Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/236

 212 GOLDEN AGE OF ACHIEVEMENT. [1849,

to conceal thought, I think that newspapers are a great improvement on a bad invention. Do not suffer your life to be taken by newspapers.

I thank you for your hearty appreciation of my book. I am glad to have had such a long talk with you, and that you had patience to lis ten to me to the end. I think that I had the advantage of you, for I chose my own mood, and in one sense your mood too, that is, a quiet and attentive reading mood. Such ad vantage has the writer over the talker. I am sorry that you did not come to Concord in your vacation. Is it not time for another vacation? I am here yet, and Concord is here.

You will have found out by this time who it is that writes this, and will be glad to have you write to him, without his subscribing himself HENKY D. THOKEAU.

P. S. It is so long since I have seen you, that, as you will perceive, I have to speak, as it were, in vacua, as if I were sounding hollowly for an echo, and it did not make much odds what kind of a sound I made. But the gods do not hear any rude or discordant sound, as we learn from the echo ; and I know that the na ture toward which I launch these sounds is so rich that it will modulate anew and wonderfully improve my rudest strain.