Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/148

 124 YEARS OF DISCIPLINE. [1843,

Fourier ist scheme of association, one develop ment of which was going on. at Brook Farm, under direction of George Ripley, and another, differing in design, at Fruitlands, under Bron- son Alcott and Charles Lane. The jocose allu sions of Thoreau to his Jones ancestors (the de scendants of the Tory Colonel Jones of Weston) had this foundation in fact, that his uncle, Charles Dunbar, soon to be named in connec tion with Daniel Webster, suffered from a sort of lethargy, which would put him to sleep in the midst of conversation. Webster had been re tained in the once famous &quot; Wyman case,&quot; of a bank officer charged with fraud, and had exerted his great forensic talent for a few days in the Concord court-house. Emerson wrote Thoreau, &quot; You will have heard of the Wyman trial, and the stir it made in the village. But the Cliff and Walden knew nothing of that.&quot;

TO MRS. THOREAU (AT CONCORD).

CASTLETON, Tuesday, August 29, 1843.

DEAR MOTHER, Mr. Emerson has just given me warning that he is about to send to Concord, which I will endeavor to improve. I am a great deal more wakeful than I was, and growing stout in other respects, so that I may yet accomplish something in the literary way ; indeed, I should have done so before now but