stimulative homes in America. Here he studied and wrote, some of his poems and studies finding a receptacle in The Dial. He also gave occasional lectures and bad part in the Alcott Conferences. In a letter to her husband, Mrs. Emerson mentions one of the Conversations Where, in argument, “Henry was brave and noble; well as I have always liked him, he still grows on me.” Thus, with opportunities for manual exercise among the trees, vines, and flowers that he loved, and with the mental expansion furnished by acquaintance with the poets and philosophers who came to the Emerson home, Thoreau was happy and appreciated. The interchange of services was entirely reciprocal. Dr. Edward Emerson has declared that “ the presence of such a friendly and sturdy inmate as Thoreau was a great comfort.” In the letters of Thoreau to Emerson are many warm and graceful acknowledgments of their kindness, “a gift as free as the sun or the summer, though I have somewhat molested you with my mean acceptance of it.”
A double grief, however, came to Thoreau and Emerson during the Winter of 1842,—an experience which brought at first stultifying despond and later calm acquiescence to Thoreau's soul. In a letter to Mrs. Brown, the sister of Mrs. Emerson, in March,1842, he refers to these joint events of sadness, the
