Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/430

 404 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1859

these things are shown us from day to day. Is not each withered leaf that I see in my walks something which I have traveled to find ? traveled, who can tell how far ? What a fool he must be who thinks that his El Dorado is anywhere but where he lives !

We are always, methinks, in some kind of ravine, though our bodies may walk the smooth streets of Worcester. Our souls (I use this word for want of a better) are ever perched on its rocky sides, overlooking that lowland. (What a more than Tuckerman s Ravine is the body itself, in which the &quot; soul &quot; is encamped, when you come to look into it ! However, eagles always have chosen such places for their eyries.)

Thus is it ever with your fair cities of the plain. Their streets may be paved with silver and gold, and six carriages roll abreast in them, but the real homes of the citizens are in the Tuckerman s Ravines which ray out from that centre into the mountains round about, one for each man, woman, and child. The masters of life have so ordered it. That is their beau-ideal of a country seat. There is no danger of being tuckered out before you get to it. . So we live in Worcester and in Concord, each man taking his exercise regularly in his ravine, like a lion in his cage, and sometimes spraining