Concord, Mass. Thoreau writes to Nathaniel Hawthorne:
I will come to your house in Mall Street on the 28th inst. and go from thence to the Lyceum.
I am glad to know of your interest in my book, for I have thought of you as a reader while writing it. My MSS. are not even yet in the hands of the printer, but I am doing my best to make him take them into his hands. In any case the MSS which he will begin with is not that from which I shall read.
I wish to be remembered and read also by Mrs Hawthorne.
Yrs. sincerely
Henry D. Thoreau
Boston, Mass. A. Bronson Alcott writes to Thoreau:
I send you herewith the names of a select company of gentlemen, esteemed as deserving of better acquaintance, and disposed for closer fellowship of Thought and Endeavor, who are hereby invited to assemble at No. 12 West Street, on Tuesday, the 20th of March next, to discuss the advantages of organizing a Club or College for the study and diffusion of the Ideas and Tendencies proper to the nineteenth century; and to concert measures, if deemed desirable, for promoting the ends of good fellowship. The company will meet at 10 a.m. Your presence is respectfully claimed by
Yours truly,
A. Bronson Alcott
“This invitation was the start of the Town and Country Club, established in July. It became the ancestor of a much more famous group, the Saturday Club, out of which grew the idea for the Atlantic Monthly. It does not appear that Thoreau ever wanted to be active in either club, in fact, we know that he declined to take part in the Saturday Club.”
