The Thoreau
Institute at Walden Woods Library
Thoreau's Life &
Writings: Correspondence
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HDT to H.G.O.
Blake
Concord, 20 November 1849
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 flavors 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 companion, when I have one.
I cannot help feeling that of all the human inhabitants of
nature hereabouts, only we two have leisure to admire and enjoy our
inheritance.
“Free in
this world as the birds in the air, disengaged from every kind of
chains, those who have practiced the yoga
gather in Brahma the certain fruit of their works.”
Depend upon it
that rude and careless as I am, I would fain practice the yoga faithfully.
“The yogi,
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.”
To some
extent, and at rare intervals, even I am a yogi.
I know little
about the affairs of Turkey, but I am sure that I know something
about barberries and chestnuts, of which I have collected a store
this fall. When I go to see my neighbor, he will formally
communicate to me the latest news from Turkey, which he read in
yesterday’s mail,—“Now Turkey by this time looks determined,
and Lord Palmerston”—Why, I would rather talk of the bran,
which, unfortunately, was sifted out of my bread this morning. and
thrown away. It is a fact which lies nearer to me. The 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 were 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 had 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
P.S. — It is so long since I have seen you, that, as you will
perceive, I have to speak, as it were, in
vacuo, as if I were sounding hollowly for an echo, and it did
not make much odds what kind of sound I made.
But the gods do not hear any rude or discordant sound, as we
learn from the echo; and I know that the nature toward which I
launch these sounds is so rich that it will modulate anew and
wonderfully improve my rudest strain.
A
Note on the Text:
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Source:
Familiar Letters edited by F.B. Sanborn [The Writings of
Henry David Thoreau (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906) p. 164-177.
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