Thoreau writes in his journal:
When I remember the treachery of memory and the manifold accidents to which tradition is liable, how soon the vista of the past closes behind,—as near as night’s crescent to the setting day,—and the dazzling brightness of noon is reduced to the faint glimmer of the evening star, I feel as if it were by a rare indulgence of the fates that any traces of the past are left us,-that my ears which do not hear across the interval over which a crow caws should chance to hear this far-travelled sound. With how little cooperation of the societies, after all, is the past remembered!
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes to Thoreau:
My dear Sir,
Will you not come up to the Cliff this P. M. at any hour convenient to you where our ladies will be greatly gratified to see you & the more they say if you will bring you flute for the echo’s sake; though now the wind blows.
R.W.E.
