Page:Some unpublished letters of Henry D. and Sophia E. Thoreau; a chapter in the history of a still-born book.djvu/52

 together about three weeks before her death: at the same time, I think there can be no harm in publishing it now."

So far as pertains to our purpose to-night I might go on at once to the Froude letter, but in so doing I should shirk a duty to the dead, for the discharging of which I am sure you will allow me a few moments.

If you should open a certain Life of Thoreau you could read therein, "Mrs. Thoreau, with her sister Louisa, and her sisters-in-law, Sarah, Maria, and Jane Thoreau, took their share in the village bickerings"; and also that Mrs. Thoreau indulged in "sharp and sudden flashes of gossip and malice": this and much else that is derogatory. Now Mrs. Thoreau died in 1873, and yet, in 1897, and