Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/134

 110 YEARS OF DISCIPLINE. [1845,

it run heedless to the sea, as if I were there to countenance it? George Miiiott, too, looms up considerably, and many another old familiar face. These things all look sober and respecta ble. They are better than the environs of New York, I assure you.

I am pleased to think of Chamiing as an in habitant of the gray town. Seven cities con tended 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. In imagination I see you pilgrims taking your way by the red lodge and the cabin of the brave farmer man, so youthful and hale, to the still cheerful woods. And Hawthorne, too, I remember as one with whom I sauntered, in old heroic times, along the banks of the* Sca- mander, amid the ruins of chariots and heroes. Tell him not to desert, even after the tenth year. Others may say, &quot; Are there not the cities of Asia ? &quot; But what are they ? Staying at home is the heavenly way.

And Elizabeth Hoar, my brave townswoman, to be sung of poets, if I may speak of her whom I do not know. Tell Mrs. Brown that I do not forget her, going her way under the stars through this chilly world, I did not think of the wind, and that I went a little way with her. Tell her not to despair. Concord s little