The Thoreau
Institute at Walden Woods Library
Thoreau's Life &
Writings: Correspondence
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HDT to Mrs. Lucy
Brown
Concord, 21 July 1841
Dear
Friend,—
Don't think I need any prompting to write
to you; but what tough earthenware shall I put into my packet to
travel over so many hills, and thrid so many woods, as lie between
Concord and Plymouth? Thank fortune it is all the way down hill, so
they will get safely carried; and yet it seems as if it were writing
against time and the sun, to send a letter east, for no natural
force forwards it. You should go dwell in the West, and then I would
deluge you with letters, as boys throw feathers into the air to see
the wind take them. I should rather fancy you at evening dwelling
far away behind the serene curtain of the West,—the home of fair
weather,—than over by the chilly sources of the east wind.
What quiet thoughts have you nowadays which
will float on that east wind to west, for so we may make our worst
servants our carriers,—what progress made from can't to can,
in practice and theory? Under this category, you remember, we used
to place all our philosophy. Do you have any still, startling, well
moments, in which you think grandly, and speak with emphasis? Don't
take this for sarcasm, for not in a year of the gods, I fear, will
such a golden approach to plain speaking revolve again. But away
with such fears; by a few miles of travel we have not distanced each
other's sincerity.
I grow savager and savager every day, as if
fed on raw meat, and my tameness is only the repose of untamableness.
I dream of looking abroad summer and winter, with free gaze, from
some mountain-side, while my eyes revolve in an Egyptian slime of
health,—I to be nature looking into nature with such easy sympathy
as the blue-eyed grass in the meadow looks in the face of the sky.
From some such recess I would put forth sublime thoughts daily, as
the plant puts forth leaves. Now-a-nights I go on to the hill to see
the sun set, as one would go home at evening; the bustle of the
village has run on all day, and left me quite in the rear; but I see
the sunset, and find that it can wait for my slow virtue.
But I forget that you think more of this
human nature than of this nature I praise. Why won't you believe
that mine is more human than any single man or woman can be? that in
it, in the sunset there, are all the qualities that can adorn a
household, and that sometimes, in a fluttering leaf, one may hear
all your Christianity preached.
You see how unskillful a letter-writer I
am, thus to have come to the end of my sheet, when hardly arrived at
the beginning of my story. I was going to be soberer, I assure you,
but now have only room to add, that if the fates allot you a serene
hour, don't fail to communicate some of its serenity to your friend,
Henry D. Thoreau
No, no. Improve so rare a gift for yourself, and send me of your
leisure.
A
Note on the Text:
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Source:
The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau edited by
Walter Harding and Carl Bode (New York: New York University
Press, c1958) p.44-45.
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