Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/274

244 Island, Elizabeth Hoar gave him the ink-stand to which his letters refer. In a cordial note, given with the remembrance, she wrote,—"and I am unwilling to let you go away without telling you that I, among your other friends, shall miss you much and follow you with remembrance and all the best wishes and confidence." Thoreau was deeply appreciative of such friendship from the noble woman, whom Emerson always regarded as sister, after the death of his brother Charles to whom she was betrothed, and whose presence, says Emerson, "consecrates." Thoreau mentions her with reverence as "my brave townswoman, to be sung of poets." Edward Sherman Hoar, her brother, was one of Thoreau's later friends and contributed to him many comforts during the last months of weakness. Though some years his senior, Thoreau found in Hoar a delightful comrade in mountain excursion and woodland tramp, as long as strength allowed. To the kind thought of this friend, he owed the long drives which gave him mild exercise and refreshing air, after the body had lost its pristine vigor. Mr. Hoar was, for many years, a magistrate in California; on his return to Concord, he preferred the quiet life of a scholar and nature-student, and in Thoreau he recognized a magician-teacher. The epitaph of Mr. Hoar accentuates the qualities