We should be glad to hear of your safe arrival home from your “perils by land and by flood,” and as we are not likely to know of this unless you receive a strong hint, I just drop a line for that end.

  Your visit, short as it was, gave us all at Brooklawn much satisfaction.

  I should be glad to have you come again next summer and cruise around with me.

  I regret I was unusually unwell when you were here, as you undoubtedly perceived by my complaints.

  I am just starting for a walk, and as I expect to pass our village post-office, thought it a good time to write you.

  I trust you and your comrade [Ellery] Channing will have many good times this winter.

  I may possibly drop in on you for a few hours at the end of this month, when I expect to be in Boston.

  Excuse haste.

  Yours very truly
  Daniel Ricketson

P.S. Mrs. R and children sent kind regards

  I am pleased to hear from the shanty whose inside and occupant I have seen. I had a very pleasant time at Brooklawn, as you know,—and thereafter at Nantucket. I was obliged to pay the usual tribute to the sea, but it was more than made up to me by the hospitality of the Nantucketers.

  Tell Arthur [Ricketson] that I can now compare notes with him, for though I went neither before nor behind the mast, since we hadn’t any—I went with my head hanging over the side all the way. 

  In spite of all my experience I resisted in reading to the Nantucket people the lecture which I read at New Bedford, and I found them to be the very audience for me. I got home Friday night after being lost in the fog off Hyannis.

  I have not yet found a new jacknife but I had a glorious skating with Channing the other day on the skates found long ago.

  Mr. Cholmondeley sailed for England direct in the America on the 3d—after spending a night with me. He thinks even to go to the east & enlist!

  Last night I returned from lecturing at Worcester.

  I shall be glad to see you when you come to Boston, as will also my mother & sister who know something about you as an abolitionist. Come directly to our house. 

  Please remember me to Mrs. Ricketson, & also to the [young folks

  Yrs
  Henry D Thoreau

  The delicious soft, spring-suggesting air,—how it fills my veins with life! Life becomes again credible to me. A certain dormant life awakes in me, and I begin to love nature again. Here is my Italy, my heaven, my New England.

  10 A.M.—To Easterbrooks place via old mill site. It is now a clear warm and sunny clay. The willow osiers by the Red Bridge decidedly are not bright now. There is a healthy earthy sound of cock-crowing. I hear a few chickadees near at hand . . .

  I have just received your very welcome reply. I am also happy to learn of your safe arrival home, and was much amused by your account of your voyage to Nantucket—also that you found an appreciative audience there.

 Your address me as Mr. Ricketson. What did I do while you were here to warrant so much deference—I pass for a rather aristocratic man among big folk, but didn’t suppose you knew it! You should have addressed “Dear Brooklawn.” Johnson in his Tour of the Hebrides says that they have a custom, in those isles, of giving their names to their chieftans or owners—as Col. Rasay, Much, etc., of which they are the Lairds. You are the true and only Laird of Walden, and as such I address you. You certainly can show a better title to Walden Manor than any other. It is just as we lawyers say, and you hold the fee. You didn’t think of finding such knowing folks this way, altho you had travelled a good deal in Concord.

  By the way, I have heard several sensible people speak well of your lecture before the New Bedford Lyceum, but conclude it was not generally understood.

  My son Arthur and I have begun a series of pilgrimages to old farmhouses—we don’t notice any short of a hundred years old.

  I am much obligated to you and your mother for your kind invitation. My intention is to attend the Anti-slavery meetings in Boston, Wednesday and Thurday, 24th and 25th this month, and shall endeavor to get up to Concord for part of a day.

  I have had a present of a jack-knife found upon a stick of timer in an old house, “built in” and supposed to have been left there by the carpenter. The house is over one hundred years old, and the knife is very curious.

  As I go toward the sun now at 4 P.M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows, but when I look back from the sun, the whole bed appears merely gray and brown . . .

  Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. How we leap by the side of the open brooks! What beauty in the running brooks! What life! What society! The cold is merely superficial; it is summer still at the core . . .

  Carried to [Thaddeus W.] Harris the worms—brown, light-striped—and fuzzy black caterpillars (he calls the first also caterpillars); also two black beetles; all which I have found within a week or two on ice and snow; thickest in a thaw. Showed one, in a German work, plates of the larvæ of dragon-flies and ephemeræ . . .

  P.M.—The damp snow still drives from the northwest nearly horizontally over the fields, while I go with C. [William Ellery Channing] toward the Cliffs and Walden.

  We cross the fields behind Hubbard’s and suddenly slump into dry ditches concealed by the snow, up to the middle, and flounder out again. How new all things seem! Here is a broad, shallow pool in the fields, which yesterday was slosh, now converted into a soft, white, fleecy snow ice, like bread that has spewed out and baked outside the pan.

  P. M.—To Andromeda Ponds via railroad; return by base of Cliffs. The snow is turning to rain through a fine hail.

  P.M.—To stone bridge, Loring’s Pond, Derby’s and Nut Meadow.

  It is a good lichen day, for the high wind has strewn the bark over the fields and the rain has made them very bright. In some places for fifteen rods the whole road is like a lake from three to fifteen inches deep. It is very exciting to see, where was so lately only ice and snow, dark wavy lakes, dashing in furious torrents . . .

  You will be glad to hear that I am safe at my mothers home on Salop after a most disagreeable passage to England in the steamer America.

  I have accepted the offer of a Captaincy in the Salop Militia, & it is probably that we shall be sent before very long to relieve other troops who are proceeding to the seat of the war: but if the strife continue to consume men at its present rate of 1000 a week we shall be involved in it before the year is out by volunteering into the Line.

  Meanwhile I shall use my best diligence to learn all I can of my men & prepare myself for the active service to which I impatiently look forward. Nothing can be more awful than the position of our poor army. At the present rate of mortality they will be finished up by the time they are most wanted; & it will be reserved for the French to take Sevastopol.

  We are learning a tremendous lesson: I hope we shall profit by it & so far from receding I trust we shall continue hostilities with greater energy & greater wisdom than before.

  I would rather see the country decimated than an unglorious or even accommodating peace.

  My passion is to see the fellow crushed or to die in the attempt.

  Lord John [Russell] has resigned & the ministry is, we all think, breaking up. It was high time considering the mismanagement of New Castle.

  We are in the midst of a great snow (great at least for us). Colds are rifle in the Parish so that “coughing drowns the Parsons saw.”

  I find the red brick houses are the most striking feature in revisiting this country. Though a great deal smaller than your elegant villas or cottages on the whole please my eye & look more homey, a very suggestion of good cheer.

  There is such a quietness & excessive sleepiness about Shropshire—the only excitement being an occasional alehouse brawl—that is it hardly possible to imagine we are at war!

  The fact is the common people never see a newspaper—& such is their confidence in “the Queen’s army” that they believe prolonged resistance on the past of any power would be impossible & absurd. My cousin in the Crimea still serves contrary to my expectations. We have heard a good anecdote from him. Early on Christmas morning the remains of the regiment to wh. he belongs gathering painfully together, & as day dawned they all sung the fine English Carol “Christmas Awake.” It is rather touching.

  I find all here quite well & hearty & hope you people will be the same when this arrives at Concord—a place I shall often revisit in spirit. Pray remember me to your father mother & sister—to Mr. Emerson, Channing, & Do not forget your promise to come over sometime to England, which you will find a very snug & hospitable country—though perhaps decaying, & not on such a huge scale as America.

  My romance—the Dream of my life—without which it is not worth living for me—is—a glorious commonwealth. I am persuaded that things must in their way to this, be greatly worse before they can become better. Turn it how you will, our English nation no longer stands upon the Living Laws of the Eternal God—we have turned ourselves to an empire & cotton bags & leprosy of prodigious manufacture. Let that all go & let us grow great men again instead of dressing up dolls for the market. I feel we are strong enough to live a better life than this one which now festers in all our joints.

  So much for the confession of all thorough English conservative as you know me to be!

  You have my direction so pray write. Your letter will be forwarded to wherever I may be

  Dear Thoreau
  Ever affectionately yours
  Thos Cholmondeley

  The wild meadow-grasses appear to have grown more rankly in those days . . .

  P.M.—To Walden and Andromeda Ponds. The river is remarkably high for this season. Meeks, the carpenter, said that he could not get home to-night if he could not find Rhoades, with whom he rode into town, for the water was more than a foot deep over half the causeway. This was at 8 P. M. But the ice is not thick enough on the meadows, so I go to Walden a-skating.

  But the ice is not thick enough on the meadows, so I go to Walden a-skating. Yet, to my surprise, it
is thinly frozen over those parts of the river which are commonly open even in the coldest weather (as at Cheney’s), probably because, it being spread over the meadows, there is not so much current there now.

  On the 19th Walden was covered with slosh four or five inches deep.

  What a Proteus is our weather! Let me try to remember its freaks. We had remarkably steady sleighing, on a little snow some six inches deep, from the .5th of December all through the month . . .

  P. M.—To Walden. A thick, driving snow, something like, but less than, that of the 19th. There is a strong easterly wind and the snow is very damp. In the deepest hollows on the Brister Hill path it has already lodged handsomely . . .

  I fully intended to have gone to Boston yesterday; but not being very well, deferred it until to-day, and now we are visited by a severe snowstorm, so that I fear the railway track may be obstructed. I shall not, therefore, be able to reach Concord this time. My only fear is that you may have gone to Boston in expectation of meeting me there; but as I have not heard from you to this effect I have no very strong reason to think so, and hope you have not.

  I should like very much to see Concord and its environs with the Laird of Walden, and hope at no very distant time to do so, should it meet his pleasure. I hope also to see your lordship again here, and to visit with you some of our rural retreats.

  Yours,
  D. Ricketson

  I have had it in mind to write you a letter ever since the day when you visited me, without my knowing it, at Cambridge. I saw you afterward at the Library, but refrained from introducing myself to you, in the hope that I should see you later in the day. But as I did not, will you allow me to seek you out, when next I come to Concord?

  The author of the criticism in the “Harvard Magazine” is Mr. [Edwin] Morton of Plymouth, a friend and a pupil of your friend, Marston Watson, of that old town. Accordingly I gave him the book which you left with me, judging that it belongs to him. He received it with delight, as a gift of value in itself, and the more valuable for the sake of the giver.

  We who at Cambridge look towards Concord as a sort of Mecca for our pilgrimages, are glad to see that your last book finds such favor with the public. It has made its way where your name has rarely been heard before, and the inquiry, “who is Mr. Thoreau?” proves that the book has in part done its work. For my own part, I thank you for the new light it shows me the aspects of Nature in, and for the marvelous beauty of your descriptions. At the same time, if any one should ask me what I think of your philosophy, I should be apt to answer that it is not worth a straw. Whenever again you visit Cambridge, be assured, sir, that it would give me much pleasure to see you at my room. There, or in Concord, I hope soon to see you; if I may intrude so much on your time.

  Believe me always, yours very truly
  F.B. Sanborn

  At 8 A.M., the river rising, the thin yellowish ice of last night, next the shore, is, as usual, much heaved up in ridges, as if beginning to double on itself, and here and there at 9 o’clock, being cracked thus in the lowest parts, the water begins to spurt up in some places in a stream, as form an ordinary pump, and flow along these valleys . . .

  As I skated near the shore under Lee’s Cliff, I saw what I took to be some scrags or knotty stubs of a dead limb lying on the bank beneath a white oak, close by me. Yet while I looked directly at them I could not but admire their close resemblance to partridges . . . I was not convinced that they were birds till I had pulled out my glass and deliberately examined them . . . I was much surprised at the remarkable stillness they preserved . . .

  I supposed, as I did not see you on the 24th or 25th, that some track or other was obstructed, but the solid earth still holds together between New Bedford and Concord, and I trust that as this time you stayed away, you may live to come another day.

  I did not go to Boston, for with regard to that place, I sympathize with one of my neighbors, an old man, who has not been there since the last war, when he was compelled to go—No, I have a real genius for staying at home.

  I have been looking of late Berwick’s tailpieces in the “Birds”—all they have of him at Harvard. Why will he be here a little vulgar at times?

  Yesterday I made an excursion up our river-skated some thirty miles in a few hours if you will believe it. So with reading and writing and skating the night comes round again.

  Yours
  Henry D. Thoreau

  Dear Sir,

  I fear that you did not get the note which I left with the Librarian for you, and so will thank you again for your politeness. I was sorry that I was obliged to go into Boston almost immediately. However, I shall be glad to see you whenever you come to Concord, and I will suggest nothing to discourage your coming so far as I am concerned, trusting that you know what it is to take partridge on the wing.

  You tell me that the author of the criticism is Mr. Morton. I had heard as much, & indeed guessed more. I have latterly found Concord nearer to Cambridge than I believed I should, when I was leaving my Alma Mater, and hence you will not be surprised if even I feel some interest in the success of the Harvard Magazine.

  Believe me
  Yrs truly
  Henry D Thoreau

  P. M.—Skating through snow . . . We went up the Pantry Meadow above the old William Wheeler house, and came down this meadow again with the wind and snow dust, spreading our coat-tails, like birds, though somewhat at the risk of our necks if we had struck a foul place.

  At Lee’s Cliff we made a fire, kindling with white pine cones, after oak leaves and twigs,—else we had lost it; these saved us, for there is a resinous drop at the point of each scale,—and then we forgot that we were outdoors in a blustering winter day.

  I was walking at five, and found it stinging cold. It stung the face. When I look out at the chimneys, I see that the cold and hungry air snaps up the smoke at once . . . At 9 o’clock P. M., thermometer at -16°. They say it did not rise above -6° to-day.

