Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/434

 408 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1859,

ties to contend with the greater part of his life, he always studied how to make a good article, pencil or other (for he practiced various arts), and was never satisfied with what he had pro duced. Nor was he ever disposed in the least to put off a poor one for the sake of pecuniary gain, as if he labored for a higher end.

Though he was not very old, and was not a native of Concord, I think that he was, on the whole, more identified with Concord street than any man now alive, having come here when he was about twelve years old, and set up for him self as a merchant here, at the age of twenty-one, fifty years ago. As I sat in a circle the other evening with my mother and sister, my mother s two sisters, and my father s two sisters, it oc curred to me that my father, though seventy-one, belonged to the youngest four of the eight who recently composed our family.

How swiftly at last, but unnoticed, a genera tion passes away ! Three years ago I was called with my father to be a witness to the signing of our neighbor Mr. Frost s will. Mr. Samuel Hoar, who was there writing it, also signed it. I was lately required to go to Cambridge to tes tify to the genuineness of the will, being the only one of the four who could be there, and now I am the only one alive.

My mother and sister thank you heartily