Although your letter only came to hand to-day, I attended to its subject yesterday, when I was in Philadelphia on my way home from Washington. Your article is this moment in type, and will appear about the 20th inst. as the leading article in Graham’s Mag. for next month. Now don’t object to this, nor be unreasonably sensitive at the delay. It is immensely more important to you that the article should appear thus (that is, if you have any literary aspirations,) than it is that you should make a few dollars by issuing it in some other way. As to lecturing, you have been at perfect liberty to deliver it as a lecture a hundred times if you had chosen—the more the better. It is really a good thing, and I will see that Graham pays you fairly for it. But its appearance there is worth far more to you than money.I know there has been too much delay, and have done my best to obviate it. But I could not. A Magazine that pays, and hich it is desirable to be known as a contributor to, is always crowded with articles, and has to postpone some for others of even less merit. I do this myself with good things that I am not required to pay for.

  Thoreau, do not think hard of Graham. Do not try to stop the publication of your article. It is best as it is. But just set down and write a like article about Emerson, which I will give you $25 for if you cannot do better with it; then one about Hawthorne at your leisure, &c. &c. I will pay you the money for each of these articles on delivery, publish them when and how I please, leaving to you the copyright expressly. In a year or two, if you take care not to write faster than you think, you will have the material of a volume worth publishing, and then we will see what can be done.

  There is a text somewhere in St. Paul—my scriptural reading is getting rusty—which says ‘Look not back to the things which are behind, but rather to these which are before,’ &c. Commending this to your thoughtful appreciation, I am,

Yours, &c.
Horace Greeley

Concord, Mass. Thoreau lectures on “A History of Myself” at the Unitarian Church for the Concord Lyceum (Studies in the American Renaissance, 1995, 150-151).

  I have not forgotten your note which I received sometime since. Though I live in the woods I am not so attentive an observer of birds as I was once, but am satisfied if I get an occasional night of sound from them. My pursuits at present are such that I am not very likely to meet with any specimens which you will not have obtained. Moreover, I confess to a little squeamishness on the score of robbing their nests, though I could easily go to the length of abstracting an egg or two gently, now and then, and if the advancement of science obviously demanded it might be carried even to the extreme of deliberate murder.I have no doubt that you will observe a greater number of species in or near the College yard than I can here. I have noticed that in an open country where there are but few trees, there are more attractions for many species of birds than in a wooded one. They not only find food there in greater abundance, but protection against birds of prey; and even if they are no more numerous than elsewhere, the few trees are necessarily more crowded with nests. Many of my classmates were quite successful in collecting birds nests and eggs and they did not have to go far from the college-yard to find them—I remember a pigeon-woodpecker’s nest in the grove on the east side of the year, which annually yielded a number of eggs to collectors, while the bird steadily supplied the loss like a hen, until my chum demolished the whole with a hatchet. I found another in the next field chipped nearly two feet into a solid stump. And in one of the fields near the yard I used to visit daily in the winter the dwelling of an ermine-weasel in a hollow apple tree. But of course one must be a greater traveller than this if he would make anything like a complete collection.

  There are many whipporwills & owls about my house, and perhaps with a little pains one might find their nests. I hope you have more nimble and inquisitive eyes to serve you than mine now are—However, if I should chance to stumble on any rarer nest I will not forget your request. If you come to Concord again, as I understand you sometimes do, I shall be glad to see you at my hut—.

  Trusting that you will feather your own nest comfortably without stripping those of the birds quite bare—I amYrs

Henry D. Thoreau

  But this fits him all the better for his special task of delineating these yet unspoiled American things, and of inspiring us with a sense of their homelier beauties—opening to us the riches of a nation scarcely yet discovered by her own population . . .

  Thoreau took his position in Nature, where he was in deed and in spirit—a genius of the natural world, a savage mind amidst savage faculties, yet adorned with the graces of a civilization which he disowned, but celebrating thereby Nature still.

  The following inquiries are made agreeably to a vote passed at the Last Annual Meeting of the Class, with a view to obtain authentic information concerning each one of its members, and to enable the Secretary to record facts now easily obtainable, but which, from year to year, it will be more and more difficult to collect.

  You are respectfully requested to answer the questions proposed, as fully as may be convenient and agreeable to you, and to add such other facts concerning your life, before or after entering College, as you are willing to communicate. The answers are to be recorded in the Class Book for future reference.Please to address Henry Williams, Jr. Boston; post paid.

Very Respectfully and Truly Yours,
Henry Williams, Jr., Class Secretary.

