Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/202

 178 GOLDEN AGE OF ACHIEVEMENT. f!848 ?

to me, to America, which I have put my spade into, and about which there is no doubt.

I thought that you needed to be informed of Hugh s progress. He has moved his house, as I told you, and dug his cellar, and purchased stone of Sol Wetherbee for the last, though he has not hauled it ; all which has cost sixteen dol lars, which I have paid. He has also, as next in order, run away from Concord without a penny in his pocket, &quot; crying &quot; by the way, having had another long difference with strong beer, and a first one, I suppose, with his wife, who seems to have complained that he sought other society ; the one difference leading to the other, perhaps, but I don t know which was the leader. He writes back to his wife from Sterling, near Worcester, where he is chopping wood, his dis tantly kind reproaches to her, which I read straight through to her (not to his bottle, which he has with him, and no doubt addresses orally). He says that he will go on to the South in the spring, and will never return to Concord. Per haps he will not. Life is not tragic enough for him, and he must try to cook up a more highly seasoned dish for himself. Towns which keep a barroom and a gun-house and a reading-room, should also keep a steep precipice whereoff im patient soldiers may jump. His sun went down, to me, bright and steady enough in the west, but