On the ice at Walden are very beautiful great leaf crystals in great profusion . . . A fisherman says they were much finer in the morning . . .

  P.M. As for the fox and rabbit race described yesterday, I find that the rabbit was going the other way, and possibly the fox was a rabbit, for, tracing back the rabbit, I found drat, it bad first been walking with alternate steps, fox-like.

  There were many white rabbits’ tracks in those woods, and many more of the gray rabbit, but the former broke through and made a deep track, except where there was a little crust on the south slope . . .

  P.M.—To Hill.

  The snow turned to a fine mist or mizzling, through evhich I see a little blue in the snow, lurking in the ruts. In the river meadows and on the (perhaps moist) sides of the hill, how common and conspicuous the brown spear-heads of the hardhack, above the snow . . .

  Dear Sir

  Inclosed please find $10, for which please to send me 5 lbs of blacklead for electrotyping purposes:—such as Mr. Filmore has sent for occasionally.

Respectfully yours

John F. Trow

  P.M.—Up river to Hubbard’s Bridge.

It has been trying to snow all day, but has not succeeded; as if it were too cold. Though it has been falling all day, there has not been enough to whiten the coat of the traveller. I come to the river, for here it is the best walking. The snow is not so deep over the ice . . .

  The river is last open, methinks, just below a bend, as now at the Bath Place and at Clamshell Hill; and quite a novel sight is the dark water there. How little locomotive now look the boats whose painted sterns I just detect where they are half filled with ice and almost completely buried in snow, so neglected by their improvident owners . . .

  Clears up at noon, when no vehicle had passed the house.

  Frank Morton has brought home, and I opened, that pickerel of the 4th . . .

  P.M.—To Drifting Cut . . . Now, at 4.15, the blue shadows are very distinct on the snow-banks . . .

  P.M.—Up river . . . (Journal, 8:93-96).

  The snow is about a foot, or probably a little more, deep on a level, and considerably drifted, but on the pond it is not more than five inches deep on an average, hero, partly turned into snow ice by tile, sinking of the ice, and perhaps partly blown off.

  Many catbird-nests about the pond. In apparently one I see a snake’s slough interwoven . . .

  3 P.M.—To Beck Stow’s . . . When I return at 4.30, it is at -2◦ . . . (Journal, 8:97-8).

  P.M.—Worked on flower-press (Journal, 8:98-101).

  P. M.—To Andromeda Swamps, measuring snow . . . (Journal, 8:105-108).

  P.M.—To Walden to learn the temperature of the water . . . (Journal, 8:112-116).

  I am glad to hear that my “Walden” has interested you—that perchance it holds some truth still as far off as Michigan. I thank you for your note. “The “Week” has so poor a publisher that it is quite uncertain whether you will find it in any shop. I am not sure but the author must turn book-sellers themselves. The price is $1.25 If you care rough for it to send me that sum by mail, (stamps will do for charge) I will forward you the copy by the same conveyance.

  As for the “more” that is to come, I cannot speak definitely at present, but I trust that the mind—be it silver or lead—is not yet exhausted. At any rate, I shall be encouraged by the fact that you are interested in its yield.

  Yrs respectfully
  Henry D. Thoreau

  Measured again the great elm in front of Charles Davis’s on the Boston road, which he is having cut down . . .

  As I came home through the village at 8.15 P.M., by a bright moonlight, the moon nearly full and not more than 18º from the zenith, the wind northwest, but not strong, and the air pretty cold, I saw the melon-rind arrangement of the clouds on a larger scale and more distinct than ever before . . . I hear that it attracted the attention of those who were abroad at 7 P. M., and now, at 9 P. M., it is scarcely less remarkable . . .

  I measured it a 3 P.M., just after the top had been cut off . . .

  Miss Minott talks of cutting down the oaks about her house for fuel, because she cannot get her wood sledded home on account of the depth of the snow, though it lies all cut there. James, at R. W. E.’s, [Ralph Waldo Emerson] water his cows at the door, because the brook is frozen . . .

