Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/246

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222 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1850,

to Portland, New England, to-day. She and Mrs. Fuller must, and probably will, come to gether. The cook, the last to leave, and the steward (?) will know the rest. I shall try to see them. In the mean while I shall do what I can to recover property and obtain particulars hereabouts. William H. Charming did I write it ? has come with me. Arthur Fuller 1 has this moment reached the house. He reached the beach last night. We got here yesterday noon. A good part of the wreck still holds to gether where she struck, and something may come ashore with her fragments. The last body was found on Tuesday, three miles west. Mrs. Oakes dried the papers which were in the trunk, and she says they appeared to be of various kinds. " Would they cover that table ? " (a small round one). " They would if spread out. Some were tied up. There were twenty or thirty books " in the same half of the trunk. Another smaller trunk, empty, came ashore, but there was no mark on it." She speaks of Paulina as if she might have been a sort of nurse to the child. I expect to go to Patchogue, whence the pilferers must have chiefly come, and advertise, etc.

1 Rev. A. B. Fuller, then of Manchester, N. H., afterward of Boston ; a brother of Margaret, who died a chaplain in the Civil War.