Page:Some unpublished letters of Henry D. and Sophia E. Thoreau; a chapter in the history of a still-born book.djvu/19

 after that event. A subsequent visit to Concord brought the distant friend and the Thoreau survivors face to face: it was the res angustæ domi alone that had prevented such a meeting with Thoreau himself. The visitor from afar was tenderly received by both the mourning mother and sister and Thoreau's friends Alcott and Channing. Before returning, the pilgrim was requested by both Mrs. Thoreau and Sophia to select from the library of his departed friend some books for keepsakes. Thus it came that both the ex-professor and the present editor saw and touched the very copy of Lemprière's Classical Dictionary that had been Thoreau's when he was an undergraduate in Harvard College, the first flyleaf bearing the autograph: "D. H. Thoreau." This is written in ink,