V. 



FORESTWARD-^ — ^DINNER SCENE PREPARATIONS TO ASCEND 



MOUNT TAHAWUS. 



Backwoods, July 10, 1846. 



Dear H : 



It will be a long time before I am again by a post 

 office where I can get a letter to you. If you wish to 

 know the pleasure of seeing a newspaper from New 

 York, bury yourself in the woods for three or four 

 weeks, where not a pulsation of the great busy world 

 can reach you, nor a word from its ten thousand 

 tongues and pens meet your ear or eye. The sight of 

 one, then, fresh from the press, putting in your hands 

 again the links of that great chain of human events 

 you had lost — re-binding you to your race, and re- 

 placing you in the mighty movement that bears all 

 things onward, is most welcome. You cannot con- 

 ceive the contrasts, nay, almost the shocks of feeling 

 one experiences in stepping from the crowded city into 



