Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/321

 asx.37.] TO THOMAS CHOLMONDELEY. 297

and the new king of the Sandwich Islands shall pull together. When I think of the gold-diggers and the Mormons, the slaves and the slavehold ers and the flibustiers, I naturally dream of a glorious private life. No, I am not patriotic ; I shall not meddle with the Gem of the Antilles. General Quitman l cannot count on my aid, alas for him ! nor can General Pierce. 2

I still take my daily walk, or skate over Con cord fields or meadows, and on the whole have more to do with nature than with man. We have not had much snow this winter, but have had some remarkably cold weather, the mercury, February 6, not rising above 6 below zero dur ing the day, and the next morning falling to 26. Some ice is still thirty inches thick about us. A rise in the river has made uncommonly good skating, which I have improved to the ex tent of some thirty miles a day, fifteen out and fifteen in.

Emerson is off westward, enlightening the Hamiltonians [in Canada] and others, mingling his thunder with that of Niagara. Chamiing still sits warming his five wits his sixth, you know, is always limber over that stove, with

1 Quitman, aided perhaps by Laurence Oliphant, was aim ing to capture Cuba with &quot; filibusters &quot; (flibustiers).

2 Then President of the United States, whose life Haw thorne had written in 1852.