I have just returned from Plymouth, where I have been detained surveying much longer than I expected.

  What do you say to visiting Wachusett next Thursday? I will start at 7¼ a.m. unless there is a prospect of a stormy day, go by cars to Westminster, & thence on foot 5 or 6 miles to the mt tops, where I may engage to meet you at (or before) 12 m.

  If the weather is unfavorable, I will try again—on Friday,—& again on Monday.

  If a storm comes on after starting, I will seek you at the tavern in Princeton Center, as soon as circumstances will permit.

  I shall expect an answer to clinch the bargain.

Yrs

Henry D. Thoreau.

  Our Course of Independent, or reform Lectures (ten in number) we propose to commence Next Month. Will you give me liberty to put your name in the program, and say when it will suit your convenience to come every Lecturer will choose his own Subject, but we expect all, whether Antislavery or what else, will be of a reformatory Character. We have engaged Theodore Parker, who will give the Introductory Nov. 1st (Garrison, W. Phillips Thos W. Higginson Lucy Stone (Mrs Rose of New York Antoinett L Brown and hope to have Cassius N Clay, & Henry Ward Beecher, (we had a course of these lectures last year and the receipts from tickets at a low price paid expenses and fifteen to twenty dollars to the Lecturers. We think we shall do as well this year as last, and perhaps better. The Anthony Burns affair and the Nebraska bill, and other outrages of Slavery has done much to awaken the feeling of a class of Minds heretofore quiet, on all questions of reform In getting up these popular Lectures we thought at first, it would not do as well to have them too radical, or it would be best to have a part of the Speakers of the conservative class, but experience has shown us in Providence surely, that the Masses who attend such Lectures are better suited with reform lectures than with the old school conservatives. I will thank you for an early reply

Yours respectfully for true freedom

A. Fairbanks