[63] The centre of Concord village, where the post-office and shops are,—so called from an old mill-dam where now is a street.
[64] The aunt of R. W. Emerson, then eighty-one years old, an admirer of Thoreau, as her notes to him show. For an account of her see Emerson's Lectures and Biographical Sketches, Centenary Ed., pp. 397-433; Riverside Ed., pp. 371-404.
[65] The books on India, Egypt, etc., sent by Cholmondeley. See [p. 271]. They were divided between the Concord Public Library and the libraries of Alcott, Blake, Emerson, Sanborn, etc.
[66] Mr. Channing became a frequent visitor at Brooklawn in the years of his residence at New Bedford, 1856-58. See [p. 274].
[67] These books were ordered by Cholmondeley in London, and sent to Boston just as he was starting for the Crimean War, in October, 1855, calling them "a nest of Indian books." They included Mill's History of British India, several translations of the sacred books of India, and one of them in Sanscrit; the works of Bunsen, so far as then published, and other valuable books. In the note accompanying this gift, Cholmondeley said, "I think I never found so much kindness in all my travels as in your country of New England." In return, Thoreau sent his English friend, in 1857, his own Week, Emerson's Poems, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and F. L. Olmsted's book on the Southern States (then preparing for the secession which they attempted four years later). This was perhaps the first copy of Whitman seen in England, and when Cholmondeley began to read it to his stepfather, Rev. Z. Macaulay, at Hodnet, that clergyman declared he would not hear it, and threatened to throw it in the fire. On reading the Week (he had received Walden from Thoreau when first in America), Cholmondeley wrote me, "Would you tell dear Thoreau that the lines I admire so much in his Week begin thus:—
'Low-anchored cloud,
Newfoundland air,' etc.
In my mind the best thing he ever wrote."
[68] Ellery Channing is mentioned, though not by name, in the Week (pp. 169, 378), and in Walden (p. 295). 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.
[69] The Concord Lyceum, founded in 1829, and still extant, though not performing its original function of lectures and debates. See [pp. 51], [154], etc.
[70] This was the town of Harvard, not the college. Perhaps the excursion was to visit Fruitlands, where Alcott and Lane had established their short-lived community, in a beautiful spot near Still River, an affluent of the Nashua, and half-way from Concord to Wachusett. "Asnebumskit," mentioned in a former letter, is the highest hill near Worcester, as "Nobscot" is the highest near Concord. Both have Indian names.