I meant to have seen you, but for delays that grew out of the snowbanks, to ask your aid in these following particulars. On the 8 February, Harvard Professor [Eben Norton] Horsford is to lecture at the Lyceum; on the 15th Feb.y, Theodore Parker. They are both to come to my house for the night. Now I wish to entreat your courtesy & counsel to receive these lonely pilgrims, when they arrive, to guide them to our house, & help the alarmed wife to entertain them, & see that they do not lose the way to the Lyceum, nor the hour. For, it seems pretty certain that I shall not be at home until perhaps the next week following these two. If you shall be in town, & can help these gentlemen so far, You will serve the whole community as well as

Yours faithfully,

R. W. Emerson

  P.M.—Up Union Turnpike.

  The tints of the sunset sky are never purer and more ethereal than in the coldest winter days. This evening, though the colors are not brilliant, the sky is crystalline and the pale fawn-tinged clouds are very beautiful. I wish to get on to a hill to look down on the winter landscape . . .

  At every post along the brook-side, and under almost every white pine, the snow strewn with the scales and seeds of white pine cones left by the squirrels. They have sat on every post and dropped them for a great distance, also acorn-shells. The surface of the snow was sometimes strewn with the small alder scales, i.e. of catkins . . . There was a low, narrow, clear segment of sky in the west at sunset, or just after (all the rest overcast), of the coppery yellow, perhaps, of some of Gilpin’s pictures, all spotted coarsely with clouds like a leopard’s skin. I took up snow in the tracks at dark . . .

  P.M.—To Ministerial Swamp.

  The bare larch trees there, so slender and tall, where they grow close together, all beaded or studded with buds, or rather stubs, which look like the dry sterile blossoms. How much fuller, or denser and more flourishing, in winter is the white spruce than the white pine! It has two hues, I believe, the glaucous or bluish and the green, melting into each other. It has not shed all its seeds yet. Now that the snow has lain more than a week, it begins to be spotted and darkened in the woods . . .

  I have often been attracted by this harmonious tint in his and other drawings, and sometimes, especially, have observed it in nature when at sunset I inverted my head. We love not so well the landscape represented as in broad noon, but in a morning or evening twilight, those seasons when the imagination is most active . . .

  P.M.—To the Spruce Swamp in front of J. Farmer’s. Can go across both rivers now . . .

  We were looking for rainbow-tinted clouds, small whiffs of vapor which form and disperse, this clear, cold afternoon, when we saw to our surprise a star, about half past three or earlier, a mere round white clot. Is the winter then such a twilight? . . .

  When we were walking last evening, Tappan admired the soft rippling of the Assabet under Tarbell’s bank. One could have lain all night under the oaks there listening to it. Westward forty rods, the surface of the stream reflected a silvery whiteness, but gradually darkened thence eastward, till beneath us it was almost quite black.

  What you can recall of a walk on the second day will differ from what you remember on the first day, as the mountain chain differs in appearance, looking back the next day, from the aspect it wore when you were at its base . . .

  P.M.—To Cliffs and Walden.

  The north side of all stubble, weeds, and trees, and the whole forest is covered with a hoar frost a quarter to a half inch deep. It is easily shaken off. The air is still full of mist. No snow has fallen, but, as it were, the vapor has been caught by the trees like a cobweb. The trees are bright hoary forms, the ghosts of trees. In fact, the warm breath of the earth is frozen on its beard. Closely examined or at a distance, it is just like the sheaf-like forms of vegetation . . .

  Every winter the surface of the pond to the depth of a foot becomes solid so as to support the heaviest teams, and anon the snow covers it to an equal depth, so that it is not to be distinguished from a level field . . .

  The landscape is now patches of bare ground and snow; much running water with the sun reflected from it. Lately all was clean, dry, and tight. Now, though clear and bright, all is moist and dissolving. The cocks crow . . .

Greeting.

  You are hereby required, in the name of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, to make your appearance before Justices of the court of Common Pleas now holden at Cambridge within and for the County of Middlesex on Thursday the Twentieth day of January instant at 9 o’clock A.M. and from day to day until the Action herein named is heard by the court, to give evidence of what you know relating to an Action of Plea of Tort then and there to be heard and tried betwixt Leonard Spaulding Lots [?] Plaintiff and William O. Benjamin Defendant

  Hereof fail not, as you will answer your default under the pain and penalty in the law in that behalf made and provided. Dated at Cambridge the Eighteenth day of january in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty four

L. Marett Justice of the Peace

  My coat is at last done, and my mother & sister allow that I am so far in a condition to go abroad. I feel as if I had gone abroad the moment I put it on. It is, as usual a production strange to me, the wearer, invented by some Count D’Orsay, and the maker of it was not acquainted with any of my real depressions or elevations. He only measured a peg to hang it on, and might have made the loop big enough to go over my head. It requires a not quite innocent indifference not to say insolence to wear it. Ah, the process by which we get overcoats is not what it should be. Though the church declare it righteous & its priest pardons me, my own Good Genius tells me that it is hasty & coarse & false. I expect a time when, or rather an integrity by which a man will get his coat as honestly, and as perfectly fitting as a tree its bark. Now our garments are typical of our conformity to the ways of the world, i.e. of the Devil, & to some extent react on us and poison us like that shirt which Hercules put on.

  I think to come & see you next week on Monday if nothing hinders. I have just returned from Court at Cambridge, whither I was called as a witness, having surveyed a water privilege about which there is a dispute since you were here.

  Ah! what foreign countries there are, greater in extent than the U.S. or Russia, and with no more souls to a square mile—stretching away on every side from every human being with whom you have no sympathy. Their humanity affects me as simply monstrous. Rocks—earth—brute beasts comparatively are not so strange to me. When I sit in the parlors or kitchens of some with whom my business brings me—I was going to say in contact—(business, like misery, makes strange bedfellows) I feel a sort of awe and as forlorn as if I were cat away on a desolate shore—I think of Riley’s Narrative & his sufferings. You who soared like a merlin with your mate through the realms of ether—in the presence of the unlike drop at once to earth a mere amorphous squab—divested of your air inflated pinions. (By the way, excuse this writing, for I am using the stub of the last feather I chance to possess.) You travel on, however, through this dark & desert world. You see in the distance an intelligent & sympathizing lineament,—stars come forth in the dark & oases appear in the desert.

  But (to return to the sobject of coats), we are well nigh smothered under yet more more fatal coats, which do not fit us, our whole lives long. Consider the cloak that our employment or station is. How rarely men treat each other for what in their true & naked characters they are. How we use & tolerate pretensions; how the judge is clothed with dignity which does not belong to him, and the trembling witness with humility that does not belong to him, and the criminal perchance with shame or impudence which no more belong to him It does not matter so much then what is the fashion of the cloak with which we cloak these cloaks. Change the coat—put the judge in the criminal box & the criminal on the bench, and you might think that you had changed the men

  No doubt the thinnest of all cloaks in conscious deception or lies it is sleazy & frays out, it is not close woven like cloth—but it meshes are a coarse net-work. A man can afford to lie only at the intersection of the threats, but truth puts in the filling & makes a consistent stuff.

  I mean merely to suggest how much the station affects the demeanor & self-respectability of the parties, & that the difference between the judge’s coat of cloth & the criminal’s is insignificant compared with—or only partially significant of—the difference between the coats which their respective station permits them to wear. What airs the judge may put on over his coat which the criminal may not! The judge’s opinion (sententia) of the criminal sentences him & is read by the clerk of the court, & published to the world, & executed by the sheriff—but the criminal’s opinion of the judge has the weight of a sentence & is published & executed only in the supreme court of the universe—a court not of common pleas. How much juster is the one than the other? Men are continually sentencing each other, but whether we be judges or criminals, the sentence is ineffectual unless we condemn ourselves.

  I am glad to hear that I do not always limit your vision when you look this way—that you sometimes see the light through me, that I am here & there windows & not all deadwall. Might not the community sometimes petition a man to remove himself as a nuisance—a darkener of the day—a too large mote?

  H.D.T

  No second snow-storm in the winter can be so fair and interesting as the first. Last night was very windy . . .

  The increased length of the days is very observable of late. What is a winter unless you have risen and gone abroad frequently before sunrise and by starlight? . . .

  At noon, go to Worcester.

  A very cold day.

  Saw a man in Worcester this morning who took a pride in never wearing gloves or mittens. Drives in the morning. Said he succeeded by keeping his arm and wrist well covered. He had a large hand, one of his fingers as big as three of mine. But this morning he had to give up . . .

  P.M.—Up river on ice and snow to Fair Haven Pond . . . Sometimes one of those great cakes of green ice from Walden or Sam Barrett’s Pond slips from the ice-man’s sled in the street and lies there like a great emerald, an object of interest to all travellers . . .

  We go up the Corner road and take the ice at Potter’s Meadow. The Cliff Hill is nearly bare on the west side, and you hear the rush of melted snow down its side in one place . . .

  We stopped awhile under Bittern Cliff, the south side, where it is very warm. There are a few greenish radical leaves to be seen, -primrose and johnswort, strawberry, etc., and spleenwort still green in the clefts. These sunny old gray rocks, completely covered with white and gray lichens and overrun with ivy, are a very cosy place. You hardly detect the incited snow swiftly trickling . . .

  John Moore and Company got about fifty weight of fish at Flint’s Pond the same day. Two pickerel weighed nine pounds.

  I went over to the Hemlocks on the Assabet this morning. Saw the tracks, I think of a mink, in the shallow snow along the edge of the river, looking for a hole in the ice. A clear, cold morning. The smokes from the village chimneys are quickly purified and dissipated . . .

  Begins to snow.

  I fear only lest my expressions may not be extravagant enough,—may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of our ordinary insight and faith, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced. I desire to speak somewhere without bounds, in order that I may attain to an expression in some degree adequate to truth of which I have been convinced. From a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments. Wandering toward the more distant boundaries of a wider pasture. Nothing is so truly bounded and obedient to law as music, yet nothing so surely breaks all petty and narrow bonds . . .

  Hear the old owl at 4.30 P.M. Crossing Walden where the snow has fallen quite level, I perceive that my shadow [is of] a delicate or transparent blue rather than black . . .

  Made a fire on the snow-covered ice half a mile below Ball’s Hill . . . These afternoons the shadows of the woods have already a twilight length by 3 or 4 P.M. . . .

  P.M.—Rain, rain, rain, carrying off the snow and leaving a foundation of ice . . .

  The hollows about Walden, still bottomed with snow, are filled with greenish water like its own . . . (Journal, 6:109-113).

  The river has risen again, and, instead of ice and snow, there is water over the ice on the meadows . . . (Journal, 6:113).

  Put on skates at mouth of Swamp Bridge Brook . . .

  Just beyond the bathing-place, I see the wreck of an ice-fleet, which yesterday morning must have been very handsome . . .

  P.M.—It snows again, spoiling the skating, which has lasted only one day . . . (Journal, 6:121).

  The telegraph resounds at every post . . . In Stow’s wood, by the Deep Cut, hear the gnah gnah of the white-breasted, black-capped nuthatch . . .

  F. Brown, who has been chasing a white rabbit this afternoon with a dog, says that they do not run off far,—often play round within the same swamp only, if it is large, and return to where they were started. Spoke of it as something unusual that one ran off so far that he could not hear the dogs, but he returned and was shot near where he started. He does not see their forms, nor marks where they have been feeding.

  On the hill at the Deep Cut on the new road, the ground is frozen about a foot deep, and they carry off lumps equal nearly to a cartload at a time. Moore’s man is digging a ditch by the roadside in his swamp . . .

  P.M.—Saw some of those architectural drifts forming . . . (Journal, 6:137-138)

  Enclosed I send Ten Dollars for which send me 5 pounds best Plumbago for Electrotype purposes. The pound you sent before I found very good. Please send me a small quantity of the $1.50 per pound Black Lead that I may try it.

Yours Truly

Thomas B Smith per R.H.S.

  I should have answered you earlier if a wood merchant whom I engaged had kept his appointment. Measuring on Mr. Hubbard’s plans of ’36 and ’52, which I enlarged, [word] the whole area wanted for a cemetery 16 acres & 114 rods. This includes a path one rod wide on the north side of the wood next to the meadow, and is all of the Brown Farm north of the New Road, except the meadow of about 7 acres and a small triangle of about a dozen rods next to the Agricultural Land. The above result is probably accurate within half an acre; nearer I cannot come with certainty without a resurvey.

  9 acres & 9 rods are woodland, whose value I have got Anthony Wright, an old Farmer & now measurer of wood at the Depot, to assist me in determining. This is the result

  Oak chiefly 4A 53rd 156 Cords at $2.75 cord standing
                                      large & small 429

  White & Pitch Pine 3A 30rd 143½ Cords 2 287

  Pitch Pine 146rd 16½ Cords 2 41 25

  Young P Pine 100rd 5 cord 2 10

                          $767 25

  Merchantable green oak wood, piled on the cars, brings

  here 4.75 pr cord.

  Pitch pine 4.25

  White 2.50

  An acquaintance in Boston applied to me last October for a small farm in Concord, and the small amount of land 7 the want of a good house may prevent his thinking of the Dutch House place, & besides circumstances have transpired which I fear will prevent his coming here; however I will inform him at once that it is on the market. I do not know about the state of his funds, only that he was in no hurry, though in earnest, & limited me to $2000.

  All well

  Yours

  Henry D. Thoreau

  P.M.—To Flint’s Pond . . . (Journal, 6:141-143).

  P. M.—To Walden via Hubbard’s Wood and foot of Cliff Hill.

  The snow has melted very rapidly the past week. There is much bare ground. The checkerberries are revealed,—somewhat shrivelled many of them. I look. along the ditches and brooks for tortoises and frogs, but the ditches are still full of dirty ice . . .

