JST. 39.] TO B. B. WILEY. 353
How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original ? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of a common mint. If others have their losses which they are busy repairing, so have I mine, and their hound and horse may perhaps be the symbols of some of them. 1 But also I have lost, or am in danger of losing, a far finer and more ethereal treasure, which commonly no loss, of which they are con scious, will symbolize. This I answer hastily and with some hesitation, according as I now understand my words. . . .
Methinks a certain polygamy with its troubles is the fate of almost all men. They are married to two wives : their genius (a celestial muse),
1 When in 1855 or 1856 Thoreau started to wade across from Duxbury to Clark s Island, and was picked up by a fishing- boat in the deep water, and landed on the " backside " of the island (see letter to Mr. Watson of April 25, 1858), Edward Watson (" Uncle Ed "), was " saggin round " to see that every thing was right alongshore, and encountered the unexpected visitor. " How did you come here ? " " Oh, from Duxbury," said Thoreau, and they walked to the old Watson house to gether. " You say in one of your books," said Uncle Ed, " that you once lost a horse and a hound and a dove, now I should like to know what you meant by that ? " " Why, everybody has met with losses, have n t they ? " " H m, pretty way to answer a fellow ! " said Mr. Watson ; but it seems this was the usual answer. In the long dining-room of the old house that night he sat by the window and told the story of the Norse voyag ers to New England, perhaps to that very island and the Gurnet near by, as Morton fancies in his review of Thoreau in the Harvard Magazine (January, 1855).