  1. When and where were you born?

  2. Where were you fitted for College, and by whom?

  3. If married, when, where, and to whom?

  4. What is your profession? If learned, with whom studied? If mercantile, where and with whom begun?

  5. What are your present employment, and residence?

  6. Mention any general facts of importance before or since graduating.

  This book has many merits. It will be attractive to lovers of nature, in every sense, that is, to naturalists, and to poets, as Isaak Walton. It will be attractive to scholars for its excellent literature, & to all thoughtful persons for its originality & profoundness. The narrative of the little voyage, though faithful, is a very slender thread for such big beads & ingots as are strung on it. It is really a book of results of the studies of years.

  Would you like to print this book into your American Library? It is quite ready, & the whole can be sent to you at once. It has never yet been offered to any publisher. If you wish to see the MS. I suppose Mr Thoreau would readily send it to you. I am only desirous that you should propose to him good terms, & give his book the great advantages of being known which your circulation ensures.

  Mr Thoreau is the author of an Article on Carlyle, now printed & printing in Graham’s last & coming Magazine, & some papers in the Dial; but he has done nothing half so good as his new book. He is well known to Mr. Hawthorn also.

1 Emerson
2 Parker
3 Channing
4 Sumner
5 Cabot
6 Stone
7 Clarke (J. F.)
8 Weiss
9 Stetson
10 Dwight
11 Thoreau
12 Alcott

  I believe that I have not yet acknowledged the receipt of your notes, and a five dollar bill. I am very glad that the fishes afforded Mr. Agassiz so much pleasure. I could easily have obtained more specimens of the Sternothaerus odoratus; they are quite numerous here. I will send more of them erelong. Snapping turtles are perhaps as frequently met with in our muddy river as anything, but they are not always to be had when wanted. It is now rather late in the season for them. As no one makes a business of seeking them, and they are valued for soups, science may be forestalled by appetite in this market, and it will be necessary to bid pretty high to induce persons to obtain or preserve them. I think that from seventy-five cents to a dollar apiece would secure all that are in any case to be had, and will set this price upon their heads, if the treasury of science is full enough to warrant it.You will excuse me for taking toll in the shape of some, it may be, impertinent and unscientific inquiries. There are found in the waters of the Concord, so far as I know, the following kinds of fishes:—

  Pickerel. Besides the common, fishermen distinguish the Brook, or Grass Pickerel, which bites differently, and has a shorter snout. Those caught in Walden, hard by my house, are easily distinguished from those caught in the river, being much heavier in proportion to their size, stouter, firmer fleshed, and lighter colored. The little pickerel which I sent last, jumped into the boat in its fright.

  Pouts. Those in the pond are of different appearance from those that I have sent.

  Breams. Some more green, others more brown.

  Suckers. The horned, which I sent first, and the black. I am not sure whether the Common or Boston sucker is found here. Are the three which I sent last, which were speared in the river, identical with the three black suckers, taken by hand in the brook, which I sent before? I have never examined them minutely.

  Perch. The river perch, of which I sent five specimens in the box, are darker colored than those found in the pond. There are myriads of small ones in the latter place, and but few large ones. I have counted ten transverse bands on some of the smaller.

  Lampreys. Very scarce since the dams at Lowell and Billerica were built.

  Shiners. Leuciscus chrysoleucas, silver and golden.

  What is the difference?

  Roach or Chiverin, Leuciscus pulchellus, argenteus, or what not. The white and the red. The former described by [David H.] Storer, but the latter, which deserves distinct notice, not described, to my knowledge. Are the minnows (called here dace), of which I sent three live specimens, I believe, one larger and two smaller, the young of the species?

  Trout. Of different appearance in different brooks in this neighborhood.

  Eels.

  Red-finned Minnows, of which I sent you a dozen alive. I have never recognized them in any books. Have they any scientific name?

  If convenient, will you let Dr. Storer see these brook minnows? There is also a kind of dace or fresh-water smelt in the pond, which is, perhaps, distinct from any of the above. What of the above does M. Agassiz particularly wish to see? Does he want more specimens of kinds which I have already sent? There are also minks, muskrats, frogs, lizards, tortoise, snakes, caddice-worms, leeches, muscles, etc., or rather, here they are. The funds which you sent me are nearly exhausted. Most fishes can now be taken with the hook, and it will cost but little trouble or money to obtain them. The snapping turtles will be the main expense. I should think that five dollars more, at least, might be profitably expended.

