Page:Some unpublished letters of Henry D. and Sophia E. Thoreau; a chapter in the history of a still-born book.djvu/92

 They never met in the flesh; but there is an old man in the West patiently waiting for a meeting where heart answers unto heart as face unto face in the refiner's silver.

An unbroken silence of more than two years followed this last letter. In the interval America was preparing to make history; chapters that should be written with her best blood and the first page with that of a hero—a man in whom was incarnated the high purpose of the Lord God Omnipotent.

There, in Virginia, Captain John Brown lay captive, "wounded and in prison." Even an Abolition paper called him a 'madman' for that which he had tried to do. The doughfaces of the North sweat clammily; the "friends of the Union" trembled for the safety of that fabric;