Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/392

 366 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS, [1857,

perchance, would be of no use, if it were pos sible. Your polished stuff turns out not to be meteoric, but of this earth. However, there is plenty of time, and Nature is an admirable schoolmistress.

Speaking of correspondence, you ask me if I &quot; cannot turn over a new leaf in that line.&quot; I certainly could if I were to receive it ; but just then I looked up and saw that your page was dated &quot; May 10,&quot; though mailed in August, and it occurred to me that I had seen you since that date this year. Looking again, it appeared that your note was written in 56 ! ! However, it was a new leaf to me, and I turned it over with as much interest as if it had been written the day before. Perhaps you kept it so long in order that the manuscript and subject-matter might be more in keeping with the old-fashioned paper on which it was written.

I traveled the length of Cape Cod on foot, soon after you were here, and, within a few days, have returned from the wilds of Maine, where I have made a journey of three hundred and twenty-five miles with a canoe and an Indian, and a single white companion, Edward Hoar Esq., of this town, lately from California, traversing the headwaters of the Kennebec, Pe- nobscot, and St. John s.

Can t you extract any advantage out of that