8 January 1852
Concord, Massachusetts; Home of Ralph Waldo and Lidian (Jackson) Emerson (?)
Passages from "An Excursion to Canada"

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        In his journal entry for 8 January 1852, Thoreau wrote, "Reading from my MSS to Miss Emerson this evening & using the word God in one instance in perchance a merely heathenish sense—she inquired hastily in a tone of dignified anxiety—’Is that god spelt with a little g?’ Fortunately it was" (PEJ4, p. 242). Because Thoreau had delivered "An Excursion to Canada" at the Concord Lyceum the day before (see lecture 34 above), and because the word "god" appears several times in the later, published version of the lecture, we conjecture that the "MSS" he read to Mary Moody Emerson were from that text. In his Thoreau Log, however, Raymond Borst suggests that Thoreau may have read from his "Walden" manuscripts (p. 206).