Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/283

 J5T.35.] TO HARRISON BLAKE. 259

reflection from his epaulet or helmet. It is nothing (for us) permanently inherent in an other, but his attitude or relation to what we prize, that we admire. The meanest man may glitter with micacious particles to his fellow s eye. These are the spangles that adorn a man. The highest union, the only un-i&amp;lt;m (don t laugh), or central oneness, is the coincidence of visual rays. Our club-room was an apartment in a constellation where our visual rays met (and there was 110 debate about the restaurant). The way between us is over the mount.

Your words make me think of a man of my acquaintance whom I occasionally meet, whom you, too, appear to have met, one Myself, as he is called. Yet, why not call him JWrself ? If you have met with him and know him, it is all I have done ; and surely, where there is a mutual acquaintance, the my and thy make a distinction without a difference.

I do not wonder that you do not like my Canada story. It concerns me but little, and probably is not worth the time it took to tell it. Yet I had absolutely no design whatever in my mind, but simply to report what I saw. I have inserted all of myself that was implicated, or made the excursion. It has come to an end, at any rate ; they will print no more, but return me my MS. when it is but little more than half