CASTLETON, STATEN ISLAND, May 11, 1843.
DEAR MOTHER AND FRIENDS AT HOME,--We arrived here safely at ten
o'clock on Sunday morning, having had as good a passage as usual,
though we ran aground and were detained a couple of hours in the
Thames River, till the tide came to our relief. At length we curtseyed
up to a wharf just the other side of their Castle Garden,--very
incurious about them and their city. I believe my vacant looks,
absolutely inaccessible to questions, did at length satisfy an army of
starving cabmen that I did not want a hack, cab, or anything of that
sort as yet. It was the only demand the city made on us; as if a
wheeled vehicle of some sort were the sum and summit of a reasonable
man's wants. "Having tried the water," they seemed to say, "will you
not return to the pleasant securities of land carriage? Else why your
boat's prow turned toward the shore at last?" They are a sad-looking
set of fellows, not permitted to come on board, and I pitied them.
They had been expecting me, it would seem, and did really wish that I
should take a cab; though they did not seem rich enough to supply me
with one.
It was a confused jumble of heads and soiled coats, dangling from
flesh-colored faces,--all swaying to and fro, as by a sort of
undertow, while each whipstick, true as the needle to the pole, still
preserved that level and direction in which its proprietor had
dismissed his forlorn interrogatory. They took sight from them,--the
lash being wound up thereon, to prevent your attention from wandering,
or to make it concentre upon its object by the spiral line. They began
at first, perhaps, with the modest, but rather confident inquiry,
"Want a cab, sir?" but as their despair increased, it took the
affirmative tone, as the disheartened and irresolute are apt to do:
"You want a cab, sir," or even, "You want a nice cab, sir, to take you
to Fourth Street." The question which one had bravely and hopefully
begun to put, another had the tact to take up and conclude with fresh
emphasis,--twirling it from his particular whipstick as if it had
emanated from his lips,--as the sentiment did from his heart. Each one
could truly say, "Them 's my sentiments." But it was a sad sight.
I am seven and a half miles from New York, and, as it would take half
a day at least, have not been there yet. I have already run over no
small part of the island, to the highest hill, and some way along the
shore. From the hill directly behind the house I can see New York,
Brooklyn, Long Island, the Narrows, through which vessels bound to and
from all parts of the world chiefly pass,--Sandy Hook and the
Highlands of Neversink (part of the coast of New Jersey),--and, by
going still farther up the hill, the Kill van Kull, and Newark Bay.
From the pinnacle of one Madame Grimes's house, the other night at
sunset, I could see almost round the island. Far in the horizon there
was a fleet of sloops bound up the Hudson, which seemed to be going
over the edge of the earth; and in view of these trading ships
commerce seems quite imposing.
But it is rather derogatory that your dwelling-place should be only a
neighborhood to a great city,--to live on an inclined plane. I do not
like their cities and forts, with their morning and evening guns, and
sails flapping in one's eye. I want a whole continent to breathe in,
and a good deal of solitude and silence, such as all Wall Street
cannot buy,--nor Broadway with its wooden pavement. I must live along
the beach, on the southern shore, which looks directly out to
sea,--and see what that great parade of water means, that dashes and
roars, and has not yet wet me, as long as I have lived.
I must not know anything about my condition and relations here till
what is not permanent is worn off. I have not yet subsided. Give me
time enough, and I may like it. All my inner man heretofore has been a
Concord impression; and here come these Sandy Hook and Coney Island
breakers to meet and modify the former; but it will be long before I
can make nature look as innocently grand and inspiring as in Concord.
Your affectionate son,
HENRY D. THOREAU.