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  Ah, those sun-sparkles on Dudley Pond in this November day! What a heaven to live in! . . .

  4 P. M.—I find ice under the north side of woods nearly an inch thick, where the acorns are frozen in, which have dropped from the overhanging oaks and been saved from the squirrels, perchance by the water. W. E. C. says he found a ripe strawberry last week in Berkshire. Saw a frog at the Swamp Bridge on back road.

  P.M.—To riverside as far down as near Peter’s, to look at the water-line before the snow covers it. By Merrick’s pasture it is mainly a fine, still more or less green, thread-like weed or grass of the river bottom . . .

  Three larks rise from the sere grass on Minott’s Hill before me . . .

  I must endeavor to thank you for your magnificent, your princely gift to me. My father, with his hand in his pocket, and an air of mystery and importance about him suggests that I have another letter from Mr. Cholmondeley, and hands me a ship letter. I open eagerly upon a list of books (made up in one parcel) for Henry D. &c &c”; and my eye glances down a column half as long as my arm, where I already detect some emineces which I had not seen or heard of, standing out like the peak of the Himalayas. No! it is not Cholmondeley’s writing.—But what good angel has divined my thoughts? Has any company of the faithful in England passed a resolution to overwhelm me with their munificent regards “Wilson Rig veda Sanhitu” [sic] Vol 1 & 2no. “Translation of Mandukya Upanishads.” I begin to step from pinnacle to pinnacle. Ah! but here it is “Longon, King William Street. Truly yours John Chapman.” Enclosed is the list. “Mr Thomas Cholmondeley” and now I see through it, and here is a land I know and father was right after all. While he is gone to the market I will read a little further in this list “Nala & Damyanta” “Bhagavita Purana.” “Institutes of Menu.”—

  How they look far away and grand!

  That will do for the present: a little at a time of these rich dishes. I will look again by and by. “Per Asia” too they have come, as I read on the envelope! Was there any design in that? The very nucleus of her cargo; Asia carried them in her womb long ago. Immobility itself is tossed on Atlantic billows to present the gift to me. Was not there an omen for you? No Africa; no Europe—no Baltic, but it would have sunk. And now we will see if America can sustain it. Build new shelves—display, unfold your columns. What was that dim pleak that loomed for an instant far behind, representatives of a still loftier and more distant range. “Vishnu Purana,” an azure mountain in itself.—gone again, but surely seen for once. And what was that which dimmed the brightness of the day, like an apex of Cotopaxi’s cone, seen against the disk of the sun by the voyager of the south American coast” Bhagavat Geeta”! whose great unseen base I can faintly imagine spreading beneath. “History of British India nine vols”!! Chevalier Bunsen vols 8vo cloth”!! Have at them! who cares numbers in a just cause England expects every man to do his duty. Be sure you are right and then go ahead. I begin to think myself learned for merely possessing such works: If here is not the wealth of the Indies, of what stuff then is it made. They may keep their rupees this and the like of this is what the great company traded and fought for, to convey the light of the East into the West:—this their true glory and success.

  And now you have gone to the East or Eastward, having assisted its light to shine westward behind you; have gone towards the source of light! To which I pray that you may get nearer and nearer

  About 10 A.M., a flock of geese are going over from northeast to southwest, or parallel with the general direction of the coast and great mountain-ranges. The sonorous, quavering sounds of the geese are the voice of this cloudy air,—a sound that comes from directly between us and the sky, an aerial sound, and yet so distinct, heavy, and sonorous, a clanking chain drawn through the heavy air. I saw through my window some children looking up and pointing their tiny bows into the heavens, and I knew at once that the geese were in the air. It is always an exciting event. The children, instinctively aware of its importance, rushed into the house to tell their parents . . .

  Goodwin, laying wall at Miss Ripley’s, observed to me going by, ‘Well, it seems that——thought that he had lived long enough.’ He committed suicide within a week, at his sister’s house in Sudbury . . .

