Ralph Waldo Emerson writes to his brother:
I have advanced Henry Thoreau $10.00 more, since I wrote before, & this sum having been expended in outfit, I paid him last night $7.00 for travelling expenses, so that I charge you with 17.—Now goes our brave youth into the new house, the new connexion, the new City. I am sure no truer & no purer person lives in wide New York; and he is a bold & a profound thinker though he may easily chance to pester you with some accidental crochets and perhaps a village exaggeration of the value of facts. Yet I confide, if you should content each other, in Willie’s soon coming to value him for his real power to serve & instruct him. I shall eagerly look, though not yet for some time, for tidings how you speed in this new relation.
(The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 3:172)
Emerson also writes to Henry James:
A friend of mine who has been an inmate of my house for the last two years, Henry D. Thoreau, is now going (tomorrow) to New York to live with my brother William at Staten Island, to take charge of the education of his son. I should like both for Mr. Thoreau’s and your own sake that you would meet and see what you have for each other . . . If you remain in the city this summer, which seemed uncertain, I wish you would send your card to him through my brother at 64 Wall Street.
