Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/430

416 whose harvest cannot fail, an irresistible, expedition of the mind, at length to be victorious?

Feb. 20, 1859. Have just read &quot;Counterparts, or the Cross of Love,&quot; by the author of &quot;Charles Auchester.&quot; It is very interesting, its illustration of Love and Friendship, as showing how much we can know of each other through sympathy merely, without any of the ordinary information. You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is insignificant, tells you more about that one than words can. If he wished to conceal something from you, it would be apparent. It is as if a bird told you. Sometimes from the altered manner of a friend which no cloak can possibly conceal, we know that something has happened, and what it was, all the essential particulars, though it would be a long story to tell, though it may involve the agency of four or five persons, who never breathed it to you, yet you are sure as if you detected all their tracks in the wood. You are the more sure, because, in the case of love, effects follow their causes more inevitably than usual, this being a controlling power.

How much the writer lives and endures in coining before the public so often! A few years or books are with him equal to a long life of