Thoreau writes in his journal:
It has rained hard the 11th, 12th, and 13th, and the river is at last decidedly rising . . . (Journal, 7:71).
Concord, Mass. Thoreau writes to Abbé Adrien Rouquette in reply to his letter of 1 November:
Dear Sir
I have just received your letter and the 3 works which accompanied it—and I make haste to send you a copy of “A Week on the Concord & Merrimack Rivers”—in the same mail with this. I thank you heartily for the interest which you express in my Walden—and also for the gift of your works. I have not had time to peruse [?] the books attentively but I am
Liverpool, England. Nathaniel Hawthorne writes to Monckton Milnes:
Walden and Concord River are by a very remarkable man; but I hardly hope you will read his books, unless for the observation of nature contained in them which is wonderfully accurate. I sometimes fancy it a characteristic of American books, that it generally requires an effort to read them; there is hardly ever one that carries the reader away with it, and few that a man of weak resolution can get to the end of. Please do not quote this as my opinion.
(Thoreau Society Bulletin, no. 121 (Fall 1972):7; MS, Norman Holmes Pearson collection, Yale University)
