourishment.

——

H. D. T.

(1) . Joseph.Polis“”1842

November 16, 1857, Monday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1857 11 16

Very likely Blake undertook his solitary journey to the White Mountains in part because of the suggestion implicit in the previous letter—and made quite explicit in this letter—that he would not have been up to the rigors of the Maine excursion of July-August. Throughout the summer of 1857 the American economy had slowed noticeably, and in early September the failure of several New York banks precipitated a full scale financial panic. Banks that remained solvent reacted to the panic by suspending specie payments. This dramatic economic downturn, afterward called the Depression of1857, was the worst since the Depression of 1837. Sometime after returning from Maine, Thoreau grew a full beard, which he kept for the remainder of his life.

————1857 1857 1837

Concord, November 16, 1857.

1857 11 16

Mr. Blake,— 

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 nowadays about hard times; but I think that the community generally, ministers and all, take a wrong view of the matter, though some of the ministers preaching according to a formula may pretend to take a right one. This general failure, both private and public, is rather occasion for rejoicing, as reminding us whom we have at the helm,—that justice is always 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 statement that ninety-six in a hundred doing such business 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"¹? If thousands are thrown out of employment, 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?

——100 96 ——“”

The merchants and company have long laughed at transcendentalism, higher laws, etc., crying, "None of your moonshine," as if they were anchored 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 wind².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 communities³, 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 merchant 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 little 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 parch, 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 dollars." I see them struggling just as ineffectually on dry land, nay, even more hopelessly, for, in the former case, rather than sink, they will finally let the bag go; but in the latter they are pretty sure to hold and go down with it. I see them swimming about in their greatcoats, collecting their rents, really getting their dues, drinking bitter draughts which only increase their thirst, becoming more and more water-logged, till finally they sink plumb down to the bottom. But enough of this.

“”“10 ”

Have you ever read Ruskin's⁴ 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 to are infinity, Beauty, Imagination, Love of Nature, etc.,—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 Hottentots⁵. 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 somewhere, 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 farther 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 garden. See how I can play with my fingers! They are the funniest companions I have ever found. Where did they come from? What strange control I have over them! Who am I? What are they?—those little peaks—call them Madison, Jefferson, Lafayette. What is the matter? My fingers ten, I say. Why, erelong, they may form the top-most crystal of Mount Washington. I go up there to see my body's cousins. There are some fingers, toes, bowels, etc., that I take an interest in, and therefore I am interested in all their relations.

————10

Let me suggest a theme for you: to state to yourself precisely and completely what that walk over the mountains amounted to for you,—returning 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 yourself for having gone over the mountains, for mankind 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 yourself. 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, etc., very much as at home. It is after we get home that we really go over the mountain, 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 Wachusett. 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?

120

Dr. Solger has been lecturing in the vestry in this town on Geography, to Sanborn's scholars, for several months past, at five P. M. Emerson and Alcott 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 outdoors! I never thought of such a thing. What was the sun made 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 indoors at such an hour, when the night is coming in which no man can walk⁶.

5

Are you in want of amusement nowadays? Then play a little at the game of getting a living. There never was anything equal it. Do it temperately, though, and don't sweat. Don't let this secret out, for I have a design against the Opera. OPERA!! Pass along the exclamations, devil⁷.

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.

“”

(1) . 97 1 “”

(2) . 11 7 “”

(3) .M. C. F r a n c i e s M a r i eCharles Fourier1772—1837

(4) 1819—1900

(5)

(6) . 9 4 “ ”

(7) ,

June 1, 1858, Tuesday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1858 6 1

On the way to New York City in late May to conduct business relating to his family's graphite supply firm, Thoreau stayed overnight at Blake's in Worcester (May 22) and enjoyed a long outing the next day with Blake, Brown, and Rogers. The morning after writing this letter he met Blake at the rail depot in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and the two men continued on together to Troy, New Hampshire, from which they walked to Mount Monadnock, five miles to the east. They camped two nights on the mountain, walked the twelve miles to the train station at Winchendon, Massachusetts, the morning of June 4, and returned to their respective homes. Thoreau's essay "Chesuncook" began appearing serially in the June issue of the Atlantic Monthly, but publication was halted after the August issue when the editor, James Russell Lowell(1819—1891), dropped without Thoreau's permission what he regarded as the heretical sentence "It [the pine tree] is as immortal as I am, and perchance will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me still.” 

5 522 6 4 12 6 8 . . 1819—1891“”

Concord Tuesday 4 pm June 1st 1858 

1858 6 1 4

Mr. Blake— 

It looks as if it might rain tomorrow; therefore this is to inform you—if you have not left Worcester on account of rain, that if the weather prevents my starting tomorrow, I intend to start on Thursday morning—i.e. if it is not decidedly rainy—or something more than a shower, and I trust that I shall meet you at Troy as agreed on.

