Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/211

 JET. 30.] TO ELLIOT CABOT. 187

day, where he was to lecture. He thought that he should get through his northern journeying by the 25th of February, and go to London to spend March and April, and if he did not go to Paris in May, then come home. He has been eminently successful, though the papers this side of the water have been so silent about his ad ventures.

My book, 1 fortunately, did not find a pub lisher ready to undertake it, and you can im agine the effect of delay on an author s estimate of his own work. However, I like it well enough to mend it, and shall look at it again directly when I have dispatched some other things.

I have been writing lectures for our own Ly ceum this winter, mainly for my own pleasure and advantage. I esteem it a rare happiness to be able to tvrite anything, but there (if I ever get there) my concern for it is apt to end. Time & Co. are, after all, the only quite honest and trustworthy publishers that we know. I can sympathize, perhaps, with the barberry

1 From England Emerson wrote: &quot;I am not of opinion that your book should be delayed a month. I should print it at once, nor do I think that yon would incur any risk in doing so that you cannot well afford. It is very certain to have readers and debtors, here as well as there. The Dial is ab surdly well known here. We at home, I think, are always a little ashamed of it, I am, and yet here it is spoken of with the utmost gravity, and I do not laugh.&quot;