CONCORD, February 10, 1843.
DEAR FRIEND,--I have stolen one of your own sheets to write you a
letter upon, and I hope, with two layers of ink, to turn it into a
comforter. If you like to receive a letter from me, too, I am glad,
for it gives me pleasure to write. But don't let it come amiss; it
must fall as harmlessly as leaves settle on the landscape. I will tell
you what we are doing this now. Supper is done, and Edith--the
dessert, perhaps more than the dessert--is brought in, or even comes
in _per se_; and round she goes, now to this altar, and then to that,
with her monosyllabic invocation of "oc," "oc." It makes me think of
"Langue d'oc." She must belong to that province. And like the gypsies
she talks a language of her own while she understands ours. While she
jabbers Sanskrit, Parsee, Pehlvi, say "Edith go bah!" and "bah" it is.
No intelligence passes between us. She knows. It is a capital
joke,--that is the reason she smiles so. How well the secret is kept!
she never descends to explanation. It is not buried liked a common
secret, bolstered up on two sides, but by an eternal silence on the
one side, at least. It has been long kept, and comes in from the
unexplored horizon, like a blue mountain range, to end abruptly at our
door one day. (Don't stumble at this steep simile.) And now she
studies the heights and depths of nature
On shoulders whirled in some eccentric orbit
Just by old Pæstum's temples and the perch
Where Time doth plume his wings.
And now she runs the race over the carpet, while all Olympia
applauds,--mamma, grandma, and uncle, good Grecians all,--and that
dark-hued barbarian, Partheanna Parker, whose shafts go through and
through, not backward! Grandmamma smiles over all, and mamma is
wondering what papa would say, should she descend on Carlton House
some day. "Larks night" 's abed, dreaming of "pleased faces" far away.
But now the trumpet sounds, the games are over; some Hebe comes, and
Edith is translated. I don't know where; it must be to some cloud, for
I never was there.
_Query_: what becomes of the answers Edith thinks, but cannot express?
She really gives you glances which are before this world was. You
can't feel any difference of age, except that you have longer legs and
arms.
Mrs. Emerson said I must tell you about domestic affairs, when I
mentioned that I was going to write. Perhaps it will inform you of the
state of all if I only say that I am well and happy in your house here
in Concord.
Your friend,
HENRY.
Don't forget to tell us what to do with Mr. Parker when you write
next. I lectured this week. It was as bright a night as you could
wish. I hope there were no stars thrown away on the occasion.
[A part of the same letter, though bearing a date two days later, and
written in a wholly different style, as from one sage to another, is
this postscript:]
February 12, 1843.
DEAR FRIEND,--As the packet still tarries, I will send you some
thoughts, which I have lately relearned, as the latest public and
private news.
How mean are our relations to one another! Let us pause till they are
nobler. A little silence, a little rest, is good. It would be
sufficient employment only to cultivate true ones.
The richest gifts we can bestow are the least marketable. We hate the
kindness which we understand. A noble person confers no such gift as
his whole confidence: none so exalts the giver and the receiver; it
produces the truest gratitude. Perhaps it is only essential to
friendship that some vital trust should have been reposed by the one
in the other. I feel addressed and probed even to the remote parts of
my being when one nobly shows, even in trivial things, an implicit
faith in me. When such divine commodities are so near and cheap, how
strange that it should have to be each day's discovery! A threat or a
curse may be forgotten, but this mild trust translates me. I am no
more of this earth; it acts dynamically; it changes my very substance.
I cannot do what before I did. I cannot be what before I was. Other
chains may be broken, but in the darkest night, in the remotest place,
I trail this thread. Then things cannot _happen_. What if God were to
confide in us for a moment! Should we not then be gods?
How subtle a thing is this confidence! Nothing sensible passes
between; never any consequences are to be apprehended should it be
misplaced. Yet something has transpired. A new behavior springs; the
ship carries new ballast in her hold. A sufficiently great and
generous trust could never be abused. It should be cause to lay down
one's life,--which would not be to lose it. Can there be any mistake
up there? Don't the gods know where to invest their wealth? Such
confidence, too, would be reciprocal. When one confides greatly in
you, he will feel the roots of an equal trust fastening themselves in
him. When such trust has been received or reposed, we dare not speak,
hardly to see each other; our voices sound harsh and untrustworthy. We
are as instruments which the Powers have dealt with. Through what
straits would we not carry this little burden of a magnanimous trust!
Yet no harm could possibly come, but simply faithlessness. Not a
feather, not a straw, is intrusted; that packet is empty. It is only
_committed_ to us, and, as it were, all things are committed to us.
The kindness I have longest remembered has been of this sort,--the
sort unsaid; so far behind the speaker's lips that almost it already
lay in my heart. It did not have far to go to be communicated. The
gods cannot misunderstand, man cannot explain. We communicate like the
burrows of foxes, in silence and darkness, under ground. We are
undermined by faith and love. How much more full is Nature where we
think the empty space is than where we place the solids!--full of
fluid influences. Should we ever communicate but by these? The spirit
abhors a vacuum more than Nature. There is a tide which pierces the
pores of the air. These aerial rivers, let us not pollute their
currents. What meadows do they course through? How many fine mails
there are which traverse their routes! He is privileged who gets his
letter franked by them.