Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/182

 158 GOLDEN AGE OF ACHIEVEMENT. [1847,

Soon after this scientific correspondence, Tho- reau left his retreat by Walden to take the place of Emerson in his household, while his friend went to visit Carlyle and give lectures in Eng land. The letters that follow are among the longest Thoreau ever composed, and will give a new conception of the writer to those who may have figured him as a cold, stoical, or selfish person, withdrawn from society and its duties. The first describes the setting out of Emerson for Europe.

TO SOPHIA THOREAU (AT BANGOR).

CONCORD, October 24, 1847.

DEAR SOPHIA, I thank you for those let ters about Ktaadn, and hope you will save and send me the rest, and anything else you may meet with relating to the Maine woods. That Dr. Young is both young and green too at trav eling in the woods. However, I hope he got &quot; yarbs &quot; enough to satisfy him. I went to Bos ton the 5th of this month to see Mr. Emerson off to Europe. He sailed in the Washington Irving packet ship ; the same in which Mr. [F. II.] Hedge went before him. Up to this trip the first mate aboard this ship was, as I hear, one Stephens, a Concord boy, son of Stephens the carpenter, who used to live above Mr. Den nis s. Mr. Emerson s stateroom was like a car-