  P. M.—To Upper Nut Meadow . . . As I go along the snow under Clamshell Hill hear it [the river] sing around me, being melted next the ground . . .

  Dear Henry,

  I am off again to New York in the morning, & go leaving my Professor Horsford [Eben M. Horsford] once more to your tender mercies. He is to come surely Wednesday Evening, & I ventured to promise him your kind conduct to the Hall. So you must come to tea, & hear the Chemistry.

  Ever your bounden [burden?]

  R. W. E.

  According to G. Emerson, maple sap sometimes begins to flow in the middle of February, but usually in the second week of March, especially in a clear, bright day with a westerly wind, after a frosty night . . . I saw trout glance in the Mill Brook this afternoon, though near its sources, in Hubbard’s close, it is still covered with dark, icy snow, and the river into which it empties has not broken up . . .

  I presume your first letter containing the $2 was robbed by our general mail robber of New Haven, who has just been sent to the State’s Prison. Your second letter has probably failed to receive attention owing to a press of business. But I will make all right. You ought to have the Semi-weekly, and I shall order it sent to you one year on trail; if you choose to write me a letter or so some time, very well; if not, we will be even without that.

  Thoreau, I want you to do something on my urgency. I want you to collect and arrange your “Miscellanies” and send them to me. Put in “Ktaadn,” “Carlyle,” “A Winter Walk,” “Canada,” etc., and I will try to find a publisher who will bring them out at his own risk, and (I hope) to your ultimate profit. If you have anything new to put with them, very well; but let me have about a 12mo volume whenever you can get it ready, and see if there is not something to your credit in the bank of Fortune.

  Yours,

  Horace Greeley.

  I did not mention the drifts yesterday. Most of the snow left on bare, dry level ground consists of the remains of drifts, particularly along fences,—most on the south side. Also much that looks like snow is softened ice in the lower parts of fields. Looking from Annursnack, there is no perceptible difference as to snow between the north and south prospects, though the north one is not extensive; but the snowiest view is westward. Has this anything to do with there being most snow inland? All the sides of steep hills are likely to be bare . . .

  I wrote a letter for an Irishman night before last, sending for his wife in Ireland to come to this country. One sentence which he dictated was, “Don’t mind the rocking of the vessel, but take care of the children that they be not lost overboard.”

  Lightning this evening, after a day of successive rains.

  Water is fast taking place of ice on the river and meadows, and morning and evening we begin to have some smooth water prospects . . .

  P.M.—To Great Meadows . . .

  Peter H. says that he saw gulls (?) and sheldrakes about a month ago, when the meadow was flooded . . .

  Misty amd mizzling . . . Saw a skunk in the Corner road, which I followed sixty rods or more. Out now about 4 P.M.—partly because it is a dark, foul day . . .

  Shall the earth be regarded as a graveyard, a necropolis, merely, and not also as a granary filled with the seeds of life? Is not its fertility increased by this decay? A fertile compost, not exhausted sand . . .

  P.M.—To Cliffs . . .

  Muskrats are driven out of their holes. Heard one’s loud plash behind Hubbard’s . . .

  C. [William Ellery Channing] says he saw a gull to-day.

  P.M.—To Ball’s Hill along river. My companion tempts me to certain licenses of speech, i.e. to reckless and sweeping expressions which I am wont to regret that I have used . . .

  The ice is all out of the river proper, and all spoiled even on Walden.

  C. [William Ellery Channing] says he saw skater insects to-day. Harris [Thaddeus William Harris] tells me that those gray insects within the little log forts under the bark of the dead white pine, which I found about a week ago, are Rhagium lineatum. Bought a telescope to-day for eight dollars. Best military spyglass with six slides, which shuts up to about the same size, fifteen dollars, and very powerful . . . C. was making a glass for Amherst College.

  Great concert of song sparrows in willows and alders along Swamp Bridge Brook by river . . .

  R.W.E. [Ralph Waldo Emerson] saw a small bird in the woods yesterday which reminded him of the parti-colored warbler.

  P.M.—To Great Meadows . . .

  Counted over forty robins with my glass in the meadow north of Sleepy Hollow, in the grass and on the snow. A large company of fox-colored sparrows in Heywood’s maple swamp close by . . . No ice visible as I look over the meadows from Peter’s, though it lies at the bottom . . .

  Painted my boat.

  Saw and hear honey-bees about my boat in the yard, attracted probably by the beeswax in the grafting-wax which was put on it a year ago. It is warm weather. A thunder-storm in the evening.

  It is understood and agreed that he said Thoreau shall receive Twenty Five copies of the first Edition, without charge, and that any additional copies that the said Thoreau may desire, he shall have the right to purchase at a discount of Twenty five per cent from the retail price.—

Witness

G. J. [Hoid?]

  4 P.M.—To Cliffs.

  The grass is slightly greened on south bank-sides . . .

  P.M.—Walked round by the west side of the river to Conantum.

  Wind less violent. C. [William Ellery Channing] has already seen a yellow-spotted tortoise in a ditch. (Two sizable elms by river in Merrick’s pasture blown down, roots being rotted off on water side.) . . .

  Saw in Mill Brook behind Shannon’s three or four shiners (the first), poised over the sand with a distinct longitudinal light-colored line midway along their sides and a darker line below it . . .

  Goodwin killed a pigeon yesterday.

  Flint’s Pond almost entirely open,—much more than Fair Haven.

  Still very cold. The most splendid show of ice chandeliers, casters, hour-glasses (!) that I ever saw or imagined . . . The now silvery willow catkins (notwithstanding the severe cold) shine along the shore, over the cold water, and C. [William Ellery Channing] thinks some willow osiers decidedly more yellow.

  I am glad your “Walden” is coming out. I shall announce it at once, whether Ticknor does or not.

  I am in no hurry now about your Miscellanies; take your time, select a good title, and prepare your articles deliberately and finally. Then if Ticknor will give you something worth having, let him have this too; if proffering it to him is to glut your market, let it come to me. But take your time. I was only thinking you were hybernating when you ought to be doing something. I referred (without naming you) to your ‘Walden’ experience in my lecture on “Self-Culture,” with which I have bored every so many audiences. This episode excited much interest and I have repeatedly been asked who it is that I refer to.

Yours,

Horace Greeley.

P.S. You must know Miss Elizabeth Hoar, whereas I hardly do. Now I have agreed to edit Margaret’s works, and I want of Elizabeth a letter or memorandum of personal recollections of Margaret and her ideas. Can’t you ask her to write it for me?

Yours,

H. G.

  Down river in boat to Great Meadows.

  Freezes on oars. Too cold and windy almost for ducks . . .

  Is not the small duel: or two I see one at a time and flying pretty high a teal? Willow osiers near Mill Brook mouth I am almost certain have acquired a fresher color . . .

  Coldest clay for a month or more,—severe as almost any in the winter. Saw this afternoon either a snipe or a woodcock; it appeared rather small for the last. Pond opening on the northeast . . .

  Got first proof of “Walden.”

  Coldest night. Pump froze so as to require thawing. Saw two marsh hawks (?), white on rump . . .

  Fair Haven half open; channel wholly open. See thin cakes of ice at a distance now and then blown up on their edges and glistening in the sun . . .

  First still hour since the afternoon of the 17th. March truly came in like a lamb and went out like a lion this year . . .

  Read an interesting article on Étienne Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, the friend and contemporary of Cuvier, though opposed to him in his philosophy. He believed species to be variable . . .

  In criticising your writing, trust your fine instinct. There are many things which we come very near questioning, but do not question . . .

  P. M.—Up Assabet to Dodge’s Brook; thence to Farmer’s . . .

  At Lee’s Cliff the red-stemmed moss . . . (Journal, 6:182-183).

  Thank you for your kindness in the matter of Margaret. Pray take no further trouble; but if anything should come in your way, calculated to help me, do not forget.

Yours,

Horace Greeley.

  P.M.—To Cliffs by boat.

  Did I see crow blackbirds with the red-wings and hear their harsher chattering?

  The water has gone down so much . . .

  A still warmer day than yesterday—a warm, moist rain-smelling west wind. I am surprised [to] find so much of the white maples already out. The light-colored stamens show to some rods. Probably they began as early as day before yesterday. They resound
with the hum of honey-bees . . .

  P.M.—To Lee’s Cliff via Clamshell . . .

  At Nut Meadow Brook saw, or rather heard, a muskrat plunge into the brook before me, and saw him endeavoring in vain to bury himself in the sandy bottom, looking like an amphibious animal . . . At Heart-leaf Pond the croaking frogs are in full blast . . .

  Saw a large bird sail along over the edge of Wheeler’s cranberry meadow just below Fair Haven . . .

  Saw several yellow redpolls (Sylvia petechia) on the willows by the Hubbard Bridge . . .

  I am surprised to find Walden completely open. When did it open? According to all accounts, it must have been between the 6th and 9th . . .

  P.M.—Surveying in Lincoln . . .

  Evening on river.

  Fine full moon; river smooth . . .

  P.M.—Sail to Bittern Cliff . . . (Journal, 6:194-197).

  There is a general tinge of green now discernible through the russet on the bared meadows and the hills, the green blades just peeping forth amid the withered ones . . .

  P.M.—This cold, moist, snowy day it is easier to see the birds and get near them . . .

  P.M.—To epigaea . . .

  When I meet one of my neighbors these days who is ridiculously stately, being offended, I say in my mind: “Farewell! I will wait till you get your manners off. Why make politeness of so much consequence, when you are ready to assassinate with a word? I do not like any better to be assassinated with a rapier than to be knocked down with a bludgeon. You are so grand that I cannot get within ten feet of you.” Why will men so try to impose on one another? Why not be simple, and pass for what they are worth only? O such thin skins, such crockery, as I have to deal with! Do they not know that I can laugh? Some who have so much dignity that they cannot be contradicted! . . .

  It is remarkable how the American mind runs to statistics. Consider the number of meteorological observers and other annual phenomena . . . John Brown, merchant, tells me this morning that the martins first came to his box on the 13th, he “made a minute of it.” Besides so many entries in their day-books and ledgers, they record these things . . .

  I return by Mr. Gerrish three vols. viz Agassiz sur les Glaciers Shepard’s Clear Sunshine and New England in 1652

  Yrs

  Henry D. Thoreau

  P.M.—To Cliffs . . .

  There is considerable growth in the water at the Boiling Spring . . . Saw a bullfrog in Hayden’s pond-hole and a small green grasshopper . . .

  It is remarkable how scarce and silent the birds are even in a pleasant afternoon like this, compared with the morning. Within a few days the warblers have begun to come. They are of every hue. Nature made them to show her colors with. There are as many as there are colors and shades . . .

  P.M.—To Island and Hill.

  A willow coming out fairly, with honey-bees humming on it, in a warm nook,—the most forward I have noticed, for the cold weather has held there in check. And now different kinds of bees and flies about them. What a sunny sight and summer sound! A striped snake on a warm, sunny bank. The painted tortoises are fairly out sunning to-day. A very pleasant and warm afternoon; the earth seems to be waking up . . .

  4 P.M.—To Moore’s Swamp . . .

  At starlight by riverside a few faint stertorous sounds from the. awakening meadow, and one or two faint bullfrogish notes,—er-er-er. The sound of the snipes, winnowing; the evening air now at starlight, visible but for an instant high over the meadows, is heard far into the village . . .

  How can a man be a wise man, if he does n’t know any better how to live than other men?—if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle? Does Wisdom work in a treadmill? Does Wisdom fail? or does she teach how to succeed by her example? Is she merely the miller who grinds the finest logic? Did Plato get his living in a better way or more successfully than his contemporaries? Did he succumb to the difficulties of life like other men? Did he merely prevail over them by indifference, or by assuming grand airs? or find it easier to live because his aunt remembered him in her will?

  P.M.—To Saw Mill Brook.

  As I was handling the arbor-vitæ to-dav, an odor like strawberries came from [it]. Is that terebinthine? The lilac is beginning to open to-day. The snows go off and the lustre of the wintergreen is undiminished . . .

  The first April showers are even fuller of promise and a certain moist serenity than the sunny days. How thickly the green blades are starting up amid the russet! The tinge of green is gradually increasing in the face of the russet earth.

  Now that the very earliest shrubs are beginning to unfold . . .

  P.M.—To Lee’s Cliff on foot . . .

  Saw my white-headed eagle again, first at the same place, the outlet of Fair Haven Pond. It was a fine sight, lie is mainly—i.e. his wings and body—so black against the sky, and they contrast so strongly with his white head and tail. He was first flying low over the water; then rose gradually and circled westward toward White Pond. Lying on the ground with my glass, I could watch him very easily, and by turns he gave me all possible views of himself . . . Now I see him edgewise like a black ripple in the air, his white head still as ever turned to earth, and now he turns his under side to me, and I behold the full breadth of his broad black wings, somewhat ragged at the edges . . .

  P.M.—Up Assabet, and thence to Cedar Swamp . . . (Journal, 6:216-218).

  Sits still amid the pines not far below the top and sings very sweetly, loud and clear, and seems further off than it is, beginning first with very fine wiry notes and then increasing in volume and melody till it ends with tweeter tweeter tweeter ter twe . . .

  P.M.—To Indian Cedar Hill.

  Quite warm and the frogs are snoring . . . The summer approaches by almost insensibly increasing lieferungs of heat, each awakening some new bird or quadruped or reptile . . . Each creature awaits with confidence its proper degree of heat . . .

