Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/350

 326 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1856,

TO HARRISON BLAKE (AT WORCESTER).

CONCORD, March 13, 1856.

MR. BLAKE, It is high time I sent you a word. I have not heard from Harrisburg since offering to go there, and have not been invited to lecture anywhere else the past winter. So you see I am fast growing rich. This is quite right, for such is my relation to the lecture-goers, I should be surprised and alarmed if there were any great call for me. I confess that I am con siderably alarmed even when I hear that an indi vidual wishes to meet me, for my experience teaches me that we shall thus only be made cer tain of a mutual strangeness, which otherwise we might never have been aware of.

I have not yet recovered strength enough for such a walk as you propose, though pretty well again for circumscribed rambles and chamber work. Even now, I am probably the greatest walker in Concord, to its disgrace be it said. I remember our walks and talks and sailing in the past with great satisfaction, and trust that we shall have more of them erelong, have more woodings-up, for even in the spring we must still seek &quot; fuel to maintain our fires.&quot;

As you suggest, we would fain value one an other for what we are absolutely, rather than relatively. How will this do for a symbol of sympathy ?