Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/394

 368 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1857,

town, I will engage to take some afternoon walks with you, retiring into prof oundest soli tude the most sacred part of the day.

TO HARRISON BLAKE (AT WORCESTER).

CONCORD, August 18, 1857.

ME. BLAKE, Fifteenthly. It seems tome that you need some absorbing pursuit. It does not matter much what it is, so it be honest. Such employment will be favorable to your de velopment in more characteristic and important directions. You know there must be impulse enough for steerage way, though it be not to ward your port, to prevent your drifting help lessly on to rocks or shoals. Some sails are set for this purpose only. There is the large fleet of scholars and men of science, for instance, always to be seen standing off and on every coast, and saved thus from running on to reefs, who will at last run into their proper haven, we trust.

It is a pity you were not here with Brown and Wiley. I think that in this case, /or a rarity, the more the merrier.

You perceived that I did not entertain the idea of our going together to Maine on such an excursion as I had planned. The more I thought of it, the more imprudent it appeared to me. I did think to have written to you before