England, and when Cholmondeley began to read it to his stepfather, Rev. Z. Macaulay, at Hodnet, that clergyman declared he would not hear it, and threatened to throw it in the fire. On reading the _Week_ (he had received _Walden_ from Thoreau when first in America), Cholmondeley wrote me, "Would you tell dear Thoreau that the lines I admire so much in his _Week_ begin thus:-- 'Low-anchored cloud, Newfoundland air,' etc.
In my mind the best thing he ever wrote."
[68] Ellery Channing is mentioned, though not by name, in the _Week_ (pp. 169, 378), and in _Walden_ (p. 295). He was the comrade of Thoreau in Berkshire, and on the Hudson, in New Hampshire, Canada, and Cape Cod, and in many rambles nearer Concord. He was also a companion of Hawthorne in his river voyages, as mentioned in the _Mosses_.
[69] The Concord Lyceum, founded in 1829, and still extant, though not performing its original function of lectures and debates. See pp. 51, 154, etc.
[70] This was the town of Harvard, not the college. Perhaps the excursion was to visit Fruitlands, where Alcott and Lane had established their short-lived community, in a beautiful spot near Still River, an affluent of the Nashua, and half-way from Concord to Wachusett. "Asnebumskit," mentioned in a former letter, is the highest hill near Worcester, as "Nobscot" is the highest near Concord. Both have Indian names.
[71] The New York newspaper.
[72] An odd boat.
[73] Mrs. Caroline Kirkland, wife of Prof. William Kirkland, then of New York,--a writer of wit and fame at that time.
[74] A Worcester newspaper.
[75] B. B. Wiley, then of Providence, since of Chicago (deceased), had written to Thoreau, September 4, for the _Week_, which the author was then selling on his own account, having bought back the unsalable first edition from his publisher, Munroe. In a letter of October 31, to which the above is a reply, he mentions taking a walk with Charles Newcomb, then of Providence, since of London and Paris, now dead,--a _Dial_ contributor, and a special friend of Emerson; then inquires about Confucius, the Hindoo philosophers, and Swedenborg.
[76] When, in 1855 or 1856, Thoreau started to wade across from Duxbury to Clark's Island, and was picked up by a fishing-boat in the deep water, and landed on the "back side" of the island (see letter to Mr. Watson of April 25, 1858), Edward Watson ("Uncle Ed") was "saggin' round" to see that everything was right alongshore, and encountered the unexpected visitor. "How did _you_ come here?" "Oh, from Duxbury," said Thoreau, and they walked to the old Watson house together. "You say in one of your books," said Uncle Ed, "that you once lost a horse and a hound and a dove,--now I should like to know what you meant by that?" "Why, everybody has met with losses, haven't they?"
"H'm,--pretty way to answer a fellow!" said Mr. Watson; but it seems this was the usual answer. In the long dining-room of the old house that night he sat by the window and told the story of the Norse voyagers to New England,--perhaps to that very island and the Gurnet near by,--as Morton fancies in his review of Thoreau in the _Harvard [77] This was when he spoke in the vestry of the Calvinistic church, and said, on his return to Concord, "that he hoped he had done something to upheave and demolish the structure above,"--the vestry being beneath the church.
[78] Notwithstanding this unwillingness to lecture, Thoreau did speak at Worcester, February 13, 1857, on "Walking," but scrupulously added to his consent (February 6), "I told Brown it had not been much altered since I read it in Worcester; but now I think of it, much of it must have been new to you, because, having since divided it into two, I am able to read what before I omitted. Nevertheless, I should like to have it understood by those whom it concerns, that I am invited to read in public (if it be so) what I have already read, in part, to a private audience." This throws some light on his method of preparing lectures, which were afterwards published as essays; they were made up from his journals, and new entries expanded them.
[79] Rev. Edward E. Hale, then pastor at Worcester. Others mentioned in the letter are Rev. David A. Wasson and Dr. Seth Rogers,--the latter a physician with whom Mr. Wasson was living in Worcester.
