CONCORD, March 13, 1856.
MR. BLAKE,--It is high time I sent you a word. I have not heard from
Harrisburg since offering to go there, and have not been invited to
lecture anywhere else the past winter. So you see I am fast growing
rich. This is quite right, for such is my relation to the
lecture-goers, I should be surprised and alarmed if there were any
great call for me. I confess that I am considerably alarmed even when
I hear that an individual wishes to meet me, for my experience teaches
me that we shall thus only be made certain of a mutual strangeness,
which otherwise we might never have been aware of.
I have not yet recovered strength enough for such a walk as you
propose, though pretty well again for circumscribed rambles and
chamber work. Even now, I am probably the greatest walker in
Concord,--to its disgrace be it said. I remember our walks and talks
and sailing in the past with great satisfaction, and trust that we
shall have more of them ere long,--have more woodings-up,--for even in
the spring we must still seek "fuel to maintain our fires."
As you suggest, we would fain value one another for what we are
absolutely, rather than relatively. How will this do for a symbol of
sympathy?
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As for compliments, even the stars praise me, and I praise them. They
and I sometimes belong to a mutual admiration society. Is it not so
with you? I know you of old. Are you not tough and earnest to be
talked at, praised, or blamed? Must _you_ go out of the room because
you are the subject of conversation? Where will you go to, pray? Shall
we look into the "Letter Writer" to see what compliments are
admissible? I am not afraid of praise, for I have practiced it on
myself. As for my deserts, I never took an account of that stock, and
in this connection care not whether I am deserving or not. When I hear
praise coming, do I not elevate and arch myself to hear it like the
sky, and as impersonally? Think I appropriate any of it to my weak
legs? No. Praise away _till all is blue_.
I see by the newspapers that the season for making sugar is at hand.
Now is the time, whether you be rock, or white maple, or hickory. I
trust that you have prepared a store of sap-tubs and sumach spouts,
and invested largely in kettles. Early the first frosty morning, tap
your maples,--the sap will not run in summer, you know. It matters not
how little juice you get, if you get all you can, and boil it down. I
made just one crystal of sugar once, one twentieth of an inch cube,
out of a pumpkin, and it sufficed. Though the yield be no greater than
that, this is not less the season for it, and it will be not the less
sweet, nay, it will be infinitely the sweeter.
Shall, then, the maple yield sugar, and not man? Shall the farmer be
thus active, and surely have so much sugar to show for it, before this
very March is gone,--while I read the newspaper? While he works in his
sugar-camp let me work in mine,--for sweetness is in me, and to sugar
it shall come,--it shall not all go to leaves and wood. Am I not a
_sugar maple_ man, then? Boil down the sweet sap which the spring
causes to flow within you. Stop not at syrup,--go on to sugar, though
you present the world with but a single crystal,--a crystal not made
from trees in your yard, but from the new life that stirs in your
pores. Cheerfully skim your kettle, and watch it set and crystallize,
making a holiday of it if you will. Heaven will be propitious to you
as to him.
Say to the farmer: There is your crop; here is mine. Mine is a sugar
to sweeten sugar with. If you will listen to me, I will sweeten your
whole load,--your whole life.
Then will the callers ask, Where is Blake? He is in his sugar-camp on
the mountainside. Let the world await him. Then will the little boys
bless you, and the great boys too, for such sugar is the origin of
many condiments,--Blakians in the shops of Worcester, of new form,
with their mottoes wrapped up in them. Shall men taste only the
sweetness of the maple and the cane the coming year?
A walk over the crust to Asnebumskit, standing there in its inviting
simplicity, is tempting to think of,--making a fire on the snow under
some rock! The very poverty of outward nature implies an inward wealth
in the walker. What a Golconda is he conversant with, thawing his
fingers over such a blaze! But--but--
Have you read the new poem, "The Angel in the House"? Perhaps you will
find it good for you.