He remembers you with great faith and hope; thinks you ought not to see Concord again these ten years — that you ought to grind up fifty Concords in your mill — and much other opinion and counsel he holds in store on this topic. Hawthorne walked with me yesterday afternoon, and not until after our return did I read his Celestial Railroad, which has a serene strength which we cannot afford not to praise, in this low life.

Our Dial thrives well enough in these weeks. I print W. E. Channing’s Letters, or the first ones, but he does not care to have them named as his for a while. They are very agreeable reading, and their wisdom lightened by a vivacity very rare in the Dial. [S. G.] Ward, too, has sent me some sheets on architecture, whose good sense is eminent. I have a valuable manuscript — a sea voyage — from a new hand, which is all clear good sense, and I may make some of Mr. Lane’s graver sheets give way for this honest story; otherwise I shall print it in October. I have transferred the publishing of the Dial to James Munroe & Co.

Do not, I entreat you, let me be in ignorance of anything good which you know of my fine friends, Waldo and Tappan. T. writes me never a word. I had a letter from H. James, promising to see you, and you must not fail to visit him. I must soon write to him, though my debts of this nature are, perhaps, too many. To him I much prefer to talk than to write. Let me know well how you prosper and what you meditate. And all good abide with you.

R. W. E.

June 15.

Whilst my letter has lain on the table waiting for a traveler, your letter and parcel have safely arrived. I may not have place now for the Winter’s Walk in the July Dial, which is just making up its last sheets, and somehow I must end it to-morrow, when I go to Boston. I shall then keep it for October, subject, however, to your order, if you find a better disposition for it. I will carry the order to the faithless booksellers. Thanks for all these tidings of my friends at New York and at the Island, and love to the last. I have letters from Lane at Fruitlands, and from Miss Fuller at Niagara; she found it sadly cold and rainy at the Falls.

XI. THOREAU TO EMERSON.

STATEN ISLAND, July 8, 1843.

DEAR FRIENDS, — I was very glad to hear your voices from so far. I do not believe there are eight hundred human beings on the globe. It is all a fable, and I cannot but think that you speak with a slight outrage and disrespect of Concord when you talk of fifty of them. There are not so many. Yet think not that I have left all behind, for already I begin to track my way over the earth, and find the cope of heaven extending beyond its horizon, — forsooth, like the roofs of these Dutch houses. My thoughts revert to those dear hills and that river which so fills up the world to its brim, — worthy to be named with Mincius and Alpheus, — still drinking its meadows while I am far away. How can it run heedless to the sea, as if I were there to countenance it? George Minott, too, looms up considerably, — and many another old familiar face. These things all look sober and respectable. They are better than the environs of New York, I assure you.

I am pleased to think of Channing as an inhabitant of the grey town. Seven cities contended for Homer dead. Tell him to remain at least long enough to establish Concord’s right and interest in him. I was beginning to know the man.