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  I was quite amused with what Sophia told me her mother said about it the other day, she poor girl was lying in bed with a sick head ache when she heard Cynthia (who has grown rather nervous of late) telling over her troubles to Mrs. Dunbar, after speaking of her own and Helen’s sickness, she says, and there’s Sophia she’s the greatest trial I’ve got, for she has complaints she never will get rid of, and Henry is putting things into his Book that never ought to be there, and Mr. Thoreau has faint turns and I don’t know what ails him, and so she went on from one thing to another hardly knew where to stop, and tho it is pretty much so, I could not help smiling at Sophia’s description of it.

  As for Henry’s book, you know I have said, there were parts of it that sounded to me very much like blasphemy, and I do not believe they would publish it, on reading it to Helen the other day Sophia told me, she made the same remark, and coming from her, Henry was much surprised, and said she did not understand it, but still I fear they will not persuade him to leave it out . . .

  By the way have you heard what a strange story there was about Miss Ford, and Henry, Mrs Brooks said at the convention, a lady came to her and inquired, if it was true, that Miss F—had committed, or was going to commit suicide on account of H—Thoreau, what a ridiculous story this is. When it was told to H—he made no remark at all, and we cannot find out from him anything about it, for a while, they corresponded, and Sophia said she recollected one day on the reception of a letter she heard H—say, he shouldn’t answer it, or he must put a stop to this, some such thing she couldn’t exactly tell what.

  I have not answered your letter before because I have been almost constantly in the fields surveying of late. It is long since I have spent so many days so profitably in a pecuniary sense; so unprofitably, it seems to me, in a more important sense. I have earned just a dollar a day for 76 days past; for though I charge at a higher rate for the days which are seen to be spent, yet so many more are spent than appears. This is instead of lecturing, which has not offered to pay for that book which I printed. I have not only cheap hours, but cheap weeks and months, i.e. weeks which are bought at the rate I have named. Not that they are quite lost to me, or make me very melancholy, alas! for I too often take a cheap satisfaction in so spending them, – weeks of pasturing and browsing, like beeves and deer, which gave me animal health, it may be, but created a tough skin over the soul and intellectual part. Yet if men should offer my body a maintenance for the work of my head alone, I feel that it would be a dangerous temptation.

  As to whether what you speak of as the “world’s way” (Which for the most part is my way) or that which is sown me, is the better, the former is imposture, the latter is truth. I have the coldest confidence in the last. There is only such hesitation as the appetites feel in following the apiratons The clod hesitates because it is inert, wants animation. The one is the way of death, the other is life everlasting. My ours are not “cheap in such a way that I doubt whether the world’s way would not have been better,” but cheap in such a way, that I doubt whether the world’s way, which I have adopted for the time, could be worse. The whole enterprise of this nation which is not upward, but a westward one, towards Oregon California, Japan &c, is totally devoid of interest to me, whether performed on foot or by a sentiment, there is nothing in it which one should lay down his life for, nor even his gloves, hardly which one should take up a newspaper for. It is perfectly heathenish -a flibustiering towards heaven by the great western route. No, they may go their way to their manifest destiny which I trust is not mine. May my 76 dollars whenever I get them help to carry me in the other direction. I see them on their winding way, but no music ‘is’ wafted from their host, only the rattling of change in their pockets. I would rather be a captive knight, and let them all pass my, than be free only to go whither they are bound. What end do they propose to themselves beyond Japan? What aims more lofty have they than the prairie dogs.

  As it respects these things I have not changed an opinion one iota from the first. As the stars looked to me when I was a shepherd in Assyria they look to me now a New Englander. The higher the mt. on which you stand, the less change in the prospect from year to year, from age to age. Above a certain height, there is no change. I am a Switzer on the edge of a glacier, with his advantages & disadvantages, goitre, or what not. (You may suspect it to be some kind of swelling at any rate). I have had but one spiritual birth (excuse the word,) and now weather it rains or snows, whether I laugh or cry, fall father below or approach nearer to my standard, whether Pierce or Scott is elected—not a new scintillation of light flashes on me, but ever and anon, though with longer intervals, the same surprising & everlastingly new light dawns to me, with only such variations as in the coming of the natural day, with which indeed, it is often coincident.

