Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/341

 XT. 38.] TO HARRISON BLAKE. 317

me, there is a corresponding depth in it. It is the cold blood of the gods. I paddle and bathe in their artery.

I do not want a stick of wood for so trivial a use as to burn even, but they get it over night, and carve and gild it that it may please my eye. What persevering lovers they are ! What infi nite pains to attract and delight us ! They will supply us with fagots wrapped in the daintiest packages, and freight paid ; sweet-scented woods, and bursting into flower, and resounding as if Orpheus had just left them, these shall be our fuel, and we still prefer to chaffer with the wood- merchant !

The jug we found still stands draining bottom up on the bank, on the sunny side of the house. That river, who shall say exactly whence it came, and whither it goes ? Does aught that flows come from a higher source ? Many things drift downward on its surface which would en rich a man. If you could only be on the alert all day, and every day ! And the nights are as long as the days.

Do you not think you could contrive thus to get woody fibre enough to bake your wheaten bread with? Would you not perchance have tasted the sweet crust of another kind of bread in the mean while, which ever hangs ready baked on the bread-fruit trees of the world ?