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