Edmund Quincy Sewall Jr. writes in his journal:
In the afternoon the boys and I went down to see Messrs Thoreau tar the bottom of their boat with a mixture of resin and tallow 4 pounds of the former to half a pound of the latter. I got very angry with Jesse [Harding] for rubbing my face with water while we were trying to spatter and wet each other. Acted as foolishly as naughtily—laid down on my face on the grass and cried. After a while I got up and we were all friends again. The expedition cost me however a pair of wet feet. Mr John went in the boat and got Thursday some sweet briars when he had fixed it.
Charles [Henry Cummings] Joseph & I went down with a wheelbarrow and got them out of the boat.
(MS, “E. Q. Sewall Diary,” Sewall Family papers. American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.)
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes to Margaret Fuller:
Henry Thoreau has too mean an opinion of ‘Persius’ or any of his pieces to care to revise them but he will give us Persius as it is, if we will do the revising (The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2:280-1).