  2.30 P.M.—To Lee’s Cliff on foot.

  A still, warm, overcast clay with a southwest wind (this is what the Indians made so much of), and the finest possible dew-like rain in the air from time to time, now more of the sun. It is now so warm that I go back to leave my greatcoat for the first time, and the cooler smell of possible rain is refreshing . . .

  9 P.M.—Quite a heavy thunder-shower,—the second lightning, I think.

  The vivid lightning, as I walk the street, reveals the contrast between day and night. The rising cloud in the west makes it very dark and difficult to find my way . . .

  Stood on Cliffs about 7 A.M. Through a warm mistiness I see the waters with their reflections in the morning sun, while the wood thrush and huckleberry-bird, etc., are heard,—an unprofaned hour . . .

  It is only the irresolute and idle who have no leisure for their proper pursuit. Be preoccupied with this, devoted to it, and no accident can befall you, no idle engagements distract you. No man ever had the opportunity to postpone a high calling to a disagreeable duty. Misfortunes occur only when a man is false to his Genius. You cannot hear music and noise at the same time . . .

  Rain all day, making the grass look green.

  Nawshawtuct now in the rain looks about as green as a Roxbury russet; i.e. the russet is yielding to the green. Perhaps the greenness of the landscape may be said to begin fairly now . . .

  This is the second day of rain, and the river has risen about as high as any time this year.

  P.M.—To Cliffs by boat in the misty rain . . .

  The mouse-car is now fairly in blossom in many places. It never looks so pretty as now, in an April rain, covered with pearly drops. Its corymbs of five heads with one in the centre (all tinged red) look like a breast-pin set with pearls . . .

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  6 A.M.—Up railroad.

  Everything looks bright and as if it were washed clean. The red maples, now fully in bloom, show red tops . . .

  9 A.M.—To Cliffs and thence by boat to Fair Haven.

  I see the scrolls of the ferns just pushed up, but yet wholly invested with wool. The sweet-fern has not yet blossomed; its anthers are green and close, but its leaves, just beginning to expand . . .

  Early starlight by riverside.

  The water smooth and broad. I hear the loud and incessant cackling of probably a pigeon woodpecker,—what some time since I thought to be a different kind. Thousands of robins are filling the air with their trills . . .

  The river rising still. What I have called the small peewee on the willow by my boat,—quite small, uttering a short tchevet from time to time. Some common cherries are quite forward in leafing . . .

  Heard what I should call the twitter and mew of a goldfinch . . . (Journal, 6:235-236).

  There is no such thing as pure, objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i.e. to be significant, must be subjective. The sum of what the writer of whatever class has to report is simply some human experience, whether he be poet or philosopher or man of science. The man of most science is the man most alive . . .

  At sunset across the flooded meadow to Nawshawtuct. The water becoming calm. The sun is just disappearing as I reach the hilltop, and the horizon’s edge appears with beautiful distinctness. As the twilight approaches or deepens, the mountains, those pillars which point the way to heaven, assume a deeper blue. As yet the aspect of the forest at a distance is not changed from its-winter appearance, except where the maple-tops in blossom in low lands tinge it red . . .

  P.M.—By boat to Fair Haven.

  The water has fallen a foot or more but I cannot get under the stone bridge, so haul over the road. There is a fair and strong wind with which to sail upstream, and then I can leave my boat, depending on the wind changing to southwest soon . . .

  As I returned I saw, in the Miles meadow, on the bottom, two painted tortoises fighting . . .

  Looking at the birds at the Natural History Rooms, I find that I have not seen the crow blackbird at all yet this season . . .

  Sat on end of Long Wharf . . .

  Harris [Thaddeus William Harris] showed me a list of plants in Hovey’s Magazine (I think for ’42 or ’43) not in Bigelow’s Botany,—seventeen or eighteen of them, among the rest a pine I have not seen, etc., etc,. q.v . . .

  Planted melons.

  Dined at Tall’s Island . . .

  Returning stopped at Rice’s. He was feeding his chickens with Indian meal and water . . . Deacon Farrar’s meadow in time of flood (I had come through this) was a good place [to hunt turtles] . . .

  It began to sprinkle, and Rice said he had got “to bush that field” of grain before it rained, and I made haste back with a fair wind and umbrella for sail . . .

  P.M.—To Saw Mill Brook . . .

  The willows on the Turnpike now resound with the hum of bees, and I hear the yellowbird and Maryland yellow-throat amid them . . .

  While at the Falls, I feel the air cooled and hear the muttering of distant thunder in the northwest and see a dark cloud in that direction indistinctly through the wood. That distant thunder-shower very much cools our atmosphere. And I make haste through the woods homeward via Hubbard’s Close. Hear the evergreen-forest note. The true poet will ever live aloof from society, wild to it, as the finest singer is the wood thrush, a forest bird . . .

  Over meadows in boat at sunset to Island, etc.

  The rain is over. There is a bow in the east. The earth is refreshed; the grass is wet. The air is warm again and still. The rain has smoothed the water to a glassy smoothness. It is very beautiful on the water now . . .

   . . . It is surprising what an electrifying effect this shower appears to have had. It is like the christening of the summer, and I suspect that summer weather may be always ushered in in a similar manner,—thunder-shower, rainbow, smooth water, and warns night. A rainbow on the brow of summer. Nature has placed this gem on the brow of her daughter . . .

  Quite a fog risen up from the river. I cannot see over it from the hill a 6 A.M. The first I have seen. The grass is now high enough to be wet. I see many perfectly geometrical cobwebs on the trees . . .

  P.M.—To climbing fern.

  I have seen a little blue moth a long time. My thick sack is too much yesterday and to-day. The golden robin makes me think of a thinner coat. I sec that the great thrush,—brown thrasher,—from its markings, is still of the same family . . .

  4 P.M.—To V. Muhlenbergii Brook.

  The bass suddenly expanding its little round leaves; probably began about the l1th. Uvularias, amid the dry tree-tops near the azaleas, apparently yesterday. Saw the crow blackbird fly over, turning his tail in tile wind into a vertical position to serve for a rudder . . .

  A St. Domingo cuckoo, black-billed with red round eye, a silent, long, slender, graceful bird, dark cinnamon ( ?) above, pure white beneath. It is in a leisurely manner picking the young caterpillars out of a nest (now about a third of an inch long) with its long, curved bill. Not timid. Black willows have begun to leaf . . .

  P.M.—Up Assabet.

  The golden willow catkins are suddenly falling and covering my boat. High blueberry has flowered, say yesterday. Swamp-pink leafing, say yesterday. The Amelanchier Botryapium—some of them—have lost blossoms and show minute fruit. This I suspect the first sign of all wild edible fruit . . .

  V. peregrina in Channing’s garden . . .

  Also drank at what I will call Alder Spring at Clamshell Hill . . .

  Landed at Conantum by the red cherry grove above Arrowhead Field . . .

  The water is now tepid in the morning to the hands (may have been a day or two), as I slip my hands down the paddle. Hear the wood pewee, the warm weather sound. As I was returning over the meadow this side of the Island, I saw the snout of a mud turtle above the surface . . .

  P.M.—To Cedar Swamp via Assabet . . .

  There is a surprising change since I last passed up the Assabet; the fields are now clothed with so dark and rich a green, and the wooded shore is all lit up with the tender, bright green of birches fluttering in the wind and shining in the light, and red maple keys are seen at a distance against the tender green of birches and other trees, tingeing them . . .

  Huckleberry. Now for the tassels of the shrub oak; I can find no pollen yet about them . . .

  High winds all day racking the young trees and blowing off blossoms.

  Ranunculus Purshii will apparently open to-day . . . (Journal, 6:279-283).

  Very low thunder-clouds and showers far in the north at sunset, the wind of which, though not very strong, has cooled the air. Saw the lightning, but could not hear the thunder. I saw in the northwest first rise, in the rose-tinted horizon sky, a dark, narrow, craggy cloud, narrow and projecting as no cloud on earth, seen against the rose-tinged sky,—the crest of a thunder-storm, beautiful and grand. The steadily increasing sound of toads and frogs along the river with each successive wanner night is one of the most important peculiarities of the season. Their prevalence and loudness is in proportion to the increased temperature of the day. It is the first earth-song . . .

 P.M.—To Deep Cut.

  A shower, heralded only by thunder and lightning, has kept me in till late in the afternoon . . .

  Twilight on river.

  The reddish white lily pads here and there and the heart-leaves begin to be seen. A few pontederias, like long-handled spoons. The water going rapidly down, that often purplish bent grass is seen lying flat . . .

  Now begins the slightly sultryish morning air into which you awake early to hear the faint buzz of a fly or hum of other insect. The teeming air, deep and hollow, filled with some spiritus, pregnant as not in winter or spring, with room for imps . . .

  10 A.M.—To Fair Haven by boat.

  I see many young and tender dragon-flies, both large and small, hanging to the grass-tops and weeds and twigs which rise above the—water still going down. They are -weak and sluggish and tender-looking . . . I see their large gauze-like wings vibrating in the breeze . . .

  We soon get through with Nature. She excites an expectation which she cannot satisfy. The merest child which has rambled into a copsewood dreams of a wilderness so wild and strange and inexhaustible as Nature can never show him . . . There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song in them. I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me. I sat and listened by the hour to a positive though faint and distant music, not sung by any bird, nor vibrating any earthly harp. When you walked with a joy which knew not its own origin . . .

  A considerable fog, but already rising and retreating to the river. There are dewy cobwebs on the grass. The morning came in and awakened me early,—for I slept with a window open,—and the chip-bird was heard also. As I go along the causeway the [sun] rises red, with a great red halo, through the fog. When I reach the hill, the fog over the river already has its erectile feathers up. I am a little too late. But the level expanse of it far in the east, now lit by the sun, with countless tree-tops like oases seen through it, reminds of vast tracts of sand and of the seashore . . .

  Smilax. Heard and saw by the sassafras shore the rose-breasted grosbeak, a handsome bird with a loud and very rich song, in character between that of a robin and a red-eye. It sang steadily like a robin. Rose breast, white beneath, black head and above, white on shoulder and wings. The flowering ferns just begin, to light up the meadow with their yellowish green . . .

  Pipe-grass equisetum. Buttercups now densely spot the churchyard. Now for the fragrance of firs and spruce.

  P.M.—To Walden.

  Horse-radish, several days; rye four feet high. The luxuriant and rapid growth of this hardy and valuable grass is always surprising. How genial must nature be to it! It makes the revolution of the seasons seem a rapid whirl. How quickly and densely it clothes the earth! Thus early it suggests the harvest and fall. At sight of this deep and dense field all vibrating with motion and light . . .

  Geum rivale, a day or two at Hubbard’s Close; also the Rubus trifloras abundant there along the brook next the maple swamp, and still in bloom. Wild pinks (Silene), apparently a day or two. The red-eye is an indefatigable singer,—a succession of short bars with hardly an interval long continued . . .

  Larch cones are now conspicuous and handsome,—dark-crimson, about half an inch long. Pitch pine cones, too, are now handsome. The larch has a little of the sweetness of the fir, etc . . . As I sail down toward the Clamshell Hill about an hour before sunset, the water is smoothed like glass, though the breeze is as strong as before . . .

  The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects . . .

  These days it is left to one Mr. Loring to say whether a citizen of Massachusetts is a slave or not. Does any one think that Justice or God awaits Mr. Loring’s decision? Such a man’s existence in this capacity under these circumstances is as impertinent as the gnat that settles on my paper. We do not ask him to make up his mind, but to make up his pack. Whv, the United States Government never performed an act of justice in its life! And this unoffending citizen is held a prisoner by the United States soldier, of whom the best you can say is that he is a fool in a painted coat. Of what use a Governor or a Legislature? they are nothing but politicians . . . I see the papers full of soft speeches of the mayor and the Governor and brother editors. I see the Court-House full of armed men, holding prisoner and trying a MAN, to find out if he is not really a SLAVE. It is a question about which there is great doubt.

  It is really the trial of Massachusetts. Every moment that she hesitates to set this man free, she is convicted . . .

  P.M.—To Clintonia Swamp and Pond . . .

  Found a ground-robin’s nest, under a tuft of dry sedge which the winter had bent down, in sprout-land on the side of Heywood Peak, perfectly concealed, with two whitish eggs very thickly sprinkled with brown; made of coarse grass and weed stems and lined with a few hairs and stems of the mahogany moss . . .

  P.M.—To Miles Meadow by boat.

  A cold southeast wind. Blue-eyed grass, apparently in pretty good season. Saw a greater telltale, and this is the only one I have seen probably; distinguished by its size. It is very watchful, but not timid, allowing me to come quite near, while it stands on the lookout at the water’s edge . . .

  Fever-root. The umbrella toadstool yesterday, and now decaying. A smaller one. It was so cold last night and still that I surely expected a frost and covered all our melons But either the wind changed or clouds came over in the night . . .

  P. M.—To Bare Hill via Walden road and Goose Pond.

  Below the almshouse I see a small sparrow, not larger than the field sparrow, with a white line down the middle of the head, i tawny throat and breast, a yellow spot over the eye and another on the forward part of the wings . . .

  While waiting for Mother and Sophia I look now from the yad to the waving and slightly glaucous-tinged June meadows . . .

  I find sanicle just out on the Island . . . We went near to the stone bridge and crossed direct via the house-leek, of which I brought home a bunch . . . Took tea at Mrs. Barrett’s.

  When we returned to our boat at 7 P.M., I notice first, to my surprise, that the river was all alive with leaping fish . . .

  Caraway naturalized, and out apparently two or three days, in C. Barrett’s front yard.

  At Lee’s Cliff, where we dined, the oxalis pretty early . . . (Journal, 6:325-326).

