CONCORD, July 21, 1852.
MR. BLAKE,--I am too stupidly well these days to write to you. My life
is almost altogether outward,--all shell and no tender kernel; so that
I fear the report of it would be only a nut for you to crack, with no
meat in it for you to eat. Moreover, you have not cornered me up, and
I enjoy such large liberty in writing to you, that I feel as vague as
the air. However, I rejoice to hear that you have attended so
patiently to anything which I have said heretofore, and have detected
any truth in it. It encourages me to say more,--not in this letter, I
fear, but in some book which I may write one day. I am glad to know
that I am as much to any mortal as a persistent and consistent
scarecrow is to a farmer,--such a bundle of straw in a man's clothing
as I am, with a few bits of tin to sparkle in the sun dangling about
me, as if I were hard at work there in the field. However, if this
kind of life saves any man's corn,--why, he is the gainer. I am not
afraid that you will flatter me as long as you know what I am, as well
as what I think, or aim to be, and distinguish between these two, for
then it will commonly happen that if you praise the last you will
condemn the first.
I remember that walk to Asnebumskit very well,--a fit place to go to
on a Sunday; one of the true temples of the earth. A temple, you know,
was anciently "an open place without a roof," whose walls served
merely to shut out the world and direct the mind toward heaven; but a
modern _meeting-house_ shuts out the heavens, while it crowds the
world into still closer quarters. Best of all is it when, as on a
mountain-top, you have for all walls your own elevation and deeps of
surrounding ether. The partridge-berries, watered with mountain dews
which are gathered there, are more memorable to me than the words
which I last heard from the pulpit at least; and for my part, I would
rather look toward Rutland than Jerusalem. Rutland,--modern
town,--land of ruts,--trivial and worn,--not too sacred,--with no
holy sepulchre, but profane green fields and dusty roads, and
opportunity to live as holy a life as you can,--where the sacredness,
if there is any, is all in yourself and not in the place.
I fear that your Worcester people do not often enough go to the
hilltops, though, as I am told, the springs lie nearer to the surface
on your hills than in your valleys. They have the reputation of being
Free-Soilers.[44] Do they insist on a free atmosphere, too, that is,
on freedom for the head or brain as well as the feet? If I were
consciously to join any party, it would be that which is the most free
to entertain thought.
All the world complain nowadays of a press of trivial duties and
engagements, which prevents their employing themselves on some higher
ground they know of; but, undoubtedly, if they were made of the right
stuff to work on that higher ground, provided they were released from
all those engagements, they would now at once fulfill the superior
engagement, and neglect all the rest, as naturally as they breathe.
They would never be caught saying that they had no time for this, when
the dullest man knows that this is all that he has time for. No man
who acts from a sense of duty ever puts the lesser duty above the
greater. No man has the desire and the ability to work on high things,
but he has also the ability to build himself a high staging.
As for passing _through_ any great and glorious experience, and rising
_above_ it, as an eagle might fly athwart the evening sky to rise into
still brighter and fairer regions of the heavens, I cannot say that I
ever sailed so creditably; but my bark ever seemed thwarted by some
side wind, and went off over the edge, and now only occasionally tacks
back toward the centre of that sea again. I have outgrown nothing
good, but, I do not fear to say, fallen behind by whole continents of
virtue, which should have been passed as islands in my course; but I
trust--what else can I trust? that, with a stiff wind, some Friday,
when I have thrown some of my cargo overboard, I may make up for all
that distance lost.
Perchance the time will come when we shall not be content to go back
and forth upon a raft to some huge Homeric or Shakespearean Indiaman
that lies upon the reef, but build a bark out of that wreck and others
that are buried in the sands of this desolate island, and such new
timber as may be required, in which to sail away to whole new worlds
of light and life, where our friends are.
Write again. There is one respect in which you did not finish your
letter: you did not write it with ink, and it is not so good,
therefore, against or for you in the eye of the law, nor in the eye of