Lidian Jackson Emerson writes to her husband Ralph Waldo:
The plum trees blossomed—scantily, but all the blossoms seem to have been fertile — for there is promise of a good share of plums. Henry duly kills the curculios . . . Henry & Mr Channing [William Ellery Channing] have gone for a week’s walk—to somewhere. I have forgotten—and am ashamed of my forgetfulness. They have been making up Mr Thoreau’s loss, by subscription. I ventured to give 10 dollars, which I though was little enough where 500 were lost. I hope you will not disapprove . . . Charles [Jackson] has at last succeeded in getting his Defence written & printed, and all whom I hear speak of it say it is complete to the overthrow of M’s [William T. G. Morton] claim. Even Henry who has been perverse, & mystified me much, by his view of the matter, now says that “the claim of Dr J now stands as clear as if Morton had never tried to wrest it from him.”
(The Selected Letters of Lidian Jackson Emerson, 156)
