P.M.—Up Assabet to White Cedar Swamp . . . We sit on the shore at Wheeler’s fence, opposite Merriams’s.  At this season we still go seeking the sunniest, the most sheltered, and warmest place. [William Ellery] C[hanning]. says this is the warmest place he has been in this year . . .

  I have been spending a fortnight in New Bedford, and on my return find your last letter awaiting me.

  I was sure that you would find Newcomb inexhaustible, if you found your way into him at all. I might say, however, by the way of criticism, that he does not take firm enough hold on this world, where surely we are bound to triumph.

  I am sorry to say that I do not see how I can furnish you with a copy of my essay on the wild. It has not been prepared for publication, only for lectures, and would cover at least a hundred written pages. Even if it were ready to be dispersed, I could not easily find time to copy it. So I return the order.

  I see that you are turning a broad furrow among the books, but I trust that some very private journal all the while holds its own through their midst. Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside. I should say read Goethe’s Autobiography, by all means, also Gibbon’s Haydon the Painter’s —& our Franklin’s of course; perhaps also Alfieris, Benvenuto Cellini’s, & DeQuincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater since you like Autobiography.

  I think you must read Coleridge again & further—skipping al his theology—i.e. If you value precise definitions and discriminating use of language. By the way, read DeQuincey’s reminiscences of Coleridge & Wordsworth.

  How shall we account for our pursuits if they are original. We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of a common mint. If others have their losses, which they are busy repairing, so have I mine, & their hound and horse may perhaps be the symbols of some of them. But also I have lost, or am in the danger of losing, a far finer & more etherial treasure, which commonly no loss of which they are conscious will symbolize—this I answer hastily & and with some hesitation, according as I now understand my own words.

  I take this occasion to acknowledge, & thank you for, your long letter of Dec. 21st. So poor a correspondent am I. If I wait for the fit time to reply, it commonly does not come at all, as you see. I require the presence of the other party to suggest what I shall say. Methinks a certain polygamy with its troubles is the fate of almost all men. They are married to two wives—their genius (a celestial muse) and also to some fair daughter of the earth. Unless these two were fast friends before marriage, and so are afterward, there will be but little peace in the house.

  In answer to your questions, I must say that I never made, nor had occasion to use a filter of any kind; but, no doubt, they can be brought in Chicago.

  You cannot surely identify a plant from a scientific description until after long practice.

  The “Millers” you speak of are the perfect or final state of the insect. The Chrysalis is the silken bag they spun when caterpillars, & occupied in the nymph state.

  Yrs truly
  Henry D. Thoreau