Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/453

 JET. 43.] TO DANIEL RICKETSON. 427

are not to be despised, which, at least, we love to think are edible in a bracing walk. We have got along pretty well together in several directions, though we are such strangers in others.

I hardly know what to say in answer to your letter. Some are accustomed to write many let ters, others very few. I am one of the last. At any rate, we are pretty sure, if we write at all, to send those thoughts which we cherish, to that one who, we believe, will most religiously attend to them.

This life is not for complaint, but for satisfac tion. I do not feel addressed by this letter of yours. It suggests only misunderstanding. In tercourse may be good; but of what use are complaints and apologies? Any complaint / have to make is too serious to be uttered, for the evil cannot be mended.

Turn over a new leaf.

My out-door harvest this fall has been one Canada lynx, a fierce-looking fellow, which, it seems, we have hereabouts; eleven barrels of apples from trees of my own planting; and a large crop of white-oak acorns, which I did not raise.

Please remember me to your family. I have a very pleasant recollection of your fireside, and I trust that I shall revisit it ; also of your shanty and the surrounding regions.