If you take this life to be simply what old religious folks pretend (I mean the effete, gone to seed in a drought, mere human galls stung by the devil once), then all your joy and serenity is reduced to grinning and bearing it. The fact is, you have got to take the world on your shoulders like Atlas, and "put along" with it. You will do this for an idea's sake, and your success will be in proportion to your devotion to ideas. It may make your back ache occasionally, but you will have the satisfaction of hanging it or twirling it to suit yourself. Cowards suffer, heroes enjoy. After a long day's walk with it, pitch it into a hollow place, sit down and eat your luncheon. Unexpectedly, by some immortal thoughts, you will be compensated. The bank whereon you sit will be a fragrant and flowery one, and your world in the hollow a sleek and light gazelle. Where is the "unexplored land but in our own untried enterprises? To an adventurous spirit any place - London, New York, Worcester, or his own yard is "unexplored land," to seek which Fremont and Kane travel so far. To a sluggish and defeated spirit even the Great Basin and the Polaris are trivial places. If they can get there (and, indeed, they are there now), they will want to sleep, and give it up, just as they always do. These are the regions of the Known and of the Unknown. What is the use of going right over the old track again? There is an adder in the path which your own feet have worn. You must make tracks into the Unknown. That is what you have your board and clothes for. Why do you ever mend your clothes, unless that, wearing them, you may mend your ways? Let us sing. TO SOPHIA THOREAU (AT CAMPTON, N. H.). CONCORD, July 8, 1860. DEAR SOPHIA,- Mother reminds me that I must write to you, if only a few lines, though I have sprained my thumb, so that it is questionable whether I can write legibly, if at all. I can't "bear on" much. What is worse, I believe that I have sprained my brain too-that is, it sympathizes with my thumb. But that is no excuse, I suppose, for writing a letter in such a case, is like sending a newspaper, only a hint to let you know that "all is well," but my thumb. I hope that you begin to derive some benefit from that more mountainous air which you are breathing. Have you had a distinct view of the Franconia Notch Mountains (blue peaks in the northern horizon)? which I told you you could get from the road in Campton, probably from some other points nearer. Such a view of the mountains is more memorable than any other. Have you been to Squam Lake or overlooked it? I should think that you could make an excursion to some mountain in that direction from which you could see the lake and mountains generally. Is there no friend of N. P. Rogers who can tell you where the "lions" are? Of course I did not go to North Elba,1 but I sent some reminiscences of last fall. I hear that John Brown, Jr., has now come to Boston for a few days. Mr. Sanborn's case, it is said, will come on after some murder cases have been disposed of here. I have just been invited formally to be present at the annual picnic of Theodore Parker's society (that was), at Waverley, next Wednesday, and to make some remarks. But that is wholly out of my line. I do not go to picnics, even in Concord, you know. Mother and Aunt Sophia rode to Acton in time yesterday. I suppose that you have heard that Mr. Hawthorne has come home. I went to meet him the other evening and found that he has not altered, except that he was looking quite 1 He was invited to a gathering of John Brown's friends at the grave in the Adirondac woods. "Mr. Sanborn's case was an indictment and civil suit against Silas Carleton et als. for an attempt to kidnap F. B. Sanborn, who had refused to accept the invitation of the Senate at Washington to testify in the John Brown investigation. brown after his voyage. He is as simple and childlike as ever. I believe that I have fairly scared the kittens away, at last, by my pretended fierceness, which was. I will consider my thumb- and your eyes. HENRY. TO HARRISON BLAKE (AT WORCESTER). CONCORD, August 3, 1860. MR. BLAKE, —I some time ago asked Channing if he would not spend a week with me on Monadnoc; but he did not answer decidedly. Lately he has talked of an excursion somewhere, but I said that now I must wait till my sister returned from Plymouth, N. H. She has returned, and accordingly, on receiving your note this morning, I made known its contents to Channing, in order to see how far I was engaged with him. The result is that he decides to go to Monadnoc to-morrow morning; 1 so I must defer 1 1 This is the excursion described by Thoreau in a subsequent letter, — lasting six days, and the first that Channing had made which involved "camping out." It was also Thoreau's last visit to this favorite mountain; but Channing continued to go there after the death of his friend; and some of these visits are recorded in his poem, "The Wanderer." The last one was in September, 1869, when I accompanied him, and we again spent five nights on the plateau where he had camped with Thoreau. At that time, one of the "two good spruce houses, half a mile apart," mentioned by Thoreau, making an excursion with you and Brown to another season. Perhaps you will call as you pass the mountain. I send this by the earliest mail. P. S.-That - That was a very insufficient visit you made here the last time. My mother is better, though far from well; and if you should chance along here any time after your journey, I trust that we shall all do better. The mention by Thoreau of John Brown and my “case” recalls to me an incident of those excited days which followed the attack by Brown on slavery in Virginia. The day after Brown's death, but before the execution of his comrades, I received a message from the late Dr. David Thayer of Boston, implying, as I thought, that a son of Brown was at his house, whither I hurried to meet him. Instead, I found young F. J. Merriam of Boston, who had escaped with Owen Brown from Harper's Ferry, and was was still standing, in ruins, the place called by Channing Henry's Camp," and thus described: We built our fortress where you see A point selected by sagacious art, Where all at once we viewed the Vermont hills, And the long outline of the mountain-ridge, Ever renewing, changeful every hour. See The Wanderer (Boston, 1871), p. 61. |