Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/362

 338 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1856,

more about your neighbors and acquaintances than you suspected.

On Monday evening I read the Moose story to the children, to their satisfaction. Ever since I have been constantly engaged in surveying Eagleswood, through woods, salt marshes, and along the shore, dodging the tide, through bushes, mud, and beggar ticks, having no time to look up or think where I am. (It takes ten or fifteen minutes before each meal to pick the beggar ticks out of my clothes ; burrs and the rest are left, and rents mended at the first con venient opportunity.) I shall be engaged per haps as much longer. Mr. Spring wants me to help him about setting out an orchard and vine yard, Mr. Birney asks me to survey a small piece for him, and Mr. Alcott, who has just come down here for the third Sunday, says that Gree- ley (I left my name for him) invites him and me to go to his home with him next Saturday morning and spend the Sunday.

It seems a twelvemonth since I was not here, but I hope to get settled deep into my den again erelong. The hardest thing to find here is soli tude and Concord. I am at Mr. Spring s house. Both he and she and their family are quite agreeable.

I want you to write to me immediately (just left off to talk French with the servant man),