Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/99

Rh do all the members of this house. You must make haste home before we have settled all the great questions, for they are fast being disposed of. But I must leave room for Mrs. Emerson.

Mrs. Emerson s letter, after speaking of other matters, gave a lively sketch of Thoreau at one of Alcott s Conversations in her house, which may be quoted as illustrating the young Nature- worshiper s position at the time, and the more humane and socialistic spirit of Alcott and Lane, who were soon to leave Concord for their exper iment of communistic life at &quot; Fruitlands,&quot; in the rural town of Harvard.

&quot; Last evening we had the Conversation, though, owing to the bad weather, but few at tended. The subjects were: What is Prophecy? Who is a Prophet? and The Love of Nature. Mr. Lane decided, as for all time and the race, that this same love of nature of which Henry [Thoreau] was the champion, and Elizabeth Hoar and Lidian (though L. disclaimed possess ing it herself) his faithful squiresses that this love was the most subtle and dangerous of sins ; a refined idolatry, much more to be dreaded than gross wickednesses, because the gross sinner would be alarmed by the depth of his degrada tion, and come up from it in terror, but the un happy idolaters of Nature were deceived by the