  I am glad to hear that you have arrived safely at Hodnet, and that there is a solid piece of ground of that name which can support a man better than a floating plank in that to me as yet purely historical England.

  But have I not seen you with my own eyes, a piece of England herself? And has not your letter come out to me thence? I have now reason to believe that Salop is as real a place as Concord, with, at least, as good an underpinning of granite floating in liquid fire. I congratulate you on having arrived safely at that floating isle, after your disagreeable passage in the steamer America. So are we not all making a passage, agreeable or disagreeable in the steamer Earth, trusting to arrive at last at some less undulating Salop or Brother’s house?

  I cannot say that I am surprised to hear that you have joined the militia after what I have heard from your lips, but I am glad to doubt if there will be occasion for your volunteering into the line. Perhaps I am thinking of the saying that it is always darkest just before the day. I believe that it is only necessary that England be fully awakened to a sense of her position, in order that he may right herself—especially as the weather will soon cease to be her foe.

  I wish I could believe that the cause in which you are embarked is the cause of the people of England. However, I have no sympathy with the idleness that would contrast this fighting with the teachings of the pulpit, for perchance more true virtue is being practiced at Sebastopol than in many years of peace. It is a pity that we seem to require a war from time to time to assure us that there is any manhood still left in man.

  I was much pleased by [J.J.G.] Wilkinson’s vigorous & telling assault on Allopathy, though he substitutes another and perhaps no stronger thigh for that. Something as good on the whole conduct of the war would be of service. Cannot Carlyle supply it? We will not require him to provide the remedy. Every man to his trade.

  As you know, I am not in any sense a politician. You who lives in that snug and compact isle may dream of a glorious Commonwealth, but I have some doubts whether I am the new king of the Sandwich Islands shall pull together. When I think of the gold-diggers and the Mormons, the slaves and the slave-holders, and the flibustiers, I naturally dream of a glorious private life. No—I am not patriotic; I shall not meddle with the gem of the Antilles; Gen. Quitman cannot count on my aid [in capturing Cuba], alas for him! nor can Gen. Pierce.

  I still take my daily walk or skate over Concord fields or meadows, and on the whole have more to do with nature than with man. We have not had much snow this winter, but have had some remarkable cold weather, the mercury Feb 6 not rising above 6° below zero during the day, and the next morning falling to 25°. Some ice is still 20 inches thick about us. A rise in the river has bade uncommonly good skating which I have improved to the extent of some 30 miles at a time, 15 out &15 in.

  Emerson is off westward, enlightened the Hamiltonians & others, mingling his thunder with that of Niagara. Since his themes are England & slavery some begin to claim him as a practical man.

  Channing still sits warming his 5 wits—his sixth you know is always limber—over that stove, with the dog down cellar.

  Lowell has just been appointed Professor of Belles Lettres in Harvard University, in place of Longfellow, resigned, and will go very soon to spend another year in Europe before taking his seat.

  I am from time to time congratulating myself on my general wants of success as a lecturer—apparent want of success, but it is not a real triumph? I do my work clean as I go along, and they will not likely to want me anywhere again. So there’s no danger of me repeating myself and getting to a varell of sermons which you must upset & begin again with.

  My father & mother & sister all desire to be remembered to you, & trust that you will never come within range of Russian bullets.

  Of course I would rather think of you as settled down there in Shropshire, in the camp of the English people, making acquaintance with your men—striking at the root of the evil—perhaps assaulting that rampart of cotton bags that you tell of. But it makes no odds where a man goes or stays if he is only about his business.

  Let me hear from you, wherever you are, and believe me yours ever in the good fight,—whether before Sebastopol or under the wreken—

  Henry D Thoreau

  I was so sure this storm would bring snowbirds into the yard that I went to the window at ten to look for them, and there they were. Also a downy woodpecker—perhaps a hairy—flitted high across the street to an elm in front of the house and commenced assiduously tapping, his head going like a hammer.

  A fine, dear day. There is a glare of light from the fresh, unstained surface of the snow, so that it pains the eyes to travel toward the sun.

  I go across Walden. My shadow is very blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow. It suggests that there may be something divine, something celestial, in me.

  The atmosphere is very blue, tingeing the distant pine woods. The dog scared up some partridges out of the soft snow under the apple trees in the Tommy Wheeler orchard.

  Smith’s thermometer early this morning at -22°; ours at 8 A. M. -10°.

  A very pleasant and warm afternoon. There is a softening of the air and snow. The eaves run fast on the south side of houses, and, as usual in this state of the air, the cawing of crows at a distance and the crowing of cocks fall on the air with a peculiar softness and sweetness . . .

  Not cold; sky somewhat overcast. The tracks of partridges are more remarkable in this snow than usual, it is so light, being at the same time a foot deep. I see where one has waddled along several rods, making a chain-like track about three inches wide (or two and a half), and at the end has squatted in the snow, making a perfectly smooth and regular oval impression . . .

  A thick fog without rain. Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance. In the woods by the Cut, in this soft air, under the pines draped with mist, my voice and whistling are peculiarly distinct and echoed back to me, as if the fog here a ceiling which made this hollow an apartment. Sounds are not dissipated and lost in the immensity of the heavens above you, but your voice, being confined by the fog, is distinct, and you hear yourself speak.

  Waded through water in the road for eight or ten rods, beyond Loring’s little bridge. It was a foot deep this morning . . . The fact is, the water is in each case dammed not only by the bridges and causeways but by the ice, so that it stands at as many levels as there are causeways.

  A man came to our house at noon and got something to eat, who set out this morning to go from Waltham to Noah Wheeler’s in Nine Acre Corner. He got as far as Lee’s Bridge on the side of Lincoln, or within three quarters of a mile of Wheeler’s, and could not get over the river on account of the freshet; so he came round through Concord village,—he might have come over the railroad a little nearer,—and I directed him over the railroad bridge, the first by which he could cross dry-shod down the stream, and up-stream he would have been obliged to go to Saxonville.

  I presume you will like an early, though it should be an unfavorable, answer to your note. After due consultation and inquiry, I am sorry to be obliged to say that we cannot make it worth your while to come to Concord at this season. The curators of the Lyceum, before which you lectured three years ago, tell me that they have already exceeded their means—Our N.E. towns are not so enterprising as some Western ones, in this respect—and Mr. [Daniel?] Foster’s society which used to be our next resources, furnishing a meeting—house and an audience, no longer exists. He is settled in Princeton, in this state.

  Mrs. Emerson sends love, and wishes me to say that she would be glad to have you spend a day or two with her after Mr. E’s return, which will probably be before the middle of March,—and she will not forget that you have a lecture on Margaret Fuller in your bag.

  I remember well meeting you at Mr. Emerson’s, in company with Mr. Alcott, and that we did not fatally disagree. You were fortunate to be here at the same time with Mr. A, who diffuses sunshine wherever he goes. I hear that he says the times are so hard that the people cannot have him to converse. Are not those hard times indeed?

  As for the good time that is coming, let us not forget that there is a good time going too, and see that we dwell on that eternal ridge between the two which neither comes nor goes.

  Yrs truly
  Henry D. Thoreau

  P.M.—To Fair Haven Hill.

  A clear air, with a northwesterly, March-like wind, as yesterday. What is the peculiarity in the air that both the invalid in the chamber and the traveller on the highway say these are perfect March days? . . . Now look for an early crop of arrowheads, for they will shine.

  Remarkably warm and pleasant weather, perfect spring. I even listen for the first bluebird. I see a seething in the air over clean russet fields. The westerly wind is rather raw, but in sheltered places it is deliciously warm.

  Mr. Loring says that he and his son George fired at white swans in Texas on the water, and, though G. shot two with ball and killed them, the others each case gathered about them and crowded them off out of their reach.

  Minott says that Messer tells him he saw a striped squirrel (!) yesterday. His cat caught a mole lately, not a star-nosed one, but one of those that heave up the meadow.

  P.M.—To Clamshell Hill, across river.

I see some cracks in a plowed field,—Depot Field corn-field,—maybe recent ones. I think since this last cold snap, else I had noticed them before. Those great cakes of ice which the last freshet floated up on to uplands now lie still further from the edge of the recent ice. You are surprised to see them lying with perpendicular edges a foot thick on bare, grassy upland where there is no other sign of water, sometimes wholly isolated by bare grass there. In the last freshet the South Branch was only broken up on the meadows for a few rods in width next the shores. Where the ice did not rise with the water, but, apparently being frozen to the dry bottom, was covered by the water,—there and apparently in shallow places here, then far from the shore, the ground ice was at length broken and rose up in cakes . . .

Yrs respectfully
Henry D. Thoreau

  The last day for skating. It is a very pleasant and warm day, the finest yet, with considerable coolness in the air, however,—winter still. The air is beautifully clear, and through [it] I love to trace at a distance the roofs and outlines of sober-colored farmhouses amid the woods.

  I made a burning-glass of ice, which produced a light sensation of warmth on the back of my hand, but was so untrue that it did not concentrate the rays to a sufficiently small focus. Returning over Great Fields, found half a dozen arrowheads, one with three scallops in the base.

  Still stronger wind, shaking the house, and rather cool. This is the third day of wind.

  Our woods are now so reduced that the chopping of this winter has been a cutting to the quick. At least we walkers feel it as such. There is hardly a woodlot of any consequence left but the chopper’s axe has been heard in it this season. They have even infringed fatally on White Pond, on the south of Fair Haven Pond . . .

  We were walking along the sunny hillside on the south of Fair Haven Pond (on the 4th), which the choppers had just laid bare, when, in a sheltered and warmer place, we heard a rustling amid the dry leaves on the hillside and saw a striped squirrel eying us from its resting-place on the bare ground. It sat still till we were within a rod, then suddenly dived into its hole, which was at its feet, and disappeared. The first pleasant days of spring come out like a squirrel and go in again.

  Another fair day with easterly wind. This morning I got my boat out of the cellar and turned it up in the yard to let the seams open before I calk it. The blue river, now almost completely open . . .

  Daniel Clark tells me that on his part of the Great Meadows there is a hole just about the breadth and depth of a man, commonly full of water.

  P.M.—To Andromeda Ponds.

  C. [William Ellery Channing] says he saw yesterday the slate-colored hawk with a white bar across tail,—meadow hawk, i. e. frog hawk. Probably finds moles and mice. An overcast and dark night.

  Miss Minott says that Dr. Spring told her that when the sap began to come up into the trees, i.e. about the middle of February (she says) then the diseases of the human body come out. The idea is that man’s body sympathizes with the rest of nature, and his pent-up humors burst forth like the sap from wounded trees. This with the mass may be that languor or other weakness commonly called spring feelings.

  Clear and rather pleasant; the ground again bare; wind northerly. I am surprised to see how rapidly that ice that covered the meadows on the 1st of March has disappeared under the influence of the sun alone. The greater part of what then lay on the meadows a foot thick has melted . . .

  Elbridge Hayden and Poland affirm that they saw a brown thrasher sitting on the top of an apple tree by the road near Hubbard’s and singing after his fashion on the 5th. I suggested the shrike, which they do not know, but they say it was a brown bird.

  Hayden saw a bluebird yesterday.

  P.M.—To Great Meadows.

  Comes out pleasant after a raw forenoon with a flurry of snow, already gone.

  Allow me to thank you for the Comp’d’m of the U. S. census, which has come safely to hand. It looks as full of facts as a chestnut of meat. I expect to nibble at it for many years.

  I read with pleasure your pertinent Address before the Merc. Lit. Association, sent me long ago.

Yrs truly
Henry D. Thoreau

  6.30 A.M.—To Hill.

  Still, but with some wrack here and there. The river is low, very low for the season. It has been falling ever since the freshet of February 18th. Now, about sunrise, it is nearly filled with the thin, half-cemented ice-crystals of the night . . .

  P.M.—To Andromeda Ponds.

  That ice of February has destroyed almost the whole of Charles Hubbard’s young red maple swamp in front of the Hollowell place. Full an acre of thrifty young maples, as well as alders and birches four to seven feet high, is completely destroyed . . .

  Now, at 9 P.M., a clear sky. And so the storm which began evening of 13th ends.

  Mr. Rice tells me that when he was getting mud out of the little swamp at the foot of Brister’s Hill last [a blank space left for the day], he heard a squeaking and found that he was digging near the nest of what he called a “field mouse” . . .

  I see with my glass as I go over the railroad bridge, sweeping the river, a great gull standing far away on the top of a muskrat-cabin which rises just above the water opposite the Hubbard Bath. When I get round within sixty rods of him, ten minutes later, he still stands on the same spot . . .

  P.M.—Paddled to Fair Haven Pond.

  Very pleasant and warm, when the wind lulls and the water is perfectly smooth. I make the voyage without gloves. The snow of March 14th is about gone, and the landscape is once more russet. The thick ice of the meadows lies rotting on each side of the stream . . .

  P.M.—Up Assabet.

  It soon cleared off in the morning, and proved a fair but windy day. I see a willow six inches in diameter which was broken down by the ice . . . I notice this havoc along the stream on making my first voyages on it. The ice either freezes to the alders, etc., one half to two thirds up them, and settling, breaks them lower down, settling upon them, or else freezes to drooping limbs and so pulls them down.

  P.M.—To Bare Hill by railroad.

  Early willow and aspen catkins are very conspicuous now. The silvery down of the former has in some places crept forth from beneath its scales a third of an inch at least. This increased silveriness was obvious, I think, about the first of March . . .