H. D. T 

June 29, 1858, Tuesday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1858 6 29

As he explains in Letter 40, Thoreau mailed this letter to Blake's home in Worcester, but Blake appears to have been visiting his in-laws in Sterling, Massachusetts, and therefore did not receive the letter in a timely fashion.

Concord, June 29, 1858, 8 A.M.

1858 6 29 8

Mr. Blake,— 

Edward Hoar and I propose to start for the White Mountains in a covered wagon, with one horse, on the morning of Thursday the 1stof July, intending to explore the mountain tops botanically, and camp on them at least several times. Will you take a seat in the wagon with us? Mr. Hoar prefers to hire the horse and wagon himself. Let us hear by express, as soon as you can, whether you will join us here by the earliest train Thursday morning, or Wednesday night. Bring your map of the mountains, and as much provision for the road as you can,—hard bread, sugar, tea, meat, etc.,—for we intend to live like gypsies; also, a blanket and some thick clothes for the mountain top.

. 7 1 ————

July 1, 1858, Thursday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1858 7 1

Apparently delayed because they had not heard from Blake, Hoar and Thoreau left Concord in their private carriage on July 2. The night of July 4 they camped near Senter (usually Center) Harbor, New Hampshire, a village at the northern extremity of Lake Winnepesaukee. On July 7 they stopped by the Glen House below Pinkham Notch, left a note there for Blake, and ascended Mount Washington, joined by one William H. H. Wentworth, whom Hoar had hired on as a packer. The following afternoon, as Thoreau reported in his journal, "we heard, as we thought, a faint shout, and it occurred to me that Blake... might possibly be looking for me; but soon Wentworth decided that it must be a bear, for they make a noise like a woman in distress. He has caught many of them. Nevertheless, we shouted in return and waved alight coat on the meadow. After an hour or two had elapsed, we heard the voice again, nearer, and saw two men, and I went up the stream to meet Blake and Brown, wet, ragged, and bloody with black flies." The next morning Thoreau sprained his ankle in Tuckerman Ravine and had to lay up the remainder of that day and the next. The five man party continued botanizing on and around Mount Washington until July 16, when Thoreau, Hoar, Blake, and Brown headed home, arriving in Concord at noon on July 19. A few of the incidents that took place during this trip are interestingly echoed in Letter 41.

7 2 7 4 7 7 . H. H. “……”7 16719

Concord, July 1, 1858 

1858 7 1

July 1st. Last Monday evening Mr. Edward Hoar said that he thought of going to the White Mountains. I remarked casually that I should like to go well enough if I could afford it. Whereupon he declared that if I would go with him, he would hire a horse and wagon, so that the ride would cost me nothing, and we would explore the mountaintops botanically, camping on them many nights. The next morning I suggested you and Brown's accompanying us in another wagon, and we could all camp and cook, gypsy-like, along the way,—or, perhaps, if the horse could draw us, you would like to bear half the expense of the horse and wagon, and take a seat with us. He liked either proposition, but said, that if you would take a seat with us, he would prefer to hire the horse and wagon himself. You could contribute something else if you pleased. Supposing that Brown would be confined, I wrote to you accordingly, by express on Tuesday morning, via Boston, stating that we should start to-day, suggesting provision, thick clothes, etc., and asking for an answer; but I have not received one. I have just heard that you may be at Sterling, and now write to say that we shall still be glad if you will join us at Senter Harbor, where we expect to be next Monday morning. In any case, will you please direct a letter to us there at once?

7 1 . ——

January 1, 1859, Saturday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1859 1 1

In late November Cholmondeley had mailed Thoreau a letter from Montreal stating that he would be visiting Boston before heading to the West Indies for the winter, whither he asked Thoreau to join him. Later, after Cholmondeley's arrival, he suggested to Thoreau that they explore the valley of the Amazon together, but Thoreau demurred once again, telling his English friend, "I think I had better stay in Concord." Thoreau's two most fervent admirers outside of his family, Blake and Ricketson, met one another and apparently did not hit it off particularly well. They were, in fact, very different personalities—Blake extremely serious and highly idealistic, Ricket son remarkably self-absorbed and literal-minded. Emerson and his compeers in the Saturday Club, had they stuck to their routine of meeting the last Saturday of the month, would have convened at the Parker House in Boston on Christmas Day. It would appear that Emerson attempted to attract Thoreau to the meeting.

11“”——

Concord, January 1, 1859.

1859 1 1

Mr. Blake,— 

It may interest you to hear that Cholmondeley has been this way again, via Montreal and Lake Huron, going to the West Indies, or rather to Weissnichtwo¹, 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 Ricketson. 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 continually, 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 believe 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 rime, expecting to make me render or minced meat, so fit for a club to dine off.

“”

"Hercules with his club 

“

The Dragon did drub; 

But More of More Hall, 

With nothing at all, 

He slew the Dragon of Wantle." ² 

”

Ah! that More of More Hall knew what fair play was. Channing, 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 from 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. It is indispensable that I should take a dose of Lowell& Agassiz & Woodman.

