Dear Sir

  May I ask you to send me or have sent to me Mr Emerson’s lecture on “Country Life.” I am told he is ready to lend his papers to earnest inquirers. I will pay all postages and return the Ms. as soon as read, though, if Mr Emerson do not object, I might wish to copy it. Neither you nor he must think me impertinent. I am where I would almost give my life for light and hence the request.

  Not having your “Wild & Walking” to read, I have been walking in the wild of my own Nature and I am filled with anxious inquiries as to whether I had better remain in this business into which I passively slided. At that time I had many misgivings that it was not a wise step and I have been on the anxious seat ever since. I want labor that I can contemplate with approval and continue to prosecute with delight in sickness, adversity, and old age, should I chance to meet with such. I object to this business that it does not use my faculties, and on the other hand I ask myself if all my trouble is not in me. You dont want to hear my reasons pro and con. You too have been at a parting of the ways and will understand me.

  It is true that while here I have been much helped yet it is in spite of my trade connections which came near spoiling me.

  If I now leave, I shall probably have very little money, but I think some “fire in my belly” which will in the long run do something for me, if I live in the freedom of obedience.

  If I leave, it will be with the expectation of earnestly choosing some sort of “Country Life,” or, if I remain in a city, something that will make me grow. I believe that am I once fairly on deck I should not want to go below again.

  I am ready to tread cheerfully any path of Renunciation if Heavenly Wisdom demand it-with equal alacrity would I, in that high behest, go to the Devil by the most approved modern, respectable, orthodox methods. It is difficult to reconcile the Temporal and the Eternal. I must at some time so decide it that I can use all the “fire in my belly” to some purpose

  I spent, in December, some weeks on a farm in the interior of the State. I walked some distance over the prairie to look at a farm a man wanted me to buy and when the next night I reached my host’s house, I took up “Walden” and came across your translation of Cato’s advice to those about buying farms. It was very welcome and I let this farm alone.

  I would write you a long letter, but I suppose it would only make you smile benignly-and perhaps me, too, when, a year hence, I remembered it.

  Remember me respectfully and lovingly to Mr Emerson

  Your grateful friend
  B. B. Wiley