  I should not have delayed sending you my manuscript so long, if I had not known that delay would be no inconvenience to you, and advantage to the sender. I will remind you, to save time, that I wish to be informed for what term the book is to be the property of the publishers, and on what terms I can have 30 copies cheaply bound in boards without immediate expense.—If you take it—It will be a great convenience to me to get through with the printing as soon as possible, as I wish to take a journey of considerable length and should not be willing that any other than myself should correct the proofs.

  If you will inform me as soon as may be, whether you want the manuscript, and what are the most favorable terms on which you will print & publish it, you will greatly oblige

Y’rs &c
Henry D. Thoreau

  I send you 15 pouts, 17 perch, 13 shiners, 1 larger land tortoise, and 5 muddy tortoises, all from the pond by my house. Also 7 perch, 5 shiners, 8 breams, 4 dace, 2 muddy tortoises, 5 painted do., and 3 land do., all from the river. One black snake, alive, and one dormouse caught last night in my cellar. The tortoises were all put in alive,; the fishes were alive yesterday, i.e., Monday, and some this morning. Observe the difference between those from the pond, which is pure water, and those from the river.

  I will send the light-colored trout and the pickerel with the longer snout, which is our large one, when I meet with them. I have set a price upon the heads of snapping turtles, though it is late in the season to get them.

  If I wrote red-finned eel, it was a slip of the pen; I meant red-finned minnow. This is their name here; though smaller specimens have but a slight reddish tinge at the base of the pectorals.

  Will you, at your leisure, answer these queries?

  Do you mean to say that the twelve banded minnows which I sent are undescribed, or only one? What are the scientific names of those minnows which have any? Are the four dace I send to-day identical with one of the former, and what are they called? Is there such a fish as the black sucker described,—distinct from the common?

  He gave us gracious welcome, asking us within. For a time he talked with Mr. Alcott in a voice and with a manner in which, boy as I was, I detected a something akin with Emerson. He was a tall and rugged-looking man, straight as a pine tree. His nose was strong, dominating his face, and his eyes as keen as an eagle’s. He seemed to speak with them, to take in all about him in one vigorous glance. His brows were shaggy as in people who observe rather than see . . . Then he took us five children upon the Pond in his boat, ceasing his oars after a little distance from the shore and playing his flute he had brought with him, its music echoing over the still and beautifully clear water. He suddenly laid the flute down and told us stories of the Indians that ‘long ago’ had lived about Walden and Concord; delighting us with simple, clear explanations of the wonders of Walden woods. Again he interrupted himself suddenly, speaking of the various kinds of lilies growing about Walden and calling the wood lilies, stately wild things. It was pond lily time and from the boat we gathered quantities of their pure white flowers and buds; upon our return to the shore he helped us gather other flowers and ladened with many sweet blossoms, we wended our way homeward rejoicingly. As we were going he said to me: “Boy, you look tired and sleepy; remember, sleep is half a dinner.”

  I sent you my Mss.* this (Saturday) morning by Augustus Adams’ and Harnden’s expresses, and now write this for greater security, that you may inform me if it does not arrive duly. If Mr. [George P.] Putnam is not likely to return for a considerable time yet, will you please inform

Yrs &c
Henry D. Thoreau

  It is a little more than three weeks since I returned my mss. sending a letter by mail at the same time for security, so I suppose that you have received it. If Messrs Wiley & Putnam are not prepared to give their answer now, will you please inform me what further delay if any, is unavoidable, that I may determine whether I had not better carry it elsewhere—for time is of great consequence to me.

Yours respectfully
Henry D. Thoreau

  Mr Emerson has showed me your note to him and says that he thinks you must have misunderstood him. If you will inform me how large an edition you contemplated, and what will be the whole or outside of the expense—(The book is about the size of one vol of Emerson’s essays)—I will consider whether I will pay one half the same (or whatever of my part one half the profits has failed to pay)—at the end of six months after the day of publication, if that is agreeable to you. This arrangement to affect only one edition. The MSS is quite ready and is now in New York.

  Please answer this as soon as convenient.

Yours &c.
Henry D. Thoreau

PS. I should have said above—that I decline your proposition as it now stands.

  I confess that I have very little class spirit, and have almost forgotten that I ever spent four years at Cambridge. That must have been in a former state of existence. It is difficult to realize that the old routine is still kept up. However, I will undertake at last to answer your questions as well as I can in spite of a poor memory and a defect of information.

  1st then, I was born, they say, on the 12th of July 1817, on what is called the Virginia Road, in the east part of Concord.

  2nd I was fitted, or rather made unfit, for college, at Concord Academy & elsewhere, mainly by myself, with the countenance of Phineas Allen, Preceptor.

  3d I am not married.