[80] A writer on scenery and natural history, who outlived Thoreau, and never forgave him for the remark about "stirring up with a pole," which really might have been less graphic.
[81] The panic of 1857,--the worst since 1837.
[82] Reinhold Solger, Ph. D.,--a very intellectual and well-taught Prussian, who was one of the lecturers for a year or two at my "Concord School," the successor of the Concord "Academy," in which the children of the Emerson, Alcott, Hawthorne, Hoar, and Ripley families were taught. At this date the lectures were given in the vestry of the parish church, which Thoreau playfully termed "a meeting-house cellar." It was there that Louisa Alcott acted plays.
[83] Exclamation points and printer's devil.
[84] Channing says (_Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist_, new ed., pp. 41, 42): "He made for himself a knapsack, with partitions for his books and papers,--india-rubber cloth (strong and large and spaced, the common knapsacks being unspaced)...After trying the merit of cocoa, coffee, water, and the like, tea was put down as the felicity of a walking '_travail_,'--tea plenty, strong, with enough sugar, made in a tin pint cup...He commended every party to carry 'a junk of heavy cake' with plums in it, having found by long experience that after toil it was a capital refreshment."
[85] Marston Watson, whose uncle, Edward Watson, with his nephews, owned the "breezy island" where Thoreau had visited his friends (Clark's Island, the only one in Plymouth Bay), had built his own house, "Hillside," on the slope of one of the hills above Plymouth town, and there laid out a fine park and garden, which Thoreau surveyed for him in the autumn of 1854, Alcott and Mr. Watson carrying the chain. For a description of Hillside, see Channing's _Wanderer_ (Boston, 1871) and Alcott's _Sonnets and Canzonets_ (Boston: Roberts, 1882). It was a villa much visited by Emerson, Alcott, Channing, Thoreau, George Bradford, and the Transcendentalists generally. Mr.
Watson graduated at Harvard two years after Thoreau, and in an old diary says, "I remember Thoreau in the college yard (1836) with downcast thoughtful look intent, as if he were searching for something; always in a green coat,--green because the authorities required black, I suppose." In a letter he says: "I have always heard the 'Maiden in the East' was Mrs. Watson,--Mary Russell Watson,--and I suppose there is no doubt of it. I may be prejudiced, but I have always thought it one of his best things,--and I have highly valued his lines. I find in my _Dial_, No. 6, I have written six new stanzas in the margin of Friendship, and they are numbered to show how they should run. I think Mrs. Brown gave them to me."
[86] _Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist_, new ed., pp. 42-45.
[87] Near which, at New Bedford, Mr. Ricketson lived.
[88] This was the "Orchard House," near Hawthorne's "Wayside." The estate on which it stands, now owned by Mrs. Lothrop, who also owns the "Wayside," was surveyed for Mr. Alcott by Thoreau in October, 1857.
16. Channing himself was, no doubt, the "follower" and "companion" here mentioned; no person so frequently walked with Thoreau in his long excursions. They were together in New Boston, N. H., when the minister mentioned in the _Week_ reproved Thoreau for not going to meeting on Sunday. When I first lived in Concord (March, 1855), and asked the innkeeper what Sunday services the village held, he replied, "There's the Orthodox, an' the Unitarian, an' th' Walden Pond Association,"--meaning by the last what Emerson called "the Walkers,"--those who rambled in the Walden woods on Sundays.
[90] Of New Bedford, first published in the _Mercury_ of that city, while Channing was one of the editors, and afterwards in a volume.
