Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/358

 334 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1856,

tional purposes. It was a colony of radical opin ions and old-fashioned culture; the Grimkes having been bred in Charleston, S. C., which they left by reason of their opposition to negro slavery, and the elder Birney having held slaves in Alabama until his conscience bade him eman cipate them, after which he, too, could have no secure home among slaveholders. He was the first presidential candidate of the voting Aboli tionists, as Lincoln was the last ; and his friend, Theodore Weld, who married Miss Grimke, had been one of the early apostles of emancipation in Ohio. Their circle at Eagleswood appealed to Thoreau s sense of humor, and is described by him in the next letter.

In October, 1856, Mr. Spring, whom Mr. Al- cott was then visiting, wrote to Thoreau inviting him to come to Eagleswood, give lectures, and survey two hundred acres of land belonging to the community, laying out streets and making a map of the proposed village. Thoreau accepted the proposal, and soon after wrote the following letter, which Miss Thoreau submitted to Mr. Emerson for publication, with other letters, in the volume of 1865 ; but he returned it, inscribed &quot;Not printable at present.&quot; The lapse of time has removed this objection.