  Going [along] the steep side-hill on the south of the pond about 4 P.M., on the edge of the little patch of wood which the choppers have not yet levelled,—though they have felled many an acre around it this winter,—I observed a rotten and hollow hemlock stump about two feet high and six inches in diameter, and instinctively approached with my right hand ready to cover it. I found a flying squirrel in it, which, as my left hand had covered a small hole at the bottom, ran directly into my right hand. It struggled and bit not a little, but my cotton glove protected me, and I felt its teeth only once or twice. It also uttered three or four dry shrieks at first . . .

  Carried my flying squirrel back to the woods in my handkerchief. I placed it, about 3:30 P.M., on the very stump I had taken it from. It immediately ran about a rod over the leaves and up a slender maple sapling about ten feet, then after a moment’s pause sprang off . . .

  Kicking over the hemlock stump, which was a shell with holes below, and a poor refuge, I was surprised to find a little nest at the bottom, open above just like a bird’s nest, a mere bed . . . Audubon and Bachman quote one Gideon B. Smith, M.D., of Baltimore, who has had much to do with these squirrels and speaks of their curving upward at the end of their flight to alight on a tree-trunk and of their “flying” into his window.

  P.M.—Up Assabet by boat.

  A cold and blustering afternoon after a flurry of snow which has not fairly whitened the ground. I see a painted tortoise at the bottom moving slowly over the meadow. They do not yet put their heads out, but merely begin to venture forth . . .

  Passing up the Assabet, by the Hemlocks, where there has been a slide and some rocks have slid down into the river, I think I see how rocks come to be found in the midst of rivers. Rivers are continually changing their channels,—eating into one bank and adding their sediment to the other,—so that frequently where there is a great bend you see a high and steep bank or hill on one side, which the river washes, and a broad meadow on the other . . . But this does not explain how so many rocks lying in streams have been split in the direction of the current. Again, rivers appear to have travelled back and worn into the meadows of their creating, and then they become more meandering than ever. Thus in the course of ages the rivers wriggle in their beds, till it feels comfortable under them. Time is cheap and rather insignificant. It matters not whether it is a river which changes from side to side in a geological period or an eel that wriggles past in an instant.

  Still cold and blustering. The ditches where I have seen salamanders last year before this are still frozen up. Was it not a sucker I saw dart along the brook beyond Jenny’s? I see where the squirrels have fed extensively on the acorns now exposed on the melting of the snow. The ground is strewn with the freshly torn shells and nibbled meat in some places.

  I see a muskrat-house just erected, two feet or more above the water and sharp; and at Hubbard Bath, a mink comes teetering along the ice by the side of the river. I am between him and the sun, and he does not notice me.

  P.M.—Sail down to the Great Meadows.

  A strong wind with snow driving from the west and thickening the, air. The farmers pause to see me scud before it. At last I land and walk further down on the meadow-bank. I scare up several flocks of ducks.

  The ducks sleep these nights in the shallowest water which does not freeze, and there may be found early in the morning. I think that they prefer that part of the shore which is permanently covered.

  P.M.—To Hubbard’s Close and down brook.

  Measured a black oak just sawed down. Twenty-three inches in diameter on the ground, and fifty-four rings. It had grown twice as much on the east side as on the west . . . Saw a wood tortoise in the brook. Am surprised to see the cowslip so forward, showing so much green . . .

  It is colder than yesterday; wind strong from northwest. The mountains are still covered with snow. They have not once been bare. I go looking for meadow mice nests, but the ground is frozen so hard, except in the meadow below the banks, that I cannot come at them. That portion of the meadow next the upland, which is now thawed, has already many earthworms in it. I can dig a quantity of them . . .

  Flint’s Pond is entirely open; may have been a day or two. There was only a slight opening about the boat-house on the 21st, and the weather has been very cold ever since.

  Walden is more than half open, Goose Pond only a little about the shores, and Fair Haven Pond only just open over the channel of the river. There is washed up on the shore of Flint’s some pretty little whorls of the radical leaves of the Lobelia Dortmanna, with its white root-fibres.

  As I stand on Heywood’s Peak, looking over Walden, more than half its surface already sparkling blue water, I inhale with pleasure the cold but wholesome air like a draught of cold water, contrasting it in my memory with the wind of summer, which I do not thus eagerly swallow.

  It is a little warmer than of late, though still the shallows are skimmed over.

  The pickerel begin to dart from the shallowest parts not frozen . I hear many phe-be notes from the chickadees, as if they appreciated this slightly warmer and sunny morning.

  A fine day. As I look through the window, I actually see a warmer atmosphere with its fine shimmer against the russet hills and the dry leaves, though the warmth has not got into the house and it is no more bright nor less windy than yesterday, or many days past. I find that the difference to the eye is a slight haze, though it is but very little warmer than yesterday.

  The slight haze of yesterday has become very thick, with a southwest wind, concealing the mountains. I can see it in the air within two or three rods, as I look against the bushes. The fuzzy gnats are in the air, and bluebirds, whose warble is thawed out. I am uncomfortably warm, gradually unbutton both my coats, and wish that I had left the outside one at home. I go listening for the croak of the first frog . . .

  It is incredible what a revolution in our feelings and in the aspect of nature this warmer air alone has produced. Yesterday the earth was simple to barrenness, and dead,—bound out. Out-of-doors there was nothing but the wind and the withered grass and the cold though sparkling blue water, and you were driven in upon yourself . Now you would think that there was a sudden awakening in the very crust of the earth, as if flowers were expanding and leaves putting forth . . .

  When I look out the window I see that the grass on the bank on the south side of the house is already much greener than it was yesterday. As it cannot have grown so suddenly, how shall I account for it? I suspect that the reason is that the few green blades are not merely washed bright by the rain, but erect themselves to imbibe its influence, and so are more prominent, while the withered blades are beaten down and flattened by it. It is remarkable how much more fatal to all superficial vegetation or greenness is a morning frost in March than a covering of snow or ice. In hollows where the ice is still melting I see the grass considerably green about its edges . . .

  P.M.—I go to sail down to the Island and up to Hubbard’s Causeway.

  Most would call it cold to-day. I paddle without gloves. It is a coolness like that of March 29th and 30th, pleasant to breathe, and, perhaps, like that, presaging decidedly warmer weather. It is an amelioration, as nature does nothing suddenly.

  P. M.—To Clematis Brook via Lee’s.

  A pleasant day, growing warmer; a slight haze. Now the hedges and apple trees are alive with fox-colored sparrows, all over the town, and their imperfect strains are occasionally heard. Their clear, fox-colored backs are very handsome. I get quite near to them. Stood quite near to what I called a hairy woodpecker—but, seeing the downy afterward, I am in doubt about it . . .

  A still and rather warm morning, with a very thick haze concealing the sun and threatening to turn to rain.

  It is a smooth, April-morning water, and many sportsmen are out in their boats. I see a pleasure boat, on the smooth surface away by the Rock, resting lightly as a feather in the air.

  By 4 P.M. it began to rain gently or mizzle. Saw this afternoon a great many of those little fuzzy gnats in the air.

  You can hear all day, from time to time in any part of the village, the sound of a gun fired at ducks. Yesterday I was wishing that I could find a dead duck floating on the water, as I had found muskrats and a hare, and now I see something bright and reflecting the light from the edge of the alders five or six rods off. Can it be a duck? I can hardly believe my eyes. I am near enough to see its green head and neck. I am delighted to find a perfect specimen of the Mergus merganser, or goosander, undoubtedly shot yesterday by the Fast-Day sportsmen . . .

  I skinned my duck yesterday and stuffed it to-day. It is wonderful that a man, having undertaken such an enterprise, ever persevered in it to the end, and equally wonderful that he succeeded. To skin a bird, drawing backward, wrong side out, over the legs and wings down to the base of the mandibles! Who would expect to see a smooth feather again? This skin was very tender on the breast. I should have done better had I stuffed it at once or turned it back before the skin became stiff. Look out not to cut the ear and eyelid.

  A fine clear morning. The ground white with frost, and all the meadows also, and a low mist curling over the smooth water now in the sunlight, which gives the water a silver-plated look. The frost covers the willows and alders and other trees on the sides of the river fifteen or twenty feet high. Quite a wintry sight.

  When taking the brain out of my duck yesterday, I perceived that the brain was the marrow of the head, and it is probably only a less sentient brain that runs down the backbone,—the spinal marrow.

  P.M.—Up Assabet to G. Barrett’s meadow.

  Hear at a distance in the sprout-lands the croaks of frogs from some shallow pool. Saw six muskrats’ bodies, just skinned, on the bank,—two large yellowish, fatty-looking masses of (I suppose) musk on each side the lower part of the abdomen. Every part of the animal now emits a very strong scent of musk. A foot which I brought home (together with a head) scented me all over. The fore feet are small and white on the palm, while the hind ones are black. All the skin being stripped off except on the nose and feet, the fore feet look like hands clothed in gauntlets of fur.

  Fine clear morning, but still cold enough for gloves. A slight frost, and mist as yesterday curling over the smooth water. I see half a dozen crows on an elm within a dozen rods of the muskrats’ bodies, as if eying them. I see thus often crows very early in the morning near the houses, which soon after sunrise take their way across the river to the woods again. It is a regular thing with them.

  I see afar, more than one hundred rods distant, sailing on Hubbard’s meadow, on the smooth water in the morning sun, conspicuous, two male sheldrakes and apparently one female. They glide along, a rod or two apart in shallow water, alternately passing one another and from time to time plunging their heads in the water, but the female (whom only the glass reveals) almost alone diving. I think I saw one male drive the other back. One male with the female kept nearly together, a rod or two ahead of the other.

  P.M.—To Fair Haven Pond by boat.

  The morning of the 6th, when I found the skunk-cabbage out, it was so cold I suffered from numbed fingers, having left my gloves behind. Since April came in, however, you have needed gloves only in the morning.

  P.M.—To Cliffs and Hubbard’s Close.

  As I sit in a sheltered place on the Cliffs, I look over the pond with my glass, but see no living thing. Soon after, I saw a boat on Lee’s meadow just inside the button-bushes on the west of the pond, about a mile distant, and, raising my glass, I saw one man paddling in the stern and another in white pantaloons standing up in the bow, ready to shoot. Presently I saw the last raise his gun, take aim, and fire into the bushes . . .

  Returning by the steep side-hill just south of Holden’s wood-lot and some dozen or fourteen rods west of the open land, I saw, amid the rattlesnake-plantain leaves, what I suspect to the Polygala paucifolia,—some very beautiful oval leaves of a dull green (green turned dark) above, but beneath—and a great many showed the under side—a clear and brilliant purple (or lake? ?), growing and looking like checkerberry leaves . . .

  . . . I see that I was not careful enough to preserve the past tense. I suppose that your objection will be avoided by writing the passage this,—“Not one of those moderate Calvanist, said to be common in the writers day, who, by giving up or explaining away the peculiar doctrines of the party, became, like a porcupine disarmed of its quills, but a consistent Calvanist . . .” By “Scripture” I mean the bible. I suspected that the line was derived from Elliot’s Indian bible. It will be better if it is printed “the Scripture” . . .

  An overcast and moist day, but truly April—no sun all clay—like such as began methinks on Fast-Day, or the 5th. You cannot foretell how it will turn out. The river has been steadily rising since the first of April, though you would not think there had been rain enough to cause it. It now covers the meadows pretty respectably. It is perhaps because the warm rain has been melting the frost in the ground. This may be the great cause of the regular spring rise . . .

  At 8 A.M.—Took caterpillar’s eggs from the apple tree at the Texas house and found about thirty.

  It being completely overcast, having rained a little, the robins, etc., sing at 4:30 as at sundown usually. The waters, too, are smooth and full of reflections.

  No sun till setting. Another still, moist, overcast day, without sun, but all day a crescent of light, as if breaking away in the north. The waters smooth and full of reflections. A still cloudy day like this is perhaps the best to be on the water. To the clouds, perhaps, we owe both the stillness and the reflections, for the light is in great measure reflected from the water . . .

  Clear and cool. A frost whitens the ground; yet a mist hangs over the village. There is a thin ice, reaching a foot from the water’s edge, which the earliest rays will melt. I scare up several snipes feeding on the meadow’s edge. It is remarkable how they conceal themselves when they alight on a bare spit of the meadow. I look with my glass to where one alighted four rods off . . .

  P.M.—To Flint’s Pond . . .

  When we reached Britton’s clearing on our return this afternoon, at sunset, the mountains, after this our warmest day as yet, had got a peculiar soft mantle of blue haze, pale blue as a blue heron, ushering in the long series of summer sunsets, and we were glad that we had stayed out so late and felt no need to go home now in a hurry.

  Very little frost; a clear morning. The oars still cold to the hand at this hour. Did I not hear an F. juncorum at a distance? ? Saw some crow blackbirds inspecting that old nest of theirs. I believe I see a tree sparrow still, but I do not remember an F. hyemalis for two days. Geese went over at noon, when warm and sunny.

  P.M.—To Lee’s Cliff.

  I leave off my greatcoat, though the wind rises rather fresh before I return. It is worth the while to walk so free and light, having got off both boots and greatcoat. Great flocks of grackles and red-wings about the Swamp Bridge Brook willows, perching restlessly on an apple tree all at once . . .

  P.M.—To Cliffs and Walden and Hubbard’s Close.

  The hillside and especially low bank-sides are now conspicuously green. Almost did without a fire this morning. Coming out, I find it very warm, warmer than yesterday or any day vet. It is a reminiscence of past summers. It is perfectly still and almost sultry, with wet-looking clouds hanging about, and from time to time hiding the sun. First weather of this kind. And as I sit on Fair Haven Hill-side, the sun actually burns my cheek; yet I left some fire in the house, not knowing behind a window how warm it was . . .

