Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/289

 JST.35.] TO HARRISON BLAKE. 265

we are doing ? Are we chiefly under obligations to the devil, like Tom Walker? Though it is late to leave off this wrong way, it will seem early the moment we begin in the right way; instead of mid-afternoon, it will be early morn ing with us. We have not got half way to dawn yet.

As for the lectures, I feel that I have some thing to say, especially on Traveling, Vague ness, and Poverty ; but I cannot come now. I will wait till I am fuller, and have fewer engage ments. Your suggestions will help me much to write them when I am ready. I am going to Haverhill 1 to-morrow, surveying, for a week or more. You met me on my last errand thither.

I trust that you realize what an exaggerater I am, that I lay myself out to exaggerate when ever I have an opportunity, pile Pelion upon Ossa, to reach heaven so. Expect no trivial truth from me, unless I am on the witness-stand. I will come as near to lying as you can drive a coach-and-four. If it is n t thus and so with me, it is with something. I am not particular whether I get the shells or meat, in view of the latter s worth.

I see that I have not at all answered your let ter, but there is time enough for that.

1 A Massachusetts town, the birthplace of Whittier.