  4th I dont know whether mine is a profession, or a trade, or what not. It is not yet learned, and in every instance has been practised before being studied. The mercantile part of it was begun here by myself alone.

  —It is not one but legion. I will give you some of the monster’s heads. I am a Schoolmaster—a Private Tutor, a Surveyor—a Gardener, a Farmer—a Painter, I mean a House Painter, a Carpenter, a Mason, a Day-Laborer, a Pencil-Maker, a Glass-Paper Maker, a Writer, and sometimes a Poetaster. If you will act the part of Iolas, and apply a hot iron to any of these heads, I shall be greatly obliged to you.

  5th My present employment is to answer such orders as may be expected from so general an advertisement as the above—that is, if I see fit, which is not always the case, for I have found out a way to live without what is commonly called employment or industry attractive or otherwise. Indeed my steadiest employment, if such it can be called, is to keep myself at the top of my condition, and ready for whatever may turn up in heaven or on earth. For the last two or three years I have lived in Concord woods alone, something more than a mile from any neighbor, in a house built entirely by myself.

  6th I cannot think of a single general fact of any importance before or since graduating

Yrs &c
Henry D Thoreau

  P.S. I beg that the Class will not consider me an object of charity, and if any of them are in want of pecuniary assistance, and will make known their case to me, I will engage to give them some advice of more worth than money.

  I thank you for those letters about Ktaadn, and hope you will save and send me the rest, and anything else you may meet with relating to the Maine woods. That Dr. [Aaron] Young is both young and green too at traveling in the woods. However, I hope he got “yarbs” enough to satisfy him. I went to Boston the 5th of this month to see Mr. [Ralph Waldo] Emerson off to Europe. He sailed in the Washington Irving packet ship; the same in which Mr. [Frederic Henry] Hedge went before him. Up to this trip the first mate aboard this ship was, as I hear, one Stephens, a Concord boy, son of Stephens the carpenter, who used to live above Mr. [Samuel] Dennis’s. Mr. Emerson’s stateroom was like a carpeted dark closet, about six feet square, with a large keyhole for a window. The window was about as big as a saucer, and the glass two inches thick, not to mention another skylight overhead in the deck, the size of an oblong doughnut, and about as opaque. Of course it would be in vain to look up, if any contemplative promenader put his foot upon it. Such will be his lodgings for two or three weeks; and instead of a walk in Walden woods he will take a promenade on deck, where the few trees, you know, are stripped of their bark. The steam-tug carried the ship to sea against a head wind without a rag of sail being raised.

  I don’t remember whether you have heard of the new telescope at Cambridge or not. They think it is the best one in the world, and have already seen more than Lord Rosse or Herschel. I went to see Perez Blood’s, some time ago, with Mr. Emerson. He had not gone to bed, but was sitting in the woodshed, in the dark, alone, in his astronomical chair, which is all legs and rounds, with a seat which can be inserted at any height. We saw Saturn’s rings, and the mountains in the moon, and the shadows in their craters, and the sunlight on the spurs of the mountains in the dark portion, etc., etc., When I asked him the power of his glass, he said it was 85. But what is the power of the Cambridge glass? 2000!!! The last is about twenty-three feet long.

  I think you may have a grand time this winter pursuing some study,—keeping a journal, or the like,—while the snow lies deep without. Winter is the time for study, you know, and the colder it is the more studious we are. Give my respects to the whole Penobscot tribe, and tell them that I trust we are good brothers still, and endeavor to keep the chain of friendship bright, though I do dig up a hatchet now and then. I trust you will not stir from your comfortable winter quarters, Miss Bruin, or even put your head out of your hollow tree, till the sun has melted the snow in the spring, and “the green buds, they are a-swellin’.”

From your
Brother Henry

  I am but a poor neighbor to you here,—a very poor companion am I. I understand that very well, but that need not prevent my writing to you now. I have almost never written letters in my life, yet I think I can write as good ones as I frequently see, so I shall not hesitate to write this, such as it may be, knowing that you will welcome anything that reminds you of Concord.

  I have banked up the young trees against the winter and the mice, and I will look out, in my careless way, to see when a pale is loose or a nail drops out of its place. The broad gaps, at least, I will occupy. I heartily wish I could be of good service to this household. But I, who have only used these ten digits so long to solve the problem of a living, how can I? The world is a cow that is hard to milk,—life does not come so easy,—and oh, how thinly it is watered ere we get it! But the young bunting calf, he will get at it. There is no way so direct. This is to earn one’s living by the sweat of his brow. It is a little like joining a community, this life, to such a hermit as I am; and as I don’t keep the account, I don’t know whether the experiment will succeed or fail finally. At any rate, it is good for society, so i do not regret my transient no my permanent share in it.