[91] The club with which Thoreau here makes merry was the Saturday Club, meeting at Parker's Hotel in Boston the last Saturday in each month, of which Emerson, Agassiz, Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Henry James, and other men of letters were members. Thoreau, though invited, never seems to have met with them, as Channing did, on one memorable occasion, at least, described by Mr. James in a letter cited in the _Memoir of Bronson Alcott_, who also occasionally dined with this club. The conversation at Emerson's next mentioned was also memorable for the vigor with which Miss Mary Emerson, then eighty-four years old, rebuked Mr. James for what she thought his dangerous Antinomian views concerning the moral law.
[92] This was Tuckerman's Ravine at the White Mountains, where Thoreau met with his mishap in the preceding July.
[93] He was looking after the manufacture of fine plumbago for the electrotypers, which was the family business after pencil-making grew unprofitable. The Thoreaus had a grinding-mill in Acton, and a packing-shop attached to their Concord house. "Parker's society," mentioned at the close of the letter, was the congregation of Theodore Parker, then in Italy, where he died in May, 1860.
[94] He was invited to a gathering of John Brown's friends at the grave in the Adirondack woods. "Mr. Sanborn's case" was an indictment and civil suit against Silas Carleton _et als._ for an attempt to kidnap F. B. Sanborn, who had refused to accept the invitation of the Senate at Washington to testify in the John Brown investigation.
[95] This is the excursion described by Thoreau in a subsequent letter,--lasting six days, and the first that Channing had made which involved "camping out." It was also Thoreau's last visit to this favorite mountain; but Channing continued to go there after the death of his friend; and some of these visits are recorded in his poem "The Wanderer." The last one was in September, 1869, when I accompanied him, and we again spent five nights on the plateau where he had camped with Thoreau. At that time, one of the "two good spruce houses, half a mile apart," mentioned by Thoreau, was still standing, in ruins,--the place called by Channing "Henry's Camp," and thus described:-- We built our fortress where you see Yon group of spruce-trees, sidewise on the line Where the horizon to the eastward bounds,-- A point selected by sagacious art, Where all at once we viewed the Vermont hills, And the long outline of the mountain-ridge, Ever renewing, changeful every hour.
Thoreau's name to him, but never guessed who his companion was.
[97] This was Thoreau's last visit to Monadnock, and the one mentioned in the note of August 3, and in Channing's _Wanderer_.
[98] The Prince of Wales (now King Edward VII), then visiting America with the Duke of Newcastle.
[99] Now termed pneumonia.
[100] In April, 1859, Mr. Alcott was chosen superintendent of the public schools of Concord, by a school committee of which Mr. Bull, the creator of the Concord grape, and Mr. Sanborn, were members, and for some years he directed the studies of the younger pupils, to their great benefit and delight. At the yearly "exhibitions," songs were sung composed by Louisa Alcott and others, and the whole town assembled to see and hear. The stress of civil war gradually checked this idyllic movement, and Mr. Alcott returned to his garden and library. It was two years after this that Miss Alcott had her severe experience as hospital nurse at Washington.
[101] Edwin Morton of Plymouth, Mass., a friend of John Brown and Gerrit Smith, who went to England in October, 1859, to avoid testifying against his friends.
[102] A word may be said of the after life of this magnanimous Englishman, who did not long survive his Concord correspondent. In March, 1863, being then in command of a battalion of Shropshire Volunteers, which he had raised, he inherited Condover Hall and the large estate adjacent, and took the name of Owen as a condition of the inheritance. A year later he married Miss Victoria Cotes, daughter of John and Lady Louisa Cotes (Co. Salop), a godchild of the Queen, and went to Italy for his wedding tour. In Florence he was seized with a malignant fever, April 10, 1864, and died there April 20,--not quite two years after Thoreau's death. His brother Reginald, who had met him in Florence, carried back his remains to England, and he is buried in Condover churchyard. Writing to an American friend, Mr. R.
Cholmondeley said: "The whole county mourned for one who had made himself greatly beloved. During his illness his thoughts went back very much to America and her great sufferings. His large heart felt for your country as if it were his own." It seems that he did not go to New Zealand with the "Canterbury Pilgrims," as suggested in the _Atlantic Monthly_ (December, 1893), but in the first of Lord Lyttelton's ships (the Charlotte Jane), having joined in Lord L.'s scheme for colonizing the island, where he remained only six months, near Christchurch.
