Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/112

 whose name I had read in the morning through the telegraph-glass, when she first came upon the coast. On Sundays I beheld from some interior hill the long procession of vessels getting to sea,—reaching from the city wharves through the Narrows and past the Hook, quite to the ocean stream." Writing to Emerson, August 7, he adds: "I study the aspects of commerce at its Narrows here, where it passes in review before me; and this seems to be beginning at the right end to understand this Babylon of New York." But he was more interested in literature.

Thus he writes: Staten Island, Sunday, 24th of September, 1843.

The poet is he that hath fat enough, like bears and marmots, to suck his claws o' winters. He feeds on his own marrow. He hybernates in this world till spring breaks. He records a moment of pure life. Who can see these cities and say that there is any life in them? I walked through New York yesterday, and met no real and living person. I love to think of dormice and all the tribe [64]