  Lidian and I make very good housekeepers. She is a very dear sister to me. Ellen and Edith and Eddy and Aunty Brown keep up the tragedy and comedy and tragic-comedy of life as usual. The two former have not forgotten their old acquaintance; even Edith carries a young memory in her head, I find. Eddy can teach us all how to pronounce. If you should discover any rare hoard of wooden or pewter horses, I have no doubt he will know how to appreciate it. He occasionally surveys mankind from my shoulders as wisely as ever Johnson did. I respect him not a little, though it is I that lift him up so unceremoniously. And sometimes I have to set him down again in a hurry, according to his “mere will and good pleasure.” He very seriously asked me, the other day, “Mr. Thoreau, will you be my father?” I am occasionally Mr. Rough-and-tumble with him that I may not miss him, and lest he should miss you too much. So you must come back soon, or you will be superseded.

  [A. Bronson] Alcott has heard that I laughed, and so set the people laughing, at his arbor, though I never laughed louder than when I was on the ridgepole. But now I have not laughed for a long time, it is so serious. He is very grave to look at. But, not knowing all this, I strove innocently enough, the other day, to engage his attention to my mathematics. “Did you ever study geometry, the relation of straight lines to curves, the transition from the finite to the infinite? Fine things about it in Newton and Leibnitz.” But he would hear none of it,—men of taste preferred the natural curve. Ah, he is a crooked stick himself. He is getting on now so many knots an hour. There is one know at present occupying the point of highest elevation,—the present highest point; and as many knots as are not handsome, I presume, are thrown down and cast into the pines. Pray show him this if you meet him anywhere in London, for I cannot make him hear much plainer words here. He forgets that I am neither old nor young, nor anything in particular, and behaves as if I had still some of the animal heat in me. As for the building, I feel a little oppressed when I come near it. It has no great disposition to be beautiful; it is certainly a wonderful structure, on the whole, and the fame of the architect will endure as long as it shall stand. I should not show you this side alone, if I did not suspect that Lidian had done complete justice to the other.

  Mr. [Edmund] Hosmer has been working at a tannery in Stow for a fortnight, though he has just now come home sick. It seems that he was a tanner in his youth, and so he has made up his mind a little at last. This comes of reading the New Testament. Was n’t one of the Apostles a tanner? Mrs. Hosmer remains here, and John looks stout enough to fill his own shoes and his father’s too.

  Mr. [Perez] Blood and his company have at length seen the stars through the great telescope, and he told me that he thought it was worth the while. Mr. [Benjamin] Peirce made him wait till the crowd had dispersed (it was a Saturday evening), and then was quite polite,—conversed with him, and showed him the micrometer, etc.; and he said Mr. Blood’s glass was large enough for all ordinary astronomical work. [Rev.] Mr. [Barzillai] Frost and Dr. [Josiah] Bartlett seemed disappointed that there was no greater difference between the Cambridge glass and the Concord one. They used only a power of 400. Mr. Blood tells me that he is too old to study the calculus or higher mathematics. At Cambridge they think that they have discovered traces of another satellite to Neptune. They have been obliged to exclude the public altogether, at last. The very dust which they raised, “which is filled with minute crystals,” etc., as professors declare, having to be wiped off the glasses, would erelong wear them away. It is true enough, Cambridge college is really beginning to wake up and redeem its character and overtake the age. I see by the catalogue that they are about establishing a scientific school in connection with the university, at which any one above eighteen, on paying one hundred dollars annually (Mr. [Abbott] Lawrence’s fifty thousand dollars will probably diminish this sum), may be instructed in the highest branches of science,—in astronomy, “theoretical and practical, with the use of the instruments” (so the great Yankee astronomer may be born without delay), in mechanics and engineering to the last degree. Agassiz will erelong commence his lectures in the zoölogical department. A chemistry class has already been formed under the direction of Professor [Eben N.] Horsford. A new and adequate building for the purpose is already being erected. They have been foolish enough to put at the end of all this earnest the old joke of a diploma. Let every sheep keep but his own skin, I say.

  I have had a tragic correspondence, for the most part all on one side, with Miss [Foord]. She did really wish to—I hesitate to write—marry me. That is the way they spell it. Of course I did not write a deliberate answer. How could I deliberate upon it? I sent back as distinct a no as I have learned to pronounce after considerable practice, and I trust that this no has succeeded. Indeed, I wished that it might burst, like hollow shot, after it had struck and buried itself and made itself felt there. There was no other way. I really had anticipated no such foe as this in my career.

