Page:Some unpublished letters of Henry D. and Sophia E. Thoreau; a chapter in the history of a still-born book.djvu/56

 right to tell you that there is no man living upon this earth at present, whose friendship or whose notice I value more than yours.

''What are these words! yet I wished to say something—and I must use words, though they serve but seldom in these days for much but lies.''

''In your book and in one other from your side of the Atlantic, "Margaret" I see hope for the coming world; all else which I have found true in any of our thinkers (or even yours) is their flat denial of what is false in the modern popular jargon—but for their positive affirming side, they do but fling us back upon our own human nature to hold on by that with our own strength. A few men here and there do this as the later Romans did—but mankind cannot, and I have gone''