My two little girls know the road now, though it is nearly two miles from my house, and find their way to the spring at the foot of a pine grove, and with some awe to the ruins of a village of shanties, all overgrown with mullein, which the Irish who built the railroad left behind them.  At a good distance in from the shore the land rises to a rocky head, perhaps sixty feet above the water.  Thereon I think to place a hut; perhaps it will have two stories and be a petty tower, looking out to Monadnoc and other New Hampshire Mountains.  There I hope to go with book and pen when good hours come.  I shall think there, a fortnight might bring you from London to Walden Pond.—­Life wears on, and do you say the gray hairs appear?  Few can so well afford them.  The black have not hung over a vacant brain, as England and America know; nor, white or black, will it give itself any Sabbath for many a day henceforward, as I believe.  What have we to do with old age?  Our existence looks to me more than ever initial.  We have come to see the ground and look up materials and tools.  The men who have any positive quality are a flying advance party for reconnoitring.  We shall yet have a right work, and kings for competitors.  With ever affectionate remembrance to your wife, your friend,

—­R.W.  Emerson

CXI.  Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 31 May, 1846

My Dear Friend,—­It is late at night and I have postponed writing not knowing but that my parcel would be ready to go,—­and now a public meeting and the speech of a rarely honest and eloquent man have left me but a span of time for the morning’s messenger.

The photograph came safely, to my thorough content.  I have what I have wished.  This head is to me out of comparison more satisfying than any picture.  I confirm my recollections and I make new observations; it is life to life.  Thanks to the Sun.  This artist remembers what every other forgets to report, and what I wish to know, the true sculpture of the features, the angles, the special organism, the rooting of the hair, the form and the placing of the head.  I am accustomed to expect of the English a securing of the essentials in their work, and the sun does that, and you have done it in this portrait, which gives me much to think and feel.* I was instantly stirred to an emulation of your love and punctuality, and, last Monday, which was my forty-third birthday, I went to a new Daguerreotypist, who took much pains to make his picture right.  I brought home three shadows not agreeable to my own eyes.  The machine has a bad effect on me.  My wife protests against the imprints as slanderous.  My friends say they look ten years older, and, as I think, with the air of a decayed gentleman touched with his first paralysis.  However I got yesterday a trusty vote or two for sending one of them to you, on the ground that I am not likely to get a better.  But it now seems probable that it will not get cased and into the hands of Harnden in time for the steamer tomorrow.  It will then go by that of the 16th.