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, Attics³ or other. The only room in Boston which I visit with alacrity is the Gentlemen's Room⁴ at the Fitchburg Depot, where I wait for the cars, sometimes for two hours, in order to get out of town. It is a paradise to the Parker House, for no smoking is allowed, and there is far more retirement. A large and respectable club of us hire it (Town and Country Club⁵), and I am pretty sure to find some one there whose face is set the same way as my own.

My last essay, on which I am still engaged, is called Autumnal Tints. I do not know how readable (i.e., by me to others) it will be.

I met Mr. James the other night at Emerson's, at an Alcottianconversation⁶, at which, however, Alcott did not talk much, being disturbed by James's opposition. The latter is a hearty man enough, with whom you can differ very satisfactorily, on account of both his doctrines and his good temper. He utters quasi philanthropic dogmas 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 turkey son Thanksgiving Day that he proposes to convert the criminal, but by a true sympathy with each one,—with him, among the rest, who lying 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 Dobson 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 farther 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 another place several times. This is the real state of things, as I understand, at least so far as James's remedies go. We are now, alas! exercising what charity we actually have, and new laws would not give us any more. But, perchance, we might make some improvements in the House of Correction. You and I are Dobson; what will James do for us?

——————

Have you found at last in your wanderings a place where the solitude is sweet?

What mountain are you camping on nowadays? Though I had a good time at the mountains, 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 demand, and not unreasonably, but after a corresponding outlay, have an all-absorbing purpose, and at the same time that your feet bear you hither and thither, travel much more in imagination.

To let the mountains slide,—live at home like a traveler. It should not be in vain that these things are shown us from day to day. Is not each withered leaf that I see in my walks some thing which I have traveled to find?—traveled, who can tell how far? What a fool he must be who thinks that his El Dorado⁷ is anywhere but where he lives!

————

We are always, methinks, in some kind of ravine, 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.⁸ 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 Tuckerman's Ravines which ray out from that center 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.

4

So we live in Worcester and in Concord, each man taking his exercise regularly in his ravine, like a lion in his cage, and sometimes spraining his ankle 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 (Brown, may be) and think it is a bear. Nevertheless, on the whole, we think it very grand and exhilarating, this ravine life. It is a capital advantage withal, living so high, the excellent drainage of that city of God. Routine is but a shallow and insignificant sort of ravine, such as the ruts are, the conduits of puddles. But these ravines are the source of mighty streams, precipitous, 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 lasts mooth and fertilizing water at which nations drink and navies supply themselves begins with melted glaciers, and burst thunder-spouts. Let us pray that, if we are not f lowing 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.

——1 1000

(1) .Thomas Carlyle1795—1881 Weissnichtwo“”

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5) 1849

(6)

(7) El Dorado

(8) . 13 12 “”

January 19 and 29, 1859, Wednesday and Saturday; 

1859 1 19 29

Concord, Massachusetts 

Thoreau's father, John Thoreau Sr., had been ill for quite some time, which circumstance had increasingly compelled Thoreau to handle matters relating to the family's business. Those matters fell wholly upon his shoulders when his father died on February 3. In the letter to which Thoreau responds here, Blake once again suggested that his friend deliver "What Shall It Profit" a second time in Worcester, either overlooking the remark in Letter 41 about "Autumnal Tints" or assuming Thoreau would not have that nascent lecture ready in goodtime. Blake also appears to have mentioned in his letter having written a paper about his "adventures in the Ravine." Tuckerman Ravine is doubtless meant, and the paper was almost certainly the result of Blake's compliance with the suggestion in Letter 37 that he "state to [himself ] precisely and completely what his solitary walk over the mountains amounted to" for him.

. 2 3 “”“”

Concord, January 19, 1859.

1859 1 19

Mr. Blake,— 

If I could have given a favorable report as to the skating, I should have answered you earlier. About a week before you wrote there was good skating; there is now none. As for the lecture, I shall be glad to come. I cannot now say when, but I will let you know, I think within a week or ten days at most, and will then leave you a week clear to make the arrangements in. I will bring something else than "What shall it profit a Man?" My father is very sick, and has been for a long time, so that there is the more need of me at home. This occurs to me, even when contemplating so short an excursion as to Worcester.

I want very much to see or hear your account of your adventures in the Ravine, and I trust I shall do so when I come to Worcester. Cholmondeley has been here again, returning from Virginia (for he went no farther south) to Canada; and will go thence to Europe, he thinks, in the spring, and never ramble any more. ( January 29). I am expecting daily that my father will die, therefore I cannot leave home at present. I will write you again within ten days.

