CONCORD, November 4, 1860.
FRIEND RICKETSON,--I thank you for the verses. They are quite too good
to apply to me. However, I know what a poet's license is, and will not
get in the way.
But what do you mean by that prose? Why will you waste so many regards
on me, and not know what to think of my silence? Infer from it what
you might from the silence of a dense pine wood. It is its natural
condition, except when the winds blow, and the jays scream, and the
chickadee winds up his clock. My silence is just as inhuman as that,
and no more. You know that I never promised to correspond with you,
and so, when I do, I do more than I promised.
Such are my pursuits and habits that I rarely go abroad; and it is
quite a habit with me to decline invitations to do so. Not that I
could not enjoy such visits, if I were not otherwise occupied. I have
enjoyed very much my visits to you, and my rides in your neighborhood,
and am sorry that I cannot enjoy such things oftener; but life is
short, and there are other things also to be done. I admit that you
are more social than I am and far more attentive to "the common
courtesies of life;" but this is partly for the reason that you have
fewer or less exacting private pursuits.
Not to have written a note for a year is with me a very venial
offense. I think that I do not correspond with any one so often as
once in six months.
I have a faint recollection of your invitation referred to; but I
suppose that I had no new nor particular reason for declining, and so
made no new statement. I have felt that you would be glad to see me
almost whenever I got ready to come; but I only offer myself as a rare
visitor, and a still rarer correspondent.
I am very busy, after my fashion, little as there is to show for it,
and feel as if I could not spend many days nor dollars in traveling;
for the shortest visit must have a fair margin to it, and the days
thus affect the weeks, you know. Nevertheless, we cannot forego these
luxuries altogether. You must not regard me as a regular diet, but at
most only as acorns, which, too, are not to be despised,--which, at
least, we love to think are edible in a bracing walk. We have got
along pretty well together in several directions, though we are such
strangers in others.
I hardly know what to say in answer to your letter. Some are
accustomed to write many letters, others very few. I am one of the
last. At any rate, we are pretty sure, if we write at all, to send
those thoughts which we cherish, to that one who, we believe, will
most religiously attend to them.
This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction. I do not feel
addressed by this letter of yours. It suggests only misunderstanding.
Intercourse may be good; but of what use are complaints and apologies?
Any complaint _I_ have to make is too serious to be uttered, for the
evil cannot be mended.
Turn over a new leaf.
My outdoor harvest this fall has been one Canada lynx, a
fierce-looking fellow, which, it seems, we have hereabouts; eleven
barrels of apples from trees of my own planting; and a large crop of
white oak acorns, which I did not raise.
Please remember me to your family. I have a very pleasant recollection
of your fireside, and I trust that I shall revisit it;--also of your
shanty and the surrounding regions.