mention is made of Curtis, who took part in the search, and who gave his
own account of the affair in his paper on Hawthorne. When Thoreau went to
New York, in 1843, he put his boat into the keeping of Curtis, and he and
Channing made their excursions on the river in it. In it they searched for
Mary Hunt, who lived near Channing. Curtis's account of this affair
deserves to be placed by the side of Hawthorne's:

"Martha was the daughter of a plain Concord farmer, a girl of delicate and
shy temperament, who excelled so much in study that she was sent to a fine
academy in a neighboring town, and won all the honors of the course. She
met at the school and in the society of the place a refinement and
cultivation, a social gayety and grace, which were entirely unknown in the
hard life she had led at home, and which by their very novelty, as well as
because they harmonized with her own nature and dreams, were doubly
beautiful and fascinating. She enjoyed this life to the full, while her
timidity kept her only a spectator; and she ornamented it with a fresher
grace, suggestive of the woods and fields, when she ventured to engage in
the airy game. It was a sphere for her capacities and talents. She shone
in it, and the consciousness of a true position and genial appreciation
gave her the full use of all her powers. She admired and was admired. She
was surrounded by gratifications of taste, by the stimulants and rewards
of ambition. The world was happy, and she was worthy to live in it. But at
times a cloud suddenly dashed athwart the sun--a shadow stole, dark and
chill, to the very edge of the charmed circle in which she stood. She knew
well what it was, and what it foretold, but she would not pause nor heed.
The sun shone again, the future smiled; youth, beauty, and all hopes and
thoughts bathed the moment in lambent light.

"But school-days ended at last, and with the receding town in which they
had been passed, the bright days of life disappeared, and forever. It was