Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/420

 394 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1858,

up from him as from a cottage on the moor. If he does not quench his genius with his beer, it may burst into a clear flame at last. However, perhaps he intentionally adopts the low style.

What do you mean by that ado about smoking, and my &quot;purer tastes &quot; ? I should like his pipe as well as his beer, at least. Neither of them is so bad as to be &quot; highly connected,&quot; which you say he is, unfortunately. No ! I expect no thing but pleasure in &quot; smoke from your pipe.&quot;

You and the Australian must have put your heads together when you concocted those titles, with pipes in your mouths over a pot of beer. I suppose that your chapters are, Whiff the First, Whiff the Second, etc. But of course it is a more modest expression for &quot; Fire from my Genius.&quot;

You must have been very busy since you came back, or before you sailed, to have brought out your History, of whose publication I had not heard. I suppose that I have read it in the &quot;Mercury.&quot; Yet I am curious to see how it looks in a volume, with your name on the title- page.

I am more curious still about the poems. Pray put some sketches into the book : your shanty for frontispiece ; Arthur and Walton s boat (if you can) running for Cuttyhunk in a tremendous gale; not forgetting &quot;Be honest