Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/285

 JET. 35.] TO HARRISON BLAKE. 261

Do not wait as long as I have before you write. If you will look at another star, I will try to supply my side of the triangle.

Tell Mr. Brown, that I remember him, and trust that he remembers me.

P. S. Excuse this rather flippant preaching, which does not cost me enough ; and do not think that I mean you always, though your let ter requested the subjects.

TO HARRISON BLAKE (AT WORCESTER).

CONCORD, April 10, 1853.

MR. BLAKE, Another singular kind of spiritual foot-ball, really nameless, handle- less, homeless, like myself, a mere arena for thoughts and feelings ; definite enough out wardly, indefinite more than enough inwardly. But I do not know why we should be styled &quot; misters &quot; or &quot; masters : &quot; we come so near to being anything or nothing, and seeing that we are mastered, and not wholly sorry to be mas tered, by the least phenomenon. It seems to me that we are the mere creatures of thought, one of the lowest forms of intellectual life, we men, as the sunfish is of animal life. As yet our thoughts have acquired no definiteness nor solidity ; they are purely molluscous, not verte brate ; and the height of our existence is to float upward in an ocean where the sun shines, ap-