I have been ridiculously hindered, and my book is not out, and I must go westward. There is one chapter yet to go to the printer; perhaps two, if I decide to send the second. I must ask you to correct the proofs of this or these chapters. I hope you can and will, if you are not going away. The printer will send you the copy with the proof; and yet, ‘tis likely you will see good cause to correct copy as well as proof. The chapter is Stonehenge, and I may not send it to the printer a week yet, for I am very tender about the personalities in it, and of course you need not think of it till it comes. As we have been so unlucky as to overstay the market-day, — that is, New Year’s, — it is not important, a week or a fortnight, now.
If anything puts it out of your power to help me at this pinch, you must dig up Channing out of his earths, and hold him steady to this beneficence. Send the proofs, if they come, to Phillips, Sampson & Co., Winter Street. We may well go away, if, one of these days, we shall really come home.
Yours, R. W. EMERSON.
This letter may fitly close an intimate correspondence. I have omitted a few notes of different dates,. usually asking Thoreau to perform some friendly hospitable service for Mrs. Emerson or her sister, Mrs. Brown. It seems to have been habitual for Thoreau to take tea at the Emerson house whenever a lecturer from Boston or Cambridge was to speak in Concord and be entertained by the Emersons. In February, 1854, there were two notes from Emerson, who expected to be absent, inviting Thoreau to take charge of Professor Horsford and Theodore Parker in successive weeks.
“They are both to come to my house for the night. Now I wish to your courtesy and counsel to receive these lonely pilgrims, to guide them to our house, and help the alarmed wife to entertain them; and see that they do not lose the way to the Lyceum, nor the hour. If you shall be in town, and can help these gentlemen so far, you will serve the whole municipality as well as
Yours faithfully,
R. W. EMERSON.”
Such notes, which were always complied with, show how far Thoreau was from that unsocial mood in which it has pleased some writers to depict him. The same inference can be drawn from the latest letter I shall here give, addressed to Sophia Thoreau from a kind of educational community in New Jersey. Miss Thoreau submitted it to Mr. Emerson for publication, with other letters, in the volume of 1865; but he returned it, inscribed “Not printable at present.” The lapse of time has removed this objection.
XV.THOREAU, IN NEW JERSEY, TO HIS SISTER.
EAGLESWOOD, PERTH AMBOY, N. J.,
Saturday Eve, November 1, 1856.
DEAR SOPHIA, — I have hardly had time and repose enough to write to you before. I spent the afternoon of Friday (it seems some months ago) in Worcester, but failed to see [Harrison] Blake, he having “gone to the horse race” in Boston; to atone for which I have just received a letter from him, asking me to stop at Worcester and lecture on my return. I called on [Theo.] Brown and [T. W.] Higginson; in the evening came by way of Norwich to New York in the steamer Commonwealth, and, though it was so windy inland, had a perfectly smooth passage, and about as good a sleep as usually at home. Reached New York about seven A.M., too late for the John Potter (there wasn’t any Jonas), so I spent the forenoon there, called on Greeley (who was not in), met [F. A.