  I suppose you will like to hear of my book, though I have nothing worth writing about it. Indeed, for the last month or two I have forgotten it, but shall certainly remember it again. Wiley & Putnam, Munroe, the Harpers, and Crosby & Nichols have all declined printing it with the least risk to themselves; but Wiley & Putnam will print it in their series, and any of them, anywhere, at my risk. If I liked the book well enough, I should not delay; but for the present I am indifferent. I believe this is, after all, the course you advised,—to let it lie.

  I do not know what to say of myself. I sit before my green desk, in the chamber at the head of the stairs, and attend to my thinking, sometimes more, sometimes less distinctly. I am not unwilling to think great thoughts if there are any in the wind, but what they are I am not sure. They suffice to keep me awake while the day lasts, at any rate. Perhaps they will redeem some portion of the night erelong.

  I can imagine you astonishing, bewildering, confounding, and sometimes delighting John Bull with your Yankee notions, and that he begins to take a pride in the relationship at last; introduced to all the stars of England in succession, after the lecture, until you pine to thrust your head once more into a genuine and unquestionable nebula, if there be any left. I trust a common man will be the most uncommon to you before you return to these parts. I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we “mingle with the herd of common men.”

  Hugh [Whelan] still has his eye on the Walden agellum, and orchards are waving there in the windy future for him. That’s the where-I’ll-go-next, thinks he; but no important steps are yet taken. He reminds me occasionally of this open secret of his, with which the very season seems to labor, and affirms seriously that as to his wants—wood, stone, or timber—I know better than he. That is a clincher which I shall have to avoid to some extent; but I fear that it is a wrought nail and will not break. Unfortunately, the day after cattle show—the day after small beer—he was among the missing, but not long this time. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the leopard his spots, nor indeed Hugh—his Hugh.

  As I walked over Conantum, the other afternoon, I saw a fair column of smoke rising from the woods directly over my house that was (as I judged), and already began to conjecture if my deed of sale would not be made invalid by this. But it turned out to be John Richardson’s young wood, on the southeast of your field. It was burnt nearly all over, and up to the rails and road. It was set on fire, no doubt, by the same Lucifer that lighted Brooks’s lot before. So you see that your small lot is comparatively safe for this season, the back fire having been already set for you.

  They have been choosing between John Keyes and Sam Staples, if the world wants to know it, as representative of this town, and Staples is chosen. The candidates for governor—think of my writing this to you!—were Governor [George N.] Briggs and General [Caleb] Cushing, and Briggs is elected, though the Democrats have gained. Ain’t I a brave boy to know so much of politics for the nonce? But I should n’t have known it if Coombs had n’t told me. They have had a peace meeting here,—I should n’t think of telling you if I did n’t know anything would do for the English market,—and some men, Deacon [Reuben] Brown at the head, have signed a long pledge, swearing that they will “treat all mankind as brothers henceforth.” I think I shall wait and see how they treat me first. I think that nature meant kindly when she made our brothers few. However, my voice is still for peace. So goodby, and a truce to all joking, my dear friend, from

H.D.T

  Mrs Emerson requests me to forward this circular to you. Mr. E. had anticipated it, and, as she thinks, said that you would take care of it. She is sure that he will take new shares.

  She desires to be kindly remembered to your family, and would have written herself, if not prevented by a slight indisposition.

  We have not yet heard from Mr. E.

Yrs respectfully
H. D. Thoreau

  Eddy. Write to Father that Edie’s got a book & a cabinet on her birth day.

  Edie. I had a wreath on my head, Thanksgiving; cause my birth day was on Monday. Mr Thoreau jumps us every night.

  Eddy. Mother, and tell him Mr Thoreau jumped a chair over me tonight! . . .

  Why have you sent no news-papers that will tell us how you prosper with the English Brethren? Henry says I must make it a special request from him that you will not fail to do so. Pray send all. Surely you will not think it un-modest to send the good said of your lectures nor of course be unwilling to send the evil reports if such there they should be.