1 29

February 7, 1859, Monday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1859 2 7

The delay occasioned by his father's illness and death enabled Thoreau to complete enough of "Autumnal Tints' to read a portion of it by February 15, but in a letter to Ricketson on February 12 he mentions that he was "going to Worcester to read a parlor lecture on the 22nd." He did indeed read the "Autumnal Tints" extracts in Worcester on that date, either at Blake's school at I Warren Block on Pearl Street or in Blake's home at 3 Bowdoin Street. As explained in note 3 to Letter 31 above, "Autumnal Tints" grew over the months into a much larger project that Thoreau called The Fall of the Leaf.

2 15 2 12 “22 ”

Concord Feb. 7th 1859 

1859 2 7

Mr. Blake, 

I will come and read you an extract from "Autumnal Tints," on Tuesday the 15th, of this month, if that is agreeable to you,—leaving here probably at noon. Perhaps you had better acknowledge the receipt of this.

15 ——

H. D. T.

September 26, 1859, Monday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1859 9 26

The Thoreau family business thrived throughout the 1850s, and with the death of his father Thoreau was left to run it himself, which reduced dramatically the free time he had become accustomed to enjoying over the years. Blake and Brown visited him in Concord on April 28, and the following month he again met John Brown, who once more visited Concord from Kansas. As he had done during his previous visit, Brown spoke at the Concord Town Hall, but this time Thoreau was considerably more impressed with Brown than he had been before. Doubtless inspired by Thoreau accounts of Cape Cod, Blake visited the Cape himself but clearly found the place not so much to his liking.

19 50 4 28 .

Concord Sep. 26th 1859 

1859 9 26

Mr. Blake, 

I am not sure that I am in a fit mood to write to you, for I feel & 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 Admetus¹—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 counting their flocks, & then lie drunk under a hedge. How is your grist ground?—Not by some murmuring stream, while you lie dreaming on the bank, but, it seems, you must take hold with your hands & 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 &goad them along. In short, you've got to carry on ² farms at once, the farm on the earth, and the farm in your mind. Those Crimean and Italian battles were mere boy's 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, & march with them in orderly array through the always hostile country! How 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 &sound, & yet despair, and turn out at last only hollowness & dust within, like a Dead-sea apple2. A standing army of numerous, brave, & well disciplined thoughts, & you at the head of them, marching straight to your goal! —How to bring this about is the problem, & Scotts' Tactics³ will not help you to it. Think of a poor fellow begirt only with a sword belt,& no such staff of athletic thoughts! his brains rattling as he walks, and talks! —These are your Pretorian guard.

——————————

It is easy enough to maintain 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, falls miserably. 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 fortress, with an army of alert thoughts!—thoughts that send their bullets home to heaven's door—with which you can take the whole world, without paying for it, or robbing any body. See the conquering hero comes! You fail in your thoughts, or you prevail in your thoughts only. Provided 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 world whenever it is dropt in it. There is no universal solvent but this, & all things together cannot saturate it. It will hold the universe in solution, & yet be as translucent as ever. The vast machine may indeed roll over our toes, & we not know it, but it would rebound & be staved to pieces like an empty barrel, if it should strike fair & square, on the smallest & least angular of a man's thoughts.

——————! 4

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, & so, by long knocking at Ocean's gate, have gained admittance at last; better if separately, & 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, & ascended the hills there, & 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 the bottom of the river pretty extensively. I have engaged to read a lecture to Parker's society on the 9th of October next.

10 9

Emerson has been seriously lame for 2 or 3 months past—Sprained his foot—& does not yet get better.It has been a bad business for him— 

——————

I am off—a barberrying 

——

H. D. T.

(1)

(2) “ ”

(3) 1835 Scott1786—1866

October 31, 1859, Monday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1859 10 31

