I presume you will like an early, though it should be an unfavorable, answer to your note. After due consultation and inquiry, I am sorry to be obliged to say that we cannot make it worth your while to come to Concord at this season. The curators of the Lyceum, before which you lectured three years ago, tell me that they have already exceeded their means—Our N.E. towns are not so enterprising as some Western ones, in this respect—and Mr. [Daniel?] Foster’s society which used to be our next resources, furnishing a meeting—house and an audience, no longer exists. He is settled in Princeton, in this state.

  Mrs. Emerson sends love, and wishes me to say that she would be glad to have you spend a day or two with her after Mr. E’s return, which will probably be before the middle of March,—and she will not forget that you have a lecture on Margaret Fuller in your bag.

  I remember well meeting you at Mr. Emerson’s, in company with Mr. Alcott, and that we did not fatally disagree. You were fortunate to be here at the same time with Mr. A, who diffuses sunshine wherever he goes. I hear that he says the times are so hard that the people cannot have him to converse. Are not those hard times indeed?

  As for the good time that is coming, let us not forget that there is a good time going too, and see that we dwell on that eternal ridge between the two which neither comes nor goes.

  Yrs truly
  Henry D. Thoreau