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enough here, but better trivial days with faith than the fairest ones lighted by sunshine alone. Perchance my Wanderjahr has not arrived, but you cannot wait for that. I hope you will find a companion who will enter as heartily into your schemes as I should have done.
I remember you, as it were, with the whole Catholic Church at your skirts. And the other day, for a moment, I think I understood your relation to that body; but the thought was gone again in a twinkling, as when a dry leaf falls from its stem over our heads, but is instantly lost in the rustling mass at our feet.
I am really sorry that the Genius will not let me go with you, but I trust that it will conduct to other adventures, and so, if nothing prevents, we will compare notes at last.
Hecker to Thoreau.
I know not but I shall receive an answer to the letter I sent you a fortnight ago, before you will receive this one; however, as the idea of making an indefinite pedestrian tour on the other side of the Atlantic has in all possible ways increased in my imagination and given me a desire to add a few more words on the project, I will do so, in the hope of stimulating you to a decision. How the thought has struck you I know not; its impracticability or impossibility in the judgment of others, would not, I feel assured, deter you in any way from the undertaking; it would rather be a stimulus to the purpose, I think, in you, as it is in me. 'Tis impossible; sir, therefore we do it. The conceivable is possible; it is in harmony with the inconceivable we should act. Our true life is in the can-not. To do what we can do is to do nothing, is death. Silence is much more respectable than repetition.
The idea of making such a tour I have opened to one or two who I thought might throw some light on the subject. I asked the opinion of the Catholic Bishop [McCloskey] who has travelled considerably in Europe. But I find that in every man there are certain things within him which are beyond the ken and counsel of others. The age is so effeminate that it is too timid to give heroic counsel. It neither will enter the kingdom of heaven nor have others
