the Thoreau Log.
25 May 1848. New York, N.Y.

Horace Greeley writes a letter to Thoreau:

   . . . Don’t scold at my publishing a part of your last private letter in this morning’s paper. It will do great good . . . I am so importuned by young loafers who want to be hired in some intellectual capacity so as to develope their minds—that is, get a broadcloth living without doing any vulgar labor—that I could not refrain from using against them the magnificent weapon you so unconsciously furnished me . . .

  Write me something shorter and when the spirit moves (never write a line otherwise, for the hack writer is a slaveish beast, I know), and I will sell it for you soon. I want one shorter article from your pen that will be quoted, as these long articles cannot be, and let the public know something of following out your thought in an essay “The Literary Life?” You need not make a personal allusion but I know you can write an article worth reading on that theme when you are in the vein.

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 228-229)

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