the Thoreau Log.
18 March 1852.

Concord, Mass. Thoreau writes in his journal:

  This afternoon the woods and walls and the whole face of the country wear once more a wintry aspect, though there is more moisture in the snow and the trunks of the trees are whitened now on a more southerly or southeast side. These slight falls of snow which come and go again so soon when the ground is partly open in the spring, perhaps helping to open and crumble and prepare it for the seed, are called “the poor man’s manure.” They are, no doubt, more serviceable still to those who are rich enough to have some manure spread on their grass ground, which the melting snow helps dissolve and soak in and carry to the roots of the grass. At any rate, it is all the poor man has got, whether it is good or bad . . . The pond is very still very little melted around the shore . . .
(Journal, 3:354-356)

New York, N.Y. Horace Greeley writes to Thoreau:

  My Dear Sir:

  I ought to have responded before this to yours of the 5th inst. but have been absent—hurried, &c &c. I have had no time to bestow upon it till to-day.

  I shall get you some money for the articles you send me, though not immediately.

  As to your longer account of a canadian tour, I don’t know. It looks unmanageable. Can’t you cut it into three or four, and omit all that relates to time? The cities are described to death; but I know you are at home with Nature, and that she rarely and slowly changes. Break this up if you can, and I will try to have it swallowed and digested.

  Yours,

  Horace Greeley.

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 277)

New York, N.Y. Horace Greeley writes to John Sartain:

  Dear Sir:

  I enclose herewith two articles from my friend Henry D. Thoreau, of Concord, Mass. the pupil of Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose name must be familiar to you. You may never have see his book—“A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers”—but his articles in Graham’s Magazine—“Thomas Carlyle and his Writings,” Mount Katahdin and the Pine Woods of Maine”—though several years back, I think cannot have escaped you. I consider him one of the best of your young writers, and have solicited these pieces from him because I want to make him better known than he is. He has more Ms. on hand, but I shall not send you more unless you ask them. If you use these, I shall expect you to pay him. If you don’t want them, please preserve them and notify me, so that I can make another disposition of them. Yours

  Horace Greeley.

  P.S. If you happen to know where a copy of “The Dial” may be consulted, just look into it at one of Thoreau’ s articles—“A Winter Walk”—I don’t know who could write a better one. Yrs. H. G.

(Thoreau Society Bulletin, no. 193 (Fall 1990):5-6)

Sartain replies on 24 March.

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