Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/431

 JST. 41.] TO HARRISON BLAKE. 405

his ankle there. We have very few clear days, and a great many small plagues which keep us busy. Sometimes, I suppose, you hear a neigh bor halloo (Brown, may be) and think it is a bear. Nevertheless, on the whole, we think it very grand and exhilarating, this ravine life. It is a capital advantage withal, living so high, the excellent drainage of that city of God. Rou tine is but a shallow and insignificant sort of ravine, such as the ruts are, the conduits of pud dles. But these ravines are the source of mighty streams, precipitous, icy, savage, as they are, haunted by bears and loup-cerviers ; there are born not only Sacos and Amazons, but prophets who will redeem the world. The at last smooth and fertilizing water at which nations drink and navies supply themselves begins with melted glaciers, and burst thunder-spouts. Let us pray that, if we are not flowing through some Mis sissippi valley which we fertilize, and it is not likely we are, we may know ourselves shut in between grim and mighty mountain walls amid the clouds, falling a thousand feet in a mile, through dwarfed fir and spruce, over the rocky insteps of slides, being exercised in our minds, and so developed.

CONCORD, January 19, 1859.

MR. BLAKE, If I could have given a favor able report as to the skating, I should have an-