Log Search Results

  P.M.—Sail to Fair Haven Pond.

  A strong northwest wind. Draw my boat over the road on a roller. Raising a stone for ballast from the south side of the railroad causeway, where it is quite sunny and warm, I find the under sides very densely covered with little ants . . .

  I thank you for your very kind letter, which, ever since I received it, I have intended to answer before I died, however briefly. I am encouraged to know, that, so far as you are concerned, I have not written my books in vain. I was particularly gratified, some years ago, when one of my friends and neighbors said, “I wish you would write another book,—write it for me.” He is actually more familiar with what I have written than I am myself.

  The verses you refer to in Conway’s “Dial,” were written by F. B. Sanborn of this town. I never wrote for that journal.

  I am pleased when you say that in “The Week” you like especially “those little snatches of poetry interspersed through the book,” for these, I suppose, are the least attractive to most readers. I have not been engaged in any particular work on Botany, or the like, though, if I were to live, I should have much to report on Natural History generally.

  You ask particularly after my health. I suppose that I have not many months to live; but, of course, I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.

Yours truly,
Henry D. Thoreau,
by Sophia E. Thoreau

  Our Dial is already printing & you must, if you call, send me something good by the 10th of June certainly, if not before. If William E can send by a private opportunity, you shall address it to Care of Miss Peabody 13 West Street, or, to be left at Concord Stage office. Otherwise send by Harnden, W. E. paying to Boston & charging to me. Let the pacquet bring letters also from you & from Waldo & Tappan, I entreat. You will not doubt that you are well remembered here, by young, older, & old people and your letter to your mother was borrowed & read with great interest, pending the arrival of direct accounts & of later experiences especially in the city. I am sure that you arc under sacred protection, if I should not hear from you for years. Yet I shall wish to know what befals you on your way.

  Ellery Channing is well settled in his house & works very steadily thus far & our intercourse is very agreeable to me. Young Ball has been to see me & is a prodigious reader & a youth of great promise,—born too in the good town. Mr Hawthorne is well; and Mr Alcott & Mr. L. are resolving a purchase in Harvard of 90 acres. Yours affectionately,

R. W. Emerson

My wife will reopen my sealed letter, but a remembrance from her shall be inserted.

“Thoreau had a variety of items in the April 1843 Dial. Giles Waldo, like William Tappan, was—as Thoreau explained in a letter of May 22 to his sister Sophia—a young friend of Emerson.”

  Mrs. Emerson is in Boston whither she went with Eddy yesterday Saturday, and I do not know that my news will be worth sending alone. Perhaps she will come home in season to send with me from Concord. The Steam mill was burnt last night—it was a fine sight lighting up the rivers and meadows. The owners who bought it the other day for seven thousand dollars, though it was indeed insured for six, I hear since will be gainers rathers that losers—but some individuals who hired of them have lost—my Father probably more than any-from four to five hundred dollars, not being insured. Some think that it was set on fire. I have no doubt that the wise fates did set it on fire, I quite agree with them that that disgrace to Concord enterprise & skill needed to be burnt away. It was a real purification as far as it went, and evidence of it was come to every man’s door. I picked up cinders in your yard this morning 6 inches long—though there was no wind.

  Your trees are doing very well; but one died in the winter—the Watson pear, a native, which apparently grew more than any other last year, and hence it died. I am a constant foe to the caterpillars.

  Mr. Alcott recommenced work on the Arbor yesterday, or rather commenced repairs—But enough of this.

  Mr. [Cyrus] Warren tells me that he is on the point of buying the hill field for you perhaps for a hundred dollars, and he remembers that you would allow him and [Cyrus ?] Stow the privilege of a way to their fields—I should beware how I suffered him to transact this business with such an implied privilege for his compensation It would certainly greatly reduce the value of the field to you.

  Your island wood was severely burnt—but Reuben Brown say[s] that it may stand till winter without harm before it is cut. He suffered his own to stand last year. There are applications for the Walden field and house which await your attention when you come home.

  The proposition for a new journal is likely to fall among inflammable materials here—& excite another short and ineffectual blaze. As for me, I cannot yet join the journalists any more than the Fourierites—for I can not adopt their principles—one reason is because I do not know what they are. Men talk as if you couldn’t get good things printed, but I think as if you couldn’t get them written. That at least is the whole difficulty with me.

  I am more interested in the private journal than the public one, and it would be better news to me to hear that there were two or three valuable papers being written in England & America—that might be printed sometime—than that there were 30,000 dollars to defray expenses—& forty thousand men standing ready to write merely, but no certainty of anything valuable being written. The blacksmiths met together looking grim and voted to have a thunderbolt; if they could only get someone to launch it, but all the while there was not one man among them who could make anything better than a horse-shoe nail.

  Who has any desire to split himself any further up, by straddling the Atlantic? We are extremities enough already. There is danger of one’s straddling so far that he can never recover an upright position. There are certain men in Old & New England who aspire to the renown of the Colossus of Rhodes, and to have ships sail under then.

  Those who build castles in the air generally have one foot in the moon.

  What after all is the value of a journal, the best that we know—but a short essay once in 2 or 3 years which you can read—separated by impassable swamps of ink & paper—It is the combination that makes the swamp, but not the firm oasis—

  A journal 2 or 3 times as good as the best English one even would not be worth the while—It would not interest you nor me.

  To be sure there is no telling what an individual may do, but it is easy to tell what half a dozen men may not do unless they are to a certain extent united as one.

  How was it with the Mass. Quart. Rev., several men undertook to make a small book for mankind to read—& advertised then what they were about some months before hand—and after considerable delay they brought it out—& I read it, or what I could of it, and certainly if one man had written it all a wise publisher would not have advised to print it. It should have been suppressed for nobody was starving for that. It probably is not so good a book as the Boston Almanack—or that little book about the same size which Mr Spaulding has just put out called his Practical Thoughts—for Mr Spaulding’s contains more of autobiography at least. In this case there is nothing to come to the rescue of. Is it the publisher?—or the reputation of the editors? The journal itself has no character. Shall we make a rush to save a piece of paper which is falling to the ground? It is as good as anybody seriously designed that it should be or meant to make it.—But I am ashamed to write such things as these.

  I am glad to hear that you are writing so much. Lecturing is of little consequence. Dont forget to inquire after Persian and Hindoo books in London or Paris. Ellen & Edith are as well as flies. I have had earnest letters from H. G. O. Blake. Greeley has sent me $100 dollars and wants more manuscript.

But this and all this letter are nothing to the purpose.
H. Thoreau

P.S. 22nd Mrs. E. has come home tonight and opened your letter. I am glad to find that you are expecting a line from me, since I have better excuse for sending this hard scrawl. I trust however that the most prosaic Concord news acquires a certain value by the time it reaches London, as Concord cranberries have done. But don’t think that these berries have soured by the way, as did the first received—They are naturally harsh and sour. Yet I think that I could listen kindly and without selfishness to men’s projected enterprises if they were not too easy,—if they were struggles not into death but even into life. I read in a Texas paper sent to you that there was a farm for sale in that country “suitable for a man of small force.” You had better make a minute of thus for the benefit of some of your literary acquaintance.

  A song sparrow’s nest and eggs so placed in a bank that none could tread on it; bluish-white, speckled . . . (Journal, 4:67-68)

  One of the most beautiful things to me now is the reddish-ash, and, higher, the silvery, canopies of half a dozen young white oak leaves over their catkins,—thousands of little tents pitched in the air for the May training of the flowers, so many little parasols to their tenderer flowers. Young white oaks and shrub oaks have a reddish look quite similar to their withered leaves in the winter . . .