Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/121

 JET. 25.] TO R. W. EMERSON. 97

the great herd, and yet the heavens are not shivered into diamonds over their heads. Per sons and things flit so rapidly through my brain nowadays that I can hardly remember them. They seem to be lying in the stream, stemming the tide, ready to go to sea, as steamboats when they leave the dock go off in the opposite direc tion first, until they are headed right, and then begins the steady revolution of the paddle- wheels ; and they are not quite cheerily headed anywhither yet, nor singing amid the shrouds as they bound over the billows. There is a cer tain youthfulness and generosity about them, very attractive ; and Tappan s more reserved and solitary thought commands respect.

After some ado, I discovered the residence of Mrs. Black, but there was palmed off on me, in her stead, a Mrs. Grey (quite an inferior color), who told me at last that she was not Mrs. Black, but her mother, and was just as glad to see me as Mrs. Black would have been, and so, for sooth, would answer just as well. Mrs. Black had gone with Edward Palmer to New Jersey, and would return on the morrow.

I don t like the city better, the more I see it, but worse. I am ashamed of my eyes that be hold it. It is a thousand times meaner than I could have imagined. It will be something to hate, that a the advantage it will be to me ;