Father seems to have got over the jaundice some weeks since, but to be scarcely the better for all that. The cough he has had so long is at least as bad as ever, and though much stronger than when I wrote before he is not sensibly recovering his former amount of health. On the contrary we cannot help regarding him more & more as a sick man. I do not think it a transient ail—which he can entirely recover from—nor yet an acute disease, but the form in which the infirmities of age have come upon him. He sleeps much in his chair, & commonly goes out once a day in pleasant weather.

  The Harpers have been unexpected enough to pay him-but others are owing a good deal yet. He has taken one man’s note for $400.00, payable I think in April, & it remains to be seen what it is worth. Mother & Sophia are as well as usual. Aunt returned to Boston some weeks ago. Mr Hoar is still in Concord, attending to Botany, Ecology, &c with a view to make his future residence in foreign parts more truly profitable to him. I have not yet had an opportunity to convey your respects to him—but I shall do so.

  I have been more than usually busy surveying the last six weeks running & measuring lines in the woods, reading old deeds & hunting up bounds which have been lost these 20 years. I have written out a long account of my last Maine journey—part of which I shall read to our Lyceum—but I do not know how soon I shall print it. We are having a remarkably open winter, no sleighing as yet, & but little ice.

  I am glad to hear that Charles [Thatcher] has a good situation, but I thought that the 3rd mate lived with and as the sailors. If he makes a study of navigation &c, and is bent on being master soon, well & good It is an honorable & brave life, though a hard one, and turns out as good men as most professions. Where there is a good character to be developed, there are few callings better calculated to develop it.
I wish you a happy new year—

Henry D. Thoreau