Blake visited Thoreau on October 13, staying overnight and joining him the next morning for a walk around Flint's Pond in Lincoln, Massachusetts, one of the towns adjoining Concord. During this month Thoreau began work on a massively ambitious project, Wild Fruits, wherein he planned to catalog and describe in considerable detail the complete natural history of all the naturally occurring fruits of his hometown in their order of ripening, as well as survey how humankind over the millennia had used and enjoyed each of those fruits. Unfortunately, this project was left unfinished at his death, and a reconstructed version of the incomplete project was not published until 2000. On October 19, five days after Blake returned home from his visit, the first report arrived in Concord of John Brown's raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia).Brown and twenty-one men aspired to rid the land of the iniquity of slavery by leading an insurrection and arming the slaves with weapons from the arsenal. Instead, ten of the men were killed, including two of Brown's sons; five escaped and were never caught. Brown was among the remaining six who were captured and quickly brought to trial. Thoreau's response to the initial reports was swift, decisive, unequivocal. Brown's character, if not his specific actions, must be defended at all hazards. Thoreau's journal, filled with observations about nature in the days leading up to October 19, is filled with nothing but his thoughts on the John Brown affair through the remainder of the month. As more news came to him through the Boston newspapers, particularly the reports of what Brown said to his captors as he lay wounded on the armory's engine house floor, Thoreau's indignation mounted, as did his respect for Brown's character. While the nation rowdily debated the import of this incredibly dramatic event and argued about Brown's sanity, Thoreau organized his journal comments into a lecture. When he sent word around town that he would deliver a defense of Brown, the local abolitionists responded that a defense at that time might be counterproductive. Thoreau replied, "I did not send to you for advice, but to announce that I am to speak." His lecture "A Plea for Captain John Brown," delivered in the vestry of the Unitarian Meetinghouse in Concord on October 30, made him the first person in the country to speak out publicly in support of Brown. It was a daring, even a dangerous act, but wholly characteristic. The lecture inaugurated a gradual swaying of the public's mind in the Free States, a development that was completed eighteen months later, when many troops assembled from those states and marched southward to the song "John Brown's Body." Two days after the Concord lecture and the day after this letter to Blake, November 1, Thoreau read the lecture again, this time in one of Boston's foremost auditoriums, the Tremont Temple. The black abolitionist orator Frederick Douglass had been scheduled to speak, but he had left hastily for Canada, fearing reprisals for his suspected involvement in planning Brown's raid. On October 31, probably after writing to Blake, Thoreau had received an urgent telegram from Boston asking him to stand in for Douglass. The lecture was scheduled for 7:30 p.m., but Tremont Hall was filled with 2,500 auditors at 7 p.m. Thoreau spoke for an hour and a half, giving what seems to have been one of his best performances on the lecture platform, for the newspaper reports indicate that the audience listened with "enthusiastic approval" and that Thoreau's speech was several times interrupted by applause. When Blake received this letter from Thoreau, he quickly rented Washburn Hall in Worcester's new Mechanic's Hall building on Main Street for Thursday, November 3.Higginson was not in town when the letter arrived but was returning from upstate New York, where he had gone to speak with Mrs. Brown in North Elba about persuading her husband to allow his friends in the North to rescue him from prison. (Brown, understanding that his martyrdom was far more valuable to the cause of abolition than his life, had refused offers of rescue.) The court in Virginia issued its verdict the day before Thoreau's Worcester engagement, November 2: death by hanging in one month. The next day's newspapers contained the text of John Brown's last speech to the court, a speech that many American school children throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century were required to recite from memory. Thoreau read Brown's brief speech at the close of his Worcester lecture that evening. The next day he stopped by Alcott's house in Concord and reported on both his Boston and Worcester lectures, after which Alcott wrote in his diary, "Thoreau has good right to speak fully his mind concerning Brown, and has been the first to speak and celebrate the hero's courage and magnanimity. It is these which he discerns and praises. The men have much in common: the sturdy manliness, straight-forwardness and independence. It is well they met, and that Thoreau saw what he sets forth as no one else can.” 

10 13 ——2000 10 19 . 10 19 10 “”10 30 . 18 . 11 1 . 10 31 7 30 7 2500 “”113 11 2 . 19 50 “

Concord Oct 31st 

10 31

Mr. Blake.

I spoke to my townsmen last evening on "the character of Capt. Brown, now in the clutches of the slaveholder." I should like to speak to any company in Worcester who may wish to hear me, & will come, if only my expenses are paid.

I think that we should express ourselves at once, while Brown is alive. The sooner the better. Perhaps Higginson may like to have a meeting.

Wednesday evening would be a good time.

The people here are deeply interested in the matter.

Let me have an answer as soon as may be.

Henry D. Thoreau 

.D.

P. S. I may be engaged toward the end of the week.

May 20, 1860, Sunday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1860 5 20

Thoreau had delivered a new lecture, "Wild Apples," in Concord on February 8. It was part of Wild Fruits, the project he had begun working on the previous October, right around the time of Blake's last visit. Shortly after his delivery of "Wild Apples," he read the first American edition of On the Origin of Species, an intellectual bombshell that continues to be controversial in our time. Charles Darwin (1809-1882)had published the treatise in London the preceding October. He knew it would spark controversy, and it certainly did that. Thoreau was one of the first Americans to read the book, and because of his incredible open-mindedness and his wide reading in natural history, particularly since 1851, he was an unusually fit reader for this particular book. The final chapter contains an eloquent plea encouraging natural historians with evidence supporting the "developmental" thesis (now more popularly known as the theory of evolution) to gather and present their evidence. Thoreau responded by immediately beginning to assemble the observations on seed dispersion and forest succession scattered throughout his journal of the preceding ten and more years. As Thoreau well knew, those observations firmly, even conclusively supported one of the most critical links in Darwin's argument, the one on the geographical distribution of species. He read a paper on "The Succession of Forest Trees" in Concord on September 20, 1860.The essay was widely reprinted shortly thereafter. Regrettably, he did not live to complete his treatise The Dispersion of Seeds, the scattered leaves of which were not reconstructed and published until1993 in Faith in a Seed. In that manuscript he eloquently sums up his thoughts on Darwin's revolutionary theory: "The development theory implies a greater vital force in nature, because it is more flexible and accommodating, and equivalent to a sort of constant new creation." Precisely the same point can be made about Thoreau's religious thought.