  Warm and still and somewhat cloudy. Am without greatcoat. The guns are firing and bells ringing. I hear a faint honk and, looking up, see going over the river, within fifty rods, thirty-two geese in the form of a hay-hook, only two in the hook, and they are at least six feet apart. Probably the whole line is twelve rods long. At least three hundred have passed over Concord, or rather within the breadth of a mile, this spring . . .

  P.M.—To Walden . . .

  From Heywood’s Peak I thought I saw the head of a loon in the pond, thirty-five or forty rods distant. Bringing my glass to bear, it seemed sunk very low in the water,—all the neck concealed,—but I could not tell which end was the bill. At length I discovered that it was the whole body of a little duck, asleep with its head in its back, exactly in the middle of the pond . . .

  Fair and still. There is a fog over the river, which shows at a distance more than near by . . .

  Aunt Maria has put into my hands to-day for safekeeping three letters from Peter Thoreau, dated Jersey (the first July 1st 1801, the second April 22nd 1804, and the third April 11th 1806) and directed to his niece “Miss Elizabeth Thoreau, Concord, Near Boston,” etc.; also a “Vue de las Ville de St. Helier,” etc., accompanying the first. She is not certain that any more were received from him.

  The first is in answer to one from Elizabeth announcing the death of her father (my grandfather). He states that his mother died the 26th of June, 1801,—the day before he received E.’s letter,—though not till after he had heard from another source of the death of his brother . . .

  The blossoms of the sweet-gale are now on fire over the brooks, contorted like caterpillars. The female flowers also out like the hazel, with more stigmas,—out at same time with the male. I first noticed my little mud turtles in the cellar out of their [sic], one of them, some eight days ago. I suspect those in the river begin to stir about that time? Antennaria probably yesterday, Skull-cap Meadow Ditch. Many yellow redpolls on the willows now. They jerk their tails constantly . . .

  P.M.—To Cedar Swamps via Assabet.

  Warm and pretty still. Even the riversides are quiet at this hour (3 P.M.) as in summer; the birds are neither seen nor heard. The anthers of the larch are conspicuous, but I see no pollen. White cedar to-morrow . . .

  C. says he has seen a yellow-legs.

  I have seen also for some weeks occasionally a brown hawk with white rump, flying low, which I have thought the frog hawk in a different stage of plumage; but can it be at this season? and is it not the marsh hawk? Yet it is not so heavy nearly as the hen-hawk.

  Warm and quite a thick haze. Cannot see distant hills, nor use my glass to advantage . . . Young caterpillars’ nests are just hatched on the wild cherry. Some are an inch in diameter, others just come out. The little creatures have crawled at once to the extremity of the twigs and commenced at once on the green buds just about to burst, eating holes into them. They do not come forth till the buds are about to burst . . .

  P.M.—To Beck Stow’s.

  Hear a faint cheep and at length detect the white-throated sparrow, the handsome and well-marked bird, the largest of the sparrows, with a yellow spot on each side of the front, hopping along under the rubbish left by the woodchopper. I afterward hear a faint cheep very rapidly repeated . . .

  After sunset paddled up to the Hubbard Bath. The bushes ringing with the evening song of song sparrows and robins, and the evening sky reflected from the surface of the rippled water like the lake grass on pools. A spearers’ fire seems three times as far off as it is.

  We see and hear more birds than usual this mizzling and still day, and the robin sings with more vigor and promise than later in the season.

  Cold and windy, but fair . . . Heard a singular sort of screech, somewhat like a hawk, under the Cliff, and soon some pigeons flew out of a pine near me. The black and white creepers running over the trunks or main limbs of red maples and uttering their fainter oven-bird-like notes. The principal singer on this walk, both in wood and field away from town, is the field sparrow. I hear the sweet warble of a tree sparrow in the yard . . .

  P.M.—Sail to Ball’s Hill . . .

  Landed at Ball’s Hill to look for birds under the shelter of the hill in the sun. There were a great many myrtle-birds there . . .

  I noticed on the 26th (and also to-day) that since this last rise of the river, which reached its height the 23d, a great deal of the young flag, already six inches to a foot long, though I have hardly observed it growing yet, has washed up all along the shore, and as to-day I find a piece of flag-root with it gnawed by a muskrat, I think that they have been feeding very extensively on the white and tender part of the young blades. They, and not ducks, for it is about the bridges also as much as anywhere. I think that they desert the clams now for this vegetable food. In one place a dead muskrat scents the shore, probably another of those drowned out in the winter. Saw the little heaps of dirt where worms had come out by river.

  P.M.—by boat to Lupine Hill . . .

  I see a woodchuck on the side of Lupine Hill, eight or ten rods off. He runs to within three feet of his hole; then stops, with his head up. His whole body makes an angle of forty-five degrees as I look sideways at it. I see his shining black eyes and black snout and his little erect ears. He is of a light brown forward at this distance (hoary above, yellowish or sorrel beneath), gradually darkening backward to the end of the tail . . .

  Is it not time to republish “A Week on the Concord & Merrimack Rivers”? You said you would notify me when it was; but I am afraid that it will soon be too late for this season.

  I have, with what were sent to you, about 250 bound, and 450 in sheets.

  Yrs truly
  Henry D. Thoreau

  P.M.—By boat with Sophia to Conantum, a maying.

  The water has gone down very fast and the grass has sprung up. There is a strong, fresh marsh scent wafted front the meadows, much like the salt marshes. We sail with a smart wind from the northeast, yet it is warm enough. Horse-mint is seen springing up, and for two or three days at the bottom of the river . . .

  Quince begins to leaf, and pear; perhaps some of last earlier. Aspen leaves of young trees—or twenty to twenty-five feet high—an inch long suddenly; say yesterday began; not till the 11th last year. Leafing, then, is differently affected by the season from flowering. The leafing is apparently comparatively earlier this year than the flowering. The young aspens are the first of indigenous trees . . .

  Hard-hack leafed two or maybe three days in one place. Early pyrus leafed yesterday or day before . . .

  I first observed the stillness of birds, etc., at noon, with the increasing warmth, on the 23d of April. Sitting on the bank near the stone-heaps, I see large suckers rise to catch insects,—sometimes leap. A butterfly one inch in alar extent, dark, velvety brown with slate-colored tips, on dry leaves. On the north of Groton Turnpike beyond Abel Hosmer’s . . .

  The trees and shrubs which I observe to make a show now with their green, without regard to the time when they began, are (to put them in the order of their intensity and generalness):—

Gooseberry, both kinds
Raspberry
Meadow-sweet
Choke-cherry shoots
Some young trembles
Very young apples . . .

  P.M.—To epigæa.

  Salix alba opened yesterday. Gilead not leafing yet, but perhaps to-morrow? A robin’s nest with two eggs, betrayed by peeping. On the 30th of April a phœbe flew out from under the arched bridge; probably building . . .

  Myrtle-birds very numerous just beyond Second Division. They sing like an instrument, teee teee te, t t t, t t t, on very various keys i. e. high or low, sometimes beginning like phe-be. As I sat by roadside one drew near, perched within ten feet, and dived once or twice with a curve to catch the little black flies about my head, coming once within three feet, not minding me much. I could not tell at first what attracted it toward me. It saw them from twenty-five feet off. There was a little swarm of flies, regularly fly-like with large shoulders, about my head.

  Finger-cold and windy. The sweet-flags showed themselves about in the pads. Hear Maryland yellow-throat. Many grackles still in flocks singing on trees, male and female, the latter a very dark or black ash, but with silvery eye. I suspect the red-wings are building. Large white maples began to leaf yesterday at least, generally; one now shows considerably across the river. The aspen is earlier . . .

  A crow’s nest near the top of a pitch pine about twenty feet high, just completed, betrayed by the birds’ cawing and alarm. As on the 5th, one came and sat on a bare oak within forty feet, cawed, reconnoitred; and then both flew off to a distance, while I discovered and climbed to the nest . . .

  P.M.—To Lee’s Cliff via Hubbard’s Bath.

  Viola cucullata apparently a day or two. A lady-bug and bumblebee, the last probably some time. A lily wholly above water, and yellow, in Skull-Cap Meadow, ready to open . . .

  Still finger-cold. I think I saw bank swallows.

  At noon begins a cold, drizzling rain, which continues at intervals through the next day. A cold May storm, wind easterly . . .

  The black current will not bloom for five or six days. A large red maple just begun to leaf—its keys an inch and a half long—by Assabet Bridge. Castilleja show red,—one,—but will not blook under a week probably. The same of erigeron. Cornus alternifolia and paniculata begin to leaf. Scared up three quails in the stubble in G.M. Barrett’s orchard. . .

  P.M.—To Beeches.

  Young red maples are generally later to leaf than young sugar maples; hardly began before yesterday; and large white are not so forward as young sugar. Muhlenberg’s willow leafed for or five days. Young yellow birch leaf, say two days. In Callitriche Pool hear a bullfrog belch or dump. Is that a proserpinaea with finely divided leaves in this pool? Hear a tree-toad,—or maybe a woodpecker tapping . . .

  Only the lower limbs of bass begin to leaf yet,—yesterday. A crow blackbird’s nest, about eight feet up a white maple over water,—a large, loose nest without, some eight inches high, between a small twig and main trunk, composed of coarse bark shreds and dried last year’s grass, without mud; within deep and size of a robin’s nest; with four pale-green eggs, streaked and blotched with black and brown. Took one. Young bird not begun to form . . .

 P.M.—To Andromeda Polifolia . . .

  I trod on a large black snake, which, as soon as I stepped again, went off swiftly down the hill toward the swamp, with head erect like a racer. Looking closely I found another left behind, partly concealed by the dry leaves. They were lying amid the leaves . . .

  6 A.M.—To Hill.

  I hear the myrtle-bird’s te-e-e, te-e-e, t t t, t t t, clear flute-like whistle, and see eight or ten crow blackbirds together.

  P.M.—To Lee’s Cliff.

  C. [William Ellery Channing] says he saw upland plover two or three nights ago. the sweet-gale begins to leaf. I perceive the fragrance of the Salix alba, now in bloom, more than an eighth of a mile distant. They now adorn the cause-ways with their yellow blossoms and resound with the hum of bumblebees . . .

  Just before sundown, took our seats before the owl’s nest and sat perfectly still and awaited her appearance. We sat about half an hour, and it was surprising what various distinct sounds we heard there deep in the wood, as if the aisles of the wood were so many ear-trumpets,—the cawing of crows, the peeping of hylas in the swamp and perhaps the croaking of a tree-toad . . .

  Yesterday was the first warm day for a week or two, and to-day it is much warmer still and hazy—as much like summer as it can be without the trees being generally leafed. I saw a Fringilla hyemalis this morning and heard the golden robin, now that the elms are beginning to leaf . . .

  As we float down the river through the still and hazy air, enjoying the June-like warmth, see the first king-birds on the bare black willows with their broad white breasts and white-tipped tails; and the sound of the first bobolink was floated to us from over the meadows; now that the meadows are lit by the tender yellow green of the willows and the silvery-green fruit of the elms . . .

  At 9.30 P.M. I hear from our gate my night-warbler. Never heard it in the village before.

  I doubt if we shall at any season hear more birds singing than now . . .

  P.M.—To Cliffs via Hubbard’s Bath.

  See a male hen-harrier skimming low along the side of the river, often within a foot of the muddy shore, looking for frogs, with a very compact flock of small birds, probably swallows in pursuit. Occasionally he alights and walks or hops flutteringly a foot or two . . .

  Suddenly very warm. Hear a hummingbird in the garden. Pear blossomed,—some perhaps yesterday. Locust, black and scarlet oak, and some buttonwoods leaf. A yellow butterfly. I hear from the top of a pitch pine in the swamp that loud, clear, familiar whistle which I have sometimes wrongly referred to the wood pewee,—whip-ter-phe-ee . . .

  Minott says that some years ago, maybe ten or fifteen, a man in Bedford climbed to an owl’s nest (probably a cat owl’s), and the owl took out one of his eyes and nearly killed him. He read it in the papers.

  Trees generally leafing. black willow leafs. Bass leaf is an inch over; probably began about the 14th. Panicled andromeda leafed in some places, probably a day or two. Grape buds begin to open. Swamp white oak leaf, probably yesterday. Silky cornel leaf, two days or three. A woodcock, near river. A blue heron-like bird on a tree over river . . .

  Large devil’s-needle. Sassafras well open. How long? Celtis will probably shed pollen to-morrow; shoots already an inch long. Sorrel pollen. First veery strain. Green-briar leafed several days. Veronica serpyllifolia well out (how long?) at Ash Bank Spring. Saw the yellow-legs feeding on shore. Legs not bright-yellow. Goes off with the usual whistle . . .

  Salix nigra leafs. Is that plump blue-backed, rufous-rumped swallow the cliff swallow, flying with barn swallows, etc., over the river? Nuttall apparently so describes it,—5 1/2 by 12. It dashes within a foot of me . . .

  Myrica, not quite. Lousewort pollen, how long? (Journal, 7:383)

  Buttonwood not open. Celandine pollen. Butternut pollen, apparently a day or two. Black oak pollen yesterday, at least. Scarlet oak the same, but a little later. The staminate flowers of the first are on long and handsome tassels for three or four inches along the extremities of last year’s shoots . . .

  P.M.—To Cliffs.

