Concord, Mass. Ralph Waldo Emerson writes to Margaret Fuller:
H. D. T. writes a hearty commendation of E’s [William Ellery Channing] poems, in a letter (The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 3:179).
Fruitlands, Harvard, Mass. Charles Lane writes to Thoreau?:
It is very remotely placed, without a road, surrounded by a beautiful green landscape of fields and woods, with the distance filled up with some of the loftiest mountains in the State. At present there is much hard manual labor, so much that, as you see, my usual handwriting is very greatly suspended. Our house accommodations are poor and scanty; but the greatest want is good female society. Far too much labor devolves on Mrs. [Abigail May] Alcott. Besides the occupations of each succeeding day, we form in this ample theatre of ope, many forthcoming scenes. The nearer little copse is designed as the site of the cottages. Fountains can be made to descend from their granite sources on the hill-slope to every apartment if desired. Gardens are to displace the warm grazing glades on the South, and numerous human beings instead of cattle, shall here enjoy existence . . .
On the estate are about 14 Acres of wood,—a very sylvian realization, which wants only a Thoreau’s mind to elevate it to classic beauty. The farther wood offers to the naturalist and the poet an exhaustless haunt; and a short cleaning up of the brook would connect our boat with the Nashua. Such are the designs which Mr. Alcott and I have just sketched, as resting from planting we walked around this reserve . . .
Though to me our mode of life is luxurious in the highest degree, yet generally it seems to be thought that the setting aside of all impure diet, dirty habits, idle thoughts, and selfish feelings is a source of self-denial scarcely to be encountered, or even thought of, in such an alluring world as this.