  Brown speaks of a great brown moth,—probably emperor moth,—which came out in Worcester a few days ago. I see under the window, half dead, a large sphinx-like moth which apparently flew last night. The surface of the still water nowadays with a kind of lint, looking like dust at a little distance. Is it the down of the leaves blown off? In many places it reaches quite across the river. It is interesting to distinguish the different surfaces,—here broken into waves and sparkling with light, there, where covered with this linty dust or film, merely undulating without breaking, and there quite smooth and stagnant . . .

  P.M.—To Walden.

  Now is the time [to] observe the leaves, so fair in color and so perfect in form. I stood over a sprig of choke-cherry, with fair and perfect glossy green obovate and serrate leaves, in the woods this P.M., as if it were a rare flower . . .

  Large yellow butterflies with black spots since the 3d. Carrion-flower, maybe a day. Dangle-berry, probably June 3d at Trillium Woods. Now, just before sundown, a nighthawk is circling . . . I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature. I would fain drink a draft of Nature’s serenity. Let deep answer to deep. Already I see reddening clouds reflected in the smooth mirror of the river, a delicate tint, far off and elysian, unlike anything in the sky . . .

  P.M.—To Assabet Bathing-Place and return by stone bridge.

  I see now great baggy light-green puffs on the panicled andromeda, some with a reddish side . . . The painted tortoises are nowadays laying their eggs. I see where they have just been digging in the sand or gravel in a hundred places on the southerly sides of hills and banks near the river . . .

   . . . 6.30 A.M. [sic].—Up Assabet.

  Rhus Toxicodendron, yesterday, on Rock. Smilacina racemosa, probably June 4th. Beautiful the hemlock-fans, now broad at the ends of the lower branches, which slant clown, seen in the shade against the dark hillside. Such is the contrast of the very light green just put forth on their edges with the old very dark, I feast my eyes on it . . .

  Vibernum dentatum. Grape yesterday. Vibernum nadum, June 5. A thick fog this morning, through which at last rain falls,—the first after a considerable and first drv shell . As yet nothing has suffered from dryness . . .

. . . P.M.—To Dugan Desert via Linnæa Hills.

  Curled dock. Linnæa abundantly out some days: say 3d or 4th. It has not rained since morning, but continues cloudy and is warm and muggy, the sun almost coming out. The birds sing now more than ever . . .

  P.M.—On river.

  Sidesaddle, apparently to-morrow (?). Earliest and common potamogeton. Erigeron strigosus slowly opening, perhaps to-morrow . . .

  The summer aspect of the river begins perhaps when the Utricularia vulgaris is first seen on the surface, as yesterday. As I go along the railroad causeway, I see, in the cultivated grounds, a lark flashing his white tail, and showing his handsome yellow breast . . .

  7 P.M. Up Assabet.

  The tupelo’s stamens are loose and will perhaps shed pollen to-morrow or next day. It is twilight, and the river is covered with that dusty lint, as was the water next the shore at Walden this afternoon . . .

  The bay-wing sparrow apparently is not my seringo, after all . What is the seringo? I see some with clear, dirty-yellow breasts, but others, as to-day, with white breasts, dark-streaked. Both have the yellow over eye and the white line on crown . . .

  Our Mr. Fields who left by the steamer of the 7th for England took the proof sheets of Walden—In order to secure a copt in England the book must be published there as soon as here and at least 12 copies published and offered for sale. If Mr. F. succeeds in making a sale of the early sheets, it will doubtless be printed in London so as to cause very little delay here but if it be necessary to print and send out the copies it will delay us 3 or 4 weeks. Probably not more than three weeks. You will probably prefer to delay the publication that you may be sure of your cop’t in England.

  Truly yours

  W. D. Ticknor & Co.

  At twelve walked up Sudbury River above Frank’s to Ashland, at first through the meadows, then over the high hills in the vicinity. The stream narrows suddenly in the middle of Framingham, probably about the outlet from Farm Pond and also Stony Brook… A young man picking strawberries pointed toward Hopkinton southwesterly and said that it was four miles thither straight and six to Whitehall Pond (the source of the river), but a great deal farther by the river, that boats were used here at Ashland, and pouts and pickerel caught . . .

  Clover now reddens the fields. Grass in its prime. Comfrey in front of Stow’s well out some days apparently. With the roses now fairly begun I associate summer heats . . .

  Sundown.—To Clamshell Hill.

  Nightshade a day or two. The cracks made by cold in pastures in the winter are still quite distinct. Phleum or herd’s-grass (?). I sit on the Clamshell Hill at sunset . . .

  2 P.M.—By boat to Bittern Cliff and so to Lee’s Cliff.

  I hear muttering of thunder and see a dark cloud in the west-southwest horizon; am uncertain how far up-stream I shall get . . .

  Sisymbrium amphibium (?) of Bigelow, some days, at foot of Loring’s land. Common mallows well out; how long? . . . I see a black caterpillar on the black willows nowadays with red spots . . .

  Found a nest of tortoise eggs, apparently buried last night, which I brought home, ten in all,—one lying wholly on the surface,—and buried in the garden . . .

  P.M.—Up Assabet to Garlic Wall . . .

  7 P.M.—To Cliff by railroad . . .

  As the sun went down last night, round and red in a damp misty atmosphere, so now it rises in the same manner, though there is no dense fog . . .

  Three days in succession,—the 13th, 14th, and 15th,—thunder-clouds, with thunder and lightning, have risen high in the cast, threatening instant rain, and yet each time it has failed to reach us . . .

  There is a cool east wind,—and has been afternoons for several days,—which has produced a very thick haze or a fog- . . . There is a fine ripple and sparkle on the pond, seen through the mist. But what signifies the beauty of nature when men are base? We walk to lakes to see our serenity reflected in them. When we are not serene, we go not to them. Who can be serene in a country where both rulers and ruled are without principle? The remembrance of the baseness of politicians spoils my walks. My thoughts are murder to the State; I endeavor in vain to observe nature; my thoughts involuntarily go plotting against the State. I trust that all just men will conspire . . .

  A cold fog. These mornings those who walk in grass are thoroughly wetted above mid-leg. All the earth is dripping wet. I am surprised to feel how warm the water is, by contrast with the cold, foggy air. The frogs seem glad to bury themselves in it. The dewy cobwebs are very thick this morning, little napkins of the fairies spread on the grass . . .

  P. M.—To Walden and Cliffs via almshouse . . . The evergreen-forest bird at old place in white pine and oak tops, top of Brister’s Hill on right. I think it has black wings with white bars. Is it not the black-throated green warbler? The unmistakable tanager sits on the oaks at midday and sings with a hoarse red-eye note, pruit, prewee, prewa, prear, preā (often more notes), some of the latter notes clearer, without the r. It does not sing so continuously as the red-eye . . .

  I discover that J. Dugan found the eggs of my snapping turtle on June 7th, apparently the same day. It did not go to a new place then, after all. I opened the nest to-day. It is, perhaps, five or six rods from the brook, in the sand near its edge . . .

  A thunder-shower in the north. Will it strike us? How impressive this artillery of the heavens! It rises higher and higher. At length the thunder seems to roll quite across the sky and all round the horizon, even where there are no clouds, and I row homeward in haste. How by magic the skirts of the cloud are gathered about us, and it shoots forward over our head, and the rain comes at a time and place -,which baffles all our calculations! Just before it the swamp white oak in Merrick’s pasture was a very beautiful sight, with its rich shade of green, its top as it were incrusted with light. Suddenly comes the gust, and the big drops slanting from the north, and the birds fly as if rudderless, and the trees bow and are wrenched. It comes against the windows like hail and is blown over the roofs like steam or smoke. It runs down the large elm at Holbrook’s and shatters the house near by. It soon shines in silver puddles in the streets . . .

  P.M.—To Shad-bush Meadow.

  Heard a new bird—chut-cheeter-varrer-chutter-wit—on the low bushes, about the size of Wilson’s thrush apparently. Apparently olivaceous (?) above, most so on head, yellow front, dark bill, dark wings with two white bars . . .

  P.M.—To Walden, etc.

  Mitchella in Deep Cut woods, probably a day or two. Its scent is agreeable and refreshing, between the mayflower and rum cherry barb, or like peachstone meats . . . The effect of the pond on its shore while standing at a great height is remarkable. Though considerably lower than it was, it appears much higher in some places, where it has worn away a barrier between itself and a meadow and so made the water deeper there.

  Rambled up the grassy hollows in the sprout-lands north (?) of Goose Pond . . .

  P.M.—Walden and Cliffs.

  I see by the railroad causeway young barn swallows on the fences learning to fly . . .

  Lysimachia stricta, perhaps yesterday, at Lincoln bound, Walden. After one or two cold and rainy days the air is now clearer at last. From the Cliffs the air is beautifully clear, showing the glossy and light-reflecting greenness of the woods. It is a great relief to look into the horizon . There is more room under the heavens . . .

  Maywecd, say 27th. At Ludwigia Pokc-logan, a cinder-like spawn in a white, frothy jelly . A green bittern, apparently, awkwardly alighting on the trees and uttering its hoarse, zarry note, zskeow-xskeow-xskeow . . .

  Cornus sericea, yesterday at least. Small front-rank polygonum, a smut-like blast in the flower. Small form of arrowhead in Hubbard’s aster meadow, apparently several days. I am struck, as I look toward the Dennis shore from the bathing-place, with the peculiar agreeable dark shade of June, a clear air, and bluish light on the grass and bright silvery light reflected from fresh green leaves . . .

  Smooth sumach at Texas house, two days . . . P. Hutchinson says that he can remember when haymakers form Sudbury, thirty or forty years ago, used to come down the river in numbers and unite with concord to clear the weeds out of the river in shallow places and the larger streams emptying in . . .

  Your letter of the 25th, the books, and the Cicada came to hand this evening,—and I am much obliged to you for all of them;—for the books,—because I am very busy with putting the Library in order for examination, & want every book to be in its place; – for the letter, because it gives me interesting facts concerning Cicadas; and for the specimen because it is new to me, as a species or as a variety.

  The Cicada seems to be a female, and of course when living could not make the noise peculiar to the other sex. It differs from my specimens of Cicada septemdecim (& indeed still more from all the other species in my collection). It is not so large as the C.17; it has more orange about its thorax; the wing-veins are not so vividly stained with orange, and the dusky zigzag W on the anterior or upper wings, which is very distinct in the C.17, is hardly visible in this specimen. It has much the same form as the female C.17; but I must see the male in order to determine positively whether it be merely a variety or a different species. I should be very glad to get more specimens and of both sexes. Will you try for them?

  Your much obliged

  Thaddeus William Harris.

  Tall anemone. Pontederia to-morrow.

  A thunder-shower in the afternoon (Journal, 6:378).

  P.M.—To lime-kiln.

  Spurry, a good while. Cichorium at Simon Brown’s, three or four days (early); also catnep, about two davs . . . All the large black birches on Hubbard’s Hill have just been cut down,—half a dozen or more . . .

  Jersey tea. Young oak shoots have grown from one and a half to three or four feet, but now in some cases appear to be checked . . . (Journal, 6:379).

  I was very much interested in watching him while he was watching the Expression of Henry’s face. For two or three weeks he did not put a pencil to paper; but one morning at breakfast, he suddenly jumped up from the table, asked to be excused and disappeared for the rest of the day. The next morning he brought down the crayon, almost exactly in its present form, scarcely another touch was put upon it.

  The wood thrush and tanager sing at 4 P.M. at Cliffs . . . Some boys brought me to-night a singular kind of spawn found attached to a pole floating in Fair haven Pond . . .

  P.M.—To Flint’s Pond and Smith’s Hill with C. [William Ellery Channing] . . . (Journal, 6:381-382).

  P.M.—To Hubbard Bridge by boat.

  On the great hummock dropped on Dennis’s meadow last winter, I see now flourishing, of small plants, water milkweed . . .

  8 A.M.—To Framingham.

  Great orange-yellow lily, some clays, wild yellow, lily, drooping, well out . . . (Journal, 6:384).

  One hundred and nine swallows on telegraph-wire at bridge within eight rods, and others flying about . . . (Journal, 6:384-385).

  Euphorbia maculata, good while. Polygonum aviculare, a day or two. Now a great show of elder blossoms. Polygala sangvinea, apparently a day or more. Galium asprellum in shade; probably earlier in sun. Partridges a third grown.

  Veery still sings and toad rings.

  On the hot sand of the new road at Beck Stove’s, headed toward the water a rod or more off . . .

  Verbena urticifolia. Ilysanthes, three or four days back, flat east of Clamshell Shore. Large form of arrowhead, two or more days. Woodcock at the spring under Clamshell. Campanula aparinoides, apparently three or four clays. The clover heads are turned brown and dry, and whiteweed is also drying up . . .

  8 P.M.—Full moon; by boat to Hubbard’s Bend . . . (Journal, 6:386-387).

  P. M.—To Hubbard’s Close, spotted pyrola, and Walden . . .

  Sun set when I was off Nut Meadow. A straight edge of massy cloud had advanced from the south-southeast and now stretched overhead from west-southwest to east-northeast, and after sunset reflected a soft fawn-colored (?) light on the landscape, lighting up with harmonious light the dry parched and shorn hillsides . . .

  The early cotton-grass is now about gone from Hubbard’s Close. With this month began the reign of riverweeds obstructing the stream. Potamogetons and heartleaves, etc., now for a long time covered with countless mosquito cases (?). They catch my oars and retard the boat. A rail will be detained a month by them in mid-stream . . .

