Lapham's Quarterly

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Henry David Thoreau witnesses 145 dead after a shipwreck in 1849:

"It was not so impressive a scene as I might have expected... If I had found one body cast upon the beach in some lonely place, it would have affected me more. I sympathized rather with the winds and waves, as if to toss and mangle these poor humans’ bodies was the order of the day.”

On October 9, 1849, Henry David Thoreau learned that the St. John, a brig bound for Boston harbor out of Galway, Ireland, had wrecked off the coast of Massachusetts. Having given up his seclusion on Walden Pond two years prior, Thoreau was en route to Cape Cod with his friend William Ellery Channing when the news changed their travel plans: “As we noticed in the streets a handbill headed DEATH! 145 LIVES LOST AT COHASSET, we decided to go by way of Cohasset.” Even Thoreau wasn’t immune to a little rubbernecking. For who among us, drawn by that mixture of fascination and horror, would not pause to catch a glimpse of death?

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