Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/271

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THOREAU AND HIS FRIENDS
241

"whose fine ray,
Doth often shine on Concord's twilight day,
Like those first stars, whose silver beams on high
Most travelers cannot at first descry,
But eyes that wont to range the evening sky"

Allusion has been made to the Sunday afternoon visits, at the Walden hut, of Edmund Hosmer, "who donned a frock instead of a professor's gown." This farmer of the exalted olden type, was the intimate adviser of Emerson and Thoreau on matters of varied import and, with him, their relations were always cordial and sympathetic. He is associated, also, with the Concord experience of George William Curtis. He was a man of strong, clear brain, keen judgment, and poetic instincts, whose home reeked with plenty and hospitality. His daughters, in their Concord home, with rare memorials and memories of the days of yore, are gracious, wise dispensers of their noble inheritance. Emerson's paper in The Dial for July, 1842, on "Agricultural Survey in Massachusetts," reflected his conversations with Mr. Hosmer. In his study of Brook Farm life, Mr. Lindsay Swift asserts that Emerson's decision, not to join this community, was due to the sagacious warnings of his farmer-friend. Hawthorne has, also, well portrayed Mr. Hosmer, with "his homely and self-acquired wisdom, a man of intellectual and moral substance, a sturdy fact, a