2 8 10 . 1809—188210 1851“”1860 9 201993 “”

Concord May 20 1860 

1860520

Mr. Blake, 

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 & Nature herself fluctuating. 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 E., this life is a weariness, routine, dust and ashes, and he drowns his imaginary cares (!) (a sort of friction among his vital organs), in a bowl. But to the man who sits most W., his contemporary (!), it is a field for all noble endeavors, an elysium, the dwelling place of heroes & knights. The former complains that he has a thousand affairs to attend to; but he does not realize, that his affairs, (though they may be a thousand, ) and he are one.

Men & boys are learning all kinds of trades 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 haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? If you can not 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 grandeur. He's in the condition of a healthy & 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 condition 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 discovers 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 & mended here" (not yours). He is a master-workman in this business. He works 24 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.

“” 24

Each reaching and aspiration is an instinct with which all nature consists & cooperates, and therefore it is not in vain. But alas! each relaxing 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 desperation, or that you hold your life cheap.

If you take this life to be simply what old religious folks pretend, (I mean the effete, gone to seed in a drought, mere human galls stung by the Devil once), then all your joy & serenity is reduced 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. Unexpectedly, by some immortal thoughts, you will be compensated. The bank whereon you sit will be a fragrant and flowery one, and your world in the hollow a sleek and light gazelle.

Where is the "Unexplored land" ¹ but in our own untried enterprises? To an adventurous spirit any place,—London, New York, Worcester, or his own yard, is "unexplored land," to seek which Freemont & ² Kane travel so far. To a sluggish & defeated spirit even the Great Basin & the Polaris are trivial places. If they ever get there (& indeed they are there now) they will want to sleep & give it up, just as they always do. These are the regions of the Known & of the Unknown. What is the use of going right over the old track again? There is an adder in the ³path which your own feet have worn. You must make tracks into the Unknown. That is what you have your board & clothes for. Why do you ever mend your clothes, unless that, wearing them, you may mend your ways?

“”——“” ,

Let us sing.

H. D. T.

(1)

(2) 1813—1890 1820—1857

(3) 4917“”

August 3, 1860, Friday; Concord, Massachusetts 

186083

The last recorded visit Blake had made to Concord was the one of the previous October, just before John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry. At the time he wrote this letter Thoreau was enthusiastically, almost feverishly engaged in studying the woodlots of Concord and in fact had been so engaged for quite some time. His principal aim was to fill out more completely the first of his Darwinian treatises, "The Succession of Forest Trees," the main components of which also appear in his larger study, The Dispersion of Seeds. He spent a great deal of time in his attic study, where he worked on his manuscripts of these works, occasionally worked as well on his Wild Fruits and The Fall of the Leaf manuscripts, combed through his journals for material related to these projects, and read related books and articles. He and Channing left for Mount Monadnock on August 4 and returned on August 9.

10 . 8489

Concord, August 3, 1860.

186083

Mr. Blake,— 

I some time ago asked Channing if he would not spend a week with me on Monadnoc; but he did not answer decidedly. Lately he has talked of an excursion somewhere, but I said that now I must wait till my sister returned from Plymouth, N.H. She has returned,—and accordingly, on receiving your note this morning, I made known its contents to Channing, in order to see how far I was engaged with him. The result is that he decides to go to Monadnoc to-morrow morning; so I must defer making an excursion with you and Brown to another season. Perhaps you will call as you pass the mountain. I send this by the earliest mail.

——

P.S.—That was a very insufficient visit you made here the last time. My mother is better, though far from well; and if you should chance along here any time after your journey, I trust that we shall all do better.

November 4, 1860, Sunday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1860114

Obviously, Blake and Brown had passed by Mount Monadnock, probably on a train, while Thoreau and Channing were on the mountain, but I have not been able to determine their destination. Thoreau at the time of his letter was still vigorously pursuing his various natural history studies, but by this time he had shifted his attention almost exclusively to The Dispersion of Seeds. Election Day fell two days after this letter was written. Abraham Lincoln received a majority vote among Northerners, but did not receive a majority of the popular vote. The combined opposition outpolled him by almost one million votes. He would be a minority president, lacking a clear mandate, and his inauguration would not take place until March. President James Buchanan was the "lame-duck" president during the intervening four months.

100 3 . 4 “”

Concord Nov. 4 1860 

1860114

Mr. Blake, 

I am glad to hear any particulars of your excursion. As for myself, I looked out for you somewhat on that Monday, when, it appears, you 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 & B could have lodged by ¹yourselves in one, if not with us1.

——

We made an excellent beginning of our mt. 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 pm. 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 thro' its remains to the earth beneath. Standing before this, and turning round slowly, like meat that is roasting, we were as dry if not drier than ever after a few hours, & so, at last we "turned in." 

