Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/441

 asx.42.] TO HARRISON BLAKE. 415

Brown, denouncing the Union, the President, the States, and Virginia particularly ; wishes to publish his late speech, and has seen Boston publishers, but failed to find any to print it for him.&quot; It was soon after published, along with Emerson s two speeches in favor of Brown, by a new Boston publishing house (Thayer & El- dridge), in a volume called, &quot; Echoes of Har per s Ferry,&quot; edited by the late James Redpath, Brown s first biographer. In the following summer, Thoreau sent a second paper on Brown (written soon after his execution) to be read at a commemoration of the martyr, beside his grave among the Adirondac Mountains. This is mentioned in his letter to Sophia Thoreau, July 8, 1860. He took an active part in arrang ing for the funeral service in honor of Brown, at Concord, the day of his death, December 2, 1859.

TO HARRISON BLAKE (AT WORCESTER).

CONCORD, May 20, 1860.

MR. BLAKE, I must endeavor to pay some of my debts to you. To begin where we left off, then.

The presumption is that we are always the same; our opportunities, and Nature herself, fluctuating. Look at mankind. No great dif ference between two, apparently ; perhaps the