CONCORD, December 29, 1847.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I thank you for your letter. I was very glad to get
it; and I am glad again to write to you. However slow the steamer, no
time intervenes between the writing and the reading of thoughts, but
they come freshly to the most distant port. I am here still, and very
glad to be here, and shall not trouble you with any complaints because
I do not fill my place better. I have had many good hours in the
chamber at the head of the stairs,--a solid time, it seems to me. Next
week I am going to give an account to the Lyceum of my expedition to
Maine. Theodore Parker lectures to-night. We have had Whipple on
Genius,--too weighty a subject for him, with his antithetical
definitions new-vamped,--what it _is_, what it is _not_, but
altogether what it is _not_; cuffing it this way and cuffing it that,
as if it were an India-rubber ball. Really, it is a subject which
should expand, expand, accumulate itself before the speaker's eyes as
he goes on, like the snowballs which the boys roll in the street; and
when it stops, it should be so large that he cannot start it, but must
leave it there. [H. N.] Hudson, too, has been here, with a dark shadow
in the core of him, and his desperate wit, so much indebted to the
surface of him,--wringing out his words and snapping them off like a
dish-cloth; very remarkable, but not memorable. Singular that these
two best lecturers should have so much "wave" in their timber,--their
solid parts to be made and kept solid by shrinkage and contraction of
the whole, with consequent checks and fissures.
Ellen and I have a good understanding. I appreciate her genuineness.
Edith tells me after her fashion: "By and by I shall grow up and be a
woman, and then I shall remember how you exercised me." Eddy has been
to Boston to Christmas, but can remember nothing but the coaches, all
Kendall's coaches. There is no variety of that vehicle that he is not
familiar with. He _did_ try twice to tell us something else, but,
after thinking and stuttering a long time, said, "I don't know what
the word is,"--the _one_ word, forsooth, that would have disposed of
all that Boston phenomenon. If you did not know him better than I, I
could tell you more. He is a good companion for me, and I am glad that
we are all natives of Concord. It is _young Concord_. Look out, World!
Mr. Alcott seems to have sat down for the winter. He has got Plato and
other books to read. He is as large-featured and hospitable to
traveling thoughts and thinkers as ever; but with the same Connecticut
philosophy as ever, mingled with what is better. If he would only
stand upright and toe the line!--though he were to put off several
degrees of largeness, and put on a considerable degree of littleness.
After all, I think we must call him particularly _your_ man.
I have pleasant walks and talks with Channing. James Clark--the
Swedenborgian that was--is at the poorhouse, insane with too large
views, so that he cannot support himself. I see him working with Fred
and the rest. Better than be there and not insane. It is strange that
they will make ado when a man's body is buried, but not when he thus
really and tragically dies, or seems to die. Away with your funeral
processions,--into the ballroom with them! I hear the bell toll hourly
over there.[36]
Lidian and I have a standing quarrel as to what is a suitable state
of preparedness for a traveling professor's visit, or for whomsoever
else; but further than this we are not at war. We have made up a
dinner, we have made up a bed, we have made up a party, and our own
minds and mouths, three several times for your professor, and he came
not. Three several turkeys have died the death, which I myself carved,
just as if he had been there; and the company, too, convened and
demeaned themselves accordingly. Everything was done up in good style,
I assure you, with only the part of the professor omitted. To have
seen the preparation (though Lidian says it was nothing extraordinary)
I should certainly have said he was a-coming, but he did not. He must
have found out some shorter way to Turkey,--some overland route, I
think. By the way, he was complimented, at the conclusion of his
course in Boston, by the mayor moving the appointment of a committee
to draw up resolutions expressive, etc., which was done.
I have made a few verses lately. Here are some, though perhaps not the
best,--at any rate they are the shortest,--on that universal theme,
yours as well as mine, and several other people's:--
The good how can we trust!
Only the wise are just.
The good, we use,
The wise we cannot choose;
These there are none above.
The good, they know and love,
But are not known again
By those of lesser ken.
They do not charm us with their eyes,
But they transfix with their advice;
No partial sympathy they feel
With private woe or private weal,
But with the universe joy and sigh,
Whose knowledge is their sympathy.
Good-night. HENRY THOREAU.
P. S.--I am sorry to send such a medley as this to you. I have
forwarded Lane's _Dial_ to Munroe, and he tells the expressman that
all is right.