Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/299

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ÆT. 37.]
TO HARRISON BLAKE.
275

tences him, and is read by the clerk of the court, and published to the world, and executed by the sheriff; but the criminal's opinion of the judge has the weight of a sentence, and is published and executed only in the supreme court of the universe,—a court not of common pleas. How much juster is the one than the other? Men are continually sentencing each other; but, whether we be judges or criminals, the sentence is ineffectual unless we continue ourselves.

I am glad to hear that I do not always limit your vision when you look this way; that you sometimes see the light through me; that I am here and there windows, and not all dead wall. Might not the community sometimes petition a man to remove himself as a nuisance, a darkener of the day, a too large mote?

TO HARRISON BLAKE (AT WORCESTER).

Concord, August 8, 1854.

Mr. Blake,—Methinks I have spent a rather unprofitable summer thus far. I have been too much with the world, as the poet might say.[1] The completest performance of the highest duties it imposes would yield me but little satis faction. Better the neglect of all such, because your life passed on a level where it was impossible to recognize them. Latterly, I have heard

  1. ↑ "The world is too much with us."—Wordsworth.
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