Everybody almost is calling me indolent,”[21] “blind, dependent on my own powers” and “on fate.”... I acknowledge that I have been something of a dreamer and have sacrificed perchance too assiduously on that altar to the “unknown God,” which the Divinity has builded not with hands in the bosom of every decent man, sometimes blazing out clear with flame (like Abel’s sacrifice) heaven seeking, sometimes smothered with green wood and earthward like that of Cain. Lazy, quotha! I haven’t dug, ’tis true, but I have done as well, and “since my free soul was mistress of her choice and could of books distinguish her election,” I have chosen what reading I pleased and what friends I pleased, sometimes scholars and sometimes not.... July 12. For the Campbell I trust I needn’t let my thanks stare me in the face, so I shall leave you to put yourself in my place and imagine them. If you see Scates tell him to write, or I shall--excommunicate, or something dreadful. If you happen to go down by the bath house I wish you would take a look after the skiff and write me about it. Because perhaps I might come down to the Supper in a wagon and bring it up; at any rate, there will be nobody there to take care of it when you leave (or rather to lay claim to it), and it may be lost, for which I should be sorry, for I hope to have considerable navigation out of her yet. August 9. I shall be free as a bird in a fortnight, and ’twill be the last Concord will ever see of me I fancy.... I am again in doubt whether to have my “Poem” printed or no. I haven’t written a line since I have been in this horrible place. I feel as queer as a woman does probably (unmarried of course) when she finds herself in what Dante calls “mezzo cammin del nostro vita.”... I’m homesick and all that sort of thing. Miss ---- being the only being I have actually sympathized with since I have been in Concord has made me feel like a fool. I must go down and see Emerson, and if he doesn’t make me feel _more_ like a fool it won’t be for want of sympathy _in that respect_. He is a good-natured man, in spite of his doctrines. He travelled all the way up from his house to bring me a book which had been sent to me _via_ him. August 17. The first eight pages of the “Poem” are probably printed by this time, and the proof on its winding way, as Charlie Foster would say to me. I wrote to the President requesting him to let me go home to-morrow, but haven’t yet received any answer, and doubt much whether I ever shall. I don’t know what to do with Miss ----. She runs in my head and heart more than she has any right to, but then