  Animals generally see things in the vacant way I have described. They rarely see anything but their food, or some real or imaginary foe. I never saw but one cow looking into the sky . . .

  Coombs says that quite a little flock of pigeons bred here last summer . . . (Journal, 12:441-442).

  I am pleased to hear from you out of the west, as if I heard the note of some singing bird from the midst of its forests, which travellers report so grim and solitary—It is like the breaking up of Winter and the coming in of Spring, when the twigs glitter and tinkle, and the first sparrow twitters in the horizon. I doubt if I can make a good echo—Yet it seems that if a man ever had the satisfaction to say once entirely and irrevocably what he believed to be true he would never leave off to cultivate that skill.

  I suppose if you see any light in the east it must be in the eastern state of your own soul, and not by any means in these New England States. Our eyes perhaps do not rest so long on any as on the few who especially love their own lives—who dwell apart at more generous intervals, and cherish a single purpose behind the formalities of society with such steadiness that of all men only their two eyes seem to meet in one focus. They can be eloquent when they speak—they can be graceful and noble when they act. For my part if I have any creed it is so to live as to preserve and increase the susceptibleness of my nature to noble impulses—first to observe if any light shine on me, and then faithfully to follow it. The Hindoo Scripture says, “Single is each man born; single he dies; single he receives the reward of his good, and single the punishment of his evil deeds.”

  Let us trust that we have a good conscience The steady light whose ray every man knows will be enough for all weathers. If any soul look abroad even today it will not find any word which does it more justice than the New Testament,—yet if it be faithful enough it will have experience of a revelation fresher and directer than that, which will make that to be only the best tradition. The strains of a more heroic faith vibrate through the week days and the fields than through the Sabbath and the Church. To shut the ears to the immediate voice of God, and prefer to know him by report will be the only sin. Any respect we may yield to the paltry expedients of other men like ourselves—to the Church—the State—or the School—seems purely gratuitous, for in our most private experience we are never driven to expediency. Our religion is where our love is. How vain for men to go musing one way, and worshipping another. Let us not fear to worship the muse. Those stern old worthies—Job and David and the rest, had no Sabbath-day worship but sung and revelled in their faith, and I have no doubt that what true faith and love of God there is in this age will appear to posterity in the happy system of some creedless poet.

  I think I can sympathize with your sense of greater freedom.—The return to truth is so simple that not even the nurses can tell when we began to breathe healthily, but recovery took place long before the machinery of life began to play freely again when on our pillow at midnoon or midnight some natural sound fell naturally on the ear. As for creeds and doctrines we are suddenly grown rustic—and from walking in streets and squares—walk broadly in the fields—as if a man were wise enough not to sit in a draft, and get an ague, but moved buoyantly in the breeze.

  It is curious that while you are sighing for New England the scene of our fairest dreams should lie in the west — it confirms me in the opinion that places are well nigh indifferent. Perhaps you have experience that in proportion as our love of nature is deep and pure we are independent upon her. I suspect that ere long when some hours of faithful and earnest life have imparted serenity into your Buffalo day, the sunset on lake Erie will make you forget New England. It was the Greeks made the Greek isle and sky, and men are beginning to find Archipelagos elsewhere as good. But let us not cease to regret the fair and good, for perhaps it is fairer and better to them.

  I am living with Mr. Emerson in very dangerous prosperity. He gave me three pamphlets for you to keep, which I sent last Saturday. The “Explanatory Preface” is by Elizabeth Peabody who was Mr. Alcott’s assistant, and now keeps a bookstore and library in Boston. Pray let me know with what hopes and resolutions you enter upon the study of law—how you are to make it a solid part of your life. After a few words interchanged we shall learn to speak pertinently and not to the air. My brother and Mr Alcott express pleasure in the anticipation of hearing from you and I am sure that the communication of what most nearly concerns you will always be welcome to

Yours Sincerely
H. D. Thoreau