"Last nights second reading only confirms my impression from the first. The essay is rich in thoughts, and I should be pained not to meet it again. But then, the thoughts seem to me so out of their natural order, that I cannot read it through without pain. I never once feel myself in a stream of thought, but seem to hear the grating of tools on the mosaic. It is true, as Mr. Emerson says, that essays not to be compared with this have found their way into 'The Dial.' But then, these are more unassuming in their tone, and have an air of quiet good-breeding, which induces us to permit their presence. Yours is so rugged that it ought to be commanding."
It appears, then, that Emerson desired its publication; yet, when it came into his hands (it seems never to have been returned to Thoreau), he did not insert it in "The Dial" when its sole editor; and from him it came to me, long after Thoreau's death. What Miss Fuller says of it had much truth, and so had her remarks on Thoreau's genius in a letter written some months later:
"He is healthful, rare, of open eye, ready hand
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