Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/339

 JET. 38.] TO DANIEL RICKETSON. 315

If you know the taste of your own heart, and like it, come to Concord, and I 11 warrant you enough here to season the dish with, ay, even though Channing and Emerson and I were all away. We might paddle quietly up the river. Then there are one or two more ponds to be seen, etc.

I should very much enjoy further rambling with you in your vicinity, but must postpone it for the present. To tell the truth, I am plan ning to get seriously to work after these long months of inefficiency and idleness. I do not know whether you are haunted by any such demon which puts you on the alert to pluck the fruit of each day as it passes, and store it safely in your bin. True, it is well to live abandonedly from time to time ; but to our working hours that must be as the spile to the bung. So for a long season I must enjoy only a low slanting gleam in my mind s eye from the Middleborough Ponds far away.

Methinks I am getting a little more strength into those knees of mine ; and, for my part, I believe that God does delight in the strength of a man s legs.