  Wind suddenly changed to south this forenoon, and for the first time I think of a thin coat. It is very hazy in consequence of the sudden warmth after cold, and I cannot see the mountains . . .

  8 A.M.—To Hill.

  Late rose shoots, two inches, say a fortnight since. Salix nigra pollen, a day at least. Wood pewee. Apparently yellowbirds’ nests just completed—one by stone bridge causeway, another on birch by mud turtle meadow. Veronica peregrina in Mackay’s strawberries, how long? Most of the robins’ nests I have examined this year had three eggs, clear bluish green . . .

  Fever-root one foot high and more, say a fortnight or three weeks. Scared it screech owl out of an apple tree on hill; flew swiftly off at first like a pigeon woodpecker and lit near by facing me; was instantly visited and spied at by a brown thrasher; then flew, into a hole high in a hickory near by . . .

  Again a strong cold wind from the north by west, turning up the new and tender pads. The young white lily pads are now red and crimson above . . .

  At Kalmia Swamp.—Nemopanthes, apparently several days, and leaf say before tupelo. White spruce pollen one or two days at least, and now begins to leaf. To my surprise the Kalmia ylauca almost all out; perhaps began with rhodora. A very fine flower, the more interesting for being early . . .

  Still a very strong wind from northerly, and hazy and rather cool for season. The fields now begin to wear the aspect of June . . .

  P.M.—To Middle Conantum Cliff . . .

  While we sit by the path in the depths of the woods three quarters of a mile beyond Hayden’s, confessing the influence of almost the first summer warmth, the wood thrush sings steadily for half an hour, now at 2.30 P.M., amid the pines,—loud and clear and sweet . . .

  I find the feathers apparently of a brown thrasher in the path, plucked since we passed here last night. You can generally find all the tail and quill feathers in such a case. The apple bloom is very rich now . . . C. [William Ellery Channing] says he has seen a green snake . . .

  There are a great marry birds now on the Island Neck. The red-eye, its clear loud song in bars continuously repeated and varied . . . There is also the warbling vireo, with its smooth-flowing, continuous, one-barred, shorter strain . . .

  But what is that bird I hear much like the first part of the yellowbird’s strain, only two thirds as long and varied at end, and not so loud,—a-che che che, che-á, or tche tche tche, tche-a, or ah tche tche tche, chit-i-vet? It is very small, not timid, but incessantly changing its position on the pitch pines . . .

  P.M.—Up railroad . . .

  Hear a familiar warbler not recognized for some years, in the thick copse in Dennis’s Swamp, south of the railroad; considerably yellowbird-like (the note)—tshe tshe tshar tshar tchit, tchit tit te vet. It has apparently a yellow head, bluish or slaty wings . . .

  I find the Linnæa borealis growing near the end of the ridge in this lot toward the meadow . . . C. [William Ellery Channing] has found the arethusa out at Hubbard’s Close . . .

  P.M.—To Hill . . .

  Mr. Hoar tells me that Deacon Farrar’s son tells him that a white robin has her nest on an apple tree near their house. Her mate is of the usual color. All the family have seen her . . .

  Ellen Emerson finds the Viola pubescens scarce to-day . . . (Journal, 7:404-406).

  Walking along the upper edge of the flat Clamshell meadow, a bird, probably a song sparrow (for I saw two chipping about immediately after), flew up from between my feet, and I soon found its nest remarkably concealed . . .

  I am much interested to see how Nature proceeds to heal the wounds where the turf was stripped off this meadow. There are large patches where nothing remained but pure black mud . . .

  You ice the dark eye and shade of June on the river as well as on land, and a dust-like tint on river, apparently from the young leaves and bud-scales, covering the waters, which begin to be smooth, and imparting a sense of depth . . .

  In afternoon—mizzling weather—to Abel Hosmer’s Woods . . . (Journal, 7:410).

  In that pitch pine wood see two rabbit forms (?), very snug and well-roofed retreats formed by the dead pine-needles falling about the base of the trees . . . C. [William Ellery Channing] says he saw two other dark ducks here yesterday . . .

  C. [William Ellery Channing] finds an egg to-day, somewhat like a song sparrow’s, but a little longer and slenderer, or with less difference between the ends in form, and more finely and regularly spotted all over with pale brown. It was in a pensile nest of grape-vine bark, on the low branch of a maple. Probably a cowbird’s; fresh-laid . . .

  When I would go a-visiting I find that I go off the fashionable street—not being inclined to change my dress—to where man meets man and not polished shoe meets shoe . . .

  What if we feel a yearning to which no breast answers? I walk alone. My heart is full. Feelings impede the current of my thoughts. I knock on the earth for my friend. I expect to meet him at every turn; but no friend appears, and perhaps none is dreaming of me. I am tired of frivolous society, in which silence is forever the most natural and the best manners. I would fain walk on the. deep waters, but my companions will only walk on shallows and puddles. I am naturally silent in the midst of twenty from day to day, from year to year. I am rarely reminded of their presence. Two yards of politeness do not make society for me. One complains that I do not take his jokes. I took them before he had done uttering them, and went my way. One talks to me of his apples and pears, and I depart with my secret untold. His are not the apples that tempt me . . .

  I hear the toad, which I have called “spray frog” falsely, still. He sits close to the edge of the water and is hard to find—hard to tell the direction, though you may be within three feet. I detect him chiefly by the motion of the great swelling bubble in his throat. A peculiarly rich, sprayey dreamer, now at 2 P.M.! How serenely it ripples over the water! What a luxury life is to him! I have to use a little geometry to detect him. Am surprised at my discovery at last, while C. sits by incredulous. . . .

  A hawthorn grows near by, just out of bloom, twelve feet high—Cratægus Oxyacantha. A veronica at Peetweet Rock; forget which kind. A crow blackbird’s nest high in an elm by riverside just below the Island. C. [William Ellery Channing] climbed to it and got it . . .

  I see a strange warbler still in this swamp. A chestnut and gray backed bird, five or six inches long, with a black throat and yellow crown; note, chit chit chill le le, or chut chut a -wetter chut a wut, che che . . .

  P.M.—To Hubbard’s Grove, on river . . .

  A painted tortoise just burying three flesh-colored eggs in the dry, sandy plain near the thrasher’s nest. It leaves no trace on the surface . . .

  Sparganium. A yellowbird feigns broken wings. Woodcock.

  At 3 P.M., as I walked up the bank by the Hemlocks, I saw a painted turtle just beginning its hole . . . I stooped down over it, and, to my surprise, after a slight pause it proceeded in its work, directly under and within eighteen inches of my face. I retained a constrained position for three quarters of an hour or more for fear of alarming it . . .

  Mr. Bull found in his garden this morning a snapping turtle about twenty rods from the brook, which had there just made a round hole . . . (Journal, 7:428-429).

  On an apple at R.W.E.’s a small pewee’s nest . . . (Journal, 7:429).

  I have been sick and good for nothing but to lie on my back and wait for something to turn up, for two or three months. This has compelled me to postpone several things, among them writing to you to whom I am so deeply in debt, and inviting you and Brown [Theophilus Brown] to Concord—not having brains adequate to such an exertion. I should feel a little less ashamed if I could give any name to my disorder, but I cannot, and our doctor cannot help me to it, and I will not take the name of any disease in vain. However, there is one consolidation in being sick, and that is the possibility that you may recover to be a better state than you were ever in before. I expected in the winter to be deep in the woods of Maine in my canoe long before this, but I am so far from that that I can only take the languid walk in Concord streets.
 
  I do not know how the mistake arose about the Cape Cod excursion. The nearest I have come to that with anybody is that about a month ago Charming proposed to me to go to Truro, on Cape Cod, with him & board there awhile, but I declined. For a week past however I have been a little inclined to go there & sit on the sea-shore a week or more, but I do not venture to propose myself as the companion of him or of any peripatetic man. Not that I should rejoice to have you and Brown or C. sitting there also. I am not sure that C. really wishes to go now—and as I go simply for the medicine of it, while I need it, I should not think it worth the whole to notify him when I am about to make my bitters.

  Since I began this, or within 5 minutes, I have begun to think that I will start for Truro next Saturday morning—the 30th. I do not know at what hour the packet leaves Boston, nor exactly what kind of accommodation I shall find at Truro.

  I should be singularity favored if you and Brown were there at the same time, and though you speak of the 20th of July, I will be so bold as to suggest your coming to Concord Friday night (when, by the way, Garrison & Phillips hold forth here) & going to the Cape with me. Though we take short walks together there we can have long talks, and you & Brown will have time enough for your own excursions besides.

  I received a letter from Cholmondeley last winter, which I should like to show you, as well as his book. He said that he had “accepted the offer to a captaincy in the Salop Militia,” and was hoping to take an active part in the war before long.
 
  I thank you again and again for the encouragement your letters are to me. But I must stop this writing, or I shall have to pay for it.

  Yours Truly
  H.D. Thoreau

  Two red-wings’ nests, four eggs and three—one without any black marks . . . (Journal, 7:430)

  Air over river at Hubbard’s Bath . . . 88º

  Water six feet from shore and one foot deep . . 84½º

  near surface in middle, where up to neck . . 83½º

  at bottom in same place, pulling it up quickly 83½º

  Yet the air on the wet body, there being a strong southwest wind, feels colder than the water.

  The schooner Melrose was advertised to make her first trip to Provincetown this morning at eight. We reached City Wharf at 8.30. “Well, Captain Crocker, how soon do you start?” “To-morrow morning at 9 o’clock.” “But you advertised to leave at 8 this morning.” “I know it but we are going to lay over till to-morrow.” ! ! ! So we spend the day in Boston,—at Athenaeum gallery, Alcott’s, [A. Bronson Alcott] and at the regatta. Lodged at Alcott’s, who is about moving to Walpole.

  Went to Gifford’s Union House (the old Tailor’s Inn) in Provincetown . . . Talked to Nahum Haynes, who is making fisherman’s boots there . . .

  Talked with a man who has the largest patch of cranberries here,—ten acres,—and there are fifteen or twenty acres in all . . .

  Went over to Bay side. That pond at Pond Village three eighths of a mile long and densely filled with cat-tail flag seven feet high . . .

  S. [James Small] said that nineteen small yellow birds (probably goldfinches) were found dead under the light in the spring early.

  P.S.—There is no mail up till Monday morning.

  Young bobolinks; one of the first autumnalish notes. The early meadow aster out.

  Young Adams of Waltham tells me he has been moose-hunting at Chesuncook. Hunted with a guide in evening without horn . . . (Journal, 7:447).

  Your check for thirty-five dollars in payment for my article in the August number of Putnam’s Monthly has come duly to hand – for which accept the acknowledgments of

Yrs respectfully
Henry D. Thoreau

  PS. Will you please forward the following note to the Editor

  They are all gone; yet Fay saw them there last night after we passed. Probably they started very early. I asked Minott if he ever saw swallows migrating, not telling him what I had seen . . .

  As I was paddling back at 6 A.M., saw, nearly half a mile off, a blue heron standing erect on the topmost twig of the great buttonwood on the street in front of Mr. Prichard’s house . . .

  8 P.M.—On river to see swallows . . .

  Very few berries this year (Journal, 7:452).

  Will you allow me to trouble you once more about my Cape Cod paper. I would like to substitute the accompanying sheets for about ten pages of my MS, in the Chapter called “The Beach Again,” . . .

  There is a very small class in England who ought to know what you have written, and for whose sake I want a few copies of “Walden” sent to certain periodicals over the water—for instance, to

  I feel sure your publishers would not throw away copies sent to these periodicals; especially if your “Week on the Concord and Merrimac[k]” could accompany them. Chapman, Ed Westminster Rev. expressed surprise to me that your book had not been sent him, and I could find very few who had read or seen it. If a new edition should be called for, try to have it better known in Europe; but have a few copies sent to those worthy of it at all events.

Yours,
Horace Greeley

  You say that you had no idea that the Cape Cod paper “was to be expanded into a book”. It has not been expanded. It is no longer than it was when I sent you the first pages. I told you its length though you had not inquired about it. You say there is enough on hand for 4 numbers of your magazine. I have sent some 208 pages in all & you have printed about 137 of them in three numbers. I write this merely in self defence & not it induce you to print it.

  Will you please send me the remainder of the MSS. by express.

Yrs.
Henry D. Thoreau

  I have just returned from Boston where I showed your note to Ticknor. He says he will put the books into the next package which he sends to England. I did not send a single copy of Walden across the water, though Fields did two or three, to private persons alone I think.

  Thank you for the suggestion.

  I am glad to hear that you are on this side again – though I should not care if you had been detained somewhat longer, if so we could have had a few more letters from Clichy.

Yrs
Henry D. Thoreau

  I scare from an oak by the side of the Close a young hen-hawk, which, launching off with a scream and a heavy flight, alights on the topmost plume of a large pitch pine in the swamp northward, bending it down, with its back toward me, where it might be mistaken for a plume against the sky, the light makes all things so black . . .

  Here am I at home again seated in my Shanty. My mind is constantly reverting to the pleasant little visit I made you, and so I thought I would sit down and write you.

  I regret exceedingly that I was so interrupted in my enjoyment while at Concord by my “aches and pains.” My head troubled me until I had to go within about 20 miles of home, when the pain passed off and my spirits began to revive. I hope that your walks, &c, with me will not harm you and that you will soon regain your usual health and strength, which I trust the cooler weather will favor; would advise you not to doctor, but just use your own good sense. I should have insisted more on your coming on with me had I not felt so ill and in such actual pain the day I left—but I want you to come before the weather gets uncomfortably cool. I feel much your debtor, for through you and your Walden I have found my hopes and strength in those matters which I had before found none to sympathize with. You have more than any other to me discovered the true secret of living comfortably in this world, and I hope more and more be able to put into practice, in the meantime you will be able to extend your pity and charity. You are the only “millionaire” among my acquaintances. I have heard of people being “independently rich,” but you are the only one I have ever had the honor of knowing.

