Do not waste any reverence on my attitude. I manage to sit up where I have dropped. Except as you reverence the evil one, - or rather the evil myriad. As for missing friends, - fortunate perhaps is he who has any to miss, whose place a thought will not supply. I have an ideal friend in whose place actual persons sometimes stand for a season. The last I may often miss, but the first I recover when I am myself again. What if we do miss one another? have we not agreed upon a rendezvous? While each travels his own own way through the wood with serene and inexpressible joy, though it be on his hands and knees over the rocks and fallen trees, he cannot but be on the right way; there is no wrong way to him. I have found myself as well off when I have fallen into a quagmire, as in an armchair in the most hospitable house. The prospect was pretty much the same. Without anxiety let us wander on, admiring whatever beauty the woods exhibit.
Do you know on what bushes a little peace, faith and contentment grow? Go a-berrying early and late after them. Miss our friends! It is not easy to get rid of them. We shall miss our bodies directly.