  Have heard a faint locust-like sound from crickets a week or two. In the midst of July heat and drought. The season is trivial as noon. I hear the hot-weather and noonday birds,—red-eye, tanager, wood pewee, etc. Plants are curled and withered. The leaves dry, ripe like the berries . . . Polygonum Hydropiper at Baker Swamp . . . Boys go after the cows now about 5.30 o’clock . . .

  P.M.—Over the Hill to Brown’s watering-place.

  It holds up from time [to time], and then a fine, misty rain falls. It lies on the fine reddish tops of some grasses, thick and whitish like morning cobwebs . . .

  On the shady side of the hill I go along Hubbard’s walls toward the bathing-place, stepping high to keep my feet as dry as may be . . . Again I am attracted by the Clamshell reach of the river, running east and west, as seen from Hubbard’s fields, now beginning to be smoothed as in the fall . . .

  P.M.—Via railroad and pond to Saw Mill Brook. Many yellow butterflies and red on clover and yarrow. Is it the yellow-winged or Savannah sparrow with yellow alternating with dark streaks on throat, as well as yellow over eye, reddish flesh-colored legs, and two light bars on wings? . . . Woodcock by side of Walden in woods . . .

  P.M.—To Sam Barrett’s by boat, and old Wheeler house . . . (Journal, 6:401-405).

  P.S. July 21, 1854. Send 2d copy pr Mail from N.Y. of 22d.

  In Moore’s Swamp I pluck cool, though not very sweet, large red raspberries in the shade, making themselves dense thickets . . . (Journal, 6:405-406).

  P.M.—To Hubbard Bath.

  That long, narrow sparganium, which is perhaps the smaller one, growing long in our river, stands thick, with the heart-leaf and potarnogeton, in the middle in shallow places. Methinks there begins to be a bluish scum on the water at this season, somewhat stagnant looking . . .

  It was almost impossible to pursue any work out-of doors yesterday. There were but few men to be seen out. You were prompted often, if working in the sun, to step into the shade to avoid a sunstroke . . .

  P. M.—To Bare Hill, Lincoln, via railroad.

  High blackberries, a day or two. The middle umbellet of the bristly aralia in some places, also a day or more . . .

  P.M.—To Peter’s.  

  Sunflower. Meadow-haying begun for a week . . . (Journal, 6:415).

  Surveyed east part of Lincoln.

  5 P.M.—To Conantum on foot.

  My attic chamber has compelled me to sit below with the family at evening for a month. I feel the necessity of deepening the stream of my life; I must cultivate privacy. It is very dissipating to be with people too much. As C. [William Ellery Channing] says, it takes the edge off a man’s thoughts to have been much in society. I cannot spare my moonlight and my mountains for the best of man I am likely to gent in exchange.

  I am inclined now to go for a pensive evening walk. Methinks we think of spring mornings and autumn evenings, I go via Hubbard’s Path . . .

  I sat on the Bittern Cliff as the still eve drew on. There was a man on Fair Haven furling his sail and bathing from his boat. A boat on a river whose waters are smoothed, and a man disporting in it! How it harmonizes with the stillness and placidity of the evening! Who knows but he is a poet in his yet obscure but golden youth? Few else go alone into retired scenes without gun or fishing-rod. He bathes in the middle of the pond while his boat slowly drifts away. As I go up the hill, surrounded by its shadow, while the sun is setting, I am soothed by the delicious stillness of the evening, save that on the hills the wind blows. I was surprised by the sound of my own voice. It is an atmosphere burdensome with thought. For the first time for a month, at least, I am reminded that thought is possible. The din of trivialness is silenced. I float over or through the deeps of silence. It is the first silence I have heard
for a month. My life had been a River Platte, tinkling over its sands but useless for all great navigation, but now it suddenly became a fathomless ocean. It shelved off to unimagined depths . . .

  [James T.] Fields today sends me a specimen copy of my “Walden.” It is to be published on the 12th inst.

  A still, cloudy day with from time to time a gentle August rain. Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects. The weeds—fleabane, etc.—begin to stand high in the potato-fields, overtopping the potatoes. This hardhack interests me with its bedewed pyramid . . .

  After sunset, a very low, thick, and flat white fog like a napkin, on the meadows, which ushers in a foggy night . . .

  In crossing the meadow to the Jenkins Spring at noon, I was surprised to find that the dew was not off the deep meadow-grass, but I wet the legs of my pants through . . . As I return down-stream, I see the haymakers now raking with hand or horse rakes into long rows or loading, one on the load placing it and treading it down, while others fork it up to him; and other are gleaning with rakes after the forkers . . .

  From Peter’s I look over the Great Meadows . . . A wasp stung me at one high blueberry bush on the forefinger of my left hand, just above the second joint . . . (Journal, 6:426-428).

  Methinks I have spent a rather unprofitable summer thus far. I have been too much with the world, as the poet might say. The completest performance of the highest duties it imposes would yield me but little satisfaction. Better the neglect of all such, because your life passed on a level where it was impossible to recognize them. Latterly, I have heard the very flies buzz too distinctly, and have accused myself because I slid not still this superficial din. We must not be too easily distracted by the crying of children or of dynasties. The Irishman erects his sty, and gets drunk, and jabbers more and more under my eaves, and I am responsible for all that filth and folly. I find it, as ever, very unprofitable to have much to do with men. It is sowing the wind, but not reaping even the whirlwind; only reaping an unprofitable calm and stagnation. Our conversation is a smooth, and civil, and never-ending speculation merely. I take up the thread of it again in the morning, with very much such courage as the invalid takes his prescribed Seidlitz powders. Shall I help you to some of the mackerel? It would be more respectable if men, as has been said before, instead of being such pigmy desperates, were Giant Despairs. [Ralph Waldo] Emerson says that his life is so unprofitable and shabby for the most part, that he is driven to all sorts of resources [recources?], and, among the rest, to men. I tell him that we differ only in our resources Mine is to get away from men. They very rarely affect me as grand or beautiful; but I know that there is a sunrise and a sunset every day. In the summer, this world is a mere watering place,—a Saratoga,—drinking so many tumblers of Congress water; and in the winter, is it any better, with its oratorios? I have seen more men than usual lately; and, well as was acquainted with one, I am surprised to find what vulgar fellowes they are. They do a little business commonly each day, in order to pay their board, and then they congregate in sitting-rooms and feebly fabulate and paddle in the social slush; and when I drink that they have sufficiently relaxed, and am prepared to see them steal away to their shrines, they go unashamed to their beds, and take on a new layer of sloth. They may be single, or have families in their faineancy. I do not meet men who can have nothing to do with me because they have so much to do with themselves. However, I trust that a very few cherish purposes which they never declare. Only think for a moment, of a man about his affairs! How we should respect him! How glorious he would appear! Not working for any corporation, its agent, or president, but fulfilling the end of his being! A man about his business would be the cynosure of all eyes.

  The other evening I was determined that I would silence this shallow din; that I would walk into various directions and see if there was not to be found any depth of silence around. As Bonaparte sent out his horsemen in the Red Sea on all slides to find shallow water, so I sent forth my mounted thoughts to find deep water. I felt the village and paddle up the river to Fair Haven Pond. As the sun went down, I saw a solitary boatman disporting on the smooth lake. The falling dews seemed to strain and purify the air, and I was soothed with an infinite stillness. I got the world, as it were, by the nape of the neck, and held it under the tide of its own events, till it was drowned, and then I let it go down stream like a dead dog. Vast hollow chambers of silence stretched away on every side, and my being expanded in proportion, and filed them. Then first could I appreciate sound, and find it musical.

  But now for your news. Tell us of the year. Have you fought the good fight? What is the state of your crops? Will you harvest answer well to the seed-time, and are you cheered by the prospect of stretching cornfields? Is there any blight on your fields, any murrain in your herds? Have you tried the size and quality of your potatoes? It does one good to see their balls dangling in the lowlands. Have you got your meadow hay before the fall rains shall have set in? Is there enough in your barns to keep your cattle over? Are you killing weeds nowadays? Or have you earned leisure to go a-fishing? Did you plant any Giant Regrets last spring, such as I saw advertised? It is not a new species, but the result of cultivation and a fertile soil. They are excellent for sauce. How is it when your marrow squashes for winter use? Is there likely to be a sufficiency for fall feed in your neighborhood? What is the state of the springs? I read that in your country there is more water on the hills than in the valleys. Do you find it easy to get all the help you require? Work early and late, and let your men and teams rest at noon. Be careful not to drink too much sweetened water, while at your hoeing, this is hot weather. You can bear the heat much better for it.

  P.M.—Clematis Brook via Conantum . . . Mr. [Eben] Loomis says that he saw a mockingbird at Fair Haven Pond to-day.

  I have just finished reading “Walden” and hasten to thank you for the great degree of satisfaction it has afforded me. Having always been a lover of Nature, in man, as well as in the material universe, I hail with pleasure every original production in literature which bears the stamp of a genuine and earnest love for the true philosophy of human life.—Such I assure you I esteem your book to be. To many, and to most, it will appear to be the wild musings of an eccentric and strange mind, though all must recognize your affectionate regard for the gentle denizens of the woods and pond as well as the great love you have shown for what are familiarly called the beauties of Nature. But to me the book appears to evince a mind most thoroughly self possessed, highly cultivated with a strong vein of common sense. The whole book is a prose poem (pardon the solecism) and at the same time as simple as a running brook.

  I have always loved ponds of pure translucent water, and some of my happiest most memorable days have been passed on and around the beautiful Middleboro’s Pond, particularly the largest, Assawampset—here King Philip frequently came, and a beautiful round hill near by is still known as “king Phillip’s look-out.” I have often felt an inclination when tired of the noise and strife of society, to retire to the shores of this noble pond, or rather lake, for it is some 5 or 6 miles in length and 2 bread. But I have a wife and four children, & besides have got a little too far along, being in my forty-second year, to undertake a new mode of life. I strive however, and have stiven during the whole of my life, to live as free from the restraint of mere forms & ceremonies as I possibly can. I love quiet, peaceful rural retirement; but it was not my fate to realize this until a little past thirty years of age—since then I have been a sort of rustic, genteel perhaps, rustic. Not so very genteel you might reply, if you saw the place where I am writing. It is a rough board shanty 12×14 three miles from New Bedford in a quiet & secluded spot—here for the present I eat, & sleep, read, write, receive visitors &c. My house is now undergoing repairs &c and my family are in town. A short time since a whip-poor-will serenaded me, and later at night I hear the cuckoos near my window. It has long been my delight to observe the feathered tribes, and early Spring is to me a still a delightful circumstance. But more particularly soothing to me is the insect hum so multitudinous at this season,—Now as I write the crickets & other little little companions are sweetly & soothingly singing around my dwellings, & occasionally in my room. I am quite at home with partridges, quails, rabbits skunks & woodchucks. But Winter is my best time, then I am a great tramper through the woods. O how I love the woods. I have walked thousands of miles in the woods hereabouts. I recognize many of my own experiences in your “Walden.” Still I am not altogether given up to these matters—they are my pastimes. I have a farm to attend to, fruit trees & a garden & a little business occasionally in town to look after, but my leisure nevertheless In fact I am the only man of leisure I know of, every body here as well as elsewhere is upon the stir. I love quiet, thus you know friend Thoreau dont necessarily imply that the body should be still all the time. I am often quietest, aren’t you, when walking among the still haunts of Nature or hoeing perhaps beans as I have oftentimes done as well as corn & potatoes &c &c.

  Poetry has been to me a great consolation amid the jarring elements of this life. The English poets, some of them at least, and one Latin, our good old Virgil, have been like household gods to me.—Cowper’s Task, my greatest favorite no lies before me in which I had been reading & alternately looking at the western sky just after sunset before I commenced this letter. Cowper was a true lover of the country. How often have I felt the force of these lines upon the country in my own experience

“I never framed a wish or formed a plan,
That flattered me with hopes of earthly bliss
But there I said the scene”

  All through my boyhood, the country haunted my thoughts. Though blessed with a good home, books & teachers, the latter however with one exception were not blessings, I would have exchanged all for the life of rustic. I envied as I then thought the freedom of the farmer boy. But I have long thought that the life of a farmer, that is most farmers, possessed but little of the poetry of labour. How we accumulate cares around us. The very repairs I am now making upon my house will to some considerable extent increase my cares. A rough board shanty, rye & indian bread, water from the spring, or as in your case, from the pond, and other things in keeping, do not burden the body & mind. It is fine houses, fine furniture, sumptuous fare, fine clothes and many in number, horses & carriages, servants &c &c &c, there are the harpies, so that so disturb our real happiness.

  My next move in life I hope will be into a much more simple mode of living. I should like to live in a small house, with my family, uncarpeted white washed walls, simple old fashioned furniture & plain wholesome old fashioned fare. Though I have always been inclined to be a vegetarian in diet & once lived in capital health two years on the Graham system.

  Well this will do for myself. Now for you friend Thoreau. Why return to the world again? A life such as you spent at Walden was too true & beautiful to be abandoned for any slight reason.

  The ponds I allude to are much more secluded than Walden, and really delightful places—Should you ever incline again to try your “philosophy of living” I would introduce you into haunts, that your very soul would leap to behold. Well I thought I would just write you a few lines to thank you for the pleasure I have received from the reading of your “Walden,” but I have found myself running on till now. I feel that you are a kindred spirit and so fear not. I was pleased to find a kind of word or two in your book for the poor down trodden slave. Wilberforce, Clarkson and John Woolman & Anthony Benezet were household words in my father’s house.—I early became acquainted with the subject of slavery for my parents were Quakers, & Quakers were then all Abolitionists. My love of Nature, absolute, undefiled Nature makes me an abolitionist. How could I listen to the woodlandsongs—or gaze upon the outstretched landscape, or look at the great clouds & the starry heavens and be aught but a friend of the poor and oppressed coloured race of our land. But why do I write—it is in vain to portray these things—they can only be felt and lived, and to you of all others I would refrain from being prolix.

