March 5, 1845.
MY DEAR THOREAU,--The handwriting of your letter is so miserable that
I am not sure I have made it out. If I have, it seems to me you are
the same old sixpence you used to be, rather rusty, but a genuine
piece. I see nothing for you in this earth but that field which I once
christened "Briars;" go out upon that, build yourself a hut, and there
begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive. I see no
alternative, no other hope for you. Eat yourself up; you will eat
nobody else, nor anything else. Concord is just as good a place as any
other; there are, indeed, more people in the streets of that village
than in the streets of this. This is a singularly muddy town; muddy,
solitary, and silent.
In your line, I have not done a great deal since I arrived here; I do
not mean the Pencil line, but the Staten Island line, having been
there once, to walk on a beach by the telegraph, but did not visit the
scene of your dominical duties. Staten Island is very distant from No.
30 Ann Street. I saw polite William Emerson in November last, but have
not caught any glimpse of him since then. I am as usual suffering the
various alternations from agony to despair, from hope to fear, from
pain to pleasure. Such wretched one-sided productions as you know
nothing of the universal man; you may think yourself well off.
That baker, Hecker, who used to live on two crackers a day, I have not
seen; nor Black, nor Vethake, nor Danesaz, nor Rynders, nor any of
Emerson's old cronies, excepting James, a little fat, rosy
Swedenborgian amateur with the look of a broker and the brains and
heart of a Pascal. William Channing, I see nothing of him; he is the
dupe of good feelings, and I have all-too-many of these now. I have
seen something of your friends, Waldo and Tappan, and have also seen
our good man McKean, the keeper of that stupid place, the Mercantile
Library.
* * * * *
Acting on Channing's hint, and an old fancy of his own, Thoreau, in
the summer of 1845, built his cabin at Walden and retired there; while
Hawthorne entered the Salem custom-house, and Alcott, returning
defeated from his Fruitlands paradise, was struggling with poverty and
discouragement at Concord. Charles Lane, his English comrade, withdrew
to New York or its vicinity, and in 1846 to London, whence he had come
in 1842, full of hope and enthusiasm. A few notes of his, or about
him, may here find place. They were sent to Thoreau at Concord, and
show that Lane continued to value his candid friend. The first,
written after leaving Fruitlands, introduces the late Father Hecker,
who had been one of the family there, to Thoreau. The second and third
relate to the sale of the Alcott-Lane Library, and other matters.
[Illustration: _Walden Woods_]