Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/315

 J5T. 37.] TO HARRISON BLAKE. 291

TO HARRISON BLAKE (AT WORCESTER).

CONCORD, December 19, 1854.

MR. BLAKE, I suppose you have heard of my truly providential meeting with Mr. T. Brown ; providential because it saved me from the suspicion that my words had fallen alto gether on stony ground, when it turned out that there was some Worcester soil there. You will allow me to consider that I correspond with him through you.

I confess that I am a very bad correspondent, so far as promptness of reply is concerned ; but then I am sure to answer sooner or later. The longer I have forgotten you, the more I remem ber you. For the most part I have not been idle since I saw you. How does the world go with you? or rather, how do you get along without it? I have not yet learned to live, that I can see, and I fear that I shall not very soon. I find, however, that in the long run things correspond to my original idea, that they correspond to nothing else so much ; and thus a man may really be a true prophet without any great exer tion. The day is never so dark, nor the night even, but that the laws at least of light still pre vail, and so may make it light in our minds if they are open to the truth. There is considera ble danger that a man will be crazy between