Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/451

 T.43.] TO DANIEL EICKETSON. 425

had spoken of the affair to his mother only since his illness. So reticent and practically useful could he be ; as Channing says, &quot; He made no useless professions, never asked one of those questions which destroy all relation ; but he was on the spot at the time, he meant friendship, and meant nothing else, and stood by it with out the slightest abatement.&quot;

TO DANIEL RICKETSON (AT NEW BEDFORD).

CONCORD, November 4, 1860.

FRIEND RICKETSON, I thank you for the verses. They are quite too good to apply to me. However, I know what a poet s license is, and will not get in the way.

But what do you mean by that prose ? Why will you waste so many regards on me, and not know what to think of my silence ? Infer from it what you might from the silence of a dense pine wood. It is its natural condition, except when the winds blow, and the jays scream, and the chickadee winds up his clock. My silence is just as inhuman as that, and no more. You know that I never promised to correspond with you, and so, when I do, I do more than I prom ised.

Such are my pursuits and habits, that I rarely go abroad ; and it is quite a habit with me to decline invitations to do so. Not that I could