——“”“”“”

This was a great deal better than going up there in fair weather, & having no adventure (not knowing how to appreciate either fair weather or foul) but dull common-place sleep in a useless house, & 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 withdrawn for a season. We had the mt. all to ourselves that pm & night. There was nobody going up that day to engrave his name on the summit, nor to gather blueberries. The Genius of the mts. saw us starting from Concord & it said,—There come two of our folks. Let us get ready for them—Get up a serious storm, that will send a-packing these holiday guests. (They may have their say another time.) Let us receive them with true mt. hospitality—kill the fatted cloud—Let them know the value of a spruce roof, & of a fire of dead spruce stumps. Every bush dripped tears of joy at our advent. Fire did its best & received 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!

————————“”——————

We & the mt. 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, & 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 Mts. last, several nuisances which render travelling there-abouts unpleasant. The chief of these was the mt. houses. I might have supposed that the main attraction of that region even to citizens, lay in its wildness and unlikeness to the city, & yet they make it as much like the city as they can afford to. I heard that the Crawford House was lighted with gas, & 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 ascended Monadnock once, & danced on the top. How did that happen? Why, he being up there, a party of young men & women came up bringing boards & a fiddler, and having laid dlown the boards they made a level floor, on which they 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, & then hurrahed for—what? Why for Harrison & 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 & their safety require it; it takes the pressure of many atmospheres to do this; & 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 Emerson's criticism called Monadnock was inspired not by remembering the inhabitants of N.H. as they are in the valleys, so much as by meeting some of them on the mt. top.

——

After several nights' experience C came to the conclusion that he was "lying out doors," and inquired what was the largest beast that might nibble 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 5 nights, being gone 6 days, for C suggested that 6 working days made a week, & I saw that he was ready to de-camp. However, he found his account in it, as well as I.

“”

We were seen to go up in the rain, grim & silent like 2 Genii of the storm, by Fassett's men or boys, but we were never identified afterward, though we were the subject of some conversation which we overheard. Five hundred persons at least came onto the mt. while we were there, but not one found our camp. We saw one party of three ladies & two gentlemen spread their blankets and spend the night on the top, & heard them converse, but they did not know that they had neighbors, who were comparatively old settlers. We spared them the chagrin which that knowledge would have caused them, & let them print their story in a newspaper accordingly.

“”——

From what I heard of Fassett's infirmities I concluded that his partner was Tap. He has moved about thirty rods further down the mt., & is still hammering at a new castle there when you go by, while Tap is probably down cellar. Such is the Cerberus² that guards this passage. There always is one you know. This is not so bad to go by as the Glen House. However, we left those Elysian fields by a short cut of our own which departed just beyond where he is stationed.

165

Yes, to meet men on an honest and simple Goring, meet with rebuffs, suffer from sore feet, as you did, aye & from a sore heart, as perhaps you also did,—all that is excellent. What a pity that that young prince³ could not enjoy a little of the legitimate experience of travelling, be dealt with simply & truly though rudely. He might have been invited to some hospitable house in the country, had his bowl of bread & milk set before him, with a clean pin-a-fore, been told that there were the punt & the fishing rod, and he could amuse himself as he chose—might have swung a few birches, dug out a woodchuck, & had a regular good time, & finally been sent to bed with the boys,—and so never have been introduced to Mr. Everett at all. I have no doubt that this would have been a far more memorable & valuable experience than he got.

——————

The snow-clad summit of Mt. Washington must have been a very interesting sight from Wachusett. 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 goodness which has forgotten its own deeds,—which God has seen to be good and let be. None of your just made perfect—pickled eels!⁴ 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 goodness 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 crystalized. You looked into the land of promise. Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is distant, serene, and cold, the purer & more durable it is. It is better to warm ourselves with ice than with fire.

—————— 30

Tell Brown 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 

(1) 18586 18

(2)

(3) 18 . Albert Edward1841—1910

(4) 1222—23“”

December 2, 1860, Sunday; Concord, Massachusetts 

1860122

The results of the election earlier in the month reflected a deeply divided country. Lincoln's victory prompted secession conventions in seven states of the Deep South, and by the end of November the convention in South Carolina had rapidly moved toward a resolution to secede. Its Ordinance of Secession would not be formally issued, however, until December 20. On November 29 Thoreau had met with Alcott to discuss a meeting in Boston to commemorate the upcoming anniversary of the execution of John Brown. Alcott had a very bad cold at the time, apparently picked up four days before while attending a convention of the Massachusetts Teachers' Association, and he apparently passed the cold on to Thoreau, who began suffering the symptoms four days later, at about the time he wrote this letter to Blake. Rather than cancel his Waterbury lecture engagement so that he could convalesce, he kept the engagement (he delivered "Autumnal Tints") and exacerbated what he later described as an already severe cold. As planned, he stopped off at Worcester on December 11 and stayed the night with Blake. A friend of Blake's stopped by to meet Thoreau that evening and described him as a very sick man. If his cold did not worsen into bronchitis before the trip to Waterbury, it certainly did during or very soon afterward. He remained housebound throughout the winter, during which time he busied himself with his natural history manuscripts and reading. He would never recover.

