CONCORD, October 6, 1838.
DEAR HELEN,--I dropped Sophia's letter into the box immediately on
taking yours out, else the tone of the former had been changed.
I have no acquaintance with "Cleaveland's First Lessons," though I
have peeped into his abridged grammar, which I should think very well
calculated for beginners,--at least for such as would be likely to
wear out one book before they would be prepared for the abstruser
parts of grammar. Ahem!
As no one can tell what was the Roman pronunciation, each nation makes
the Latin conform, for the most part, to the rules of its own
language; so that with us of the vowels only A has a peculiar sound.
In the end of a word of more than one syllable it is sounded like
"ah," as _pennah_, _Lydiah_, _Hannah_, etc., without regard to case;
but "_da_" is never sounded "_dah_," because it is a monosyllable. All
terminations in _es_, and plural cases in _os_, as you know, are
pronounced long,--as _homines_ (hominese), _dominos_ (dominose), or,
in English, _Johnny Vose_. For information, see Adams' "Latin
Grammar," before the Rudiments.
This is all law and gospel in the eyes of the world; but remember I am
speaking, as it were, in the third person, and should sing quite a
different tune if it were I that had made the quire. However, one must
occasionally hang his harp on the willows, and play on the Jew's harp,
in such a strange country as this.
One of your young ladies wishes to study mental philosophy, hey?
Well, tell her that she has the very best text-book that I know of in
her possession already. If she do not believe it, then she should have
bespoken another better in another world, and not have expected to
find one at "Little & Wilkins." But if she wishes to know how poor an
apology for a mental philosophy men have tacked together,
synthetically or analytically, in these latter days,--how they have
squeezed the infinite mind into a compass that would not nonplus a
surveyor of Eastern Lands--making Imagination and Memory to lie still
in their respective apartments like ink-stand and wafers in a lady's
escritoire,--why let her read Locke, or Stewart, or Brown. The fact
is, mental philosophy is very like Poverty, which, you know, begins at
home; and indeed, when it goes abroad, it is poverty itself.
_Chorus._ I should think an abridgment of one of the above authors, or
of Ambercrombie, would answer her purpose. It may set her a-thinking.
Probably there are many systems in the market of which I am ignorant.
As for themes, say first "Miscellaneous Thoughts." Set one up to a
window, to note what passes in the street, and make her comments
thereon; or let her gaze in the fire, or into a corner where there is
a spider's web, and philosophize, moralize, theorize, or what not.
What their hands find to putter about, or their minds to think about,
that let them write about. To say nothing of advantage or disadvantage
of this, that, or the other, let them set down their ideas at any
given season, preserving the chain of thought as complete as may be.
This is the style pedagogical. I am much obliged to you for your piece
of information. Knowing your dislike to a sentimental letter, I remain
Your affectionate brother,
H. D. T.
The next letter to Helen carries this pedagogical style a little
farther, for it is in Latin, addressed "Ad Helenam L. Thoreau,
Roxbury, Mass.," and postmarked "Concord, Jan. 25" (1840).