Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/428

 402 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1859,

some one there whose face is set the same way as my own.

My last essay, on which I am still engaged, is called Autumnal Tints. I do not know how read able (i. e., by me to others) it will be.

I met Mr. James the other night at Emer son s, at an Alcottian conversation, at which, however, Alcott did not talk much, being dis turbed by James s opposition. The latter is a hearty man enough, with whom you can differ very satisfactorily, on account of both his doc trines and his good temper. He utters quasi philanthropic dogmas in a metaphysic dress ; but they are for all practical purposes very crude. He charges society with all the crime committed, and praises the criminal for com mitting it. But I think that all the remedies he suggests out of his head for he goes no farther, hearty as he is would leave us about where we are now. For, of course, it is not by a gift of turkeys on Thanksgiving Day that he proposes to convert the criminal, but by a true sympathy with each one, with him, among the rest, who lyingly tells the world from the gal lows that he has never been treated kindly by a single mortal since he was born. But it is not so easy a thing to sympathize with another, though you may have the best disposition to do it. There is Dobson over the hill. Have not