  How charming you, Channing, and I dovetailed together! Few men smoke such pipes as we did—the real Calumet—the tobacco that we smoked was free labor produce. I haven’t lost sight of Solon Hosmer, the wisest looking man in Concord, and the real “feelosopher”! I want you to see him and tell him not to take down the old house, where the feelosofers met. I think I should like to have the large chamber, for an occasional sojourn to Concord, It might me easily tinkered up so as to be a comfortable roost for a feelosopher—a few old chairs, a table, bed &c, would be all—sufficient, then you and C. could come over in your punt and rusticate. What think of it? In the mean time come down to Brooklawn, and look about with me. As you are a little under the weather, we will make our peregrinations with horse and wagon.

  With much regard to Channing and my kind remembrances to your parents and sister, I remain,

  Yours very truly
  D’l Ricketson

  Above Hubbard Bridge we see coming from the south in loose array some twenty apparently black ducks . . .

  Brought home quite a boat-load of fuel,—one oak rail, on which fishers had stood in wet ground at Bittern Cliff, a white pine rider (?) with a square hole in [it] made by a woodpecker anciently, so wasted the sap as to leave the knots projecting, several chestnut rails; and I obtained behind Cardinal Shore a large oak stump which I know to have been bleaching there for more than thirty years, with three great gray prongs sprinkled with lichens . . .

  In evening went to Welch’s circus with C. [William Ellery Channing] Approaching, I perceived the peculiar scent which belongs to such places, a certain sourness in the air, suggesting trodden grass and cigar smoke . . .

  The other day I thought that my health must be better,—that I gave at last a sign of vitality,—because I experienced a slight chagrin. But I do not see how strength is to be got into my legs again. These months of feebleness have yielded few, if any, thoughts, though they have not passed without serenity, such as our sluggish Musketaquid suggests.I hope that the harvest is to come. I trust that you have a least warped up the stream a little daily, holding fast by your anchors at night, since I saw you, and have kept my place for me while I have been absent.

  Mr. Ricketson of New Bedford has just made me a visit of a day and a half, and I have had a quite good time with him. He and Channing have got on particularly well together. He is a man of very simple tastes, notwithstanding his wealth; a lover of nature; but above all, singularly frank and plain-spoken. I think that you might enjoy meeting him.

  Sincerity is a great but rare virtue, and we pardon to it much complaining, and the betrayal of many weaknesses. R. says of of himself, that he sometimes thinks that he has all the infirmities of genius without the genius; is wretched without a hair-pillow, etc.: expresses a great and awful uncertainty with regard to “God,” “Death,” his “immortality”; says, “If I only knew,” etc. He loves Cowper’s “Task” better than any thing else; and thereafter, perhaps, Thomson, Gray, and even Howitt. He has evidently suffered for want of sympathizing companions. He says that he sympathizes with much in my book, but much in them is naught to him,—”namby-pamby,”—”stuff,”—”mystical.” Why will not I, having common sense, write in plain English always; teach men in detail how to live a simpler life, etc.; not go off into ————? But I say that I have no scheme about it, no designs on men at all; and if I had, my mode would be to tempt them with the fruit, and not with the manure. To what end do I lead a simple life at all, pray? That I may teach others to simplify their lives?—and so all our lives be simplified merely, like an algebraic formula? Or not, rather that I may make use of the ground I have cleared, to live more worthily and profitably? I would fainly lay the most stress forever on that which is the most important,—imports the most to me,—though it were only (what it is likely to be) a vibration in the air. As a preacher, I should be prompted to tell men, not so much to get their wheat-bread cheaper, as of the bread of life compared with which that is bran. Let a man only taste these loaves, and he becomes a skillful economist at once. He’ll not waste much time in earning those. Don’t spend your time drilling soldiers, who may turn out hirelings after all, but give to undrilled peasantry a country to fight for. The school begins with what they call the elements, and where do they end?

  I was glad to hear the other day that [T.W.] Higginson and _____ were gone to Ktaadn; it must be some much better to go to than a Woman’s Rights or Abolition Convention; better still, to the delectable primitive mounts within you, which you have reamed of from your youth up, and seen perhaps in the horizon, but never climbed.

  But how do you do? Is the air sweet to you? Do you find anything at which you can work, accomplishing something solid from day to day? Have you put sloth and doubt behind, considerable?—had one redeeming dream this summer? I dreamed, last night, that I could vault over any height it pleased me. That was something; and I contemplated myself with a slight satisfaction in the morning for it.

  Methinks I will write you. Methinks you will be glad to hear. We will stand on solid foundations to one another,—I a column planted on this shore, you on that. We meet the same sun in his rising We were built slowly, and have come to our bearing. We will not mutually fall over that we may meet, but will grandly and eternally guard the straits. Methinks I see an inscription on you, which the architect made, the stucco being morn off to it. The same of that ambitious worldly king is crumbling away. I see it toward sunset in favorable lights. Each must read for the other, as might a sailer-by. Be sure you are a star—y—pointing still. How is it on your side. I will not require an answer until you think I have paid my debts to you.

  I have just got your letter from Ricketson, urging me to come to New Bedford, which possibly I may do. He says I can wear my old clothes there.

  Let me be remembered in your quiet house.

  I am sorry that you were obliged to leave Concord without seeing more of it—its river and woods, and various pleasant walks, and its worthies. I assure you that I am none the worse for my walk with you, but on all accounts the better. Methinks I am regaining my health, but I would like to know first what it was that ailed me.

  I have not yet conveyed your message to Hosmer, but will not fail to do so. That idea of occupying the old house is a good one—quite feasible,—and you could bring your hair—pillow with you. It is an inn in Concord which I had not thought of—a philosophers inn. That large chamber might make a man’s ideas expand proportionately. It would be well to have interest in ‘some old chamber in’ a deserted house in every part of the country which attracted us. There would be no such place to receive one’s guests as that. If old furniture is fashionable, why not go to the whole—house at once? I shall endeavor to make Hosmer believe that the old house is the chief attraction of his farm, & that it is his duty to preserve it by all honest appliances. You might take a lease of it in perpetuo, and done with it.

  I am so wedded to my way of spending a day—require such broad margins of leisure, and such a complete ward-robe of old clothes, that I am ill fitted for going abroad. Pleasant is it sometimes to sit, at home, on a single egg all day, in your own nest, though it may prove at last be an egg of chalk. The old coat that I wear is Concord—it is my morning robe & study gown, my working dress and suit of ceremony, and my night—gown after all. Cleave to the simplest every—Home—home—home. Cars sound like cares to me.

  I am accustomed to think very long of going anywhere—am slow to move. I hope to hear a response of the oracle first.

  However I think that I will try the effect of your talisman on the iron horse next Saturday, and dismount at Tarkiln Hill. Perhaps your sea air will be good for me.

  I conveyed your invitation to Channing but he apparently will not come.

  Excuse my not writing earlier—but I had not decided.

  Yrs
  Henry D. Thoreau

  At Natural History Library saw Dr. Cabot, who says that he has heard either the hermit, or else the olivaceous, thrush sing,—very like a wood thrush, but softer . . .

  Get out at Tarkiln Hill, or Head of the River Station, three miles this side of New Bedford. Recognized an old Dutch barn. R’s sons Arthur and Walton were just returning from tautog-fishing in Buzzard’s Bay, and I tasted one at supper. Singularly curved from snout to tail.

  In acc with W. D. Ticknor & Co.

  Walden—

  On hand last settlement 600 cops.

  Sold since last acc 344

  Remaining on hand 256

  Sales 344 Cops @ 15 cents is $51.60

Dear Sir,

  We regret for you sake as well as ours that a larger number of Walden has not been sold.

  We enclose our check for Fifty-one 60/100 Dollars for sales to date.

Ever Respy
W. D. Ticknor & Co.

  Thence we proceeded to Long Pond, stopping at the south end, which is in Freetown, about eight miles from R’s. The main part is in Middleborough . . .

  Went to a place easterly from the south end of the pond, called Joe’s Rock, just over the Rochester line… Went into an old deserted house, the Brady house, where two girls who had lived in the family of R. and his mother had been born and bred, their father Irish, and mother Yankee . . .

  Arthur Ricketson showed me in his collection what was apparently (?) an Indian mortar, which had come from Sampson’s in Middleborough . . .

  Returned by the new Point road, four miles long, and R. [Daniel Ricketson] said eighty feet wide (I should think from recollection more), and cost $50,000 . . .

  We soon left the main road and turned into a path on the right, leading to Assawampsett Pond, a mile distant . . .

  Returning along the shore, we saw a man and woman putting off in a small boat, the first we had seen . . .

  We left our horse and buggy at John Kingman’s and walked by Sampson’s to a hill called King Phillip’s Lookout, from which we got a good view of Assawampsett and Long Ponds . . .

  P.M.—Rode to see some old houses in Fairhaven . . .

  Visited the studio in Fairhaven of a young marine painter, built over the water, the dashing and gurgling of it coming up through a grating in the floor. He was out, but we found there painting Van Best, a well-known Dutch painter of marine pieces whom he has attracted to him. He talked and looked particularly Dutchman-like. Then visited For Nobscot on the rocky point.

  I have been busily collecting a next of Indian Books for you, which, accompanied by this not Mr [John] Chapman will send you—& you will find them at Boston carriage-paid (mind that, & don’t let them cheat you) at Crosby & Nichols.

  I hope dear Thoreau you will accept this trife from one who has received so much from you & one who is so anxious to become your friend & to induce you to visit England. I am just about to start for the Crimea, being now a complete soldier—but I fear the game is nearly played out—& all my friends tell me I am just too late for the fair. When I return to England (if ever I do return) I mean to buy a little cottage somewhere on the south coast where I can swell in Mersonian leisure & where I have a plot to persuade you over.

  Give my love to your Father & Mother & sister & my respects to Mr. Emerson & Channing, & the painter who gave me Websters Head—

  I think I never found so much mindedness anywhere in all my travels as in your country of New England—& indeed—barrings its youth—it is very like our old country in my humble judgement

  Adieu dear Thoreau & immense affluence to you

  Ever Yours
  Thos Cholmondeley

P.S. Excuse my bad writing. Of course it is the pen. Chapman will send a list of your books—by which you can see whether they are all right because I hate to have anything lost or wasted, however small.

  Returning, lunched by Westport Pond in Dartmouth, said to contain sixty acres but to [be] about two feet deep . . .

  Returning stopped upon the shore of Westport Pond in a grove of young oaks, where ourselves and old Charley ate our dinner, arriving home about 4 1/2 P.M. Showery evening.

  Lodged at Olney’s (the old Hedge) House in Plymouth.

  Mr. William Allen, now here, tells me that when, some years ago, a stream near his house, emptying into the Taunton River, was drained, he found a plant on the bottom very similar to a sponge—of the same form and color—and say six inches wide.

  I fear that you had a lonely and disagreeable ride back to New Bedford, through the Carver woods & so on,—perhaps in the rain too, and I am in part answerable for it. I feel very much in debt to you & your for the pleasant days I spent at Brooklawn. Tell Arthur & Walter [Waon; perhaps a slip of Thoreau’s pen] that the shells which they gave me are spread out, and make quite a show to inland eyes. Methinks I still hear the strains of the piano and violin & the flageolet blend together. Excuse me for the noise which I believe drove you to take refuge in the shanty. That shanty is indeed a favorable place to expand in, which I fear I did not enough improve.

  On my way through Boston I inquired for Gilpin’s work at Little Brown & Co’s, Monroes, Ticknor’s & Burnham’s. They have not got them. They told me at Little Brown & Co’s that his work (not complete in 12 vols 8vo, were imported & sold in this country 5 or 6 years ago for about 15 dollars. Their terms for importing at 10 per cent on the cost. I copied from “The London Catalogue of Books, 1816-51” at their shop, the following list of Gilpin’s books—

  I still see an image of those Middleborough Ponds in my mind’s eye—board shallow lakes with an iron mine at their bottom—comparatively unvexed by sails—only by Tom Smith & his squaw Sepit’s “sharper.” I find my map of the state to be the best I have seen of that district. It is a question whether the island of Long Pond or Great Quitteus offer the most attractions to a Lord of the Isles. That plant which I found on the Shore of Long Pond chances to be a rare & beautiful flower—the Sabbatia chlorides—referred to Plymouth.

  In a Description of Middleborough in the Hist. Coll vol 3d 1810—signed Nehemiah Bennet Middleborough 1793—it is said “There is on the easterly shore of Assawampsitt Pond on the shore of Bett’s Neck, two rocks which have curiously marks thereon (supposed to be done by the Indians) which appear like the stepping of a person with naked feet which settled into the ricks, likewise the prints of a land on several places, with a number of other marks; also there is a rock on a high hill a little to the eastward of the old stone fishing wear, where there is the print of a person’s hand in said rock.”
It would be well to look at those rocks again more carefully—also a the rock on the hill.

  I should think that you would like to explore Shipatuct Pond in Rochester [it] is so large & near. It is an interesting fact that the alewives used to ascend to it—if they so not still both from Mattapoisett & through Great Quitticus.

