Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/96

 72 YEARS OF DISCIPLINE, [1843,

you ere this. Mr. Alcott has a letter from He- raud, 1 and a book written by him, the Life of Savonarola, which he wishes to have re- published here. Mr. Lane will write a notice of it. (The latter says that what is in the New York post-office may be directed to Mr. Alcott.) Miss [Elizabeth] Peabody has sent a &quot; Notice to the readers of the Dial, &quot; which is not good.

Mr. Chapin lectured this evening, and so rhetorically that I forgot my duty and heard very little. I find myself better than I have been, and am meditating some other method of paying debts than by lectures and writing, which will only do to talk about. If anything of that &quot; other &quot; sort should come to your ears in New York, will you remember it for me ?

Excuse this scrawl, which I have written over the embers in the dining-room. I hope that you live on good terms with yourself and the gods. Yours in haste, HENRY.

Mr. Lane and his lucubrations proved to be tough subjects, and the next letter has more to say about them and the &quot; Dial.&quot; Lane had undertaken to do justice to Mr. Alcott and his books, as may still be read in the pages of that

1 An English critic and poetaster. See Memoir of Bronson Alcott, pp. 292-318.