Thoreau writes in his journal:
Thoreau also writes to Parker Pillsbury:
I am sorry to say that I have not a copy of “Walden” which I can spare, and know of none, unless possibly, Ticknor & Fields have one. I send, nevertheless a copy of the “Week,” the price of which is $1.25 which you can pay at your convenience.
As for my prospective reader, I hope that he ignores Fort Sumpter, & Old Abe, & all that, for that is just the most fatal and indeed the only fatal, weapon you can direct against evil ever; for as long as you know of it, you are particeps criminis. What business have you, if you are “an angel of light,” to be pondering over the deeds of darkness, reading the New York Herald, & the like? I do not so much regret the present condition of things in this country (provided I regret it at all) as I do that I ever heard of it. I know one or 2 who have this year, for the first time, read a president’s message. Blessed are the young for they do not read the president’s message.
Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and through her, God.
But alas I have heard of Sumpter, & Pickens, & even of Buchanan, (though I did not read his message).
I also read the New York Tribune, but then I am reading Herodotus & Strabo, & Blodget’s Climatology, and Six Years in the Deserts of North America, as hard as I can, to counterbalance it.
By the way, Alcott is at present our most popular & successful man, and has just published a volume on “vice,” in the shape of the annual school report, which, I presume, he has sent to you.
Yours, for remembering all good things,
Henry D. Thoreau
“Two days after Thoreau answered Pillsbury’s request for Walden, the attack on Sumter began. In the last paragraph “vice” is probably a glancing reference to the scandal caused by Alcott’s earlier publication of the reports on his work at the Temple School in Boston.”
