Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/258

 234 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1852,

TO HARRISON BLAKE (AT WORCESTER).

CONCORD, July 21, 1852.

ME. BLAKE, I am too stupidly well these days to write to you. My life is almost altogether outward, all shell and no tender kernel ; so that I fear the report of it would be only a nut for you to crack, with no meat in it for you to eat. Moreover, you have not cornered me up, and I enjoy such large liberty in writing to you, that I feel as vague as the air. However, I rejoice to hear that you have attended so patiently to anything which I have said heretofore, and have detected any truth in it. It encourages me to say more, not in this letter, I fear, but in some book which I may write one day. I am glad to know that I am as much to any mortal as a persistent and consistent scarecrow is to a farmer, such a bundle of straw in a man s clothing as I am, with a few bits of tin to sparkle in the sun dangling about me, as if I were hard at work there in the field. However, if this kind of life saves any man s corn, why, he is the gainer. I am not afraid that you will flatter me as long as you know what I am, as well as what I think, or aim to be, and distinguish between these two, for then it will commonly happen that if you praise the last you will condemn the first.

I remember that walk to Asnebumskit very