Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/103

 jsT.25.] TO RICHARD F. FULLER. 79

sincerity. The old mythology is incomplete without a god or goddess of sincerity, on whose altars we might offer up all the products of our farms, our workshops, and our studies. It should be our Lar when we sit on the hearth, and our Tutelar Genius when we walk abroad. This is the only panacea. I mean sincerity in our dealings with ourselves mainly ; any other is comparatively easy. But I must stop before I get to ITthly. I believe I have but one text and one sermon.

Your rural adventures beyond the West Cam bridge hills have probably lost nothing by dis tance of time or space. I used to hear only the sough of the wind in the woods of Concord, when I was striving to give my attention to a page of Calculus. But, depend upon it, you will love your native hills the better for being sepa rated from them.

I expect to leave Concord, which is my Rome, and its people, who are my Romans, in May, and go to New York, to be a tutor in Mr. Wil liam Emerson s family. So I will bid you good by till I see you or hear from you again.

Going to Staten Island, early in May, 1843, Thoreau s first care was to write to his &quot;Ro mans, countrymen, and lovers by the banks of the Musketaquid,&quot; beginning with his mother,