324 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1856,
However, the old house has not failed yet. That offers you lodging for an indefinite time after you get into it ; and in the mean while I offer you bed and board in my father s house, always excepting hair-pillows and new-fangled bedding.
Remember me to your family.
TO DANIEL RICKETSON (AT NEW BEDFORD).
CONCORD, March 27, 1856.
FEIEND RICKETSON, - - I was surprised to hear the other day that Channing was in New Bedford. When he was here last (in December, I think), he said, like himself, in answer to my inquiry where he lived, " that he did not know the name of the place ; " so it has remained in a degree of obscurity to me. I am rejoiced to hear that you are getting on so bravely with him and his verses. He and I, as you know have been old cronies, 1 -
" Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill, Together both, ere the high lawns appeared Under the opening eyelids of the morn, We drove afield, and both together beared," etc.
" But O, the heavy change," now he is gone.
1 Ellery^ Channing is mentioned, though not by name, in the Week (pp.~~21l7l57), and in Walden (p. 414). He was the comrade of Thoreau in Berkshire, and on the Hudson, in New Hampshire, Canada, and Cape Cod, and in many rambles nearer Concord. He was also a companion of Hawthorne in his river voyages, as mentioned in the Mosses.
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