Concord, April 10,1861.
Friend Pillsbury,
— I am sorry to say that I have not a copy of “Walden” which I can spare; and
know of none, unless possibly Ticknor & Fields may have one. I send,
nevertheless, a copy of “The Week,” the price of which is one dollar and
twenty-five cents, which you can pay at your convenience.
As for your friend, my prospective reader, I hope he ignores
Fort Sumter, and “Old Abe,” and all that; for that is just the most fatal, and,
indeed, the only fatal weapon you can direct against evil, ever; for, as long
as you know of it, you are particeps criminis. What business have
you, if you are “an angel of light,” to be pondering over the deeds of
darkness, reading the “New York Herald,” and the like?
I do not so much regret the present condition of things in
this country (provided I regret it at all), as I do that I ever heard of it. I
know one or two, who have this year, for the first time, read a President’s
Message; but they do not see that this implies a fall in themselves,
rather than a rise in the President. Blessed were the days before you
read a President’s Message. Blessed are the young, for they do not read the
President's Message. Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they
shall see Nature, and, through her, God.
But, alas! I have
heard of Sumter and Pickens, and even of Buchanan (though I did not read his
Message). I also read the “New York Tribune;” but then, I am reading Herodotus
and Strabo, and Blodget's “Climatology,” and “Six Years in the Desert of North
America,” as hard as I can, to counterbalance it.
By the way, Alcott is at present our most popular and
successful man, and has just published a volume in size, in the shape of the
Annual School Report, which I presume he has sent to you.
Yours, for
remembering all good things,
Henry D. Thoreau.
SOURCE: F. B. Sanborn, Editor, Familiar Letters of Henry David Thoreau, p. 437-8
No comments:
Post a Comment