Emerson - Thoreau Letters (I-VI) The Dial Period
by Henry D. Thoreau
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 Pestum’s temples and the perch
Where Time doth plume his wings.
And how 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 domestie 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 of one sage to another, is the following 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 grati tude. 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.