Page:Some unpublished letters of Henry D. and Sophia E. Thoreau; a chapter in the history of a still-born book.djvu/57

 ''near to despair. I am growing not to despair, and I thank you for a helping hand.''

''Well, I must see you some time or other. It is not such a great matter with these steam bridges. I wish to shake hands with you and look a brave man in the face. In the meantime I will but congratulate you on the age in which your work is cast: the world has never seen one more pregnant.''

God bless you!

Your friend (if you will let him call you so),

J. A. Froude.

There is so much between the lines here that one must go back to the middle of the present century for a clue. In 1849 Froude, then a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford,