31 May–6 June 1841

I am sometimes discontented with my house because it lies on a dusty road, and with its sills and cellar almost in the water of the meadow. But when I creep out of it into the Night or the Morning and see what majestic and what tender beauties daily wrap me in their bosom, how near to me is every transcendent secret of Nature's love and religion, I see how indifferent it is where I eat and sleep. This very street of huck- sters and taverns the moon will transform to a Palmyra, for she is the apologist of all apolo- gists, and will kiss the elm trees alone and hides every meanness in a silver-edged darkness. Then the good river-god has taken the form of my valiant Henry Thoreau here and introduced me to the riches of his shadowy, starlit, moonlit stream, a lovely new world lying as close and yet as unknown to this vulgar trite one of streets and shops as death to life, or poetry to prose. Through one field only we went to the boat and then left all time, all science, all history, behind us, and entered into Nature with one stroke of a paddle. Take care, good friend ! I said, as I looked west into the sunset overhead and under- neath, and he with his face toward me rowed towards it, — take care ; you know not what you do, dipping your wooden oar into this enchanted liquid, painted with all reds and purples and yellows, which glows under and behind you. Presently this glory faded, and the stars came and said, " Here we are " ; began to cast such private and ineffable beams as to stop all con- versation. A holiday villeggiatura, a royal revel, the proudest, most magnificent, most heart- rejoicing festival that valor arid beauty, power and poetry ever decked and enjoyed — it is here, it is this. These stars signify it and proffer it : they gave the idea and the invitation," . . .