Dear Mr. Emerson,
Agnes visited me again today, I fear for the first time. I did not catch her surname, sadly, as my table wobbles terribly after a recent fall. The leg, as you know, is in need of replacing.
It was in the beanfield that she first called upon me, though we retired to the cabin after a time. We did not speak, but I was struck by her appreciation for accuracy, unlike the clods in Charlestown. I suspect she wished to ask after my personal life but, alas, words defied us both.
My time here in the woods has been most peculiar, though I have achieved my desire to live deliberately; this, despite the best efforts of both Samuel and Harold, who have visited several times over the coming months in an effort to lead me awry. Samuel employs strange idioms in conversation, while Harold continues to write me letters using phrases pulled from my very own journals, private phrases and details of my personal life that no other knows.
Both men have referred to their "wireless", and wear strange clothing. Their teeth are unusually perfect.
Still, despite these peculiarities, I believe their nature to be inherently good, and their intentions towards me to be the same. They have done nothing and said nothing to suggest otherwise, and I must take them then at face value.
At times I suspect that I am stuck in wakeful dreaming, for the incessant cough, of course, keeps me awake most nights. Is it a dream, then, that brings these men to me? Is Agnes a dream as well? I hear her words in my mind, though I have not heard them spoken aloud since the first day we met, and then only in a whisper. I cannot shake her words, however, and thus hers are now mine to you: The capital of a man is not in money but in purpose, and the advertisement of a life well lived is in living it, not in declaring it so.
I shall write you again in the Spring. I look forward to your visit.
Yours respectfully,
H.D. Thoreau