  There will be no trouble about the chamber in the old house, though, as I told you, Hosmer counts his coppers and may expect some compensation for it. He says “Give my respects to Mr R. & tell him that I cannot be at a large expense to preserve an antiquity or curiosity. Nature must do its work. “But” say I, [“] R asks you only not to assist Nature.”

  I find that Channing is gone to his wife at Dorchester—perhaps for the winter—& both may return to Concord in the Spring

  yrs
  Henry D.Thoreau

  Your long lost letter came to hand last Monday, and I concluded that you had safely arrived in Concord and had forwarded it yourself.

  One week ago this morning we parted in Plymouth. I looked out of my indow and got the last glimpse of you going off with your umbrella and carpet-bag or valise.

  Your visit here was very agreeable to us all, and particularly to me. In fact your visit was highly successful except in duration—being much too short.

  But the principle object in my now writing is, to assure you that I expect to spend a few days in Concord next week, and shall leave here my the middle or towards the end of the next week. I shall bring my hair pillow and some old clothes. I shall not consider it obligatory on you to devote much time to me, particularly as you are an invalid, but such time as you can spare I shall be glad to avail myself of, but I hope that Channing, you, and I will be able to feelosophize a little occasionally.

  I shall go directly to the Tavern, and shall insist upon putting you to no trouble or attention.

  I conclude in haste, breakfast waiting.

  Yours truly,
  Dan’l Ricetson

Tell Channing I hope to smoke my pipe with him soon.

  I wrote a few line to you this morning before breakfast, which I took to the post-office, but since, I have received yours of yesterday, which rather changes my mind as to going to Concord. I thank you for your kindness in procuring for me information concerning Gilpin’s work, which I shall endeavor to procure.

  My ride home, as you anticipate, was somewhat full and dreary through Carver woods, but I escaped the rain which did not come until after my arrival home, about tea-time. I think that you hurried away from Brooklawn. We had just got our affairs in good train. I hope, however, that you will soon be able to come again and spend several weeks, when we will visit the pond in Rochester which you mentioned, and reviewing our rides and rambles. The Middleborough ponds and their surroundings never time me. I could go every day for a long time to them. I give my preference to the isles in Long Pond—we must get the Indian name of this favorite lake of ours.

  The principle reason for my changing my mind in regard to going to Concord is that you say Channing has gone, and perhaps for the winter. Although I intend to board and lodge at the Tavern, I expected to philosophize with you and C. by the wood-fire. But this is only a good reason for you to come to Brooklawn again. We have some weeks of good rambling weather yet before winter sets in. You will be very welcome to us all, and don’t feel the least hesitation about coming if you have the desire to do so.

  I am in the Shanty—Uncle James is here with me. He came up as soon as he heard you had gone. I have endeavored to convince him that you are perfectly harmless, but I think he still retains a portion of his fears. I think you would affiliate well if you should ever come together.

  Yours truly
  D. Ricketson

  I look at a grass-bird on a wall in the dry Great Fields . . . (Journal, 7:489-490).

  I have got both of your letters at once. You must not think Concord so barren a place when Channing is away. There are the river & fields left yet, and I, though ordinarily a man of business, should have some afternoons and evenings to spend with you, I trust; that is: if you could stand so much of me. If you can spend your time profitably here, or without ennui, having an occasional ramble or tete-atete with one of the natives, it will give me pleasure to have you in the neighborhood. You see I am preparing you for our awful unsocial ways,—keeping in our dense a good part of the day, sucking or claws perhaps.—But then we make a religion of it, and that you cannot but respect.

  If you know the taste of your own heart and like it—come to Concord, and I’ll warrant you enough here to season the dish with,—aye, when though C and E[merson] and I were all away. We might paddle quietly up the river—then there are one or two more ponds to be seen, &c.

  I should very much enjoy further rambling with you in your vicinity, but I must postpone for the present. To tell the truth, I am planning to get seriously to work after these long months of inefficiency and idleness. I do not know whether you are haunted by any such demon which puts you on the alert to pluck the fruit of each day as it passes, and store it safely in your bin. True, it is will to live abandonedly from time to time, but to our working hours that must be as the spile to the bung. So for a long season I must enjoy only a low slanting glean in my mind’s eye from the Middleborough Pond far away.

  Methinks I am getting a little more strength into those knees of mine; and, for my part, I believe that God does delight into the strength of a man’s legs.

  Yours
  Henry D. Thoreau

  A fine Indian-summer afternoon. There is much gossamer on the button-bushes, now bare of leaves, and on the sere meadow-grass, looking toward the sun, in countless parallel lines, like the ropes which connect the masts of a vessel . . .

  I received yours of the 16th inst. yesterday. I am very sorry that you did not conclude at once to come to Brooklawn and finish the visit which you so unceremoniously curtailed. But I cannot release you on so light grounds. I thought that you were a man of leisure. At any rate by your philosophy which I consider the best, you are so. You appear to be hugging your chains or endeavouring so to do. I approve of your courage, but cannot see the desperate need of your penance.

  But I must appeal to you as a brother man, a philanthropist too. I am in need of help. I want a physician, and I send for you as the one I have most confidence in. You can bring your writing with you, but I can furnish you with stationery in abundance, and you can have as much time for “sucking your claws” as you wish.

  Don’t fail to come by Saturday noon the 20th.

  Yours truly
  D. Ricketson.

  I am in need of a physician‚so Dr. Thoreau, come to my relief. I need dosing with country rides and rambles, lake scenery, cold viands and jack-knife dinners.

  I find the following in Sterne’s Koran, which is the best thing I have seen for a long time:—

  “Spare diet and clear skies are Apollo and the Muses.”

  I see Mrs. Riordan and her little boy coming out of the woods with their bundles of fagots on their backs . . .

  Therien tells me, when I ask if he has seen or heard any large birds lately, that he heard a cock crow this morning, a wild one, in the woods . . .

  Walking in E.’s [Ralph Waldo Emerson] path west of the pond . . .

  Talking with [Frank H. T.] Bellew this evening about Fourierism and communities, I said that I suspected any enterprise in which two were engaged together . . .

  Agreeable to me is the scent of the, withered and decaying leaves and pads, pontedcrias, on each side as I paddle up the river this still cloudy day, with the faint twittering or chirping of a sparrow still amid the bare button-bushes. It is the scent of the year . . .

  It is always a recommendation to me to know that a man has ever been poor, has been regularly born into this world, knows the language. I require to be assured of certain philosophers that they have once been barefooted, footsore, have eaten a crust because they had nothing better, and know what sweetness resides in it . . .

  I have been thinking over with Father the old houses in this street . . .

  P.M.—Up Assabet . . .

  Almost all wild apples are handsome. Some are knurly and peppered all over or on the stem side with fine crimson spots on a yellowish-white ground; others have crimson blotches or eyes, more or less confluent and fiery when wet,—for apples, like shells and pebbles, are handsomest in a wet day . . .

  In Potter’s pasture, as you go to to Fair Haven Hill, where he had grain in the summer, the great mullein leaves are strewn as thick as turnips that have been sown . . .

  I return by the way of the mocker-nut trees . . . (Journal, 7:517-520).

  Enclosed is the list of book[s] referred to in Mr Thos Cholmondeley’s note. The parcel I have forwarded to Messrs Crosby Nichols & Co of Boston, and have requested them to deliver it to you free of all expense. As Mr Cholmondeley has gone to the East I should be glad of a note from you acknowledging the receipt of the parcel. I am, dear Sir

  Very truly yours
  John Chapman

Attached with this letter was a parcel of book which included:

Wilsons Rig Veda Sanhita Vols 1 and 2
Translation of Mandukya Upanishads
Nala & Damyanta by Milman
Vishnu Purana by Wolsin
Haughtons Institutes of Menu
Colebrookes Two Treatises
Sankhya Karika
Aphorisms of the Mimasma
Lecture on the Vedanta
Bhagavat Gheeta & translation 2 Volumes
Wilson’s “Theatre of Hindoos 2 Volumes Williams’ Translation of “Sakoontala,”
Colebrookes’ Miscellaneous Essays 2 Vols
Hardys Eastern Monachism
Manual of Buddhism
Mills’ History of British India 9 volumes
The Chevalier Bunses Christianity & Mankind
 I.“Hippolytus & his Age” 2 Vols
 II.“Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal Religion applied to Language & Religion” 2 Vols
 III.Analecta Ante Nicana 3 Vols
The Chevalier Bunsens Egypt’s Place in Universal History
The Bhagavita Purana
Lotus de la Bonnes Lois
Halsteads Code of Gentoo Laws

  There are many fringed gentians, now considerably frost-bitten, in what was E. Hosmer’s meadow between his dam and the road. It is high time we came a-nutting, for the nuts have nearly all fallen, and you must depend on what you can fold on the ground, left by the squirrels, and cannot shake down any more to speak of . . .

  To appreciate, the flavor of those wild apples requires vigorous and healthv senses, papillæ firm and erect on the tongue and palete, not easily tamed and flattened. Some of those apples might be labelled, “To be eaten in the wind.”

  As I paddle under the Hemlock bank this cloudy afternoon, about 3 o’clock, I see a screech owl sitting on the edge of a hollow hemlock stump about three feet high, at the base of a large hemlock. It sits with its head drawn in, eyeing me, with eyes partly open, about twenty feet off . . . After watching it ten minutes from the boat, I landed two rods above, and, stealing quietly up behind the hemlock, though from the windward, I looked carefully around it, and, to my surprise, saw the owl still sitting there. So I sprang round quickly, with my arm outstretched, and caught it in my hand. It was so surprised that it offered no resistance at first, only glared at me in mute astonishment with eyes as big as saucers. But ere long it began to snap its bill, making quite a noise, and, as I rolled it up in my handkerchief and put it in my pocket, it bit my finger slightly. I soon took it out of my pocket and, tying my handkerchief, left it on the bottom of the boat. So I carried it home and made a small cage in which to keep it, for a night . . .

  Carried my owl to the hill again. Had to shake him out of the box, for he did not go of his own accord. He had learned to alight on his perch, and it was surprising how lightly and noiselessly he would hop upon it.) There he stood on the grass, at first bewildered, with his horns pricked up and looking toward me. In this strong light the pupils of his eyes suddenly contracted and the iris expanded till then were two great brazen orbs, with a centre spot merely. His attitude expressed astonishment more than anything. I was obliged to toss him up a little that he might feel his wings, and then he flapped away . . .

  There is a wild apple on the lull which has to me a peculiarly pleasant bitter tang, not perceived till it is three quarters tasted. It remains on the tongue. As you cut it, it smells exactly like a squash-bug. I like its very acerbity. It is a sort of triumph to cat and like it, an ovation. In the fields alone are the sours and bitters of nature appreciated . . .

  Returning in the twilight, I see a bat over the river (Journal, 8:3-5).

  Dear Sir

  The parcel of books advised by me on the 26th of October, as having been sent by the “Asia” Steamer, from Liverpool, has been shut out of that vessell on account of her cargo being complete several days previous to her sailing. Under these circumstances I have therefore ordered the parcel to be shipped by the “Canada” of the 10th proximo, and trust that you will not experience any inconvenience from this unavoidable delay—

  I am, dear Sir,

  Yours very truly

  John Chapman
  A D Ferguson

  I have written to Messrs Crosby Nichols & Co, Boston, respecting your package—

  The winter is approaching. The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter, as I go amid the wild apples on Nawshawtuct. The autumnal dandelion sheltered by this apple-tree trunk is drooping and half closed and shows but half its yellow, this dark, late, wet day in the fall.

  Gathered a bag of wild apples . . .

  From my experience with wild apples I can understand that there may be a reason for a savage preferring many kinds of food which the civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man. It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild apple . . .

  I can hardly resist the inclination to collect driftwood, to collect a great load of various kinds, which will sink my boat low in the water, and paddle or sail slowly home with it . . .

  I see a painted tortoise swimming under water, and to my surprise another afterward out on a willow trunk this dark day . . .

  I find it good to be out this still, dark, mizzling afternoon; my walk or voyage is more suggestive and profitable than in bright weather. The view is contracted by the misty rain, the water and the stillness is favorable to reflection. I am more open to impressions, more sensitive (not calloused or indurated by sun and wind), as if in a chamber still. My thoughts are concentrated; I am all compact. The solitude is real, too, for the weather keeps other men at home. This mist is like a roof and walls over and around, and I walk with a domestic feeling . . .

  I must endeavor to thank you for your magnificent, your princely gift to me. My father, with his hand in his pocket, and an air of mystery and importance about him suggests that I have another letter from Mr. Cholmondeley, and hands me a ship letter. I open eagerly upon a list of books (made up in one parcel) for Henry D. &c &c”; and my eye glances down a column half as long as my arm, where I already detect some emineces which I had not seen or heard of, standing out like the peak of the Himalayas. No! it is not Cholmondeley’s writing.—But what good angel has divined my thoughts? Has any company of the faithful in England passed a resolution to overwhelm me with their munificent regards “Wilson Rig veda Sanhitu” [sic] Vol 1 & 2no. “Translation of Mandukya Upanishads.” I begin to step from pinnacle to pinnacle. Ah! but here it is “Longon, King William Street. Truly yours John Chapman.” Enclosed is the list. “Mr Thomas Cholmondeley” and now I see through it, and here is a land I know and father was right after all. While he is gone to the market I will read a little further in this list “Nala & Damyanta” “Bhagavita Purana.” “Institutes of Menu.”—

  How they look far away and grand!