[103] Rev. Joseph May, a cousin of Louisa Alcott.
[104] I had answered T. Cholmondeley's last letter, explaining that Thoreau was ill and absent.
[105] A return to religious Quakerism, of which his friend had written enthusiastically.
[106] This was a short-lived monthly, edited at Cincinnati (1861-62) by Moncure D. Conway, since distinguished as an author, who had resided for a time in Concord, after leaving his native Virginia. He wrote asking Thoreau and all his Concord friends to contribute to this new _Dial_, and several of them did so.
APPENDIX The letters of Thoreau, early or late, which did not reach me in time to be used in the original edition of this book, and have since appeared in print here and there, are included either in order of their date in the preceding pages (in the case of the additional Ricketson letters) or in this Appendix. I owe the right to use the following correspondence to Mr. E. H. Russell of Worcester and to Dr.
S. A. Jones of Ann Arbor, Michigan, who first obtained from the family of Calvin H. Greene of Rochester, Michigan, the Greene letters, five in number, all short, but characteristic. Dr. Jones printed these in a small edition at Jamaica, N. Y., and along with them some letters of Miss Sophia Thoreau to Mr. Greene, and portions of Greene's Diary during his two visits to Concord in September, 1863, and August, 1874.
In these papers he left initials, or letters commonly used for unknown quantities, to stand for certain names occurring there. "X." and "X.
Y. Z." in this Diary, and in Miss Thoreau's letters, signify Ellery Channing, to whom in March, 1863, Mr. Greene had sent the manzanita cane, headed with buffalo-horn and tipped with silver, which he had made with his own hands and intended for Thoreau, and which Mr.
Channing gave to me, as the mutual friend of the two Concord poets. In the Diary I am "Mr. S." This Diary and the letters of Miss Thoreau supply some useful facts for a Thoreau biography, which this collection of Familiar Letters was meant to be,--a biography largely in the words of its subject. Notice is taken of such facts in footnotes.
The earlier letters to Isaac Hecker, afterwards known as Father Hecker of New York, grew out of an acquaintance formed with him while he was living at Mrs. Thoreau's, and taking lessons of the late George Bradford, brother of Mrs. Ripley. They were subsequent to Hecker's brief stay at Brook Farm and Fruitlands, and when he was studying to be a Catholic priest. He cherished the vain hope of converting Thoreau to his own newly acquired faith, amid the influences of Catholic Europe. The brief correspondence is printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for September, 1902.
Isaac Hecker, born in December, 1819, two and a half years after Thoreau, was the son of a German baker in New York city, and of little education until he came to Massachusetts at the age of twenty-three, as the disciple and friend of Dr. Brownson, then a Protestant preacher and social democrat. In January, 1843, he entered the Brook Farm community, not as a member, but as a worker and student, making the bread for the family and taking lessons of George Ripley, George Bradford, Charles Dana, and John S. Dwight,--all friends of the Concord circle of authors. But he was restless, and yearned for a more ascetic life, and before he had been at Brook Farm a month he was writing to Bronson Alcott about entering the as yet unopened Fruitlands convent, between which and Brook Farm Concord was a half-way station, both physically and spiritually. Hecker tried all three; was at Brook Farm, off and on, for six months, at Fruitlands two weeks (from July 11 to July 25, 1843), and at Concord two months (from April 22 to June 20, 1844). Then, August 1, he was baptized in the Catholic faith at New York. The day before this final step, towards which he had been tending for a year, he wrote to Thoreau, proposing a journey through Europe on foot and without money. During his brief Concord life he had been a lodger at the house of John Thoreau (the Parkman house, where now the Public Library stands), and had seen Henry Thoreau daily. Hecker thus describes his room, his rent, and his landlady, who was Thoreau's mother: "All that is needed for my comfort is here,--a room of good size, very good people, furnished and to be kept in order for 75 cents a week, including lights,--wood is extra pay; a good straw bed, a large table, carpet, wash-stand, bookcase, stove, chairs, looking-glass,--all, all that is needful. The lady of the house, Mrs. Thoreau, is a _woman_.
