Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/244

 III. FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS.

TO R. W. EMERSON 1 (AT CONCORD).

FIRE ISLAND BEACH, Thursday morning-, July 25, 1850.

DEAR FRIEND, I am writing this at the house of Smith Oakes, within one mile of the wreck. He is the one who rendered most assist ance. William H. Charming came down with me, but I have not seen Arthur Fuller, nor Gree- ley, nor Marcus Spring. Spring and Charles Sumner were here yesterday, but left soon. Mr. Oakes and wife tell me (all the survivors came, or were brought, directly to their house) that the ship struck at ten minutes after four A. M., and all hands, being mostly in their mghtclothes, made haste to the forecastle, the water coming- in at once. There they remained ; the passengers in the forecastle, the crew above it, doing what

1 It will readily be seen that this letter relates to the ship wreck on Fire Island, near New York, in which Margaret Ful ler, Countess Ossoli, with her husband and child, was lost. A letter with no date of the year, but probably written February 15, 1840, from Emerson to Thoreau, represents them both as taking- much trouble about a house in Concord for Mrs. Fuller, the mother of Margaret, who had just sold her Groton house, and wished to live with her daughter near Emerson.