Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/242

 218 GOLDEN AGE OF ACHIEVEMENT, [1850,

slam the seat in disgust. This discourse was written long before these exciting times.

Some absorbing employment on your higher ground, your upland farm, whither no cart- path leads, but where you mount alone with your hoe, where the life everlasting grows; there you raise a crop which needs not to be brought down into the valley to a market ; which you barter for heavenly products.

Do you separate distinctly enough the support of your body, from that of your essence ? By how distinct a course commonly are these two ends attained! Not that they should not be attained by one and the same means, that, in deed, is the rarest success, but there is no half and half about it.

I shall be glad to read my lecture to a small audience in Worcester such as you describe, and will only require that my expenses be paid. If only the parlor be large enough for an echo, and the audience will embarrass themselves with hearing as much as the lecturer would otherwise embarrass himself with reading. But I warn you that this is no better calculated for a pro miscuous audience than the last two which I read to you. It requires, in every sense, a concor dant audience.

I will come on next Saturday and spend Sun day with you if you wish it. Say so if you do.