Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/296

 272 FRIENDS AJ^D FOLLOWERS. [1854,

a condition to go abroad. I feel as if I had gone abroad the moment I put it on. It is, as usual, a production strange to me, the wearer, invented by some Count D Orsay ; and the ma ker of it was not acquainted with any of my real depressions or elevations. He only measured a peg to hang it on, and might have made the loop big enough to go over my head. It requires a not quite innocent indifference, not to say in solence, to wear it. Ah ! the process by which we get our coats is not what it should be. Though the Church declares it righteous, and its priest pardons me, my own good genius tells me that it is hasty, and coarse, and false. I expect a time when, or rather an integrity by which, a man will get his coat as honestly and as perfectly fitting as a tree its bark. Now our garments are typical of our conformity to the ways of the world, i. e., of the devil, and to some extent react on us and poison us, like that shirt which Hercules put on.

I think to come and see you next week, on Monday, if nothing hinders. I have just re turned from court at Cambridge, whither I was called as a witness, having surveyed a water- privilege, about which there is a dispute, since you were here.

Ah ! what foreign countries there are, greater in extent than the United States or Russia, and