Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/314

 290 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1854,

As above mentioned, Thoreau went to lecture at Nantucket, and on his way spent a day or two with Mr. Ricketson, reaching his house 011 Christmas Day. His host, who then saw him for the first time, says :

&quot; I had expected him at noon, but as he did not arrive, I had given him up for the day. In the latter part of the afternoon I was clearing off the snow from my front steps, when, looking up, I saw a man walking up the carriage-road, bearing a portmanteau in one hand and an um brella in the other. He was dressed in a long overcoat of dark color, and wore a dark soft hat. I had no suspicion it was Thoreau, and rather supposed it was a peddler of small wares.&quot;

This was a common mistake to make. When Thoreau ran the gauntlet of the Cape Cod vil lages, &quot; feeling as strange,&quot; he says, &quot; as if he were in a town in China,&quot; one of the old fish ermen could not believe that he had not some thing to sell. Being finally satisfied that it was not a peddler with his pack, the old man said, &quot;Wai, it makes no odds what tis you carry, so long as you carry Truth along with ye.&quot; Mr. Ricketson soon came to the same conclusion about his visitor, and in the early September of 1855 returned the visit.