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  Yours of the 17th received. Say we are even on money counts, and let the matter drop. I have tried to serve you, and have been fully paid for my own disbursements and trouble in the business. So we will move on.

  I think you will do well to send me some passages from one or both of your new works, to dispose of to the magazines This will be the best kind of advertisement whether for a publisher or for readers. You may write with an angel’s pen, yet your writings have no mercantile, money value till you are known and talked of as an author. Mr. Emerson would have been twice as much known and read if he had written for the magazines a little, just to let common people know of his existence. I believe a chapter from one of your books printed in Graham or The Union will add many to the readers of the volume when issued. Here is the reason why British books sell so much better among us than American—because they are thoroughly advertised through the British Reviews, Magazines and journals which circulate or are copied among us.—However, do as you please. If you choose to send me one of your MSS. I will get it publisher, but I cannot promise you any considerable recompense; and, indeed, if Monroe will do it, that will be better. Your writings are in advance of the general mind here—Boston is nearer their standard.

  I never saw the verses you speak of. Won’t you send them again? I have been buried up in politics for the last six weeks.

  Kind regards to Emerson. It is doubtful about my seeing you this season.

Yours,
Horace Greeley

  Standing by Harrington’s pond-hole in the swamp, which had skimmed over, we saw that there were many holes through the thin black ice, of various sizes, from a few inches to more than a foot in diameter, all of which were perfectly circular. Mr. H. asked me if I could account for it. As we stood considering, we jarred the boggy ground and made a dimple in the water, and this accident, we thought, betrayed the cause of it: i. e. the circular wavelets so wore off the edges of the ice when once a hole was made.

  They redden all the lee shore, the water being still apparently at the same level with the 16th. This is a very pleasant and warm Indian-summer afternoon. Methinks we have not had one like it since October. 31st. This, too, is a gossamer day, though it is not
particularly calm . . .

  Minott had two cats on his knee. One given away without his knowledge a fortnight before had just found its way back. He says he would not kill a cat for twenty dollars,—no, not for fifty. Finally he told his women folks that he would not do it for five hundred, or any sum. He thought they loved life as well as we. Johnny Vose would n’t do it. He used to carry down milk to a shop every day for a litter of kittens . . .

  Rice says that that brook which crosses the road just beyond his brother Israel’s is called Cold Brook. It comes partly from Dunge Hole. When the river is rising it will flow up the brook a great way . . .

  I have been here much longer than I expected, but have deferred answering you, because I could not foresee when I shall return. I do not know yet within three or four days. This uncertainty makes it impossible for me to appoint a day to meet you, until it shall be too late to hear from you again. I think, therefore, that I must go straight home. I feel some objection to reading that “What shall it profit” lecture again in Worcester; but if you are quite sure that it will be worth the while (it is a grave consideration), I will even make an independent journey from Concord for that purpose. I have read three of my old lectures (that included) to the Eagleswood people, and, unexpectedly, with rare success—i.e., I was aware that what I was saying was silently taken in by their ears.

  You must excuse me if I write mainly a business letter now, for I am sold for the time, am merely Thoreau the surveyor here,—and solitude is scarcely obtainable in these parts.

  Alcott has been here three times, and, Saturday before last, I went with him and Greeley, by invitation of the last, to G.’s farm, thirty-six miles north of New York. The next day A. and I heard Beecher preach; and what was more, we visited Whitman the next morning (A. had already seen him), and were much interested and provoked. He is apparently the greatest democrat the world has seen. Kings and aristocracy go by the board at once, as they have long deserved to. A remarkably strong though coarse nature, of a sweet disposition, and much prized by his friends. Though peculiar and rough in his exterior, his skin (all over (?)) red, he is essentially a gentleman. I am still somewhat in quandary about him, feel that he is essentially strange to me, at any rate; but I am surprised by the sight of him. He is very broad, but, as I have said, not fine. He said that I misapprehended him. I am not quite sure that I do. He told us that he loved to ride up and down broadway all day on an omnibus, sitting beside the driver, listening to the roar of the carts, and sometimes gesticulating and declaiming Homer at the top of his voice. He has long been an editor and writer for the newspaper,—was editor of the New Orleans Cresent” once; but now has no employment but to read and write in the forenoon, and walk in the afternoon, like all the rest of the scribbling gentry.

  I shall probably be in Concord next week; so you can direct to me there.

  The lambkill and water andromeda are turned quite dark red where much exposed;in shelter are green yet . . . (Journal, 11:334-335).

  I trust that you also, with Emerson, [Ralph Waldo Emerson] will be moved by old and high memories to help us in starting out here a new incarnation of the old Dial. It certainly will prove worthy to be so called if we can obtain help from R. W. E. yourself and others. We will not be able at once to pay contributors, and the Editor expects to lose; but in due time we shall reap if we faint not. Will you not give the babe a birth-present? One of those fresh wood-zephyrs that fan our fevered hearts and bring health to blasé cheeks! You are the man, the only man, who can make green grass and flowers grow upon the pages of our Dial.

  What is my chief wish of you? It is to have you interested in us: willing to send us a love-gift of thought: noting, now and then on paper, the form and [?] of some pearls, which I know you are constantly finding in that Oriental Sea of yours upstairs. So now Mr. Pearl-Diver, I await your word of cheer! May I say that I shall be assisted by H. D. Thoreau of Concord? Pray let me hear at once.

Your friend,
M. D. Conway.