Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/117

Rh deaths of John Thoreau and Waldo Emerson. With tender memory of his brother, he recounts the strange calm brought to him as he listened to a music-box soon after John's death, and recalls the steadfast rotation of the seasons, the songs of the birds and the gentle flow of the river, until he can write with peaceful philosophy, "the everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful if it is not." The letter shows a deep, controlled grief and a groping, yet undaunted, faith suggestive of passages of "In Memoriam." With delicate beauty he says of the death of little Waldo,—"He died as the mist rises from the brook, which the sun will soon dart his ray through. Do not the flowers die every autumn? He had not taken root here." ("Familiar Letters," p. 48.)

Thoreau's ambitions for a future life of authorship, with the necessary leisure to develop and express his thought, had shown early in life and had been fostered by his service on The Dial. An opportunity offered in 1843 for him to tutor the son of Mr. William Emerson, at Castleton, Staten Island. As this arrangement would introduce him to New York litterateurs and editors, he took the position and remained there about six months. His letters record his cordial relations with all the Emerson family but the change did not prove