Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/184

 160 GOLDEN AGE OF ACHIEVEMENT. [1847,

bridge glass ? 2000 ! ! ! The last is about twenty- three feet long.

I think you may have a grand time this win ter pursuing some study, keeping a journal, or the like, while the snow lies deep without. Winter is the time for study, you know, and the colder it is the more studious we are. Give my respects to the whole Penobscot tribe, and tell them that I trust we are good brothers still, and endeavor to keep the chain of friendship bright, though I do dig up a hatchet now and then. I trust you will not stir from your comfortable winter quarters, Miss Bruin, or even put your head out of your hollow tree, till the sun has melted the snow in the spring, and &quot; the green buds, they are a-swellin .&quot;

From your BROTHER HENRY.

This letter will explain some of the allusions in the first letter to Emerson in England. Perez Blood was a rural astronomer living in the ex treme north quarter of Concord, next to Carlisle, with his two maiden sisters, in the midst of a fine oak wood ; their cottage being one of the points in view when Thoreau and his friends took their afternoon rambles. Sophia Thoreau, the younger and soon the only surviving sister, was visiting her cousins in Maine, the &quot; Penob scot tribe &quot; of whom the letter makes mention,