  That will do for the present: a little at a time of these rich dishes. I will look again by and by. “Per Asia” too they have come, as I read on the envelope! Was there any design in that? The very nucleus of her cargo; Asia carried them in her womb long ago. Immobility itself is tossed on Atlantic billows to present the gift to me. Was not there an omen for you? No Africa; no Europe—no Baltic, but it would have sunk. And now we will see if America can sustain it. Build new shelves—display, unfold your columns. What was that dim pleak that loomed for an instant far behind, representatives of a still loftier and more distant range. “Vishnu Purana,” an azure mountain in itself.—gone again, but surely seen for once. And what was that which dimmed the brightness of the day, like an apex of Cotopaxi’s cone, seen against the disk of the sun by the voyager of the south American coast” Bhagavat Geeta”! whose great unseen base I can faintly imagine spreading beneath. “History of British India nine vols”!! Chevalier Bunsen vols 8vo cloth”!! Have at them! who cares numbers in a just cause England expects every man to do his duty. Be sure you are right and then go ahead. I begin to think myself learned for merely possessing such works: If here is not the wealth of the Indies, of what stuff then is it made. They may keep their rupees this and the like of this is what the great company traded and fought for, to convey the light of the East into the West:—this their true glory and success.

  And now you have gone to the East or Eastward, having assisted its light to shine westward behind you; have gone towards the source of light! To which I pray that you may get nearer and nearer

  A clear and beautiful day after frost.

  Looking over the meadow westward from Merrick’s Pasture Shore, I see the alders beyond Dodd’s, now quite bare and gray (maple-like) in the morning sun (the frost melted off, though I found a little ice on my boat-seat),—that true November sight,—ready to wear frost leaves and to transmit (so open) the tinkle of tree sparrows. How wild and refreshing to see these old black willows of the river-brink, unchanged from the first, which man has never cut for fuel or for timber! Only the muskrat, tortoises, blackbirds, bitterns, and swallows use them . . .

  The parcel of books referred to in your letter of the 9th has not yet reached us.

  We suppose that our case whi contained it was left behind at Liverpool and shall expect it by next Steamer.

  As long as the sun is out, it is warm and pleasant. The water is smooth. I see the reflections, not only of the wool-grass, but the bare button-bush, with its brown balls beginning to crumble and show the lighter inside, and the brittle light-brown twigs of the black willow, and the coarse rustling sedge, now completely withered (and hear it pleasantly whispering), and the brown and yellowish sparganium blades curving over like well-tempered steel . . .

  P.M.—To Cardinal Shore. Going over Swamp Bridge Brook at 3 P.M., I saw in the pond by the roadside, a few rods before me, the sun shining bright, a mink swimming, the whole length of his back out . . .

  Heard to-day in my chamber, about 11 A.M., a singular sharp crackling sound by the window, which made me think of the snapping of an insect (with its wings, or striking something). It was produced by one of three small pitch pine cones which I gathered on the 7th, and which lay in the sun on the window-sill . . .

  I was remarking to-day to Mr. Rice on the pleasantness of this November thus far, when he remarked that he remembered a similar season fifty-four years ago . . .

  P.M.—Up Assabet with Sophia . . .

  It is interesting to me to talk with Rice, he lives so thoroughly and satisfactorily to himself . . .

  Saw Goodwin this morning returning from the river with minks, one trapped, the other shot, and half a dozen muskrats.

  Minott had two cats on his knee. One given away without his knowledge a fortnight before had just found its way back. He says he would not kill a cat for twenty dollars,—no, not for fifty. Finally he told his women folks that he would not do it for five hundred, or any sum. He thought they loved life as well as we. Johnny Vose would n’t do it. He used to carry down milk to a shop every day for a litter of kittens . . .

  Rice says that that brook which crosses the road just beyond his brother Israel’s is called Cold Brook. It comes partly from Dunge Hole. When the river is rising it will flow up the brook a great way . . .

  There is little now to be heard along the river but the sedge rustling on the brink. There is a little ice along most of the shore throughout the day . . .

  This evening I received [Thomas] Cholmondeley’s gift of Indian books, forty-four volumes in all, which came by Canada, reaching Boston on the morning of the 24th. Left Liverpool the 10th.

  Goodwin and Farmer think that a dog will not ouch the dead body of a mink, it smells so strongly . . .

  I asked Aunt L. [Louisa Dunbar] to-night why Scheeter Potter was so called. She said, because his neighbors regarded him so small a man that they said in jest that it was his business to make mosquitoes’ bills. He was accused of catching his neighbor’s hens in a trap and eating them. But he was crazy.

  William Wheeler says that he went a-spearing on the 28th (night before Thanksgiving) and, besides pouts and pickerel, caught two great suckers . . .

  I hope that the trumpet and the drum will sound to you as they do in dreams, and that each night you may feel the satisfaction of having fought worthily in a worthy cause.

  I shall depend on hearing from you in the camp. My father and mother and sister send their hearty good wishes. If I am ever rich enough I shall think seriously of going to England and finding you out in your cottage on the south shore. That you may return home safely and in good time to carry out that project, your country’s glory being secured, is the earnest wish of one by whom you will ever be well remembered.

  Henry Thoreau

  Hear and see, of birds, only a tree sparrow in the willows on the Turnpike . . . (Journal, 8:38).

  Met Therien coming from Lincoln on the railroad. He says that he carried a cat from Jacob Baker’s to Riordan’s shanty in a bag at night, but she ran home again . . .

  Jacob Farmer brought me the head of a mink to-night and took tea here.

  Thank you! thank you for going a-wooding with me,—and enjoying it,—for being warmed by my wood fire. I have indeed enjoyed it much alone. I see how I might enjoy it yet more with company,—how we might help each other to live. And to be admitted to nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

  I am glad to hear that you were there too. There are many more such voyages, and longer ones, to be made on that river, for it is the water of life. The Ganges is nothing to it. Observe its reflections, no idea but is familiar to it. That river, though to dull eyes it seems terrestrial wholly, flows through Elysium. What powers bathe in it invisible to villagers! Talk of its shallowness,—that hay—carts can be driven through it at midsummer; its depth passeth my understanding. If, forgetting the allurements of the world, I could drink deeply enough of it; if, cast adrift from the shore, I could with complete integrity float on it, I should never be seen on the Mill-dam again. If there is any depth in me, there is a corresponding depth in it. It is the cold blood of the gods. I paddle and bathe in their artery.

  I do not want a stick of wood for so trivial a use as to burn even, but they get it over night, and carve a gild it that it may please my eye. What persevering lovers they are! What infinite pains to attract and delight us! They will supply us with fagots wrapped in the dantiest packages, and freight paid; sweet—scented woods, and bursting into flower, and resounding as if Orpheus had just left them, these shall be our fuel, and we still prefer to chaffer with the wood-merchant!

  The jug we found still stands draining bottom up on the bank, on the sunny side of the house. That river, —who shall say exactly whence it came, and whither it goes? Does aught that flows come from a higher source? Many things rift downward on its surface which would enrich a man. If you could only be on the alert all day, and every day! And the nights are as long as the days.

  Do you not think you could contrive this to get woody fibre enough to bake your wheaten bread with? Would you not perchance have tasted the sweet crust of another kind of break-fruit trees of the world?

  Talk of burning your smoke after the wood has been consumed! There is a far more important and warming heart, commonly lost, which precedes the burning of the wood. It is the smoke of industry, which is incense. I had been so thoroughly warmed in the body and spirit, that when at length my fuel was housed, I came near selling it to the ashman, as if I had extracted all its heat.

  You should have been here to help me get in my boat. The last time I used it, November 27th, paddling up the assabet, I saw a great round pine long sunk deep in the water, and with labor got it abroad. When I was floating this some so gently, it occurred to me why I had found it. It was to make wheels with to roll my boat into winter quarters upon. So I sawed off two thick rollers from one end, pierced them for wheels, and then of a joist which I had found drifting on the river in the summer I made an axletree, and on this I rolled my boat out.

  Miss Mary Emerson [R.W.’s aunt] is here, the youngest person in Concord, though about eighty,—and the most apprehensive of a genuine thought; earnest to know of your inner life; most stimulating society; and exceedingly witty withal. She says they call her old when she was young, and she has never grown any older. I wish you could see her.

  My books did not arrive till November 20th, the cargo of the Asia having been complete when they reached Liverpool, I have arranged them in a case which I made in the mean whole, partly of river boards. I have not dipped far into the news one yet. One is splendidly bound and illuminated. They are in English, French, Latin, Greek, and Sanscrit. I have not made out the significance of this godsend yet.

  Farewell, and bright dreams to you!

  P.M.—To Pink Azalea Woods.

  The warm sun has quite melted the thin snow on the south aides of the hills, but I go to see the tracks of animals that have been out on the north sides . . .

  A reararkably fine, springlike morning. The earth all bare; the sun so bright and warm; the steam curling up from every fence and roof, and carried off at [an] angle by the slight northwesterly air. After those rainy days the air is apparently uncommonly clear, and hence (?) the sound of cock-crowing is so sweet . . .

  P.M.—To Hubbard’s skating meadow . . .

  Boys are now devoted to skating after school at night, far into evening, going without their suppers. It is pretty good on the meadows, which are somewhat overflown, and the sides of the river, but the greater part of it is open. I walk along the side of the river, on the ice beyond the Bath Place. Already there is dust on this smooth ice, on its countless facets, revealed by the sun . . .

  P.M.—Via Hubbard’s Grove and river to Fair Haven Pond. Return by Andromeda Ponds . . .

  I do not remember to have seen the Andromeda Ponds so low . . . What a primitive and swampy wilderness for the wild mice to run amidst!-the andromeda woods!

  Walden is skimmed over, all but an acre, in cove. It will probably be finished to-night.

  No doubt the healthiest man in the world is prevented from doing what he would like by sickness.

  A very bright and pleasant day with remarkably soft wind from a little north of west. The frost has come out so in the rain of yesterchty that I avoid the muddy plowed fields and keep on the grass ground, which shines with moisture. I think I do not remember such and so much pleasant, springlike weather as this and some other days of this month . . .

  Think of the life of a kitten, ours for instance: last night her eyes set in a fit, doubtful if she will ever come out of it, and she is set away in a basket and submitted to the recuperative powers of nature; this morning running up the clothes-pole and erecting her back in frisky sport to every passer.

  Though you have not shown your face here, I trust that you did not interpret my last note to my disadvantage. I remember that, among other things, I wished to break it to you that, owing to engagements, I should not be able to show you so much attention as I could wish, or as you had shown to me.—How we did scour over the country! I hope your horse will live as long as one which I hear just died in the south of France at the age of 40. Yet I had no doubt you would get quite enough of me. Do yot give up so easily—the old house is still empty & Hosmer is easy to treat with.

  Channing was here about 10 days ago. I told him of my visit to you, and that he too must go and see you & your country. This may have suggested his writing to you.

  That island lodge, especially for some weeks in a summer, and new exploration in your vicinity are certainly very alluring; but such are my engagements to myself that I dare not promise to wend your way—but will for the present only heartily thank you for your kind & generous offer. When my vacation comes, then look out.

  My legs have grown considerably stronger, and that is all that ails me.

  But I wish now above all to inform you—though I suppose you will not be particularly interested—that Cholmondeley has gone to the Crimea “a complete soldier,” with a design when he returns, if he ever returns, to buy a cottage in the south of England and tempt me over,—but that, before going, he busied himself in buying, & had caused to me forwarded to me by Chapman, a royal gift, in the shape of 21 district works (one in 9 vols-44 vols in all) almost exclusively relating to ancient Hindoo literature, and scarcely one of them to be bought in America. I am familiar with many of them & know how to prize them.

  I send you information of this as I might of the birth of a child.

  Please remember me to all your family—

  Yrs truly
  Henry D. Thoreau

  I go to Walden via the almshouse and up the railroad . . .

  Now, at 10 A.M., there blows a very strong wind from the northwest, and it grows cold apace . . .

  4 P.M. – Up railroad . . .

  It is so easy, at a distance, or when going to a distance, to ask a great favor which one would haggle at near by. I have been ridiculously hindered, and my book is not out, and I must go westward. There is one chapter yet to go to the printer; perhaps two, if I decide to send the second. I must ask you to correct the proofs of this or these chapters. I hope you can and will, if you are not going away. The printer will send you the copy with the proof; and yet, ‘t is likely you will see good cause to correct copy as well as proof. The chapter is Stonehenge, and I may not send it to the printer for a week yet, for I am very tender about the personalities in it, and of course you need not think of it till it comes. As we have been so unlucky asto overstay the market—day,—that is New Year’s—it is not important, a week or a fortnight, now.

  If anything puts it out of your power to help me at this pinch, you must dig up channing out of his earths, and hold him steady to this beneficence. Send the proofs, if they come, to Phillips, Samspon &co., Winter Street.

  We may well go away, if, one of these days, we shall really come home.

  Yours
  R.W. Emerson

  To-day and yesterday the boys have been skating on the crust in the streets,—it is so hard, the show being very shallow. Considerable ice still clings to the rails and trees . . . What do the birds do when the seeds and bark are thus encased in ice?

  Am surprised to find eight or ten acres of Walden still open . . .

  A good time to walk in swamps, there being ice but no snow to speak of,—all crust. It is a good walk along the edge of the river, the wild side, amid the button-bushes and willows . . .

  P.M.—Across the river and over Hill . . .

  Looking up over the top of the hill now, southwest, at 3.30 P. M., I see a few mother-o’-pearl tints . . .

  Recrossing the river behind Dodd’s, now at 4 P.M., the sun quite low, the open reach just below is quite green . . .

  9 A.M.—To Partridge Glade . . .

  At ten the frost leaves are nearly all melted . . .