The Thoreau
Institute at Walden Woods Library
Thoreau's Life &
Writings: Correspondence
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HDT to George
Thatcher
Concord, 16 February 1849
Dear
George,
I am going as far as Portland
to lecture before their Lyceum on the 3d Wednesday in March.—By
the way they pay me $25.00. Now I am not sure but I may have leisure
then to go on to Bangor and so up river. I have a great desire to go
up to Chesuncook before the ice breaks up—but I should not care if
I had to return down the banks and so saw the logs running; and I
write now chiefly to ask how late it will probably do to go up the
river—or when on the whole would be the best time for me to start?
Will the 3d week in March answer?
I should be very glad if you
would go with me, but I hesitate to ask you now, it is so uncertain
whether I go at all myself. The fact is I am once more making a
bargain with the Publishers Ticknor & Co, who talk of printing a
book for me, and if we come to terms I may then be confined
here correcting proofs—or at most I should have but a few days to
spare.
If the Bangor Lyceum should
want me about those times, that of course would be very convenient,
and a seasonable aid to me.
Shall I trouble you then to
give me some of the statistics of a winter excursion to Chesuncook?
Of Helen I have no better news
to send. We fear that she may be very gradually failing, but it may
not be so. She is not very uncomfortable and still seems to enjoy
the day. I do not wish to foresee what change may take place in her
condition or in my own.
The rest of us are as well off
as we deserve to be.—
Yrs truly
Henry D. Thoreau
A
Note on the Text:
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Source:
The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau edited by
Walter Harding and Carl Bode (New York: New York University
Press, c1958) p. 236-237.
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