Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/154

 130 YEARS OF DISCIPLINE. [1843,

Meanwhile I am somnambulic at least, stir ring in my sleep ; indeed, quite awake. I read a good deal, and am pretty well known in the libraries of New York. Am in with the libra rian (one Dr. Forbes) of the Society Library, who has lately been to Cambridge to learn lib erality, and has come back to let me take out some un-take-out-able books, which I was threat ening to read on the spot. And Mr. McKean, of the Mercantile Library, is a true gentleman (a former tutor of mine), and offers me every privilege there. I have from him a perpetual stranger s ticket, and a citizen s rights besides, all which privileges I pay handsomely for by improving.

A canoe race &quot; came off &quot; on the Hudson the other day, between Chippeways and New York ers, which must have been as moving a sight as the buffalo hunt which I witnessed. But canoes and buffaloes are all lost, as is everything here, in the mob. It is only the people have come to see one another. Let them advertise that there will be a gathering at Hoboken, having bar gained with the ferryboats, and there will be, and they need not throw in the buffaloes.

I have crossed the bay twenty or thirty times, and have seen a great many immigrants going up to the city for the first time : Norwegians, who carry their old-fashioned farming-tools to