“ Lidian [Mrs. Emerson] and I make very good housekeepers. She is a very dear sister to me. Ellen and Edith and Eddy and Aunty Brown keep up the tragedy and comedy and tragic-comedy of life as usual. The two former have not forgotten their old acquaintance; even Edith carries a young memory in her head, I find. Eddy can teach us all how to pronounce. If you should discover any rare hoard of wooden or pewter horses, I have no doubt he will know how to appreciate it. He occasionally surveys mankind from my shoulders as wisely as ever Johnson did. ”

“ It is pity, however, that you should not see this England, with its indescribable material superiorities of every kind; the just confidence which immense successes of all pasts have generated in the Englishman that he can do everything, and which his manners, though he is bashful and reserved, betray ”

“ Eddy climbed up the sofa, the other day, of his own accord, and kissed the picture of his father,—"right on his shirt, I did."
I had a good talk with Alcott this afternoon. He is certainly the youngest man of his age we have seen,—just on the threshold of life. When I looked at his gray hairs, his conversation sounded pathetic; but I looked again, and they reminded me of the gray dawn. He is getting better acquainted with Channing, though he says that, if they were to live in the same house, they would soon sit with their backs to each other. ”

“ I trust a common man will be the most uncommon to you before you return to these parts. I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we "mingle with the herd of common men."
Hugh [the gardener] still has his eye on the Walden agellum, and orchards are waving there in the windy future for him. That's the where-I'll-go-next, thinks he; but no important steps are yet taken. He reminds me occasionally of this open secret of his, with which the very season seems to labor, and affirms seriously that as to his wants—wood, stone, or timber—I know better than he. ”

“ Nature is rare and sensitive on the score of nurseries. You may cut down orchards and grow forests at your pleasure. Sand watered with strong beer, though stirred with industry, will not produce grapes. He dug his cellar for the new part too near the old house, Irish like, though I warned him, and it has caved and let one end of the house down. Such is the state of his domestic affairs. I laugh with the Parcæ only. He had got the upland and the orchard and a part of the meadow ploughed by Warren, at an expense of eight dollars, still unpaid, which of course is no affair of yours. ”

“ Ellen and I have a good understanding. I appreciate her genuineness. Edith tells me after her fashion: "By and by I shall grow up and be a woman, and then I shall remember how you exercised me." Eddy has been to Boston to Christmas, but can remember nothing but the coaches, all Kendall's coaches. There is no variety of that vehicle that he is not familiar with. ”

“ Last night, as I believe I have already told Lidian, I heard the best man in England make perhaps his best speech,—Cobden, who is the cor cordis, the object of honor and belief, to risen and rising England: a man of great discretion, who never overstates nor states prematurely, nor has a particle of unnecessary genius or hope to mislead him, nor of wasted strength ”

“ But I, who have only used these ten digits so long to solve the problem of a living, how can I? The world is a cow that is hard to milk,—life does not come so easy,—and oh, how thinly it is watered ere we get it! ”

“ He did try twice to tell us something else, but, after thinking and stuttering a long time, said, "I don't know what the word is," the one word, forsooth, that would have disposed of all that Boston phenomenon. If you did not know him better than I, I could tell you more. He is a good companion for me, and I am glad that we are all natives of Concord. It is young Concord. Look out, World!
Mr. Alcott seems to have sat down for the winter. He has got Plato and other books to read. He is as large-featured and hospitable to traveling thoughts and thinkers as ever ”

“ I'd creep, and go on seeming
To be what I despise.
You laugh, and say I'm dreaming,
And all your laughs are lies.
Are women mad? A few are,
And if it's true you say—
If most men are as you are—
We'll all be mad some day. ”

“ He writes back to his wife from Sterling, near Worcester, where he is chopping wood, his distantly kind reproaches to her, which I read straight through to her (not to his bottle, which he has with him, and no doubt addresses orally) . He says that he will go on to the South in the spring, and will never return to Concord. Perhaps he will not. Life is not tragic enough for him, and he must try to cook up a more highly seasoned dish for himself. Towns which keep a bar-room and a gun-house and a reading-room should also keep a steep precipice whereoff impatient soldiers may jump. ”