  As to how to preserve potatoes from rotting, your opinion may change from year to year, but as to how to preserve your sound from rotting, I have nothing to learn but something to practise.

  Thus I declaim against them, but I in my folly am the world I condemn.

  I very rarely indeed, if ever, “feel any itching to be what is called useful to my fellowmen.” Sometimes, it may be when my thoughts for want of employment, fall into a beaten path or humdrum, I have dreamed idly of stopping a man’s horse in order that I might stop him, or, of putting out a fire, but then of course it must have got well a—going. Now, to tell the truth, I do not dream much of acting upon horses before they run, or of preventing fires which are not yet kindled. What a foul subject is this, of doing good, instead of minding ones life, which should be his business—going food as a dead carcass, which is only for for manure, instead of as a living man,—Instead of taking care to flourish & smell & taste sweet and refresh all mankind to the extent of our capacity & quality. People will sometimes try to persuade you that you have done something from that motive, as if you did not already know enough about it. If I ever did a man any good, in their sense, of course it was something exceptional, and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am constantly doing by being what I am. As if you were to preach to the ice to shape itself into burning glasses, which are sometimes useful, and so the peculiar properties of ice be lost—Ice that merely performs the office of a burning glass does not do its duty.

  The problem of life becomes one cannot say by how many degrees more complicated as our material wealth is increased, whether that needle they tell of was a gate-way or not,—since the problem is not merely nor mainly to get life for our bodies, but by this or a similar discipline to get life for our souls; but cultivating the lowland farm on right principles, that is with this view, to turn it into an upland farm. You have so many more talents to account for. If I accomplish as much more in spiritual work as I am richer in worldly goods, then I am just as worthy, or worth just as much as I was before, and no more. I see that, in my own case, money might be of great service to me, but probably it would not be, for the difficulty ever is that I do not improve my opportunities, and therefore I am not prepared to have my opportunities increased. Now I warn you, if it be as you say, you have got to put on the pack of an Upland Farmer in good earnest the coming spring, the lowland farm being cared for, aye you must be selecting your seeds forth with and doing what winter work you can; nd while others are raising potatoes and Baldwin apples for you, you must be raising apples of the hesperides for them. (Only hear how he preaches!) No man can suspect that he is the proprietor of an Upland farm, upland in the sense that it will produce nobler crops and better replay cultivation in the long run, but he will be perfectly sure that he ought to cultivate it.

  Though we are desirous to earn our bread, we need not be anxious to satisfy men for it—though we shall take care to pay them, but Good [sic] who alone gave it to us. Men may in effect put us in the debtors jails, for that matter, simply for paying our whole debt to God which includes our debt to them, and though we have his receipt for it, for his paper is dishonored. The carrier will tell you that he has no stock in his bank.

  How prompt we are to satisfy the hunger & thirst of our bodies; how slow to satisfy the hunger & thirst of our souls. Indeed we [who] would be practical folks cannot use this work without blushing because of our infidelity, having starved this substance almost to a shadow. We feel it to be as absurd as if a man were to break forth into a eulogy on his dog who hasn’t any. An ordinary man will work every day for a year at shovelling dirt to support his body, or a family of bodies, but he is an extraordinary man who will work a whole day in a year for the sport of his soul. Even the priests, then men of God, so called, for the most part confess that they work for the support of their body. But he alone is the truly enterprising & practical man who succeeds in maintaining his soul here. Haven’t we our everlasting life to get? And isn’t that the only excuse at last for eating drinking sleeping or even carrying an umbrella when it rains? A man might as well devote himself to raising pork, as topatening the bodies or temporal part merely of the whole human family. If we made the true distinction we should almost all of us be seen to be in the almshouse for souls.

