recounts their early morning strolls to Fairhaven and elsewhere, while his letters testify to common interest in Indian tradition and archeology. After John's death in 1842, in the poem first written in his journal and later transcribed in a letter to Helen, are pathetic memories of this nature-companionship:
"Dost thou still haunt the brink
Of yonder river’s tide?
And may I ever think
That thou art by my side?"
"What bird wilt thou employ
To bring me word of thee?
For it would give them joy,—
’Twould give them liberty,
To serve their former lord
With wing and minstrelsy."
There was a fearful tragedy connected with the death of John, the first rift in the Thoreau house hold. He died of lockjaw, due to tetanus poison in a cut upon the finger. A friend of Miss Sophia Thoreau, in a recent interview, said that the wound received instant and expert treatment from Boston, but no efforts could avail to avert the terrible sequel. She also verifies the tradition that Henry suffered sympathetically for a time during the hours of agony. His memory of that suffering never lightened; twelve years afterwards, when occasion
