LETTER TO NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, JULY 22 1851

My dear Hawthorne:

This is not a letter, or even a note -- but only a passing word said to you over your garden gate. I thank you for your easy-flowing long letter (received yesterday) which flowed through me, and refreshed all my meadows, as the Housatonic -- opposite me -- does in reality. I am now busy with various things -- not incessantly though; but enough to require my frequent tinkerings; and this is the height of the haying season, and my nag is dragging me home his winter's dinners all the time. And so, one way and another, I am not yet a disengaged man; but shall be, very soon. Meantime, the earliest good chance I get, I shall roll down to you, my good fellow, seeing we -- that is, you and I, -- must hit upon some little bit of vagabondism, before Autumn comes. Graylock -- we must go and vagabondize there. But ere we start, we must dig a deep hole, and bury all Blue Devils, there to abide till the Last Day.

Goodbye, his X mark.

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