MY DEAR DOCTOR LE BARON:
I received last night your two notes, and the cheque, enclosed in one of them, for one thousand and twenty dollars.
Are my friends bent on killing me with kindness? No, you will say, but to make me live longer. I thought myself sufficiently loaded with benefits already, and you add more and more. It appears that you all will rebuild my house and rejuvenate me by sending me in my old days abroad on a young man's excursion.
I am a lover of men, but this recent wonderful experience of their tenderness surprises and occupies my thoughts day by day. Now that I have all or almost all the names of the men and women who have conspired in this kindness to me (some of whom I have never personally known), I please myself with the thought of meeting each and asking, Why have we not met before? Why have you not told me that we thought alike? Life is not so long, nor sympathy of thought so common, that we can spare the society of those with whom we best agree. Well, 'tis probably my own fault by sticking ever to my solitude. Perhaps it is not too late to learn of these friends a better lesson.
Thank them for me whenever you meet them, and say to them that I am not wood or stone, if I have not yet trusted myself so far as to go to each one of them directly.
My wife insists that I shall also send her acknowledgments to them and you.
Yours and theirs affectionately,
R.W. EMERSON.
DR. LE BARON KUSSELL.
The following are the names of the subscribers to the fund for rebuilding Mr. Emerson's house:—