11 12 20 11 29 . 12 11

Concord Dec 2d'60 

1860122

Mr. Blake, 

I am going to Waterbury Ct. to lecture on the 11 the inst. If you are to be at home, & it will be agreeable to you, I will spend the afternoon & night of the 10th with you & Brown.

11 10

H. D. Thoreau 

H. D.

May 3, 1861, Friday; Concord, Massachusetts 

186153

The secession of South Carolina on December 20 had been followed by the secession of Mississippi (January 9), Florida (January 10), Alabama (January 11), Georgia (January 19), Louisiana (January 26), and Texas (February 1). These seven states formed a Confederate constitution later in February and named Jefferson Davis provisional president pending elections. The seceded states also occupied or insisted on the surrender of federal forts within their borders, but President Buchanan refused to surrender any forts. During this period of crisis Kansas was admitted to the Union (January 29). At the end of February Blake and Brown ice-skated and walked to Concord from Worcester, the trip taking two days, and spent a day and a half enjoying "a solid talk" with Thoreau, although he confessed that his "pipes were not in good order." Lincoln's inauguration took place on March 4. He announced that he had no plans to end slavery in those states where it already existed, but he also said he would not accept secession. Lincoln informed South Carolina in early April that he would resupply Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, and on April 10 Brigadier General Pierre Gustare Toutant Beauregard, in command of the provisional Confederate forces around the Union garrison, demanded its immediate surrender. When the garrison commander refused to surrender on April 12, Confederate batteries opened fire on the fort, which surrendered the following day. Lincoln issued a proclamation on April 15 announcing the existence of an "insurrection" and calling forth 75,000 of "the militia of the several States of the Union." Meanwhile, the physician attending Thoreau, Dr. Josiah Bartlett, the "Dr. B" mentioned near the end of the "Reading" chapter of Walden, had given his advice for Thoreau to visit warmer climes. Thoreau likely decided on Minnesota for a complex of reasons not mentioned in his letter. For one, a distant cousin had moved there a decade before with a respiratory ailment and had improved. Also, many stories were appearing in the Eastern press about the salutary effects of Minnesota's climate. The stories seem to have sprung from three facts: hundreds of thousands of Easterners suffered from tuberculosis, railroads to Minnesota (then relatively remote) were looking for more passengers, and pioneers in Minnesota were eager to encourage migration to their state. In any case, Thoreau stopped in Worcester on May 11 and spent two days with Blake and Brown. He was unable to walk because of his illness, so the three men instead toured the countryside in a horse-drawn carriage. Thoreau was on his way west, accompanied by the young naturalist Horace Mann Jr. (1844—1868), the son of the famous educator, whose family had recently moved to Concord. "Dunleith," just across the Mississippi River from Dubuque, Iowa, is now named East Dubuque, Illinois. Fulton, Illinois, also on the Mississippi River, is fifty miles south-southeast of East Dubuque. It is altogether fitting that the final word of this, Thoreau's last letter to Blake, is "moral." 

12 20 1 9 1 10 1 11 1 19 1 26 2 1 2 . 1 29 2 “”“” 3 4 4 4 10 P. G. T. 4 12 4 15 “” 75000 “”. “”“B ”5 11 . 1844—1868“”“”50 “”

Concord May 3rd 1861 

186153

Mr. Blake, 

I am still as much an invalid as when you & Brown 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 heat in the summer, & the S. of Europe, on ac of the expense of time & money, and have at last concluded that it will be most expedient for me to try the air of Minnesota, say somewhere about St Paul. I am only waiting to be well enough to start—hope to get off within a week or 10 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 traveling 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 Niagara Falls—several days or a week, at a private boarding house—then a night or day at Detroit—& as much at Chicago, as my health may require.

————————

At Chicago I can decide at what point (Fulton, Dunleith or another) to strike the Mississippi & take a boat to St. Paul.

I trust to find a private boarding house in one or various agreeable places in that region, & spend my time there.

I expect, and shall be prepared to be gone 3 months—& I would like to return by a different route—perhaps Mackinaw & Montreal.

3——

I have thought of finding a companion, of course, yet not seriously, because I had no right to offer myself as a companion to anybody—having such a peculiarly private & all absorbing but miserable business as my health, & not altogether his, to attend to—causing me to stop here & go there &c &c unaccountably.

————

Nevertheless, I have just now decided to let you know of my intentions, thinking it barely possible that you might like to make a part or the whole of this journey, at the same time, & that perhaps your own health may be such as to be benefitted by it.

Pray let me know, if such a statement offers any temptations to you. I write in great haste for the mail & must omit all the moral.

H. D. Thoreau 

H. D.