  I have outlined, or nearly so, all ambition for notoriety. I wish only to be a simple, good man & so live that when I come to surrender up my spirit to the Great Father, I may depart in peace.

  I wrote the above last evening. It is now Sunday afternoon, and alone in my Shanty I sit down at my desk to add a little more. A great white cloud which I have been watching for the past half hour is now majestically moving off to the north east before the fine S. W. breeze which sets in here nearly every summer afternoon from the ocean. We have the best climate in New England—Sheltered in the north & east by dense pine woods from the cold winds which so cut up the healths of eastern folks, or rather are suffered to—but I think if the habits of our people were right the north easters would do but little harm. I never heard that the Indians were troubled by them—but they were nature’s philosophers and lived in the woods. I love to go by my instincts, inspiration rather. O how much we lose by civilization! In the eyes of the world you & I are demi savages—But I rather think we could stand our hand at the dinner table or in the drawing room with most of folks. I would risk you anywhere, and as for myself I have about done with the follies of “society.” I never was trump’s yet.

  I have lived out all the experiences of idle youth—some gentle, & some savage experiments but my heart was not made of the stuff for a sportsman or angler—early in life I rangled the woods, fields & shores with my gun, or rod, but I found that all I sought could be obtained much better without the death of dealing implements. So now my rustic staff is all the companion I usually take, unless my old dog joins me—taking no tracks as he often does, and bounding upon me in some distant thicket. My favorite books are—Cowper’s task, Thomas’s Seasons Milton, Shakespeare, &c &c—Goldsmith Gray’s Elegy—Beattie’s Minstrel (parts) Howitt, Gil. White, (Selbourne) Berwich (wood—engraver) moderns—Wordsworth Ch. Lamb De Quincy, Macaulay, Kit. Noth, &c &c

  These and others are more my companions than men. I like talented women & wear lustily by May Wolstoncroft, &c &c—Roland, Joan d-arc & somewhat by dear Margaret Fuller.

The smaller fry, let go by-

  Again permit me to thank you for the pleasure & strength I have found in reading “Walden.”

  Dear Mr Walden good bye for the present.

Yours most respectfully
Daniel Rickertson

Boston, Mass. Walden is reviewed in Dwight’s Journal of Music.

Boston, Mass. Walden is reviewed in the Boston Commonwealth.

Boston, Mass. Walden is reviewed in the Olive Branch.

New Bedford, Mass. Walden is reviewed in the New Bedford Mercury.

The National Anti-Slavery Standard prints an abbreviated version of “Slavery in Massachusetts” in an article entitled “Words That Burn.”

  Let me thank you heartily for your paper on the present condition of Massachusetts, read at Framingham and printed in the Liberator. As a literary statement of the truth, which every day is making more manifest, it surpasses everything else (so I think), which the terrible week in Boston has called out. I need hardly add my thanks for “Walden,” which I have been awaiting for so many years. Through Mr. [James T.] Field’s kindness, I have read a great deal of it in sheets;—I have just secured two copies, one for myself, and one for a young girl here, who seems to me to have the most remarkable literary talent since Margaret Fuller,—and to whom your first book has been among the scriptures, ever since I gave her that. (No doubt your new book will have a larger circulation than the other, but not, I think, a more select or appreciate one.)

  6 P.M. – To Hubbard Bath and Fair Haven Hill . . . (Journal, 6:437-440).

  By 5.30 the fog has withdrawn from the channel here and stands southward over the Texas Plain, forty or fifty feet high . . .

  9 A.M.—Walk all day with W. E. C., [William Ellery Channing] northwest into Acton and Carlisle . . .

  At evening, Mr. [John] Russell showed me his microscope at Miss Mackay’s. Looked at a section of pontederia leaf . . .

  P.M.—With Russell to Fair Haven by boat . . . (Journal, 6:446-9).

  P.M.—Over Great Meadows . . . (Journal, 6:449-453).

  Plucked, about 4.30, one bunch of Viburnum nudum berries, all green, with very little pink tinge even. When I got home at 6.30, nine were turned blue, the next morning thirty . . .

  P.M.—Up Assabet by boat to Bath . . . A man tells me to-day that he once saw some black snake’s eggs on the surface of a tussock in a meadow just hatching, some hatched . . .

  I improve the dry weather to examine the middle of Gowing’s Swamp . . .  Next comes, half a dozen rods wide, a dense bed of Andromeda calyculata,—the A. Polifolia mingled with it,—the rusty cotton-grass, cranberries,—the common and also V. Oxycoccus,—pitcher-plants, sedges, and a few young spruce and larch here and there,—all on sphagnum, which forms little hillocks about the stems of the andromeda . . .

  I hear part of phoebe’s strain, as I go over the railroad bridge. It is the voice of dying summer. The pads now left on the river are chiefly those of the white lily . . . Nasturtium hispidum still in bloom, and will be for some time . . .

  The Poa hirsuta is left on the upper edge of the meadows (as at J. Hosmer’s), as too thin and poor a grass, beneath the attention of the farmers. How fortunate that it grows in such places and not in the midst of the rank grasses which are cut! With its beautiful fine purple color, its beautiful purple blush, it reminds me and supplies the place of the rhexia now about done. Close by, or held in your hand, its fine color is not obvious,—it is but dull,—but [at] a distance, with a suitable light, it is exceedingly beautiful. It is at the same time in bloom. This is one of the most interesting phenomena of August . . .

  I am surprised to find the brook and ditches in Hubbard’s Close remarkably full after this long drought, when so many streams are dried up. Rice and others are getting out mud in the pond-hole opposite Breed’s. They have cut down straight through clear black muck, perfectly rotted, eight feet, and it is soft yet further. Button-bushes, andromeda, proserpinaca, hardhack, etc., etc., grow atop. It looks like a great sponge. Old trees buried in it. On the Walden road some maples are yellow and some chestnuts brownish-yellow and also sere . . .  As I go up Pine Hill, gather the shrivelled Vaccinium vacillans berries, many and good, and not wormy like huckleberries. Far and more abundant in this state than usual, owing to the drought . . .

  P.M.—To Conantum via Clamshell Hill and meadows . . .

  I go along through J. Hosmer’s meadow near the river, it is so dry. I see places where the meadow has been denuded of its surface within a few years . . .

  P.M.—To Lincoln. Surveying for William Peirce. He says that several large chestnuts appear to be dying near him on account of the drought. Saw a meadow said to be still on fire after three weeks . . .

  P. M.—Along river to E. Hosmer’s [Edmund Hosmer].

  A very little mizzling. The Aster Tradescanti is perhaps beginning to whiten the shores on moist banks. I see a fine (reddish) topped grass in low lands, whitened like a thin veil with what it has caught of this dewy rain . . .

  P.M.—By boat to Purple Utricularia Shore . . .

  I see white lilies wide open at 2.30 P.M. They are half open even at 5 P.M. in many places this moist cloudy day and thus late in their season . . . Bathed at Hubbard’s . . .

  P.M.—With Minot Pratt into Carlisle . . .

  P.M.—To climbing fern . . .

  7.30.—To Fair Haven Pond by boat . . .

  9 P.M.—There is now approaching from the west one of the heaviest thunder-showers (apparently) and with the most incessant flashes that I remember to have seen . . . Before this, in the afternoon, to Hollowell place via Hubbard Bath, crossing the river . . .

  A sprinkling drove me back for an umbrella, and I started again for Smith’s Hill via Hubbard’s Close . . . (Journal, 7:34-36).

  8 A.M.—To opposite Pelham’s Pond by boat . . . We went up thirteen or fourteen miles at least, and, as we stopped at Fair Haven Hill returning, rowed about twenty-five miles to-day.

  Your note, which was directed to Concord N.H., has just reached me. The address to which you refer has not been printed in a pamphlet form. It appeared in the Liberator, from which it was copied into the Tribune, &, with omissions, into the Anti-Slavery Standard. I am sorry that I have not a copy to send you. I have published “A Week on the Concord & Merrimack Rivers,” as well as “Walden, or Life in the Woods,” and some miscellaneous papers. The “Week” probably is not for sale at any bookstore. The greater part of the edition was returned to me.

Respectfully

Henry D. Thoreau.

  P.M.—To Fringed Gentian Meadow over Assabet and to Dugan Desert. I find the mud turtle’s eggs at the Desert all hatched . . .

  Mr James Spooner and others here, your friends, have clubbed together and raised a small sum in hope of persuading you to come down and read them a paper or two some Sunday. They can offer you $10 at least. Mr [A. Bronson] Alcott is now here, and I thought it might be agreeable to you to come down next Saturday and read a paper on Sunday morning and perhaps on Sunday evening also, if agreeable to yourself. I can assure you of a very warm reception but from a small party only.

Very truly yours

B. M. Watson

I will meet you at the Depot on Saturday evening, if you so advise me. Last train leaves at 5—

This is not a “Leyden Hall Meeting” but a private party—social gathering—almost sewing circle. Tho’ perhaps we may meet you at Leyden Hall.

  Viburnum Lentago berries now perhaps in prime, though there are but few blue ones.

  Thinking this afternoon of the prospect of my writing lectures and going abroad to read them the next winter, I realized how incomparably great the advantages of obscurity and poverty which I have enjoyed so long (and may still perhaps enjoy). I thought with what more than princely, with what poetical, leisure I had spent my years hitherto, without care or engagement, fancy-free. I have given myself up to nature, I have lived so many springs and summers and autumns and Winters as if I had nothing else to do but live them, and imbibe whatever nutriment they had for me; I have spent a couple of years, for instance, with the flowers chiefly, having none other so binding engagement as to observe when they opened; I could have afforded to spend a whole fall observing the changing tints of the foliage. Ah, how I have thriven on solitude and poverty! . . .

  I am glad to hear from you & the Plymouth men again. The world still holds together between Concord and Plymouth, it seems. I should like to be with you while Mr [A. Bronson] Alcott is there, but I cannot come next Sunday. I will come Sunday after next, that is Oct 1st, if that will do,—and look out for you at the depot.

  I do not like to promise now more than one discourse. Is there a good precedent for 2?

Yrs Concordially

Henry D. Thoreau.

  The first frost in our yard last night, the grass white and stiff in the morning. The muskmelon vines are now blackened in the sun. There have been some frosts in low grounds about a week. The forenoon is cold, and I have a fire, but it is a fine clear day, as I find when I come forth to walk in the afternoon, a fine-grained air with a seething or shimmering in it . . .

  I have just read your letter, but do not mean now to answer it, solely for want of time to say what I wish. I directed a copy of “Walden” to you at Ticknor’s, on the day of its publication, and it should have reached you before. I am encouraged to know that it interests you as it now stands,—a printed book,—for you apply a very severe test to it,—you make the highest demand on me. As for the excursion you speak of, I should like it right well,—indeed I thought of proposing the same thing to you and [Theophilus] Brown, some months ago. Perhaps it would have been better if I had done so then; for in that case I should have been able to enter into it with that infinite margin to my views,—spotless of all engagements,—which I think so necessary. As it is, I have agreed to go a-lecturing to Plymouth, Sunday after next (October 1) and to Philadelphia in November, and thereafter to the West, if they shall want me; and, as I have prepared nothing in that shape, I feel as if my hours were spoken for. However, I think that, after having been to Plymouth, I may take a day or two—if that date will suit you and Brown. At any rate I will write you then.

  P.M.—Over Nawshawtuct.

  The river is peculiarly smooth and the water clear and sunny as I look from the stone bridge. A painted tortoise with his head out, outside of the weeds . . .

Crossing the hill behind Minott’s just as the sun is preparing to dip below the horizon, the thin haze in the atmosphere north and south along the west horizon reflects a purple tinge and bathes the mountains with the same . . .

  By moonlight all is simple. We are enabled to erect ourselves, our minds, on account of the fewness of objects. We are no longer distracted. It is simple as bread and water. It is simple as the rudiments of an art,—a lesson to be taken before sunlight, perchance, to prepare us for that . . .

  I was struck with the peculiar and interesting colors of the naked arms of the buttonwood at the brick house, delicate tints seen from the ground,—whitish, greenish, and fawn-colored (?). They look as if recently bared by the scaling off of the old bark. The buttonwoods are in a flourishing condition thus year . . .

  Low fog-like veil on meadows.

  On the large sassafras trees on the hill I see many of the handsome red club-shaped pedicels left, with their empty cups which have held fruit; and I see one or two elliptical but still green berries. Apparently the rest have ripened and fallen or been gathered by birds already . . .

  P.M.—By boat to Grape Cliff.

  These are the stages in the river fall: first, the two varieties of yellow lily pads begin to decay and blacken (long ago), second, the first fall rains come after dog-days and arise and cool the river, and winds wash the decaying sparganium, etc., etc., to the shores and clear the channel more or less; third, when the first harder frosts come (as this year the 21st and 22d inst.), the button-bushes, which before had attained only a dull mixed Yellow, are suddenly bitten, wither, and turn brown, all but the protected parts.

  The first fall is so gradual as not to make much impression, but the last suddenly and conspicuously gives a fall aspect to the scenery of the river . . .

  There is to be a meeting here on Oct 1st that we think will interfere with yours, and so if the Lord is willing and you have no objections we will expect you on the next Sunday 8th October.

  I think Mr A. [A. Bronson Alcott] will stay till that time.

  I have been lately adding to my garden, and now have all that joins me—so I am ready to have it surveyed by you; a pleasure I have long promised myself. So, if you are at leisure and inclined to the field I hope I may be so fortunate as to engage your services

Very truly yrs

B. M. Watson

They survey might be before Monday or after as you please, and I will meet you at the Depot any time you say.

