Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/404

 378 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1857,

Opera. OPERA ! ! Pass along the exclamations, devil. 1

Now is the time to become conversant with your wood-pile (this comes under Work for the Month), and be sure you put some warmth into it by your mode of getting it. Do not consent to be passively warmed. An intense degree of that is the hotness that is threatened. But a positive warmth within can withstand the fiery furnace, as the vital heat of a living man can withstand the heat that cooks meat.

After returning from the last of his three ex peditions to the Maine woods (in 1846, 1853, and 1857), Thoreau was appealed to by his friend Higginson, then living in Worcester, for information concerning a proposed excursion from Worcester into Maine and Canada, then but little visited by tourists, who now go there in droves. He replied in this long letter, with its minute instructions and historical references. The Arnold mentioned is General Benedict Ar nold, who in 1775-76 made a toilsome march through the Maine forest with a small New Eng land army for the conquest of Canada, while young John Thoreau, Henry s grandfather, was establishing himself as a merchant in Boston (not yet evacuated by British troops), previous to his marriage with Jane Burns.

1 Exclamation points and printer s devil.