Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/347

 JST. 38.] TO DANIEL RICKETSON. 323

for even the Concord hens have, though one wonders where they find the raw material of egg-shell here. Beware how you put off your laying to any later spring, else your cackling will not have the inspiring early spring sound.

As for visiting you in April, though I am inclined enough to take some more rambles in your neighborhood, especially by the seaside, I dare not engage myself, nor allow you to expect me. The truth is, I have my enterprises now as ever, at which I tug with ridiculous feebleness, but admirable perseverance, and cannot say when I shall be sufficiently fancy-free for such an ex cursion.

You have done well to write a lecture on Cowper. In the expectation of getting you to read it here, I applied to the curators of our Ly ceum ; 1 but, alas, our Lyceum has been a failure this winter for want of funds. It ceased some weeks since, with a debt, they tell me, to be car ried over to the next year s account. Only one more lecture is to be read by a Signor Some body, an Italian, paid for by private subscription, as a deed of charity to the lecturer. They are not rich enough to offer you your expenses even, though probably a month or two ago they would have been glad of the chance.

1 The Concord Lyceum, founded in 1829, and still extant, though not performing its original function of lectures and debates. See pp. 61, 185, etc.