s us!" he said.
His faith was sublime.

When all the world reaches the Alcott stage, there will be no need of
soldiers, policemen, night-watchmen, or bolts, bars and locks.

In Eighteen Hundred Forty, Nathaniel Hawthorne came to Concord from
Salem, where he had resigned his clerkship in the custom-house, that he
might devote all his time to literature. He moved into the Old Manse,
which had just been vacated by Doctor Ripley, who had gone
a-Brook-Farming--the Old Manse where Emerson himself once lived.
Elizabeth Peabody, the talented sister of Hawthorne's wife, lived at a
convenient distance, and to her Hawthorne read most of his manuscript,
for I need not explain that literature is not literature until it is
read aloud and reflected back by a sympathetic, discerning mind.
Literature is a collaboration between the reader and the listener.

Margaret Fuller, with her tragic life-story still unwound, lived hard
by, and Hawthorne had already worked her up into copy as "Zenobia."
Margaret's sister Ellen had married Ellery Channing, the closest,
warmest friend that Henry Thoreau ever knew. The gossips arranged a
doublewedding, with Henry and Margaret as the other principals; but when
interviewed on the theme, Henry had merely shaken his head and said, "In
the first place, Margaret Fuller is not fool enough to marry me; and
second, I am not fool enough to marry her."

An Irishman who saw Thoreau in the field making a minute in his notebook
took it for granted that he was casting up his wages, and inquired what
they came to. It was a peculiar farmhand who cared more for ideas than
for wages.

George William Curtis was also a farmhand out on the Lowell Road, but
came into town Saturday evenings--taking a swim in the river on the
way--to attend the philosophical conferences at Emerson's house, and
then went off and made gentle fun of them.

Little Doctor Holmes occasionally drove out from Boston to Concord in a
one-horse chaise; James Russell Lowell had walked over from Cambridge;
and Longfellow had invited all hands to a birthday fete on his lawn at
Cambridge, but Thoreau had declined for himself, saying he had to look
after his pond-lilies and the field-mice on Bedford flats.

Thoreau, at this time, was a member of Emerson's household, and in a
letter Emerson says, "He has his board for what labor he chooses to do;
he is a great benefactor and physician to me, for he is an indefatigable
and skilful laborer, besides bein