Page:Some unpublished letters of Henry D. and Sophia E. Thoreau; a chapter in the history of a still-born book.djvu/49

 lives through and by these occult influences.

Here we are gathered to-night, some five hundred and twenty years after the birth of Thomas à Kempis, avowing his influence upon our lives. He that was Thomas à Kempis had lain in his grave twenty-one years before the prow of the Pinta was pointed towards the New World, yet here are we upon a beautiful peninsula—"Peninsulam amœnam"—therein, and actually indebted to a lady now in Italy, and whom it is little likely that any one of us hath ever met,—indebted, I say, to this remote stranger for the privilege of reading a letter written fifty years ago, never yet published, and having an interesting bearing upon the matter that you have come together to hear about.