The only fear I have about her is that she is too much like dear mother,--she will take too much care of me. If you were to see her, Mother, you would be perfectly satisfied that I have fallen into good hands, and met a second mother, if that is possible. I have just finished my dinner,--unleavened bread from home, maple-sugar, and apples which I purchased this morning. Previous to taking dinner I said my first lesson to Mr. Bradford in Greek and Latin."
Hecker "boarded himself," but no doubt often partook of Mrs. Thoreau's hospitality, and took long walks with Thoreau. Writing to him three months after the first meeting at Concord, Hecker said: "I have formed a certain project which your influence has no slight share in forming.
It is, to work our passage to Europe, and to walk, work, and beg, if need be, as far, when there, as we are inclined to do."
TO ISAAC HECKER (AT NEW YORK).
CONCORD, August 14, 1844.
FRIEND HECKER,--I am glad to hear your voice from that populous city, and the more so for the tenor of its discourse. I have but just returned from a pedestrian excursion somewhat similar to that you propose, _parvis componere magna_, to the Catskill Mountains, over the principal mountains of this State, subsisting mainly on bread and berries, and slumbering on the mountain-tops. As usually happens, I now feel a slight sense of dissipation. Still, I am strongly tempted by your proposal, and experience a decided schism between my outward and inward tendencies. Your method of traveling, especially,--to live along the road, citizens of the world, without haste or petty plans,--I have often proposed this to my dreams, and still do. But the fact is, I cannot so decidedly postpone exploring the _Farther Indies_, which are to be reached, you know, by other routes and other methods of travel. I mean that I constantly return from every external enterprise with disgust, to fresh faith in a kind of Brahminical, Artesian, Inner Temple life. All my experience, as yours probably, proves only this reality. Channing wonders how I can resist your invitation, I, a single man--unfettered--and so do I. Why, there are Roncesvalles, the Cape de Finisterre, and the Three Kings of Cologne; Rome, Athens, and the rest, to be visited in serene, untemporal hours, and all history to revive in one's memory, as he went by the way, with splendors too bright for this world,--I know how it is. But is not here, too, Roncesvalles with greater lustre? Unfortunately, it may prove dull and desultory weather enough here, but better trivial days with faith than the fairest ones lighted by sunshine alone. Perchance, my _Wanderjahr_ has not arrived, but you cannot wait for that. I hope you will find a companion who will enter as heartily into your schemes as I should have done.
I remember you, as it were, with the whole Catholic Church at your skirts. And the other day, for a moment, I think I understood your relation to that body; but the thought was gone again in a twinkling, as when a dry leaf falls from its stem over our heads, but is instantly lost in the rustling mass at our feet.
I am really sorry that the Genius will not let me go with you, but I trust that it will conduct to other adventures, and so, if nothing prevents, we will compare notes at last.
* * * * * When this invitation reached Concord, Thoreau was absent on a tour with Channing to the Berkshire Mountains and the Catskills,--Channing coming up the Hudson from New York (where he then lived, aiding Horace Greeley in the _Tribune_ office), and meeting his friend at the foot of the Hoosac Mountain. On its summit Thoreau had spent the night, sleeping under a board near the observatory tower built by the Williams College students, as related by him in the _Week_. They then crossed the Hudson and journeyed on to the Catskills, returning together to Concord.[107] Meantime Hecker had got impatient, and wrote again, to which Thoreau replied, August 17, thus briefly:-- TO ISAAC HECKER (AT NEW YORK).
