Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/322

 298 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1855,

the dog down cellar. Lowell has just been ap pointed Professor of Belles-Lettres in Harvard University, in place of Longfellow, resigned, and will go very soon to spend another year in Europe, before taking his seat.

I am from time to time congratulating myself on my general want of success as a lecturer; apparent want of success, but is it not a real tri umph? I do my work clean as I go along, and they will not be likely to want me anywhere again. So there is 110 danger of my repeating myself, and getting to a barrel of sermons, which you must upset, and begin again with.

My father and mother and sister all desire to be remembered to you, and trust that you will never come within range of Russian bullets. Of course, I would rather think of you as settled down there in Shropshire, in the camp of the English people, making acquaintance with your men, striking at the root of the evil, perhaps assaulting that rampart of cotton bags that you tell of. But it makes no odds where a man goes or stays, if he is only about his business.

Let me hear from you, wherever you are, and believe me yours ever in the good fight, whether before Sevastopol or under the wreken.

While Cholmondeley s first letter from Eng land was on its way to Concord, Thoreau was