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  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 a 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 football, not our cushion. In the midst of this labyrinth let us live a thread 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 expanded, even as the 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 stopps nor goes 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 book 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.

  Will you remember me to Mr. Brown, when you see him next; he is well remembered by
Henry Thoreau

  I still owe you a worthy answer.

  “The blue-eyed Walden there doth smile

  Most tenderly upon its neighbour pines.”

  Thoreau read me some passages from his paper on “Walking” as I passed the evening with him, and slept at Emerson’s again afterwards.

  August royal and rich. Green corn now, and melons have begun. That month, surely, is distinguished when melons ripen. July could not do it . . .

  P.M.—To Walden and Saw Mill Brook.

  These days are very warm, though not so warm as it was in June. The heat is furnace-like while I am climbing the steep bills covered with shrubs on the north of Walden, through sweet-fern as high as one’s head. The goldfinch sings er, twe, twotter twotter . . .

  P.M.—Clematis Brook via Conantum . . . Mr. [Eben] Loomis says that he saw a mockingbird at Fair Haven Pond to-day.

  P.M.—To Fair Haven Hill and Walden . . .

  Hear the wood thrush still.

  I go across lots like a hunting dog. With what tireless energy and abandonment they dash through the brush and up the sides of hills! I meet two white foxhounds, led by an old red one. How full of it they are! How their tails work! They are not tied to paths; they burst forth . . .

  P. M.—To Fair Haven Hill and Walden . . .

  I go across lots like a hunting dog. With what tireless energy and abandonment they dash through the brush and up the sides of hills! I meet two white foxhounds, led by an old red one. How full of i t they are! How their tails work! They are not tied to paths; they burst forth . . .

  It is cloudy and misty dog-day weather, with a good deal of wind, and thickening to occasional rain this afternoon. This rustling wind is agreeable, reminding me, by its unusual sound, of other and ruder seasons . . .