Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/286

 262 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1853,

pearing only like a vast soup or chowder to the eyes of the immortal navigators. It is wonder ful that I can be here, and you there, and that we can correspond, and do many other things, when, in fact, there is so little of us, either or both, anywhere. In a few minutes, I expect, this slight film or dash of vapor that I am will be what is called asleep, resting ! forsooth from what? Hard work? and thought? The hard work of the dandelion down, which floats ovei the meadow all day ; the hard work of a pismire that labors to raise a hillock all day, and even by moonlight. Suddenly I can come forward into the utmost apparent distinctness, and speak with a sort of emphasis to you ; and the next moment I am so faint an entity, and make so slight an impression, that nobody can find the traces of me. I try to hunt myself up, and find the little of me that is discoverable is falling asleep, and then I assist and tuck it up. It is getting late. How can / starve or feed ? Can / be said to sleep ? There is not enough of me even for that. If you hear a noise, t aint I, t aint I, as the dog says with a tin-kettle tied to his tail. I read of some thing happening to another the other day : how happens it that nothing ever happens to me ? A dandelion down that never alights, set tles, blown off by a boy to see if his mother