  Very welcome in the parcel was your letter, very precious your thoughts & tidings. It is one of the best things connected with my coming hither that you could & would keep the homestead, that fireplace shines all the brighter,—and has a certain permanent glimmer therefor. Thanks, evermore thanks for the kindness which I well discern to the youths of the house, to my darling little horseman of pewter, leather wooden, rocking & what other breeds, destined, I hope, to ride Pegasus yet, and I hope not destined to be thrown, to Edith who long ago drew from you verses which I carefully preserve, & to Ellen who by speech & now by letter I find old enough to be companionable, & to choose & reward her own friends in her own fashions. She sends me a poem today, which I have read three times!—I believe, I must keep back all my communication on English topics until I get to London, which is England. Everything centralizes, in this magnificent machine which England is. Manufacturer for the world she is become or becoming one complete tool or engine in herself.—Yesterday the time all over the kingdom was reduced to Greenwich time. At Liverpool, where I was, the clocks were put forward 12 minutes. This had become quite necessary on account of the railroads which bind the whole country into swiftest connexion, and require so much accurate interlocking, intersection, & simultaneous arrival, that the difference of time produced confusion. Every man in England carries a little book in his pocket called “Bradshaws Guide,” which contains time tables of arrival & departure at every station on all railroads of the kingdom. It is published anew on the first day of every month & costs sixpence. The proceeding effects of Electric telegraph will give a new importance to such arrangements.

  —But lest I should not say what is needful, I will postpone England once for all,—and say that I am not of opinion that your book should be delayed a month. I should print it at once, nor do I think that you would incur any risk in doing so that you cannot well afford. It is very certain to have readers & debtors here as well as there. The Dial is absurdly well known here. We at home, I think, are always a little ashamed of it,—I am,—and yet here it is spoken of with the utmost gravity, & I do not laugh. Carlyle writes me that he is reading Doomsday Book,— You tell me in your letter one odious circumstance, which we will dismiss form remembrance henceforward. Charles Lane entreated me, in London, to ask you to forward his Dials to him, which must be done, if you can find them. Three bound vols are among his books in my library. The 4th Vol is in unbound numbers at J Munroe & Co.’s Shop, received there in a parcel to my address a day or two before I sailed & which I forgot to carry to Concord It must be claimed without delay It is certainly there — was opened by me, & left. And they can enclose all 4 vols to [John] Chapman for me.—Well, I am glad the Pleasaunce at Walden suffered no more but it is a great loss as it is which years will not repair.—I see that I have baulked you by the promise of a letter which ends in as good as none But I write with counted minutes & a miscellany of things before me.

Yours affectionately,
R. W. E.

  You are not so far off but the affairs of this world still attach to you. Perhaps it will be so when we are dead. Then look out.—Joshua R. Holman of Harvard, who says he lived a month with Lane at Fruitlands wishes to hire said Lane’s farm for one or more years, and will pay $125 rent, taking out the same what is necessary for repairs—as, for a new bank-wall to the barn cellar, which he says is indispensable. [Joseph] Palmer is gone, Mrs Palmer is going. This is all that is known, or that is worth knowing.

  Yes or no—

  What to do?

  Hugh [Whelan]’s plot begins to thicken. He starts thus. 80 dollars on one side—Walden field & house on the other. How to bring these together so as to make a garden & a palace . . .

  —for when one asks—“What do you want? Twice as much room more,” the reply—Parlor kitchen & bedroom—these make the palace.—Well, Hugh, what will you do? Here are forty dollars to buy a new house 12 feet by 25 and add it to the old.—Well, Mr Thoreau, as I tell you, I know no more than a child about it. It shall be just as you say.—Then build it yourself—get it roofed & get in. Commence at one end & leave it half done, and let time finish what money’s begun.

  So you see we have forty dollars for a nest egg—sitting on which, Hugh & I, alternately & simultaneously, there may in course of time be hatched a house, that will long stand, and perchance even lay fresh eggs one day for its owner, that is, if when he returns he gives the young chick 20 dollars or more in addition by way of “swichin”—to give it a start in the world.

  Observe this—I got your check changed into thirty dollars the other day, & immediately paid away sixteen for Hugh. To-day Mr [John Milton] Cheney says that they in Boston refuse to answer it—not having funds enough to warrant it. There must be some mistake &c—We shall pay back the thirty dollars & await your orders.

  The Mass. Quart. Review came out on the 1st of Dec., but it does not seem to be making a sensation—at least not hereabouts. I know of none in Concord who takes, or has seen, it yet.

  We wish to get by all possible means some notion of your success or failure in England—more than your two letters have furnished—Can’t you send a fair sample both of Young & of Old England’s criticism, if there is any printed? [A. Bronson] Alcott & [William Ellery] Channing are equally greedy with myself.

Henry Thoreau

  In a letter from R. W. Emerson, which I received this morning, he requests me to send him Charles Lane’s Dials. Three bound vols accompany this letter to you—”The fourth.” to quote his own words, “is in unbound numbers at J Munroe & Co’s shop, received there in a parcel to my address a day or two before I sailed, and which I forgot to carry to Concord—It is certainly there, was opened by me, & left.”

