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The Thoreau Institute
at Walden Woods Library
About Thoreau's Life and Writings
Texts and Links
including Thoreau's contemporaries, his readings, current
scholarship and
related documents
Louisa May Alcott
(1832-1888)
Merry's
Monthly Chat with his Friends
Thoreau, the Concord hermit, who lived by
himself in the woods, used to come smiling up to his neighbors, to announce that the
bluebirds had arrived, with as much interest in the fact as other men take in messages by
the Atlantic cable. On certain days, he made long pilgrimages to find
"The sweet rhodora in the wood,"
welcoming the lonely flower like a long-absent friend. He gravely informed us once,
that frogs were much more confiding in the spring, than later in the season; for then, it
only took an hour to get well acquainted with one of the speckled swimmers, who liked to
be tickled with a blade of grass, and would feed from his hand in the most sociable
manner.
A
Note on the Text:
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1st
published in Merry's Museum (March 1869) p. 147
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Source:
Merry's Museum (March 1869) p. 147.
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