Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/302

 278 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1854,

I left the village and paddled up the river to Fair Haven Pond. As the sun went down, I saw a solitary boatman disporting on the smooth lake. The falling dews seemed to strain and purify the air, and I was soothed with an infi nite stillness. I got the world, as it were, by the nape of the neck, and held it under in the tide of its own events, till it was drowned, and then I let it go down stream like a dead dog. Vast hollow chambers of silence stretched away on every side, and my being expanded in pro portion, and filled them. Then first could I appreciate sound, and find it musical. 1

But now for your news. Tell us of the year.

1 A lady who made such a night voyage with Thoreau, years before, says : &quot; How wise he was to ask the elderly lady with a younger one for a row on the Concord River one moonlit night ! The river that night was as deep as the heavens above ; serene stars shone from its depths, as far off as the stars above. Deep answered unto deep in our souls, as the boat glided swiftly along, past low-lying fields, under overhanging trees. A neighbor s cow waded into the cool water, she became at once a Behemoth, a river-horse, hippopotamus, or river-god. A dog barked, he was Diana s hound, he waked Endymion. Suddenly we were landed on a little isle ; our boatman, our boat glided far off in the flood. We were left alone, in the power of the river-god ; like two white birds we stood on this bit of ground, the river flowing about us ; only the eternal powers of nature around us. Time for a prayer, perchance, and back came the boat and oarsman ; we were ferried to our homes, no question asked or answered. We had drank of the cup of the night, had felt the silence and the stars.&quot;