Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/198

 174 GOLDEN AGE OF ACHIEVEMENT. [1847,

too weighty a subject for him, with his antitheti cal definitions new-vamped, what it is, what it is not, but altogether what it is not ; cuffing it this way and cuffing it that, as if it were an India- rubber ball. Really, it is a subject which should expand, expand, accumulate itself before the speaker s eyes as he goes on, like the snowballs which the boys roll in the street ; and when it stops, it should be so large that he cannot start it, but must leave it there. [H. N.] Hudson, too, has been here, with a dark shadow in the core of him, and his desperate wit, so much in debted to the surface of him, wringing out his words and snapping them off like a dish-cloth ; very remarkable, but not memorable. Singular that these two best lecturers should have so much &quot; wave &quot; in their timber, their solid parts to be made and kept solid by shrinkage and contraction of the whole, with consequent checks and fissures.

Ellen and I have a good understanding. I appreciate her genuineness. Edith tells me after her fashion : &quot; By and by I shall grow up and be a woman, and then I shall remember how you exercised me.&quot; Eddy has been to Boston to Christmas, but can remember nothing but the coaches, all Kendall s coaches. There is no variety of that vehicle that he is not familiar with. He did try twice to tell us something