Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/117

 JET. 25.] TO R. W. EMERSON. 93

I have had no later experiences yet. You must not count much upon what I can do or learn in New York. I feel a good way off here ; and it is not to be visited, but seen and dwelt in. I have been there but once, and have been con fined to the house since. Everything there dis appoints me but the crowd ; rather, I was dis appointed with the rest before I came. I have no eyes for their churches, and what else they find to brag of. Though I know but little about Boston, yet what attracts me, in a quiet way, seems much meaner and more pretending than there, libraries, pictures, and faces in the street. You don t know where any respecta bility inhabits. It is in the crowd in Chatham Street. The crowd is something new, and to be attended to. It is worth a thousand Trinity Churches and Exchanges while it is looking at them, and will run over them and trample them under foot one day. There are two things I hear and am aware I live in the neighborhood of, the roar of the sea and the hum of the city. I have just come from the beach (to find your letter), and I like it much. Everything there is on a grand and generous scale, sea weed, water, and sand ; and even the dead fishes, horses, and hogs have a rank, luxuriant odor ; great shad-nets spread to dry ; crabs and horse shoes crawling over the sand ; clumsy boats, only