I have just returned from driving our cow to pasture and assisting in our usual in and outdoor work, the first making a fire in our sitting-room, a little artificial warmth being still necessary for my invalid wife, although I sit most of the time as I do now, with my Shanty door open, and without fire in my stove.

  Well, my dear friend and fellow-pilgrim, spring has again come, and here appears in full glow. The farmers are busy and have been for some weeks, ploughing and planting,—the necessity of paying more attention to agriculture being strongly felt in these hard times,—old fields and neglected places are now being brought into requisition, and with a good season our former neglected farms will teem with abundance.

  I, too, am busy in my way, but on rather a small scale, principally in my garden and among my fruit trees. Walton, however, is head man, and I am obliged generally to submit to his superior judgment.

  About all the birds have returned—the large thrush (T. rufus) arrived here on the 25th last month. I am now daily expecting the catbird and ground robin, and soon the Bob-o-link and golden robin. With the arrival of the two last our vernal choir becomes nearly complete. I have known them both to arrive the same day. Of the great variety of little woodland and wayside warblers, I am familiar with but few, yet some of them are great favorites of mine, particularly the oven bird, warbling vireo, veery (T. Wilsonii), etc., etc. The wind flower and blue violet have been in bloom some time, and I suppose the columbine and wild geranium are also, although I have not been to visit them as yet. How beautiful and how wonderful indeed is the return of life—how suggestive and how instructive to mankind! Truly God is great and good and wise and glorious.

  I hope this will find you mending, and as I hear nothing to the contrary, I trust that it may be so that you are. I did expect to be able to go to Concord soon; I still may, but at present i do not see my way clear, as we ‘Friends’ say. I often think of you, however, and join hands with you in the spirit, if not in the flesh, which I hope always to do.

  I see by the papers that Concord has found a new voice in the way of a literary journal y’cept “The Monitor,” which has my good wishes for its success. I conclude that Mr. [Franklin B.] Sanborn is the pioneer in this enterprise, who appears to be a healthy nursing child of the old mother of heroes. I do not mean to be classic, and only intend to speak of old Mother Concord. I hope [William Ellery] Channing will wake up and give us some of his lucubrations, and father [A. Bronson] Alcott strike his Orphic lyre once more, and [Ralph Waldo] Emerson discourse wisdom and verse from the woods around. There sings a whortleberry sparrow (F. juncorum) from our bush pasture beyond the garden. I hear daily your sparrow (F. Graminus) with his “here! here! there! there! come quick or I’m gone!” By the way, is not Emerson wrong in his interpretation of the whistle of the Chickadee as “Phoebe”? The low, sweet whistle of the “black cap” is very distinct from the clearly expressed Phoebe of the wood pewee. But I must not by hypercritical with so true a poet and lover of Nature as E.

  How grandly is the Lord overruling all for the cause of the slave—defeating the evil machinations of men by the operation of his great universal and regulating laws, by which the universe of mind and matter is governed! I do not look for a speedy termination of the war, although matters look more hopeful, but I cannot doubt but that slavery will soon find its exodus. What a glorious country this will be for the next generation should this curse be removed!

  Amid the song of purple finches, robins, meadow-larks, and sparrows—a kind of T. solitarius myself—and with heart full of kind wishes and affection for you, I conclude this hasty epistle.

As ever, yours faithfully,
D. R.

P.S. I believe I answered your sister’s kind and thoughtful letter to me.