Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/367

 JST.39.] TO HARRISON BLAKE. 343

mouse at the depot, and gave it to her kitten to play with. So that world-famous tragedy goes on by night as well as by day, and nature is emphatically wrong. Also I saw a young Irish man kneel before his mother, as if in prayer, while she wiped a cinder out of his eye with her tongue ; and I found that it was never too late (or early ?) to learn something. These things transpired while you and B. were, to all practical purposes, nowhere, and good for nothing, not even for society, not for horse-races, nor the taking back of a &quot; Putnam s Magazine.&quot; It is true, I might have recalled you to life, but it would have been a cruel act, considering the kind of life you would have come back to.

However, I would fain write to you now by broad daylight, and report to you some of my life, such as it is, and recall you to your life, which is not always lived by you, even by day light. Blake ! Brown ! are you awake ? are you aware what an ever-glorious morning this is, -- what long-expected, never-to-be-repeated opportunity is now offered to get life and know ledge ?

For my part, I am trying to wake up, to

wring slumber out of my pores ; for, generally,

I take events as unconcernedly as a fence post,

absorb wet and cold like it, and am pleasantly

tickled with lichens slowly spreading over me.