  I suspect that I know on what the brilliancy of the autumnal tints will depend On the greater or less drought of the summer. If the drought has been uncommonly severe, as this year, I should think it would so far destroy the vitality of the leaf that it would attain only to a dull, dead color in autumn, that to produce a brilliant autumn the plant should be full of sap vigor to the last . . .

  There was a splendid sunset while I was on the water, beginning at the Clamshell reach. All the lower edge of a very broad dark-slate cloud which reached up backward almost to the zenith was lit up through and through with a dun golden fire, the sun being below the horizon, like a furze plain densely on fire, a short distance above the horizon, for there was a clear, pale robin’s-egg sky beneath, and some little clouds on which the light fell high in the sky but nearer, seen against the upper part of the distant uniform dark-slate one, were of a fine grayish silver color, with fine mother-o’-pearl tints unusual at sunset (?). The furze gradually burnt out on the lower edge of the cloud, changed into a smooth, hard pale pink vermilion, which gradually faded into a gray satiny pearl, a fine Quaker-color . . .

  Yesterday was quite warm, requiring the thinnest coat. To-day is cooler. The elm leaves have in some places more than half fallen and strew the ground with thick rustling beds . . .

  Since Esta will not take the trouble to write me, as she promised, I address myself to you. I received your letter this evening as I returned from an afternoon’s tramp with Mr. Thoreau. Mrs. T. kindly invited me to tea & said she should expect me, but I thought it better to decline & since, I have been glad I have done so, as I got your letter, & can sit & write here so comfortably—It only wants one or two people here to make it quite pleasant.

  I dined at Mr. Thoreau’s today. I went in and knocked gently, but as no one heard, for the family was in the next room, walked in & made myself at home reading Walden. There was an English Gentleman, with an unpronounceable name [Cholmondeley] which I wish I had written just for curiosity, there. He came there for Mr. Thoreau to teach him botany which Mr. T. says he never professed to know, though he acknowledged to me today that he never met with a new plant now & had given up the study. The English gentleman wears a long beard & mustache & is a graduate of Oxford.

  Mr. T’s mother is a rather tall & very pleasant lady. She made herself very agreeable and said she knew my father & mother which I found were Uncle Brown & Aunt Hannah. Mr. T’s father and sister are very pleasant. They had a mutton for dinner which would suit you. It was much better than we have at home. By going in so I had the opportunity of hearing Mr. Thoreau play upon his flute in the next room, which was very fine. He accompanied his sister upon the piano, Mrs. T. says.

  They must be pretty well off by the look of things. Mr. T. showed me another large white two story house [the Texas house] a short distance over the fields which he said his father owned. He said he dug the cellar while he lived at Walden & stoned it. They lived there when it was built but his mother & sister preferred living down nearer & so they moved down. He said he didn’t care where they lived, so long as it was in Concord, if he could only get off the back way into the woods, which you can do from almost every house by going across the fields or meadows.

  After dinner we set off for a walk. We went up on the hill from which you can see distant mountains & a wide prospect of river, dale & hamlet around. We soon came to the “Cliff,”—a perpendicular ledge of rocks some hundred (200 feet) above the wood & river below—all wild & rugged far from any house, a stupendous work of nature & worth as much to see as Niagara Falls or the Giants’ Causeway!!! I should like to see you look down there—you would have to hold on though it makes one so dizzy. We saw and passed through “Pleasant Meadow” & the “Baker Farm,” saw the house where John Field lived & “Fairhaven Bay” & “Conantum,” the desolate pasture & river reach & wild apple orchard & deserted house. The river pleases me most for it is a perfectly natural stream lying in the meadow at rest. Sell out and buy a farm in concord. You can have a little skiff on the river, and paddle freely right into another state if you choose. Mr. T. has paddled fifty miles in a day.

  It is a charming prospect to stand above Mr. Lee’s farm and look down. The house stands back from the river & facing it, with a smooth lawn running down to it, & a boat. The beauty of it is that the river does not flow but lies still & calm so that I could not tell which way it runs. Mr. T. says some Irish people live by it some years & don’t know. You do not see it in the village at all. There are no masts to offend the eye.

  We saw a beautiful trout brook on the Baker Farm. Nobody lives there & no doubt it could be bought! I went down & saw Mr. [A. Bronson] Alcott’s house, now Mr. [Nathaniel] Hawthorne’s this forenoon. I am going tomorrow to see Mr. Minott opposite Mr. [Ralph Waldo] Emerson’s, an old man who doesn’t go away from his farm & has never seen the depot. I told Mr. T. of a parallel case in Uncle Johnny Bradford.

  Mr. [William Ellery] Channing’s home is directly opposite Mr. T’s & the lot runs down to the river & is level. I went down & saw his boat. There are some very ancient houses one with the upper story larger than the lower. The most of the houses are large with an ample porch & painted white with green blinds. The church spires show beautifully from a distance. They are white and stand among the trees with the green meadows around. I could write a few more sheets but I think I had better retire.

Your affectionate Son

James Spooner

  I am surprised to see that some red maples, which were so brilliant a day or two ago, have already shed their leaves, and they cover the land and the water quite thickly. I see a countless fleet of them slowly carried round in the still bay by the Leaning Hemlocks. I find a fine tupelo near Sam Barrett’s now all turned scarlet . . .

  I am glad to learn from Mr. [James Walter] Spooner that you are really coming down, with the tripod too, which is so good news that I hardly dared to expect it.

  It seems a little uncertain whether you intend to read in the morning as well as evening, and so I write to enquire, that there may be no mistake in the announcement. Please let me know by return mail which will be in time.

Very truly yours

B. M. Watson

  I had duly received your very kind and frank letter, but delayed to answer it thus long because I have little skill as a correspondent, and wished to send you something more than my thanks. I was gratified by your prompt and hearty acceptance of my book. Yours is the only word of greeting I am likely to receive from a dweller in the woods like myself, from where the whippoorwill and cuckoo are heard, and there are better than moral clouds drifting over, and real breezes blow.

  Your account excites in me a desire to see the Middleboro Pond, of which I had already heard somewhat; as also of some very beautiful ponds of the Cape, in Harwich I think, near which I once passed. I have sometimes also thought of visiting that remnant of our Indians still living near you,—But then, you know there is nothing like ones native fields and lakes. The best news you send me, not that Nature with you is so fair and genial, but that there is one there who likes her so well. That proves all that we asserted.

  Homer, of course, you include in your list of covers of Nature—and, by the way, let me mention here,—for this is “my thunder” lately—Wm Gilpin’s long series of books on the Picturesque, with their illustrations. If it chances that you have not met with these, I cannot just now frame a better wish than that you may one day derive as much pleasure from the inspection of them as I have.

  Much as you have told me of yourself, you have still I think a little the advantage of me in this correspondence, for I have told you still more in my book. You have therefore the broadest mark to fire at.

  A young English author, Thomas Cholmondeley, is just now waiting for me to take a walk with him—therefore excuse this very barren note from

Yrs, hastily at last,
Henry D Thoreau

  After I wrote to you Mr. [Marston] Watson postponed my going to Plymouth one week i.e. till next Sunday, and now he wishes me to carry my instruments & survey his grounds, to which he has been adding. Since I want a little money, though I contemplate but a short excursion, I do not feel at liberty to decline this work. I do not know exactly how long it will detain me – but there is plenty of time yet—& I will write to you again—perhaps from Plymouth—

  There is a Mr. Thomas Cholmondeley (pronounced Chumly) a young English author, staying at our house at present—who asks me to teach him botany—i.e. anything which I know—and also to make an excursion to some mountain with him. He is a well-behaved person, and possibly I may propose his taking that run to Wachusett with us—if it will be agreeable to you. Nay If I do not hear any objection from you I will consider myself at liberty to invite him.

In haste,

H. D. Thoreau

New York, N.Y. Walden is reviewed in the Home Journal.

  Your long delayed, but very acceptable acknowledgment of the 1st inst. came duly to hand. It requires no answer, and I trust you will not esteem this as such. I simply wish to say, that it will afford me pleasure to show you the Middleborough ponds, as well as the other Indian water spoken of by you, which I conclude to be what is called “Wakeebe Pond,” at Mashpee near Sandwich.

  Since I first wrote you my rough board shanty, which I then inhabited and from which I now write, has been partially forsaken, thro’ the house of which I spoke to you as being built, having been completed and my family moved into it; so the shanty is somewhat shorn of its means to the public or vulgar eye at least, but none is less pried by me. Here I spend considerable part of my time in study and mediation, ahd here I also entertained my best and most welcome friends. Now, friend Walden, if it should be agreeable to you to leave home at this pleasant season, I shall be happy to receive you as my guest. Making my farm, which lies about three miles north of New Bedford, headquarters, we can sally for into the adjoining country—to the fine ponds in question and visit other objects of interest hitherward. I am just now quite busily engaged in the improvement of the grounds near my house, but expect to conclude them by the end of the next week, when should it meet your pleasure, I shall be very happy to see you here.

  I am quite a tramper as well as yourself, but have horse—flesh and carriages at hand if preferable, which certainly for long distances, with all my antediluvian taste, I deem it to be.

  Perhaps your young English friend and author, Mr. Cholmondeley, would like to accompany you, should you conclude to come. If so, please extend the invitation to him should you deem it proper.

  I do not wish to push matters at all, but am of the opinion, if you are not too learned, we shall affiliate nicely in our rustic feelings—at any rate it will do no harm to try.

  Your short and hastily written note embarrasses me, and I hardly know whether it best or not to send what I have now written, and so conclude, whether this shall reach you or not,

Your friend and fellow-worshipper at Nature’s great shrine
Daniel Ricketson

  I have just returned from Plymouth, where I have been detained surveying much longer than I expected.

  What do you say to visiting Wachusett next Thursday? I will start at 7¼ a.m. unless there is a prospect of a stormy day, go by cars to Westminster, & thence on foot 5 or 6 miles to the mt tops, where I may engage to meet you at (or before) 12 m.

  If the weather is unfavorable, I will try again—on Friday,—& again on Monday.

  If a storm comes on after starting, I will seek you at the tavern in Princeton Center, as soon as circumstances will permit.

  I shall expect an answer to clinch the bargain.

Yrs

Henry D. Thoreau.

  Our Course of Independent, or reform Lectures (ten in number) we propose to commence Next Month. Will you give me liberty to put your name in the program, and say when it will suit your convenience to come every Lecturer will choose his own Subject, but we expect all, whether Antislavery or what else, will be of a reformatory Character. We have engaged Theodore Parker, who will give the Introductory Nov. 1st (Garrison, W. Phillips Thos W. Higginson Lucy Stone (Mrs Rose of New York Antoinett L Brown and hope to have Cassius N Clay, & Henry Ward Beecher, (we had a course of these lectures last year and the receipts from tickets at a low price paid expenses and fifteen to twenty dollars to the Lecturers. We think we shall do as well this year as last, and perhaps better. The Anthony Burns affair and the Nebraska bill, and other outrages of Slavery has done much to awaken the feeling of a class of Minds heretofore quiet, on all questions of reform In getting up these popular Lectures we thought at first, it would not do as well to have them too radical, or it would be best to have a part of the Speakers of the conservative class, but experience has shown us in Providence surely, that the Masses who attend such Lectures are better suited with reform lectures than with the old school conservatives. I will thank you for an early reply

Yours respectfully for true freedom

A. Fairbanks

  Soon after sunrise I saw the pyramidal shadow of the mountain reaching quite across the State . . .

  Pretty hard frosts these nights. Many leaves fell last night, and the Assabet is covered with their fleets. Now they rustle as you walk through them in the woods . . .

  I return herewith the “Bhagvat Geeta.” Will you please send me the “Vishnoo Purana” a single volume—translated by Wilson.

Yrs respecty

Henry D. Thoreau

  The maples being bare, the great hornet nests are exposed . . . (Journal, 7:66).

  As warm as summer. Cannot wear a thick coat. Sit with windows open. I see considerable gossamer on the causeway . . . (Journal, 7:66).

  Seeing your name announced as a Lecturer, I write you a line to see if your services could be secured to give a Lecture before the Library Association of this place.

  We can give $50—

  Thinking you might have other calls this way, we thought we would add our solicitation with the rest—

Yours Respectfully
C B Bernard Cor Sec

  This tendency to solitude & asceticism means something, and there is a certain degree of truthfulness & even bravery in his attempts to find out what this something is; but his results are increased pride, pretention & infidelity, instead of humility, simplicity & piety . . .

  He brags of not having committed himself in not having purchased a farm, he forgets that he takes a deed for his book in the shape of a copy right . . .

  Ever since October 27th we have had remarkably warm and pleasant Indian summer, with frequent frosts in the morning. Sat with open window for a week.

  I am glad to send books where they are so well appreciated as in your chamber.

  Permit me to say that the courtesy of your letter admonishes me of my short-coming in not sooner acknowledging the gift of your book. Believe me I had not forgotten it, but I proposed to write you, when I had fully read & enjoyed it. At present I have been able to peruse only the early chapters, & have detected parts enough, however, to satisfy me that you have made a contribution to the permanent literature of our mother tongue, & to make me happy in your success.

  Believe me, dear Sir,

Sincerely Yours,

Charles Sumner

  When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor and for the most part the only difference between us and our fellow is that he has seen the paper or been out to tea & we have not. But the London Times even is not one of the muses. It is no better when poet laureates writes to you there. When a man’s inward life fails, he begins to go more constantly & desperately to the post office, and despatches couriers to the other side of the globe; and so again he gains the whole world & loses his own soul.

