Letters to a Friend 



two months in the spirit world, screaming among 

 the peaks and outside meadows like a negro 

 Methodist in revival time, and every interven 

 ing clump of week-days in trying to fix down 

 and assimilate my shapeless harvests of revealed 

 glory into the spirit and into the common earth 

 of my existence; and I am rich, rich beyond 

 measure, not in rectangular blocks of sifted 

 knowledge or in thin sheets of beauty hung pic 

 ture-like about "the walls of memory," but in 

 unselected atmospheres of terrestrial glory dif 

 fused evenly throughout my whole substance. 



Your Brooksian letters I have read with a 

 great deal of interest, they are so full of the spice 

 and poetry of unmingled nature, and in many 

 places they express my own present feelings 

 very fully. Quoting from your Forest Glen, 

 "without anxiety and without expectation all 

 my days come and go mixed with such sweet 

 ness to every sense/' and again, "I don't know 

 anything of time and but little of space." "My 

 whole being seemed to open to the sun." All 

 this I do most comprehensively appreciate and 

 [86] 



