CONCORD, June 13, 1840.
DEAR HELEN,--That letter to John, for which you had an opportunity
doubtless to substitute a more perfect communication, fell, as was
natural, into the hands of his "transcendental brother," who is his
proxy in such cases, having been commissioned to acknowledge and
receipt all bills that may be presented. But what's in a name? Perhaps
it does not matter whether it be John or Henry. Nor will those same
six months have to be altered, I fear, to suit his case as well. But
methinks they have not passed entirely without intercourse, provided
we have been sincere though humble worshipers of the same virtue in
the mean time. Certainly it is better that we should make ourselves
quite sure of such a communion as this by the only course which is
completely free from suspicion,--the coincidence of two earnest and
aspiring lives,--than run the risk of a disappointment by relying
wholly or chiefly on so meagre and uncertain a means as speech,
whether written or spoken, affords. How often, when we have been
nearest each other bodily, have we really been farthest off! Our
tongues were the witty foils with which we fenced each other off. Not
that we have not met heartily and with profit as members of one
family, but it was a small one surely, and not that other human
family. We have met frankly and without concealment ever, as befits
those who have an instinctive trust in one another, and the scenery of
whose outward lives has been the same, but never as prompted by an
earnest and affectionate desire to probe deeper our mutual natures.
Such intercourse, at least, if it has ever been, has not condescended
to the vulgarities of oral communication, for the ears are provided
with no lid as the eye is, and would not have been deaf to it in
sleep. And now glad am I, if I am not mistaken in imagining that some
such transcendental inquisitiveness has traveled post _thither_,--for,
as I observed before, where the bolt hits, thither was it aimed,--any
arbitrary direction notwithstanding.
Thus much, at least, our _kindred_ temperament of mind and body--and
long _family_-arity--have done for us, that we already find ourselves
standing on a solid and natural footing with respect to one another,
and shall not have to waste time in the so often unavailing endeavor
to arrive fairly at this simple ground.
Let us leave trifles, then, to accident; and politics, and finance,
and such gossip, to the moments when diet and exercise are cared for,
and speak to each other deliberately as out of one infinity into
another,--you there in time and space, and I here. For beside this
relation, all books and doctrines are no better than gossip or the
turning of a spit.