  It appears that you think yourself reestablished by this time & that your leisure was again hindered.

  I like yr keeping at yr “noble task.”

Yours

Henry D Thoreau

  how would you like to go up to Holt’s point to-day, or will you . . .

Yrs

W. E. C.

  Sailing past the bank above the railroad, just before a clear sundown, close to the shore on the east side I see a second fainter shadow of the boat, sail, myself, and paddle, etc., directly above and upon the first on the bank . . .

  I am in receipt of yours of the 4th inst, You stating explicitly that the 6th December would suit you better than any other time. I altered other arrangements on purpose to accommodate you, and notified you as soon as I was able to accomplish them. Had you named the last Wednsday in Nov. or the second Wednsday in December, I could have replied to you at once or any time in Janury or Feb it would have been the same I shall regret the disappointment very much but must submit to it if you have such overtures as you cannot avoid. I hope however you will be able to come at the time appointed

Truly

A. Fairbanks

  See where the muskrats have eaten much pontederia root. Got some donacia grubs for [Thaddeus William] Harris, but find no chrysalids . . .

  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

  I wish to introduce to you Thomas Cholmondeley, an English man, of whom and his work in New Zealand I have already told you. He proposes to spend a part of the winter in Boston, pursuing his literary studies, at the same time that he is observing our institutions.

  He is an English country gentleman of simple habits and truly liberal mind, who may one day take a part in the government of his country.

  I think that you will find you[r] account in comparing notes with him.

  Will you allow me to introduce to you the bearer—Thomas Cholmondeley, who has been spending some months with us in Concord. He is an English country gentleman, and the author of a political work on New Zealand called “Ultimo Thule” He wishes to look round the Library.

  If you can give him a few moments of your time, you will confer a favor on both him & me.

  I have taken much pains, but in vain, to find another of those locusts for you—I have some of the grubs from the nuphar buds in spirits.

Yrs. truly

Henry D. Thoreau

  Thinking it possible that you might be expecting me [to] lecture before your Society on the 5th of December as I offered—I write to ask if it is so.

  I am still at liberty for that evening—and will read you a lecture either on the Wild or on Moosehunting as you may prefer.

Yrs respectfully

  Reached Canal Street at 5 P.M., or candle-light.

  Started for Philadelphia from foot of Liberty Street at 6 P.M. via Newark, etc., etc., Bordentown, etc., etc., Camden Ferry, to Philadelphia, all in the dark . . . Arrive at 10 P.M.; four hours from New York, thirteen from Boston, fifteen from Concord. Put up at Jones’s Exchange Hotel, 77 Dock Street; lodgings thirty-seven and a half cents, meals separate . . .

  Went to Crystal Palace; admired the houses on Fifth Avenue . . . Saw [Horace] Greeley; Snow, the commercial editor of the Tribune; Solon Robertson; Fry, the musical critic, etc.; and others. Greeley carried me to the new opera-house, where I heard Grisi and her troupe . . . Greeley appeared to know and to be known by everybody; was admitted free to the opera, and we were led by a page to various parts of the house at different times. Saw at Museum some large flakes of cutting arrowhead stone made into a sort of wide cleavers, also a hollow stone tube, probably from mounds.

  Your favor of 25th is at hand this evening. We cannot have you between the 4 & 15th of Dec without bringing two lecturers in one week—which we wish to avoid if possible.

  If you cannot come the 28th of Dec. will the 2d week in January either the 9th 10th 11th or 12th of the month suit you?—if not, perhaps you can select a day in the 4th week in Jany., avoiding Monday and Saturday.

  Write us as soon as possible and make the day as early as you can.—

Yours truly,

Andrew Whitney.

  Still very clear and bright as well as comfortable weather. River not so high . . . (Journal, 7:77).

  No ice, but strong cold wind; river slightly over meadows. Was that large diver which was on the edge of the shore and scooted away down-stream as usual, throwing the water about for a quarter of a mile, then diving, some time afterward flying up-stream over our head, the goosandcr or red-breasted merganser? . . .

  Walden went down quite rapidly about the middle of November, leaving the isthmus to Emerson’s meadow bare. Flint’s has been very low all summer. The northeast sides of the trees are thickly incrusted with snowy shields . . .

  Allow me to thank you once more for the Report of Sittgreaves, the Patent Office 2d part, and on Emigrants Ships.

  At this rate there will be one department in my library, and not the smallest one, which I may call the Sumnerian—

Yrs sincerely

Henry D. Thoreau.

  I see thick ice and boys skating all the way to Providence, but know not when it froze, I have been so busy writing my lecture; probably the night of the 4th. In order to go to Blue Hill by Providence Railroad, stop at Readville Station (Dedham Low Plain once), eight miles; the hill apparently two mile east. Was struck by the Providence depot, its towers and great length of brick. Lectured in it.

  Went to R. Williams’s Rock on the Blackstone with Newcomb and thence to hill with an old fort atop in Seekonk, Mass., on the east side of the bay, whence a fine view down it. At lecture spoke with a Mr. [Brook?] Clark and Vaughn and Eaton . . .

  [Thaddeus W.] Harris tells me that since he exchanged a duplicate Jesuit Relation for one he had not with the Montreal men, all theirs have been burnt. He has two early ones which I have not seen.

  Weather warmer; snow softened. Saw a large flock of snow buntings . . . (Journal, 7:81).

  Good sleighing still, with but little snow. A warm, thawing day . The river is open almost its whole length. It is a beautifully smooth mirror Nvithin an icy frame. It is well to improve such a time to walk by it. This strip of water of irregular width over the channel, between broad fields of ice, looks like a polished silver mirror, or like another surface of polished ice, and often is cfistinguislied from the starrounding ice only by its reflections . . .

  I see again a large flock of what I called buntings on the loth, also another flock surely not buntings, perhaps Fringilla linaria. May they not all be these ? . . . (Journal, 7:83).

  I suppose you have heard of my truly providential meeting with Mr T [Theophilus] Brown: providential because it saved me from the suspicion that my words had fallen altogether on stony ground, when it turned out that there was some Worcester soil there. You will allow me to consider that I correspond with him through you.

  I confess that I am a very bad correspondent, so far as promptness of reply is concerned; but then I am sure to answer sooner or later. The longer I have forgotten you, the more I remember you. For the most part I have not been idle since I saw you. How does the world go with you? or rather, how do you get along without it? I have not yet learned to live, that I can see, and I hear that I shall not very soon. I find, however, that in the long run things correspond to my original idea,—that they correspond to nothing else so much; and this a man may really be a true prophet without any great exertion. The day is never so dark, nor the night even, but that the laws at least of light still prevail, and so may make it light in our minds if they are open to the truth. There is considerable danger that a man will be crazy between dinner and supper; but it will not directly answer any good purpose that I know if, and it is just as easy to be sane. We have got to know what both life and death are, before we can begin to live after our own fashion. Let us be hearing our a-b-c’s as soon as possible. I never yet knew the sun to be knocked down and rolled through a mud-puddle; he comes our honorbright from behind every storm. Let us not put all we prize into a football to be kicked, when a bladder will do as well.

  When an Indian is burned, his body may be broiled, it may be no more than a beefsteak. What of that? They may broil his heart, but they do not therefore broil his courage,—his principles. Be of good courage! That is the main thing.

  If a man were to place himself in an attitude to bear manfilly the greatest evil that can be inflicted on him, he would find suddenly that there was no such evil to bear; his brave back would go a-begging. When Atlas got his back made up, that was all that was required. The world rests on principles. The wise gods will never make underpinning of a man. But as long as he crouches, and skulks, and shirks his work, every creature that has weight will be treading on his toes, and crushing him, he will himself tread with one foot on the other foot.

  The monster is never just there where we think he is. What is truly monstrous is our cowardice and sloth.

  Have no idle disciplines like the Catholic Church and others; have only positive and fruitful ones. Do what you know ought to do. Why should we ever go abroad, even across the way, to ask a neighbors advice? There is a nearer neighbor within us incessantly telling us how we should behave. But we wait for the neighbor without to tell us of some false, easier way.

  They have a census-table in which they put down the number of the insane. Do you believe that they put them all down there? Why, in every one of these houses there is at least one man fighting or squabbling a good part of his time with a dozen pet demons of his own breeding an cherishing, which are relentlessly gnawing at his vitals; and if perchance he resolves at length that he will courageously combat them, he says, “Ay! Ay! I will attend to you after dinner!” And, when that time comes, he concludes that he is good for another stage, and reads a column or two about the Eastern War! Pray, to be in earnest, where is Sevastopol? Who is Mechikoff? And Nicholas behind there? Who the allies? Did not we fight a little (little enough to be sure, but just enough to make it interesting) at Alma, at Balaclava, at Inkermann? We love to fight far from home. Ah! The Minié musket is the king of weapons. Well let us get one then.

  I just put another stick into my stove,—a pretty large mass of while oak. How many men will do enough this cold winter to pay for the fuel that will be required to warm them? I suppose I have burned up a pretty good-sized tree to-night—and for what? I settled with Mr. Tarbell for it the other day; but that wasn’t the final settlement. I got off cheaply from him. At Last, one will say, “Let us see, how much wood did you burn sir?” And I shall shudder to think that the next question will be, “What did you do while you were warm?” Do we think the ashes will pay for it? that God is an ash-man? It is a fact that we have got to render an account for the deeds done in the body.

  Who knows but we shall be better the next year than we have been the past? At any rate, I wish you a really new year,—commencing from the instant you read this,—and happy or unhappy, according to your deserts.

  I am going to lecture at Nantucket the 28th and I suppose I must improve the earliest opportunity to get there from New Bedford, I will endeavor to come on Monday that I may see yourself and New Bedford before my lecture.

  I should like right well to see your ponds, but that is hardly to be thought of at present. I fear that it is impossible for me to combine such things with the business of lecturing You cannot serve God and Mammon. However perhaps I shall have time to see something of your country. I am aware that you have not so much snow as we. There has been excellent sleighing here ever since the 5th ult.

  Mr. Cholmondeley has left us; so that I shall come alone.

  Will you be so kind as to warn Mr. Mitchell that I accepted at once his invitation to lecture on the 26th of this month, for I do not know that he has got my letter.

  Excuse this short note from yours truly

Henry D. Thoreau

  P.M.—Skated to Fair Haven with C. [William Ellery Channing] C.’s skates are not the best, and besides he is far from an easy skater, so that, as he said, it was killing work for him . . .

  Yours of the 19th came to hand this evening. I shall therefore look for you on Monday next.

  My farm is three miles north of New Bedford. Say to the conductor to leave you at the Tarkiln Hill station, where I or some of my folks will be in readiness for you on the arrival of the evening train. Should you intend coming earlier in the day, please inform me in time.

  I will get word to the Committee of the N. B. Lyceum, as you desire.

  If I do not hear from you again, I shall prepare for your arrival as before. In the meantime, I remain,

Yours very truly,

Dan’l Ricketson.

  It [Walden] is very thickly [covered with] what C. [William Ellery Channing] calls ice-rosettes . . . (Journal, 7:88-89).

  [I w]ill lecture for your [Lyceum on the 4]th of January next; and I hope that I shall have time for that good day out of doors. Mr Cholmondeley is in Boston, yet perhaps I may write him to accompany me.

  I have engaged to lecture at New Bedford on the 26 inst, stopping with Daniel Ricketson 3 miles out of town; and at Nantucket on the 28th; so that I shall be gone all next week. They say there is some danger of being weather-bound at Nantucket, but I see that others run the same risk.

  You had better acknowledge the receit of this at any rate, though you should write nothing else, otherwise I shall not know whether you get it; but perhaps you will not wait till you have seen me to answer my letter. I will tell you what I think of lecturing when I see you.

  Did you see the notice of Walden in the last Anti-Slavery Standard? You will not be surprised if I tell you that it reminded me of you.

Yrs,

[Henry D. Thoreau.]

  I do not remember to have ever seen such a day as this in Concord. There is no snow here (though there has been excellent sleighing it Concord since the 5th), but it is very muddy, the frost coming out of the ground as in spring with us. I went to walk in the woods with R. It was wonderfully warm and pleasant, and the cockerels crowed Just as in a spring day at home. I felt the winter breaking up in Me, and if I had been at home I should have tried to write poetry. They told me that this was not a rare day there . . .

  Captain Edward W. Gardiner (where I spent the night) thought there was a beach at Barnegat similar to that at Cape Cod . . .

  At Ocean house I copied from William Coffin’s Map of the town (1834) this: 30, 590 acres including 3 isles beside.

  The nearest approach to woods that I saw was the swamps, where the blueberries, maples, etc., are higher than one’s head. I saw, as I rode, high blueberry bushes and maple in the swamps, huckleberries, shrub oaks, uva-ursi (which he called mealy plum), gaultheria, beach plum, clethra, mayflower (well budded). Also withered poverty-grass, goldenrods, asters. In the swamps are cranberries, and I saw one carting the vines home to set out, which also many are doing. G. described what he made out to be “star-grass” as common . . .

  Visited the museum at the Athenaeum. Various South Sea implements etc., etc., brought home by whalers.

  The last Indian, not of pure blood, died this very month, and I saw his picture with a basket of huckleberries in his hand.

  Still in mist. The fog was so thick that we were lost on the water; stopped and sounded many times. The clerk said the depth varied from three to eight fathoms between the island and Cape. Whistled and listened for the locomotive’s answer, but probably heard only the echo of our own whistle at first, but at last the locomotive’s whistle . . .

  A beautiful, clear, not very cold day. The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue. The pines look very dark. The white oak leaves are a cinnamon-color, the black and red (?) oak leaves a reddish brown or leather-color . . .