I improve the occasion of my mother's sending to acknowledge the receipt of your stirring letter. You have probably received mine by this time. I thank you for not anticipating any vulgar objections on my part. _Far_ travel, very _far_ travel, or travail, comes near to the worth of staying at home. Who knows whence his education is to come! Perhaps I may drag my anchor at length, or rather, when the _winds_ which blow _over_ the deep fill my sails, may stand away for distant parts,--for now I seem to have a firm _ground_ anchorage, though the harbor is low-shored enough, and the traffic with the natives inconsiderable. I may be away to Singapore by the next tide.
I like well the ring of your last maxim, "It is only the fear of death makes us reason of impossibilities." And but for fear, death itself is an impossibility.
Believe me, I can hardly let it end so. If you do not go soon, let me hear from you again.
Yrs. in great haste, HENRY D. THOREAU.
Hecker did not in fact go to Europe till a year later, and when he walked over a part of central Europe, it was in company with one or two young Catholic priests,--men very unlike Thoreau.
The short correspondence with Calvin Greene (longer than that with Hecker) occurred at intervals, a dozen years and more after the Fruitlands period, when the Walden experience had been lived through and recorded, and the friendship with the Ricketson family was in its earlier stages. Mr. Greene, when he called on me at his first visit to the Thoreau family in 1863, mentioned that he had just read Thoreau's poem, "The Departure," which at Sophia's request I had lately printed in the Boston _Commonwealth_, a weekly that I had been editing since Moncure Conway had left Concord for London, in the winter of 1862-63.
Greene was a plain, sincere man, never in New England before, who amused Channing by saying he had "taken a boat-ride on the Atlantic."
He came once more in 1874, and spent an evening with me in the house where Thoreau lived and died,--Mrs. Thoreau then being dead, and Sophia at Bangor, where she died in 1876.
TO CALVIN H. GREENE (AT ROCHESTER, MICH.).
CONCORD, January 18, 1856.
DEAR SIR,--I am glad to hear that my "Walden" has interested you,--that perchance it holds some truth still as far off as Michigan.
I thank you for your note.
The "Week" had so poor a publisher that it is quite uncertain whether you will find it in any shop. I am not sure but authors must turn booksellers themselves. The price is $1.25. If you care enough for it to send me that sum by mail (stamps will do for change), I will forward you a copy by the same conveyance.
As for the "more" that is to come, I cannot speak definitely at present, but I trust that the mine--be it silver or lead--is not yet exhausted. At any rate, I shall be encouraged by the fact that you are interested in its yield.
Yours respectfully, HENRY D. THOREAU.
CONCORD, February 10, 1856.
DEAR SIR,--I forwarded to you by mail on the 31st of January a copy of my "Week," post paid, which I trust that you have received. I thank you heartily for the expression of your interest in "Walden" and hope that you will not be disappointed by the "Week." You ask how the former has been received. It has found an audience of excellent character, and quite numerous, some 2000 copies having been dispersed.[108] I should consider it a greater success to interest one wise and earnest soul, than a million unwise and frivolous.
You may rely on it that you have the best of me in my books, and that I am not worth seeing personally, the stuttering, blundering clod-hopper that I am. Even poetry, you know, is in one sense an infinite brag and exaggeration. Not that I do not stand on all that I have written,--but what am I to the truth I feebly utter?
I like the name of your county.[109] May it grow men as sturdy as its trees! Methinks I hear your flute echo amid the oaks. Is not yours, too, a good place to study theology? I hope that you will ere long recover your turtle-dove, and that it may bring you glad tidings out of that heaven in which it disappeared.
Yours sincerely, HENRY D. THOREAU.
CONCORD, May 31, 1856.
DEAR SIR,--I forwarded by mail a copy of my "Week," post paid to James Newberry, Merchant, Rochester, Oakland Co., Mich., according to your order, about ten days ago, or on the receipt of your note.
