Dear Friend,--I daily expect the picture, and wonder--so long as
I have wished it--I had never asked it before. I was in Boston
the other day, and went to the best reputed Daguerreotypist, but
though I brought home three transcripts of my face, the house-
mates voted them rueful, supremely ridiculous. I must sit again;
or, as true Elizabeth Hoar said, I must not sit again, not being
of the right complexion which Daguerre and iodine delight in. I
am minded to try once more, and if the sun will not take me, I
must sit to a good crayon sketcher, Mr. Cheney, and send you
his draught....
Good rides to you and the longest escapes from London streets. I
too have a new plaything, the best I ever had,--a wood-lot. Last
fall I bought a piece of more than forty acres, on the border of
a little lake half a mile wide and more, called Walden Pond,--a
place to which my feet have for years been accustomed to bring me
once or twice a week at all seasons. My lot to be sure is on the
further side of the water, not so familiar to me as the nearer
shore. Some of the wood is an old growth, but most of it has
been cut off within twenty years and is growing thriftily. In
these May days, when maples, poplars, oaks, birches, walnut, and
pine are in their spring glory, I go thither every afternoon, and
cut with my hatchet an Indian path through the thicket all along
the bold shore, and open the finest pictures.
My two little girls know the road now, though it is nearly two
miles from my house, and find their way to the spring at the foot
of a pine grove, and with some awe to the ruins of a village of
shanties, all overgrown with mullein, which the Irish who built
the railroad left behind them. At a good distance in from the
shore the land rises to a rocky head, perhaps sixty feet above
the water. Thereon I think to place a hut; perhaps it will have
two stories and be a petty tower, looking out to Monadnoc and
other New Hampshire Mountains. There I hope to go with book and
pen when good hours come. I shall think there, a fortnight might
bring you from London to Walden Pond.--Life wears on, and do you
say the gray hairs appear? Few can so well afford them. The
black have not hung over a vacant brain, as England and America
know; nor, white or black, will it give itself any Sabbath for
many a day henceforward, as I believe. What have we to do with
old age? Our existence looks to me more than ever initial. We
have come to see the ground and look up materials and tools. The
men who have any positive quality are a flying advance party for
reconnoitring. We shall yet have a right work, and kings for
competitors. With ever affectionate remembrance to your wife,
your friend,
--R.W. Emerson