CONCORD, July 13, 1852.
DEAR SOPHIA,--I am a miserable letter-writer, but perhaps if I should
say this at length and with sufficient emphasis and regret it would
make a letter. I am sorry that nothing transpires here of much moment;
or, I should rather say, that I am so slackened and rusty, like the
telegraph wire this season, that no wind that blows can extract music
from me.
I am not on the trail of any elephants or mastodons, but have
succeeded in trapping only a few ridiculous mice, which cannot feed my
imagination. I have become sadly scientific. I would rather come upon
the vast valley-like "spoor" only of some celestial beast which this
world's woods can no longer sustain, than spring my net over a bushel
of moles. You must do better in those woods where you are. You must
have some adventures to relate and repeat for years to come, which
will eclipse even mother's voyage to Goldsborough and Sissiboo.
They say that Mr. Pierce, the presidential candidate, was in town last
5th of July, visiting Hawthorne, whose college chum he was; and that
Hawthorne is writing a life of him, for electioneering purposes.
Concord is just as idiotic as ever in relation to the spirits and
their knockings. Most people here believe in a spiritual world which
no respectable junk bottle, which had not met with a slip, would
condescend to contain even a portion of for a moment,--whose
atmosphere would extinguish a candle let down into it, like a well
that wants airing; in spirits which the very bullfrogs in our meadows
would blackball. Their evil genius is seeing how low it can degrade
them. The hooting of owls, the croaking of frogs, is celestial wisdom
in comparison. If I could be brought to believe in the things which
they believe, I should make haste to get rid of my certificate of
stock in this and the next world's enterprises, and buy a share in the
first Immediate Annihilation Company that offered. I would exchange my
immortality for a glass of small beer this hot weather. Where _are_
the heathen? Was there ever any superstition before? And yet I suppose
there may be a vessel this very moment setting sail from the coast of
North America to that of Africa with a missionary on board! Consider
the dawn and the sunrise,--the rainbow and the evening,--the words of
Christ and the aspiration of all the saints! Hear music! see, smell,
taste, feel, hear,--anything,--and then hear these idiots, inspired by
the cracking of a restless board, humbly asking, "Please, Spirit, if
you cannot answer by knocks, answer by tips of the table." ! ! ! ! ! !
!