In January I was in Providence a short time and had a walls with Newcomb at Narragansett Bay. Since you heard from me I have learned more of him and I find your statements fall short of the truth. He has thrown light on doubts with which I was wrestling. Reading is useful but it may be long before one finds what he is in search of and when a man or a saint appears who can help us solve the problem we cannot be too grateful. This acquaintance is one of the results of my pregnant Concord visit. Then Emerson told me that if we needed each other we should be brought together. I have had some illustrations of this and perhaps accept the remark as irrefrangably true.

  I want in this material atmosphere some breath from the hills of Concord. Will you favor me with a copy of the “Wild & Walking” Do not disappoint me. I want it for my own reading mainly, though I may sometimes read it to friends. I of course do not want it for publication. I trust I shall have a copy in your own hand

  I have read much Plato; some of it with almost a wild delight. Many of the biographies I have read with equal or perhaps greater interest. I like to have principles illustrated by actual life. He (Carlyle) is a wondrous clear & reverent thinker. S for an obscure faulty style in him, I have yet to discover it.

  Leaves of Grass I read and I appreciate Walt’s pure freedom & humanity

  Plutarch’s Morals I have more recently commenced. This I shall take in gradually as I did the Iliad. I could have wished that in the letter those good enough fellows had been less ready to annihilate each other with big stones “such as two men could not now lift.” The morning of the 1st we had a hard storm of the Lake and I walked along the “much—resounding sea” for a long distance seeing it dash grandly against the pier. I wish you had been there with me.

  Heroes & Hero Worship I intend to read soon. Montaigne I have read with much interest. I have given you those names to inquire whether you think of any other valuable books not too abstruse for me. Books of a half biographical character have great charm for me. I have read none of the German authors. I think Wilhelm Meister may be full of meaning to me. I hope Goethe is that great universal man that Carlyle accounts him. His auto-biography I suppose is valuable. Dont think I am reading at random. I have a place for all true thoughts on my own subjects. Now and then I return and read again and again my leading books so that they become my intimate friends and help me to test my own life. If it be not unfair to ask an author what he means I would inquire what I am to understand when in your list of employments given in Walden you say “I long ago lost a hound a bay-horse and a turtle-dove.” If I transgress let the question pass unnoticed.

  For myself I make fictitious employments. I am not satisfied with much that I do. Exultingly should I hail that wherein I could give exercise to my best powers for an end of unquestionable value.

   With one and only one here do I have really valuable hours. Rev R R Shippen. He is a true man—working, living, hoping, strong. I have not been to his church yet, wicked rebel that I am, but I may soon attend, though again I amy not In private however he tells me of his sermons and necessarily speaks to me as he could not in an assembly. He tells me that lately from “we are members one of another” he told the of their duties as members of a Christian church and threatened if he were not more zealously seconded to “shake off the dust from his feet and depart out of their city.” I am sorry that this is not mere rhetorical flourish. He will probably leave in the Fall as he must at any rate have rest.

  Among other works you recommended some of Coleridge. I took up his books, but was so repelled by the Trinitarian dogmas that I read almost none. I am very sensitive to that theological dist. As a child I was kept in too much

  Please give my love to Emerson. I trust he carried home pleasanter experiences than the measles

  Your friend
  B B Wiley