I will obtain and forward a copy of "Walden" and also of the "Week" to California, to your order, post paid, for $2.60. The postage will be between 60 and 70 cents.
I thank you heartily for your kind intentions respecting me. The West has many attractions for me, particularly the lake country and the Indians, yet I do [not] foresee what my engagements may be in the fall. I have once or twice come near going West a-lecturing, and perhaps some winter may bring me into your neighborhood, in which case I should probably see you. Yet lecturing has commonly proved so foreign and irksome to me, that I think I could only use it to acquire the means with which to make an independent tour another time.
As for my pen, I can say that it is not altogether idle, though I have finished nothing new in the book form. I am drawing a rather long bow, though it may be a feeble one, but I pray that the archer may receive new strength before the arrow is shot.
With many thanks, yours truly, HENRY D. THOREAU.
CONCORD, Saturday, June 21, 1856.
DEAR SIR,--On the 12th I forwarded the two books to California, observing your directions in every particular, and I trust that Uncle Sam will discharge his duty faithfully. While in Worcester this week I obtained the accompanying daguerreotype,[110] which my friends think is pretty good, though better-looking than I.
Books and postage $2.64 Daguerreotype.50 Postage.16 ---- 3.30 5.00 You will accordingly 3.30 ---- find 1.70 enclosed with my shadow.
Yrs., HENRY D. THOREAU.
CONCORD, July 8, 1857.
DEAR SIR,--You are right in supposing that I have not been Westward. I am very little of a traveler. I am gratified to hear of the interest you take in my books; it is additional encouragement to write more of them. Though my pen is not idle, I have not published anything for a couple of years at least. I like a private life, and cannot bear to have the public in my mind.
You will excuse me for not responding more heartily to your notes, since I realize what an interval there always is between the actual and imagined author and feel that it would not be just for _me_ to appropriate the sympathy and good will of my unseen readers.
Nevertheless, I should like to meet you, and if I ever come into your neighborhood shall endeavor to do so. Can't you tell the world of your life also? Then I shall know you, at least as well as you me.
Yours truly, HENRY D. THOREAU.
CONCORD, November 24, 1859.
DEAR SIR,--The lectures which you refer to were reported in the newspapers, _after a fashion_,--the last one in some half-dozen of them,--and if I possessed one, or all, I would send them to you, bad as they are. The best, or at least longest one of the Boston lectures was in the Boston _Atlas and Bee_ of November 2d,--maybe half the whole. There were others in the _Traveller_, the _Journal_, etc., of the same date.
I am glad to know that you are interested to see my things, and I wish I had them in printed form to send to you. I exerted myself considerably to get the last discourse printed and sold for the benefit of Brown's family, but the publishers are afraid of pamphlets, and it is now too late.[111] I return the stamps which I have not used.
I shall be glad to see you if I ever come your way.
Yours truly, HENRY D. THOREAU.
FOOTNOTES: [107] Channing more than once described to me Thoreau's disheveled appearance as he came down the mountain the next morning, after rather a comfortless night. He was carrying for valise a green leather satchel that had been Charles Emerson's, having but recently been the guest of both William and Waldo Emerson. In depicting the scene from the Berkshire mountain, he recurred (in the _Week_) to the homesteads of the Huguenots on Staten Island, where he had rambled the year before this Berkshire experience, while living at William Emerson's and giving lessons to his sons.
[108] This was ten times as many in eighteen months as the _Week_ sold in five years.
[109] Mr. Greene lived in Oakland County.
[110] This fixes the date of the Worcester portrait,--June, 1856, two years after the Rowse crayon.
[111] This "last discourse" was the long one on John Brown, now included in Thoreau's _Miscellanies_, and formerly in the volume beginning with "A Yankee in Canada."
GENERAL INDEX The following are the titles of the volumes covered by this index and the numbers by which they are designated:-- 1. A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS.