“ I should quite subside into idolatry of one of my friends, if I were not every now and then apprised that the world is wiser than any one of its boys, and penetrates us with its sense, to the disparagement of the subtleties of private gentlemen. ”

“ Hugh, by the last accounts, was still in Worcester County. Mr. Hosmer, who is himself again, and living in Concord, has just hauled the rest of your wood, amounting to about ten and a half cords.
The newspapers say that they have printed a pirated edition of your Essays in England. Is it as bad as they say, and undisguised and unmitigated piracy? I thought that the printed scrap would entertain Carlyle, notwithstanding its history. If this generation will see out of its hind-head, why then you may turn your back on its forehead. ”

“ I think I shall wait and see how they treat me first. I think that nature meant kindly when she made our brothers few. However, my voice isstill for peace. So good-by, and a truce to all joking, my dear friend, from
H. D. T.
Upon this letter some annotations are to be made. "Eddy" was Emerson's youngest child, Edward Waldo, then three years old and upward,—of late years his father's biographer. Hugh, the gardener, of whom more anon, bargained for the house of Thoreau on Emerson's land at Walden, and for a field to go with it ”

“ It is strange that they will make ado when a man's body is buried, but not when he thus really and tragically dies, or seems to die. Away with your funeral processions,—into the ballroom with them! I hear the bell toll hourly over there. [1]
Lidian and I have a standing quarrel as to what is a suitable state of preparedness for a traveling professor's visit, or for whomsoever else; but further than this we are not at war. We have made up a dinner, we have made up a bed, we have made up a party, and our own minds and mouths, three several times for your professor, and he came not. ”

“ It has no great disposition to be beautiful; it is certainly a wonderful structure, on the whole, and the fame of the architect will endure as long as it shall stand. I should not show you this side alone, if I did not suspect that Lidian had done complete justice to the other. ”

“ But the young bunting calf, he will get at it. There is no way so direct. This is to earn one's living by the sweat of his brow. It is a little like joining a community, this life, to such a hermit as I am ”

“ Every man in England carries a little book in his pocket, called Bradshaw's Guide, which contains time-tables of every arrival and departure at every station, on all the railroads of the kingdom. It is published anew on the first day of every month, and costs six-pence. ”

“ Sometimes he will ride a broomstick still, though there is nothing to keep him, or it, up but a certain centrifugal force of whim, which is soon spent, and there lies your stick, not worth picking up to sweep an oven with now. ”

“ We wish to get by all possible means some notion of your success or failure in England,—more than your two letters have furnished. Can't you send a fair sample both of young and of old England's criticism, if there is any printed? Alcott and [Ellery] Channing are equally greedy with myself.
Henry Thoreau.
C. T. Jackson takes the Quarterly (new one) , and will lend it to us. Are you not going to send your wife some news of your good or ill success by the newspapers?
IV. EMERSON TO THOREAU FROM ENGLAND.
Manchester, December 2, 1847. ”

“ Thoreau please to bear in mind that when there is good mortar in readiness Mr. Dean must be summoned to fit the air-tight stove to the chimney in the schoolroom?—unless Mr. T. can do it with convenience himself.
Mr. Lane was the English owner of the farm in Harvard, where he had lived with the Alcotts; and Emerson had the care of his property in America, now that he had gone back to England. In the letter which follows "Whipple" is E. P. Whipple, the essayist, then a popular lecturer, and the "traveling professor" is Agassiz.
V. THOREAU TO EMERSON IN ENGLAND.
Concord, December 29, 1847. ”

“ He brought me a poem the other day, for me, on Walden Hermitage: not remarkable.
Lectures begin to multiply on my desk. I have one on Friendship which is new, and the materials of some others. I read one last week to the Lyceum, on The Rights and Duties of the Individual in Relation to Government, much to Mr. Alcott's satisfaction.
Joel Britton has failed and gone into chancery, but the woods continue to fall before the axes of other men. Neighbor Coombs [2] was lately found dead in the woods near Goose Pond, with his half-empty jug, after he had been rioting a week. ”

