Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/227

 JET. 30.] THOREAU S PENETRATION. 203

You will perceive that I am as often talking to myself, perhaps, as speaking to you.

Here is a confession of faith, and a bit of self- portraiture worth having ; for there is little ex cept faithful statement of the fact. Its sentences are based on the questions and experiences of his correspondent ; yet they diverge into that atmosphere of humor and hyperbole so native to Thoreau ; in whom was the oddest mixture of the serious and the comic, the literal and the romantic. He addressed himself also, so far as his unbending personality would allow, to the mood or the need of his correspondent ; and he had great skill in fathoming character and de scribing in a few touches the persons he encoun tered ; as may be seen in his letters to Emerson, especially, who also had, and in still greater measure, this &quot; fatal gift of penetration,&quot; as he once termed it. This will be seen in the contrast of Thoreau s correspondence with Mr. Blake, and that he was holding at the same time with Horace Greeley, persons radically unlike.

In August, 1846, Thoreau sent to Greeley his essay on Carlyle, asking him to find a place for it in some magazine. Greeley sent it to R. W. Griswold, then editing &quot; Graham s Maga zine &quot; in Philadelphia, who accepted it and promised to pay for it, but did not publish it