2. WALDEN.
3. THE MAINE WOODS.
4. CAPE COD, AND MISCELLANIES.
5. EXCURSIONS, AND POEMS.
6. FAMILIAR LETTERS.
GENERAL INDEX [The titles of chapters and general divisions are set in SMALL CAPITALS.]
"A finer race and finer fed," verse, =1=, 407.
Abbot (Me.), =3=, 97.
Abby and Almira (Mrs. Miner and Mrs. Small), =6=, 152.
Abolitionist Journal, an, =4=, 306-310; convention, =6=, 260.
Aboljacarmegus Falls, =3=, 58, 82; meaning of the name, 157.
Aboljacarmegus Lake, =3=, 51.
Absence, from Concord, =6=, 50, 67-121, 233; in love and friendship, 74, 187.
"Abuse of the Bible," Mrs. Mott's, =6=, 97.
Academy at Concord, =6=, 72.
Achilles, The Youth of, translation, =5=, 385.
Acre, an, as long measure, =5=, 60.
ACROSS THE CAPE, =4=, 129-149.
Adams, John, =6=, 5, note.
Adams' Latin Grammar, =6=, 25.
Advertisements, the best part of newspapers, =1=, 194.
Æolian harp, =6=, 199.
Aerial effects, =6=, 88.
Aerial rivers, =6=, 58.
Æschylus, The Prometheus Bound of, translation, =5=, 337-375.
Æsculapius, that old herb-doctor, =2=, 154.
Æsculapius, translation, =5=, 380.
AFTER THE DEATH OF JOHN BROWN, =4=, 451-454.
147, 328.
Age and youth, =2=, 9.
Age of achievement, =6=, 120-182.
Agriculture, the new, =4=, 291; the task of Americans, =5=, 229-231; "Ah, 't is in vain the peaceful din," verse, =1=, 15.
187, 242, 260, 278.
Ajax, The Treatment of, translation, =5=, 387.
acquaintance with Thoreau, 50, 52, 64, 136, 137, 151; at home in Fruitlands, 64, 83, 84; in Boston, 236, 237; in Walpole, 281; in Concord, at Orchard House, 333, 376; builds Emerson's summer-house, 134-137; in Concord jail, 52; chosen school superintendent, 377; diary of, 297; holds conversations in Concord, 52, 64, 346; in Eagleswood, N.
J., 291; in New York, 282, 283, 297; dines with Thoreau, 52; visits with Thoreau in New Bedford, 306, 307; in Plymouth, 328, note; in Brooklyn, 298; describes Walt Whitman, 298; at Thoreau's funeral, 65, note; letter from, 397; letter to, 282.
Alcott, Louisa May, =6=, 321, note, 377, note.
Alewives, =1=, 32.
Alexander the Great, =6=, x.
"All things are current found," verse, =1=, 415.
ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH, THE, =3=, 174-327.
270.
Allen, Phineas, =6=, 10, note.
Alphonse, Jean, quoted, =4=, 238; and Falls of Montmorenci, =5=, 38, 39; quoted, 91.
Ambejijis Falls, =3=, 50; portage round, 52, 84.
Ambejijis Stream, =3=, 50.
America, the only true, =2=, 228; the newness of, =3=, 90; not truly free, =4=, 476, 477; provincialism of, 477; superiorities of, =5=, 220-224.
American, money in Quebec, =5=, 24; the, and government, 82, 83, =6=, 8-10.
American privateer, General Lincoln, =6=, 5.
"Amok" against T., society running, =2=, 190.
Amonoosuck, the, =1=, 334.
Amphiaraus, The death of, translation, =5=, 387.
Amusements, games and, despair concealed under, =2=, 8, 9.
"An early unconverted saint," verse, =1=, 42.
109, 110.
Anawan, an Indian, =6=, 15.
Anchors, dragging for, =4=, 162.
Ancients, wisdom of the, =6=, 114, 299, 300.
Andover (Mass.), =1=, 124.