Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/187

 JST. 30.] TO R. W. EMERSON. 163

ble with him that I may not miss Aim, and lest he should miss you too much. So you must come back soon, or you will be superseded.

Alcott has heard that I laughed, and so set the people laughing, at his arbor, though I never laughed louder than when I was on the ridge pole. But now I have not laughed for a long time, it is so serious. He is very grave to look at. But, not knowing all this, I strove inno cently enough, the other day, to engage his at tention to my mathematics. &quot;Did you ever study geometry, the relation of straight lines to curves, the transition from the finite to the infi nite ? Fine things about it in Newton and Leib nitz.&quot; But he would hear none of it, men of taste preferred the natural curve. Ah, he is a crooked stick himself. He is getting on now so many knots an hour. There is one knot at pres ent occupying the point of highest elevation, the present highest point; and as many knots as are not handsome, I presume, are thrown down and cast into the pines. Pray show him this if you meet him anywhere in London, for I cannot make him hear much plainer words here. He forgets that I am neither old nor young, nor anything in particular, and behaves as if I had still some of the animal heat in me. As for the building, I feel a little oppressed when I come near it. It has no great disposition to be beau-