Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/346

 322 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1856,

TO DANIEL RICKETSON (AT NEW BEDFORD).

CONCORD, March 5, 1856.

DEAR SIR, I have been out of town, else I should have acknowledged your letter before. Though not in the best mood for writing, I will say what I can now. You plainly have a rare, though a cheap, resource in your shanty. Per haps the time will come when every country-seat will have one, when every country-seat will be one. I would advise you to see that shanty business out, though you go shanty-mad. Work your vein till it is exhausted, or conducts you to a broader one ; so that Channing shall stand before your shanty, and sa^, &quot; That is your house.&quot;

This has indeed been a grand winter for me, and for all of us. I am not considering how much I have enjoyed it. What matters it how happy or unhappy we have been, if we have minded our business and advanced our affairs. I have made it a part of my business to wade in the snow and take the measure of the ice. The ice on our pond was just two feet thick on the first of March ; and I have to-day been survey ing a wood-lot, where I sank about two feet at every step.

It is high time that you, fanned by the warm breezes of the Gulf Stream, had begun to &quot;lay&quot;