I have been sick and good for nothing but to lie on my back and wait for something to turn up, for two or three months. This has compelled me to postpone several things, among them writing to you to whom I am so deeply in debt, and inviting you and Brown [Theophilus Brown] to Concord—not having brains adequate to such an exertion. I should feel a little less ashamed if I could give any name to my disorder, but I cannot, and our doctor cannot help me to it, and I will not take the name of any disease in vain. However, there is one consolidation in being sick, and that is the possibility that you may recover to be a better state than you were ever in before. I expected in the winter to be deep in the woods of Maine in my canoe long before this, but I am so far from that that I can only take the languid walk in Concord streets.
 
  I do not know how the mistake arose about the Cape Cod excursion. The nearest I have come to that with anybody is that about a month ago Charming proposed to me to go to Truro, on Cape Cod, with him & board there awhile, but I declined. For a week past however I have been a little inclined to go there & sit on the sea-shore a week or more, but I do not venture to propose myself as the companion of him or of any peripatetic man. Not that I should rejoice to have you and Brown or C. sitting there also. I am not sure that C. really wishes to go now—and as I go simply for the medicine of it, while I need it, I should not think it worth the whole to notify him when I am about to make my bitters.

  Since I began this, or within 5 minutes, I have begun to think that I will start for Truro next Saturday morning—the 30th. I do not know at what hour the packet leaves Boston, nor exactly what kind of accommodation I shall find at Truro.

  I should be singularity favored if you and Brown were there at the same time, and though you speak of the 20th of July, I will be so bold as to suggest your coming to Concord Friday night (when, by the way, Garrison & Phillips hold forth here) & going to the Cape with me. Though we take short walks together there we can have long talks, and you & Brown will have time enough for your own excursions besides.

  I received a letter from Cholmondeley last winter, which I should like to show you, as well as his book. He said that he had “accepted the offer to a captaincy in the Salop Militia,” and was hoping to take an active part in the war before long.
 
  I thank you again and again for the encouragement your letters are to me. But I must stop this writing, or I shall have to pay for it.

  Yours Truly
  H.D. Thoreau