Perhaps it always costs me more than it comes to to lecture before a
promiscuous audience. It is an irreparable injury done to my modesty
even,--I become so indurated.
O solitude! obscurity! meanness! I never triumph so as when I have the
least success in my neighbor's eyes. The lecturer gets fifty dollars a
night; but what becomes of his winter? What consolation will it be
hereafter to have fifty thousand dollars for living in the world? I
should like not to exchange _any_ of my life for money.
These, you may think, are reasons for not lecturing, when you have no
great opportunity. It is even so, perhaps. I could lecture on dry oak
leaves; I could, but who could hear me? If I were to try it on any
large audience, I fear it would be no gain to them, and a positive
loss to me. I should have behaved rudely toward my rustling
friends.[78]
I am surveying, instead of lecturing, at present. Let me have a
skimming from your "pan of unwrinkled cream."
* * * * *
The proposition about Mr. Alcott in Thoreau's letter of September 23,
1856, to Mr. Ricketson took effect in the spring of 1857, and early in
April he went to visit the Ricketsons in New Bedford, going down from
Walpole, and there met his younger friends Channing and Thoreau.
Anticipating Mr. Alcott's visit, Thoreau wrote thus:--