“ Perhaps it will be so when we are dead. Then look out. Joshua R. Holman, of Harvard, who says he lived a month with [Charles] Lane at Fruitlands, wishes to hire said Lane's farm for one or more years, and will pay $125 rent, taking out of the same a half, if necessary, for repairs,—as for a new bank-wall to the barn cellar, which he says is indispensable. Palmer is gone, Mrs. Palmer is going. This is all that is known or that is worth knowing Yes or no? What to do?
Hugh's plot begins to thicken. He starts thus: eighty dollars on one side; Walden, field and house, on the other. ”

“ I think that if an honest and small-familied man, who has no affinity for moisture in him, but who has an affinity for sand, can be found, it would be safe to rent him the shanty as it is, and the land ”

“ They have had a peace meeting here,—I should n't think of telling you if I did n't know anything would do for the English market,—and some men, Deacon Brown at the head, have signed a long pledge, swearing that they will "treat all mankind as brothers henceforth." ”

“ Every wave lifted the forecastle roof and washed over those within. The first man got ashore at nine; many from nine to noon. At flood tide, about half past three o'clock, when the ship broke up entirely, they came out of the forecastle, and Margaret sat with her back to the foremast, with her hands on her knees, her husband and child already drowned. A great wave came and washed her aft. The steward (?) had just before taken her child and started for shore. Both were drowned.
The broken desk, in a bag, containing no very valuable papers ”

“ Alcott, he called on Whitman, then living at Brooklyn; and I remember the calm enthusiasm with which they both spoke of Whitman upon their return to Concord. "Three men," said Emerson, in his funeral eulogy of Thoreau (May, 1862) , "have of late years strongly impressed Mr. Thoreau, John Brown, his Indian guide in Maine, Joe Polis, and a third person, not known to this audience." This last was Whitman, who has since become well known to a larger audience. ”

“ He is very short-sighted, and, without his eyeglass, cannot see as far as your eyes to know how you like him, so that he quite neglects that point. The Americans see very well,—too well,—and the traveling portion are very light troops. ”

“ He is getting on now so many knots an hour. There is one knot at present occupying the point of highest elevation,—the present highest point; and as many knots as are not handsome, I presume, are thrown down and cast into the pines. ”

“ Brownson, and charge yourself with carrying him to the Lyceum and introducing him to the curators. I hope you can oblige me so far.
Yours, R. W. E.
I. THOREAU TO HIS SISTER SOPHIA AT BANGOR.
Concord, October 24, 1847.
Dear Sophia,—I thank you for those letters about Ktadn, and hope you will save and send me the rest, and anything else you may meet with relating to the Maine woods. That Dr. Young is both young and green too at traveling in the woods. However, I hope he got "yarbs" enough to satisfy him. I went to Boston the 5th of this month to see Mr. Emerson off to Europe. ”

“ Blake, he having "gone to the horse race" in Boston; to atone for which I have just received a letter from him, asking me to stop at Worcester and lecture on my return. I called on [Theo.] Brown and [T. W.] Higginson; in the evening came by way of Norwich to New York in the steamer Commonwealth, and, though it was so windy inland, had a perfectly smooth passage, and about as good a sleep as usually at home. Reached New York about seven a. ”

“ R. W. Emerson.
XIII. THOREAU TO EMERSON.
Fire Island Beach,
Thursday Morning, July 25, 1850.
Dear Friend,—I am writing this at the house of Smith Oakes, within one mile of the wreck. He is the one who rendered most assistance. William H. Channing came down with me, but I have not seen Arthur Fuller, nor Greeley, nor Marcus Spring. Spring and Charles Sumner were here yesterday, but left soon. Mr. Oakes and wife tell me (all the survivors came, or were brought, directly to their house) that the ship struck at ten minutes after four a. ”