Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/413

 4ST.40.] TO DANIEL RICKETSON. 387

TO DANIEL RICKETSON (AT NEW BEDFORD).

CONCORD, June 30, 1858.

FRIEND RICKETSON, I am on the point of starting for the White Mountains in a wagon with my neighbor Edward Hoar, and I write to you now rather to apologize for not writing, than to answer worthily your three notes. I thank you heartily for them. You will not care for a little delay in acknowledging them, since your date shows that you can afford to wait. Indeed, my head has been so full of company, etc., that I could not reply to you fitly before, nor can I now.

As for preaching to men these days in the Walden strain, is it of any consequence to preach to an audience of men who can fail, or who can be revived ? There are few beside. Is it any success to interest these parties ? If a man has speculated and failed, he will probably do these things again, in spite of you or me. I confess that it is rare that I rise to sentiment in my relations to men, ordinarily to a mere pa tient, or may be wholesome, good-will. I can imagine something more, but the truth compels me to regard the ideal and the actual as two things.

Channing has come, and as suddenly gone, and left a short poem, &quot;Near Home,&quot; pub-