Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/261

 MT.35.] TO HARRISON BLAKE. 237

tinents of virtue, which should have been passed as islands in my course ; but I trust what else can I trust? that, with a stiff wind, some Fri day, when I have thrown some of my cargo overboard, I may make up for all that distance lost.

Perchance the time will come when we shall not be content to go back and forth upon a raft to some huge Homeric or Shakespearean India- man that lies upon the reef, but build a bark out of that wreck and others that are buried in the sands of this desolate island, and such new timber as may be required, in which to sail away to whole new worlds of light and life, where our friends are.

Write again. There is one respect in which you did not finish your letter : you did not write it with ink, and it is not so good, therefore, against or for you in the eye of the law, nor in the eye of H. D. T.

TO HARRISON BLAKE (AT WORCESTER).

September, 1852.

MR. BLAKE, Here come the sentences which I promised you. You may keep them, if you will regard and use them as the disconnected fragments of what I may find to be a completer essay, on looking over my journal, at last, and may claim again.