  I am much indebted to you because you look so steadily at the better side, or rather the true center of me (for our center & perhaps oftenest does lie entirely aside from us, and we are in fact eccentric,) and as I have elsewhere said “Give me an opportunity to live.” You speak as if the image or idea which I see were reflected from me to you, and I see it again reflected from you to me, because we stand at the right angle to one another; and so it does, zig-zag, to what successive reflecting surfaces, before it is all dissipated, or absorbed by the more unreflecting, or differently reflecting, who knows? Or perhaps what you see directly you refer to me. What a little shelf is required, by which we may impinge upon another, and build there our eyrie in the clouds, and all the heaven we see above us we refer to the crags around and beneath us. Some piece of mica, as it were, in the face or eyes of heaves to us, But in the slow geological depressions & upheavals, these mutual angles are distibed, these suns set & new ones rise to us. That ideal which I worshipped was a greater stranger to the mica than to me. It was not the hero I admired but the reflection from his epaulet or helmet. It is nothing (for us) permanently inherent in another, but his attitude or relation to what we prize that we admire. The meanest man may glitter with micaceous particles to his fellow’s eye. There are the spangles that adorn a man. The highest union—the only un-ion (don’t laugh) or central oneness, is the coincidence of visual rays. Our club room was an apartment in a constellation where our visual rays met (and there was no debate about the restaurant) The way between us is over the mount.

  Your worlds make me think of a man my acquaintance whom I occasionally meet, whom you too appear to have met, one Myself, as he is called. Yet why not call him Your-self? If you have met with him & know him it is all I have done, and surely here there is a mutual acquaintance the my & thy make a distinction without a difference.

  I do not wonder that you do not like my Canada story. It concerns me but little, and probably is not worth the time it took to tell it. Yet I had absolutely no design whatever in my mind, but simply to report what I saw. I have inserted all of myself that was implicated or made the excursion. It has come to an end at any rate, they will print no more, but return me my mss. when it is but little more than half done as ellas another I had sent them, because the editor Curtis requires the liberty to omit the hereies without consulting me -a privilege California is not rich enough to bid for.

  I thank you again & again for attending to me; that is to say I am glad that you hear me and that you also are glad. Hold fast to your most indefinite waking dream. The very green dust on the walls is an organized vegetable; the atmosphere has its fauna & flora floating in it; & shall we think that dreams are but dust & askes, are always disintegrated & crumbling thoughts and not dust like thoughts trooping to its standard with music systems beginning to be organized. These expectations there are toots there are nuts which even the poorest man has in his bin, and roasts or cracks them occasionally in winter evenings, which even the poor debtor retains with his bed and his pig i.e. his idleness & sensuality. Men go to the opera because they hear there a faint expression in sound of this news which is never quite distinctly proclaimed Suppose a man where to sell the hue the least amount of coloring matter in the superficies of his thought,—for a farm—were to exchange an absolute & infinite value for a relative & finite one- to gain the whole work & lose his own soul!

  Do not wait as long as I have before you write. If you will look at another star I will try to supply my side of the triangle

  Tell Mr Brown that I remember him & trust that he remembers me.

Yrs
H.D.T

PS. Excuse this rather flippant reaching—which does not cost me enough—and do not think that I mean you always—though your letter requested the subjects.

  Mother says that the cat lay on her bread one night and caused it to rise finely all around her.

  I go on the crust which we have had since the 13th, i.e. on the solid frozen snow, which settles very gradually in the sun, across the fields and brooks. The very beginning of the river’s breaking up appears to be the oozing of water through cracks in the thinnest places, and standing in shallow puddles there on the ice,—which freeze solid at night. The river and brooks are quite shrunken . The brooks flow far under the hollow ice and snow-crust a foot thick . . .

  Miles is repairing the damage done at his new mill by the dam giving away. He is shovelling out the flume, which was half filled with sand, standing in the water. His sawmill, built of slabs, reminds me of a new country. He has lost a head of water equal to two feet by this accident. Yet he sets his mill agoing to show me how it works . . .

  Our young maltesc cat which has been absent five cold nights, the ground covered deep with crusted snow,—her first absence,—and given up for dead, has at length returned at daylight, awakening the whole house with her mewing . . . Various are the conjectures as to her addventures,—whether she has had a fit, been shut up somewhere, or lost, torn in pieces by a certain terrier or frozen to death. In the meanwhile she is fed with all the best that the house affords, minced meats and saucers of warmed milk, and, with the aid of unstinted sleep in all laps in succession, is fast picking up her crumbs. She has already found her old place under the stove, and is preparing to make a stew of her brains there . . .

  I see the track, apparently of a muskrat (?),—about five inches wide with very sharp and distinct trail of tail,—on the snow and thin ice over the little rill in the Miles meadow . . .

  Rice says he saw a whistler (?) duck to-day (Journal, 10:287).