Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/124

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100 YEARS OF DISCIPLINE. [1843,

TO HIS FATHER AND MOTHER (AT CONCORD). CASTLETON, June 8, 1843.

DEAR PARENTS, I have got quite well now, and like the lay of the land and the look of the sea very much, only the country is so fair that it seems rather too much as if it were made to be looked at. I have been to New York four or five times, and have run about the island a good deal.

George Ward, when I last saw him, which was at his house in Brooklyn, was studying the Daguerreotype process, preparing to set up in that line. The boats run now almost every hour from 8 A. M. to 7 P. M., back and forth, so that I can get to the city much more easily than before. I have seen there one Henry James, a lame man, of whom I had heard before, whom I like very much ; and he asks me to make free use of his house, which is situated in a pleasant part of the city, adjoining the University, I have met several people whom I knew before, and among the rest Mr. Wright, who was on his way to Niagara.

I feel already about as well acquainted with New York as with Boston, that is, about as little, perhaps. It is large enough now, and they intend it shall be larger still. Fifteenth Street, where some of my new acquaintance live,