Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/147

 JET. 20.] EMERSON TO THOREAU. 123

selves, with the aid of several to Thoreau s fam ily, which the purpose of Emerson, in 1865, to present his friend in a stoical character, had ex cluded from the collection then printed. Men tion of C. S. Wheeler and his sad death in Ger many had come to him from Emerson, as well as from his own family at Concord, of whose occupations Thoreau gives so genial a picture in the letter of August 6, to his mother. Emerson wrote : &quot; You will have read and heard the sad news to the little village of Lincoln, of Stearns Wheeler s death. Such an overthrow to the hopes of his parents made me think more of them than of the loss the community will suffer in his kindness, diligence, and ingenuous mind.&quot; He died at Leipsic, in the midst of Greek stud ies which have since been taken up and carried farther by a child of Concord, Professor Good win of the same university. Henry James, several times mentioned in the correspondence, was the moral and theological essayist (father of the novelist Henry James, and the distin guished Professor James of Harvard), who was so striking a personality in the Concord and Cambridge circle for many years. W. H. Chan- ning was a Christian Socialist fifty years ago, cousin of Ellery Charming, and nephew and biographer of Dr. Channing. Both he and Hor ace Greeley were then deeply interested in the