Nathaniel Hawthorne writes to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
I will gladly come on Thursday. Thoreau is to be at my house, and I shall take the liberty to bring him with me, unless he has scruples about intruding on you. You would find him well worth knowing: he is a man of thought and originality; with a certain iron-poker-ishness, and uncompromising stiffness in his mental character, which is interesting, though it grows wearisome on close and frequent acquaintance.
(Hawthorne and his friends:Â Reminiscence and tribute, 28-29)
