The Thoreau
Institute at Walden Woods Library
Thoreau's Life &
Writings: Correspondence
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HDT to H.G.O.
Blake
Concord, 3 May 1861
Mr.
Blake, — I am still as much an
invalid as when you and Brown were here, if not more of one, and at
this rate there is danger that the cold weather may come again,
before I get over my bronchitis. The Doctor accordingly tells me
that I must “clear out” to the West Indies, or elsewhere, —
he does not seem to care much where.
But I decide against the West Indies, on account of their muggy heat
in the summer, and the South of Europe, on account of the expense of
time and money, and have at last concluded that it will be most
expedient for me to tr y the air of Minnesota, say somewhere about
St Paul’s. I am only waiting to be well enough to start. Hope to
get off within a week or ten days.
The inland air
may help me at once or it may not. At any rate, I am so much of an
invalid that I shall have to study my comfort in traveling to a
remarkable degree, — stopping
to rest, etc., etc., if need be. I think to get a through ticket to
Chicago, with liberty to stop frequently on the way, making my first
stop of consequence at Niagara Falls, several days or a week, at a
private boarding-house; then a night or day at Detroit; and as much
at Chicago as my health may require. At Chicago I can decide at what
point (Fulton, Dunleith, or another) to strike the Mississippi and
take a boat to St. Paul's.
I trust to find a private boarding-house in
one or various agreeable places in that region, and spend my time
there. I expect, and shall be prepared, to be gone three months; and
I would like to return by a different route,
— perhaps Mackinaw and
Montreal.
I have thought of finding a companion, of
course, yet not seriously, because I had no right to offer myself as
a companion to anybody, having such a peculiarly private and all-absorbing
but miserable business as my health, and not altogether his,
to attend to, causing me to stop here and go there, etc., etc.,
unaccountably.
Nevertheless, I have just now decided to
let you know of my intention, thinking it barely possible that you
might like to make a part or the whole of this journey, at the same
time, and that perhaps your own health may be such as to be benefited
by it.
Pray let me know, if such a statement offers any
temptations to you. I write in great haste for the mails and must
omit all the moral.
A
Note on the Text:
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Source:
Familiar Letters edited by F.B. Sanborn [The Writings of
Henry David Thoreau (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906) p. 365.
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