Bradbury told me, when I passed through Boston, that he was coming to New York the following Saturday, and would then settle with me, but he has not made his appearance yet. Will you, the next time you go to Boston, present that order for me which I left with you?

If I say less about Waldo and Tappan now, it is, perhaps, because I may have more to say by and by. Remember me to your mother and Mrs. Emerson, who, I hope, is quite well. I shall be very glad to hear from her, as well as from you. I have very hastily written out something for the Dial, and send it only because you are expecting something, — though something better. It seems idle and Howittish, but it may be of more worth in Concord, where it belongs. In great haste. Farewell.

HENRY D. THOREAU.

The Bradbury mentioned was of the publishing house of Bradbury & Soden, in Boston? which had taken Nathan Hale’s Boston Miscellany off his hands, and had published in it, with promise of payment, Thoreau’s Walk to Wachu sett. But much time had passed, and the debt was not paid; hence the lack of a “shower of shillings” which the letter laments. Emerson’s reply gives the first news of the actual beginning of Alcott’s short-lived paradise at Fruitlands, and dwells with interest on the affairs of the rural and lettered circle at Concord, from which Alcott and his English friends were just departing, only to retain sadder and wiser the next year.

X. EMERSON TO THOREAU.

CONCORD, June 10, 1848.

DEAR HENRY, — It is high time that you had some token from us in acknowledgment of the parcel of kind and helpful things you sent us, as well as of your permanent right in us all. The cold weather saddened our landscape and our gardens here almost until now; but today’s sunshine is obliterating the memory of such things. I have just been visiting my petty plantations, and find that all your grafts live except a single scion; and all my new trees, including twenty pines to fill up interstices in my “curtain,” are well alive. The town is full of Irish, and the woods of engineers with theodolite and red flag, singing out their feet and inches to each other from station to station. Near Mr. Alcott’s [the Hosmer Cottage] the road is already begun. [This was the Fitchburg railroad, which crosses the highway not far from where the Alcotts had been living.]

From Mr. Alcott and Mr. Lane, at Harvard, we have yet heard nothing. They went away in good spirits, having sent “Wood Abram” and Lamed and William Lane before them, with horse and plough, a few days in advance, to begin the spring work. Mr. Lane paid me a long visit, in which he was more than I had ever known him gentle and open; and it was impossible not to sympathize with and honor projects that so often seem without feet or hands. They have near a hundred acres of land which they do not want, and no house, which they want first of all. But they count this an advantage, as it gives them the occasion they so much desire, of building after their own idea. In the event of their attracting to their company a carpenter or two, which is not impossible, it would be a great pleasure to see their building, which could hardly fail to be new and beautiful. They have fifteen acres of woodland, with good timber.

Ellery Channing is excellent company, and we walk in all directions.