CONCORD, October 24, 1847.
DEAR SOPHIA,--I thank you for those letters about Ktaadn, and hope you
will save and send me the rest, and anything else you may meet with
relating to the Maine woods. That Dr. Young is both young and green
too at traveling in the woods. However, I hope he got "yarbs" enough
to satisfy him. I went to Boston the 5th of this month to see Mr.
Emerson off to Europe. He sailed in the Washington Irving
packet-ship; the same in which Mr. [F. H.] Hedge went before him. Up
to this trip the first mate aboard this ship was, as I hear, one
Stephens, a Concord boy, son of Stephens the carpenter, who used to
live above Mr. Dennis's. Mr. Emerson's stateroom was like a carpeted
dark closet, about six feet square, with a large keyhole for a window.
The window was about as big as a saucer, and the glass two inches
thick, not to mention another skylight overhead in the deck, the size
of an oblong doughnut, and about as opaque. Of course it would be in
vain to look up, if any contemplative promenader put his foot upon it.
Such will be his lodgings for two or three weeks; and instead of a
walk in Walden woods he will take a promenade on deck, where the few
trees, you know, are stripped of their bark. The steam-tug carried the
ship to sea against a head wind without a rag of sail being raised.
I don't remember whether you have heard of the new telescope at
Cambridge or not. They think it is the best one in the world, and have
already seen more than Lord Rosse or Herschel. I went to see Perez
Blood's, some time ago, with Mr. Emerson. He had not gone to bed, but
was sitting in the wood-shed, in the dark, alone, in his astronomical
chair, which is all legs and rounds, with a seat which can be inserted
at any height. We saw Saturn's rings, and the mountains in the moon,
and the shadows in their craters, and the sunlight on the spurs of the
mountains in the dark portion, etc., etc. When I asked him the power
of his glass, he said it was 85. But what is the power of the
Cambridge glass? 2000!!! The last is about twenty-three feet long.
I think you may have a grand time this winter pursuing some
study,--keeping a journal, or the like,--while the snow lies deep
without. Winter is the time for study, you know, and the colder it is
the more studious we are. Give my respects to the whole Penobscot
tribe, and tell them that I trust we are good brothers still, and
endeavor to keep the chain of friendship bright, though I do dig up a
hatchet now and then. I trust you will not stir from your comfortable
winter quarters, Miss Bruin, or even put your head out of your hollow
tree, till the sun has melted the snow in the spring, and "the green
buds, they are a-swellin'."
From your BROTHER HENRY.
This letter will explain some of the allusions in the first letter to
Emerson in England. Perez Blood was a rural astronomer living in the
extreme north quarter of Concord, next to Carlisle, with his two
maiden sisters, in the midst of a fine oak wood; their cottage being
one of the points in view when Thoreau and his friends took their
afternoon rambles. Sophia Thoreau, the younger and soon the only
surviving sister, was visiting her cousins in Maine, the "Penobscot
tribe" of whom the letter makes mention, with an allusion to the
Indians of that name near Bangor. His letter to her and those which
follow were written from Emerson's house, where Thoreau lived during
the master's absence across the ocean. It was in the orchard of this
house that Alcott was building that summer-house at which Thoreau,
with his geometrical eye, makes merry in the next letter.