  —And he wishes me to ask you to “enclose all four vols. to Chapman” for him (Emerson).

  If all is right, will you please say so to the express-man—or at any rate give me an opportunity to look for the fourth vol, if it is missing.

  I may as well inform you that I do not intend to print my book* anywhere immediately.

Yrs Respectfully
Henry Thoreau

  I thank you for your letter. I was very glad to get it—And I am glad again to write to you. However slow the steamer, no time intervenes between the writing and the reading of thoughts, but they come freshly to the most distant port.

  I am here still, & very glad to be here—and shall not trouble you with my complaints because I do not fill my place better. I have had many good hours in the chamber at the head of the stairs—a solid time, it seems to me. Next week I am going to give an account to the Lyceum of my expedition to Maine. Theodore Parker lectures tonight—We have had [Edwin Percy] Whipple on Genius—too weighty a subject for him—with his antithetical definitions,—new-vamped—What it is, & what it is not—but altogether what it is not. Cuffing it this way, & cuffing it that, as if it were an India rubber ball. Really, it is a subject which should—expand & accumulate itself before the speaker’s eyes, as he goes on,—like the snow balls which boys roll in the street—& when he stops, it should be so large that he cannot start it—but must leave it there—. [Henry Norman] Hudson too has been here with a dark shadow in the core of him, and his desperate wit so much indebted to the surface of him—wringing out his words and snapping them off like a dish-cloth—very remarkable but not memorable. Singular that these two best lecturers should have so much “wave” in their timber—Their solid parts too be made and kept solid by shrinkage and contraction of the whole—with consequent checks & fissures—Ellen and I have a good understanding—I appreciate her genuineness—Edith tells me after her fashion—“By & by, I shall grow up to be a woman, and then I shall remember how you exercised me.”—Eddie has been to Boston to Christmas—but can remember nothing but the coaches—all [Obadiah] Kendall’s coaches. There is no variety of that vehicle that he is not familiar with.—He did try once to tell us something else, but, after thinking and stuttering a long time—said—“I dont know what the word is,”—the one word, forsooth that would have disposed of all that Boston phenomenon. If you did not know him better than I—I could tell you more. He is a good companion for me—& I am glad that we are all natives of Concord—It is Young Concord—Look out—World.—Mr Alcott seems to have sat down for the winter. He has got Plato and other books to read. He is as large featured—and hospitable to traveling thought & thinkers as ever—but with the same creaking & sneaking Connecticut philosophy as ever, mingled with what is better. If he would only stand straight and toe the line!—though he were to put off several degrees of largeness—and put on a considerable degree of littleness.—After all, I think we must call him particularly your man.—I have pleasant walks and talks with [William Ellery] Channing.—James Clark—the Swedenborgian that was—is at the Poor House—insane with too large views, so that he cannot support himself—I see him working with Fred and the rest. Better than be there not insane. It is strange that they will make an ado when a man’s body is buried—and not when he thus really & tragically dies—or seems to die. Away with your funeral procession,—into the ballroom with them. I hear the bell toll hourly over there.

  Lidian & I have a standing quarrel as to what is a suitable state of preparedness for a traveling Professor’s visits [John Pringle Nichol]—or for whomsoever else—but further than this we are not a war. We have made up a dinner—we have made up a bed—we have made up a party—& our own minds & mouths three several times for your Professor, and he came not—Three several turkeys have died the death—which I myself carved, just as if he had been there, and the company too, convened and demeaned themselves accordingly—Everything was done up in good style, I assure you with only the part of the Professor omitted. To have seen the preparation though Lidian says it was nothing extraordinary—I should certainly have said he was a coming—but he did not. He must have found out some shorter way to Turkey—some overland rout[e]—think. By the way, he was complimented at the conclusion of his course in Boston by the Mayor moving the appointment of a committee to draw up resolutions expressive of &c &c which was done.

  I have made a few verses lately—Here are some—though perhaps not the best—at any rate they are the shortest on that universal theme—yours as well as min, & several other people’s

Good night
Henry Thoreau

I am sorry to send such a medley as this to you. I have forwarded [Charles] Lane’s Dial to [James] Munroe with the proper instructions and he tells the express man that all is right.

  Tell Henry that [Joseph] Palmer & not [Charles] Lane is owner of Fruitla[nds.] He has already paid 3 or $400, and we only [hold m]ortgages. But has Palmer gone?

  More money for Hugh [Whelan] by next letter perhaps.