This was the golden age of hope and achievement for the Concord poets
and philosophers. Their ranks were not yet broken by death (for
Stearns Wheeler was hardly one of them), their spirits were high, and
their faith in each other unbounded. Emerson wrote thus from Concord,
while Thoreau was perambulating Staten Island and calling on "the
false booksellers:" "Ellery Channing is excellent company, and we walk
in all directions. He remembers you with great faith and hope; thinks
you ought not to see Concord again these ten years--that you ought to
grind up fifty Concords in your mill--and much other opinion and
counsel he holds in store on this topic. Hawthorne walked with me
yesterday afternoon, and not until after our return did I read his
'Celestial Railroad,' which has a serene strength which we cannot
afford not to praise, in this low life."
The Transcendentalists had their quarterly, and even their daily
organ, for Mr. Greeley put the _Tribune_ at their service, and gave
places on its staff to Margaret Fuller and her brother-in-law
Channing, and would gladly have made room for Emerson in its columns,
if the swift utterance of a morning paper had suited his habit of
publication. While in the _Tribune_ office, Ellery Channing thus
wrote to Thoreau, after he had returned home, disappointed with New
York, to make lead pencils in his father's shop at Concord.