CONCORD, March 28, 1857.
FRIEND RICKETSON,--If it chances to be perfectly agreeable and
convenient to you, I will make you a visit next week (say Wednesday or
Thursday), and we will have some more rides to Assawampset and the
seashore. Have you got a boat on the former yet? Who knows but we may
camp out on the island? I propose this now, because it will be more
novel to me at this season, and I should like to see your early birds,
etc.
Your historical papers have all come safely to hand, and I thank you
for them. I see that they will be indispensable _mémoires pour
servir_. By the way, have you read Church's "History of Philip's War,"
and looked up the localities? It should make part of a chapter.
I had a long letter from Cholmondeley lately, which I should like to
show you,
I will expect an answer to this straightway,--but be sure you let your
own convenience and inclinations rule it. Please remember me to your
family.
* * * * *
He was welcomed, of course, and went down April 2, as indicated in
the letter of the day before. But he had not been informed that Alcott
was already there, writing in his Diary of April 1, this sketch of
Brooklawn and its occupants:--
"A neat country residence, surrounded by wild pastures and low
woods,--the little stream Acushnet flowing east of the house, and into
Fairhaven Bay. The hamlet of Acushnet at the 'Head of the River' lies
within half a mile of Ricketson's house. His tastes are pastoral,
simple even to wildness; and he passes a good part of his day in the
fields and woods,--or in his rude 'Shanty' near his house, where he
writes and reads his favorite authors, Cowper having the first place.
He is in easy circumstances, and has the manners of an English
gentleman,--frank, hospitable, and with positive persuasions of his
own; mercurial, perhaps, and wayward a little sometimes, but full of
kindness and sensibility to suffering."