The Thoreau
Institute at Walden Woods Library
Thoreau's Life &
Writings: Correspondence
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HDT to H.G.O.
Blake
Concord, 9 August 1851
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 and death—and
affect me less than my dreams. This petty stream which from time to
time swells and carries away the mills and bridges of our habitual
life, and that mightier stream or ocean on which we securely
float,—what makes the difference between them? I have in my pocket
a button which I ripped off the coat of the Marquis of Ossoli, on
the seashore, 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 wit h 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,
ay, and more lamentably shabby, am I in my inward substance. If I
should turn myself inside out, my rags and meanness would indeed
appear. I am something to him that made me, undoubtedly, but not
much to any other that he has made.
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, and frogs,
and 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, ay,
with serene joy, though it be on his hands and 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 friend
at a turn, went on buoyantly, dividing the friendly air, and humming
a tune to himself, ever and anon kneeling with delight to study each
little lichen in his path, and scarcely made three miles a day for
friendship. As for conforming outwardly, and living your own life
inwardly, I do not think much of that. Let not your right hand know
what your left hand does in that line of business. It will prove a
failure. Just as successfully can you walk against a sharp steel
edge which divides you cleanly right and left. Do you wish to try
your ability to resist distension? It is a greater strain than any
soul can long endure. When you get God to pulling one way, and the
devil the other, each having his feet well braced,—to say nothing
of the 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 fields, and we should have to take it out in viewing the
landscape. But come, on every account, and we will see—one
another.
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. 185-188.
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