Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/351

 affr.38.] TO HARRISON BLAKE. 327

As for compliments, even the stars praise me, and I praise them. They and I sometimes be long to a mutual admiration society. Is it not so with you ? I know you of old. Are you not tough and earnest to be talked at, praised, or blamed ? Must you go out of the room because you are the subject of conversation? Where will you go to, pray ? Shall we look into the &quot; Letter Writer &quot; to see what compliments are admissible ? I am not afraid of praise, for I have practiced it on myself. As for my deserts, I never took an account of that stock, and in this connection care not whether I am deserving or not. When I hear praise coming, do I not ele vate and arch myself to hear it like the sky, and as impersonally ? Think I appropriate any of it to my weak legs ? No. Praise away till all is blue.

I see by the newspapers that the season for making sugar is at hand. Now is the time, whether you be rock, or white-maple, or hickory. I trust that you have prepared a store of sap- tubs and sumach-spouts, and invested largely in kettles. Early the first frosty morning, tap your maples, the sap will not run in summer, you