Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/234

 210 GOLDEN AGE OF ACHIEVEMENT. [1849,

ters, as I have just done, I feel that I am un worthy to have received or to answer them, though they are addressed, as I would have them, to the ideal of me. It behoves me, if I would reply, to speak out of the rarest part of myself.

At present I am subsisting on certain wild flavors which nature wafts to me, which unac countably sustain me, and make my apparently poor life rich. Within a year my walks have extended themselves, and almost every after noon (I read, or write, or make pencils in the forenoon, and by the last means get a living for my body) I visit some new hill, or pond, or wood, many miles distant. I am astonished at the wonderful retirement through which I move, rarely meeting a man in these excursions, never seeing one similarly engaged, unless it be my companion, when I have one. I cannot help feeling that of all the human inhabitants of na ture hereabouts, only we two have leisure to admire and enjoy our inheritance.

&quot; Free in this world as the birds in the air, disengaged from every kind of chains, those who have practiced the yoga gather in Brahma the certain fruit of their works.&quot;

Depend upon it, that, rude and careless as I am, I would fain practice the yoga faithfully.

&quot;The yogi, absorbed in contemplation, con-