Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/188

 164 GOLDEN AGE OF ACHIEVEMENT. [1847,

tiful; it is certainly a wonderful structure, on the whole, and the fame of the architect will endure as long as it shall stand. I should not show you this side alone, if I did not suspect that Lidian had done complete justice to the other.

Mr. [Edmund] Hosmer has been working at a tannery in Stow for a fortnight, though he has just now come home sick. It seems that he was a tanner in his youth, and so he has made up his mind a little at last. This comes of reading the New Testament. Was n t one of the Apos tles a tanner ? Mrs. Hosmer remains here, and John looks stout enough to fill his own shoes and his father s too.

Mr. Blood and his company have at length seen the stars through the great telescope, and he told me that he thought it was worth the while. Mr. Peirce made him wait till the crowd had dispersed (it was a Saturday evening), and then was quite polite, conversed with him, and showed him the micrometer, etc. ; and he said Mr. Blood s glass was large enough for all ordi nary astronomical work. [Rev.] Mr. Frost and Dr. [Josiah] Bartlett seemed disappointed that there was no greater difference between the Cambridge glass and the Concord one. They used only a power of 400. Mr. Blood tells me that he is too old to study the calculus or higher