Thoreau writes to Ralph Waldo Emerson in New York, N.Y.:
Dear Friend,—
I have stolen one of your own sheets to write you a letter upon, and I hope, with two layers of ink, to turn it into a comforter. If you like to receive a letter from me, too, I am glad, for it gives me pleasure to write. But don’t let it come amiss; it must fall as harmlessly as leaves settle on the landscape. I will tell you what we are doing this now. Supper is done, and Edith—the dessert, perhaps, more than the desert—is brought in, or even comes in per se; and round she goes, now to this altar, and then to that, with her monosyllabic invocation of “oc,” “oc.” It makes me think of “Langue d’oc.” She must belong to that province. And like the gipsies she talks a language of her own while she understands outs. While she jabbers Sanscrit, Parsec, Pehlvi, say “Edith go bah!” and “bah” it is. No intellignece passes between us. She knows. It is a capital joke,—that is the reason she smiles so. How well the secret is kept! she never descends to explanation. It is not buried like a common secret, bolstered up on two sides, but by an eternal silence on the one side, at least. It has been long kept, and comes in from the unexplored horizon, like a blue mountain range, to end abruptly at our door one day. (Don’t stumble at this steep simile.) And now she studies the heights and depths of nature
On shoulders whirled in some eccentric orbit
Just by old Pestum’s temples and the perch
Where Time doth plume his wings.
And how she runs the race over the carpet, while all Olympia applauds,—mamma, grandma, and uncle, good Grecians all,—and that dark-hued barbarian, Partheanna Parker, whose shafts go through and through, not backward! Grandmamma smiles over all, and mamma is wondering what papa would say, should she descend on Carlton House some day. “Lark’s night” ’s abed, dreaming of “pleased faces” far away. But now the trumpet sounds, the games are over; some Hebe comes, and Edith is translated. I don’t know where; it must be to some cloud, for I never was there.
Query: what becomes of the answers Edith thinks, but cannot express? She really gives you glances which are before this world was. You can’t feel any difference of age, except that you have longer legs and arms.
Mrs. Emerson said I must tell you about domestic affairs, when I mentioned that I was going to write. Perhaps it will inform you of the state of all if I only say that I am well and happy in your house here in Concord.
Your friend,
Henry.
Don’t forget to tell us what to do with Mr. [Theodore] Parker, when you write next. I lectured this week. It was as bright a night as you could wish. I hope there were stars thrown away on the occasion.
The Concord Freeman notes Thoreau’s lecture of 8 February:
Mr. Thoreau’s Lecture, delivered last Wednesday evening, before the Lyceum, is spoken of as a production very creditable to its author. The subject was the life and character of Sir Walter Raleigh. Raleigh was one of the most remarkable men of a remarkable period, the Elizabethan age. He was learned, brave and adventurous, and was possessed of such varied intellectual powers, as to be esteemed as a writer, a statesman, and a soldier. Those who are wholly unacquainted with his writings, have yet to explore a mine of intellect which has few equals in point of richness. Like the productions of all those men whom we are accustomed to call the old English prose writers,—and who terminated with the author of the “Urn Burial,”—they are literally tilled with profound thought, which finds its expression in the most nervous language. The public conduct of Raleigh is well known to every historical reader, and no one will be found to question the accuracy of the assertion, that much of it added to the glory of the English name. Yet he had many bad traits of character, and is scarcely deserving of the admiration of which he is the object, and which, it is quite probable, had its origin in his melancholy fate and has been kept up in these latter days thro’ the genius of Scott. Raleigh was a selfish man, and to say that many of his acts were superlatively mean, would be but to utter a simple truth. In adventure, he was but a high sort of Mike Lambourne, and readily subscribed to the creed of those “jolly fellows” who held that there was no law beyond the line. His conduct in his last voyage was clearly illegal, and Gondomar was right when he called him and his comrades pirates. He was haughty, insolent, and vindictive, an unchivalrous enemy, and too often a deceitful friend. But he is one of the world’s favorites, and the closing scene of his life atoned in the opinion of many for all his errors.
