CONCORD August 9, 1850.
MR. BLAKE,--I received your letter just as I was rushing to Fire
Island beach to recover what remained of Margaret Fuller, and read it
on the way. That event and its train, as much as anything, have
prevented my answering it before. It is wisest to speak when you are
spoken to. I will now endeavor to reply, at the risk of having nothing
to say.
I find that actual events, notwithstanding the singular prominence
which we all allow them, are far less real than the creations of my
imagination. They are truly visionary and insignificant,--all that we
commonly call life and death,--and affect me less than my dreams. This
petty stream which from time to time swells and carries away the
mills and bridges of our habitual life, and that mightier stream or
ocean on which we securely float,--what makes the difference between
them? I have in my pocket a button which I ripped off the coat of the
Marquis of Ossoli, on the seashore, the other day. Held up, it
intercepts the light,--an actual button,--and yet all the life it is
connected with is less substantial to me, and interests me less, than
my faintest dream. Our thoughts are the epochs in our lives: all else
is but as a journal of the winds that blew while we were here.
I say to myself, Do a little more of that work which you have
confessed to be good. You are neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with
yourself, without reason. Have you not a thinking faculty of
inestimable value? If there is an experiment which you would like to
try, try it. Do not entertain doubts if they are not agreeable to you.
Remember that you need not eat unless you are hungry. Do not read the
newspapers. Improve every opportunity to be melancholy. As for health,
consider yourself well. Do not engage to find things as you think they
are. Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else. It
is not easy to make our lives respectable by any course of activity.
We must repeatedly withdraw into our shells of thought, like the
tortoise, somewhat helplessly; yet there is more than philosophy in
that.
Do not waste any reverence on my attitude. I merely manage to sit up
where I have dropped. I am sure that my acquaintances mistake me. They
ask my advice on high matters, but they do not know even how poorly
on 't I am for hats and shoes. I have hardly a shift. Just as shabby
as I am in my outward apparel, ay, and more lamentably shabby, am I in
my inward substance. If I should turn myself inside out, my rags and
meanness would indeed appear. I am something to him that made me,
undoubtedly, but not much to any other that he has made.
Would it not be worth while to discover nature in Milton? be native to
the universe? I, too, love Concord best, but I am glad when I
discover, in oceans and wildernesses far away, the material of a
million Concords: indeed, I am lost, unless I discover them. I see
less difference between a city and a swamp than formerly. It is a
swamp, however, too dismal and dreary even for me, and I should be
glad if there were fewer owls, and frogs, and mosquitoes in it. I
prefer ever a more cultivated place, free from miasma and crocodiles.
I am so sophisticated, and I will take my choice.
As for missing friends,--what if we do miss one another? have we not
agreed on a rendezvous? While each wanders his own way through the
wood, without anxiety, ay, with serene joy, though it be on his hands
and knees, over rocks and fallen trees, he cannot but be in the right
way. There is no wrong way to him. How can he be said to miss his
friend, whom the fruits still nourish and the elements sustain? A man
who missed his friend at a turn, went on buoyantly, dividing the
friendly air, and humming a tune to himself, ever and anon kneeling
with delight to study each little lichen in his path, and scarcely
made three miles a day for friendship. As for conforming outwardly,
and living your own life inwardly, I do not think much of that. Let
not your right hand know what your left hand does in that line of
business. It will prove a failure. Just as successfully can you walk
against a sharp steel edge which divides you cleanly right and left.
Do you wish to try your ability to resist distension? It is a greater
strain than any soul can long endure. When you get God to pulling one
way, and the devil the other, each having his feet well braced,--to
say nothing of the conscience sawing transversely,--almost any timber
will give way.
I do not dare invite you earnestly to come to Concord, because I know
too well that the berries are not thick in my fields, and we should
have to take it out in viewing the landscape. But come, on every
account, and we will see--one another.
* * * * *
No letters of the year 1851 have been found by me. On the 27th of
December, 1850, Mr. Cabot wrote to say that the Boston Society of
Natural History, of which he was secretary, had elected Thoreau a
corresponding member, "with all the _honores_, _privilegia_, _etc._,
_ad gradum tuum pertinentia_, without the formality of paying any
entrance fee, or annual subscription. Your duties in return are to
advance the interests of the Society by communications or otherwise,
as shall seem good." This is believed to be the only learned body
which honored itself by electing Thoreau. The immediate occasion of
this election was the present, by Thoreau, to the Society, of a fine
specimen of the American goshawk, caught or shot by Jacob Farmer,
which Mr. Cabot acknowledged, December 18, 1849, saying: "It was first
described by Wilson; lately Audubon has identified it with the
European goshawk, thereby committing a very flagrant blunder. It is
usually a very rare species with us. The European bird is used in
hawking; and doubtless ours would be equally _game_. If Mr. Farmer
skins him now, he will have to take second cut; for his skin is
already off and stuffed,--his remains dissected, measured, and
deposited in alcohol."