  F. Morton [Frank Morton] hears to-day from Plymouth that three men have just caught in Sandy Pond, in Plymouth, about two hundred pounds of pickerel in two days . . .

  Measured, this afternoon, the snow in the same fields which I measured just a week ago, to see how it had settled . . .

  P.M.—Up Assabet . . .

  The hardest day to bear that we have had, for, being 5° at noon and at 4 P.M., there is a strong northwest wind . . . Pierce says it is the first day that he has been unable to work outdoors in the sun . . .

  P.M.—Walked down the river as far as the south bend behind Abner Buttrick’s . . .

Walked as far as Flint’s Bridge with Abel Hunt, where I took to the river . . .

Talking with Miss Mary Emerson this evening, she said, “It was not the fashion to be so original when I was young” . . .

  P.M.—Walked on the river from the old stone to Derby’s Bridge . . .

  Miss Minott has been obliged to have some of her locusts about the house cut down. She remembers when the whole top of the elm north of the road close to Dr. Heywood’s broke off,—when she was a little girl . . .

  P. M.—Measured to see what difference there was in the depth of the snow in different adjacent fields as nearly as possible alike and similarly situated . . .

  P.M.—Up river.

  What gives to the excrements of the fox that clay color often, even at this season? Left on an eminence.

  I scented a fox’s trail this afternoon (and have done so several times before), where he crossed the river, just three rods distant. Looked sharp, and discovered where it had stepped by a prominence. Yet he could not have passed since last night, or twelve hours before . . .

  Returning, saw near Island a shrike glide by, cold and blustering as it was, with a remarkably even and steady sail or gliding motion like a hawk . . .

  Mr. Emerson, [Ralph Waldo Emerson] who returned last week from lecturing on the Mississippi, having been gone but a month, tells me that he saw boys skating on the Mississippi and on Lake Erie and on the Hudson, and has no doubt they are skating on Lake Superior; and probably at Boston he saw them skating on the Atlantic . . .

  I go to walk at 3 P.M., thermometer 18°. It has been about this (and 22°) at this hour for a week or two. All the light snow, some five inches above thc crust, is adrift these days and driving over the fields like steam, or like the foam-streaks on a flooded meadow . . .

  Goodwin says that he has caught two crows this winter in his traps set in water for mink, and baited with fish . . . (Journal, 8:167-168).

  Edward and Isaac Garfield fishing there, and Puffer came along, and afterward Lewis Miner with his gun . . .

  Mr. Prichard tells me that he remembers a six weeks of more uninterruptedly severe cold than we have just [had] . . .

  3.30 P.M., thermometer 30º. This and yesterday comparatively warm weather. Half an inch of snow fell this forenoon, but now it has cleared up. I see a few squirrel-tracks, but no mice-tracks, for no night has intervened since the snow . . .

  Returning, I saw a fox on the railroad, at the crossing below the shanty site, eight or nine rods from me . . . (Journal, 8:175-177).

  I forwarded to you by mail on the 31st of January a copy of my “Week,” post paid, which I trust that you have received. I thank you heartily for the expression of your interest in “Walden” and hope that you will not be disappointed by the “Week.” You ask how the former has been received. It has found an audience of excellent character, and quite numerous, some 2000 copies having been dispersed. I should consider it a greater success to interest one wise and earnest soul, than a million unwise & frivolous.

  You may rely on it that you have the best of me in my books, and that I am not worth seeing personally—the stuttering, blundering, clodhopper that I am. Even poetry, you know, is the one sense of an infinite brag & exaggeration. Not that I do not stand on all that I have written—but what am I to the truth I feebly utter!

  I like the name of your country. May it grow men as sturdy as its trees. Methinks I hear your flute echo amid the oaks. It is not yours too a good place to study theology? I hope that you will ere long recover your turtle-dove, and that it will bring you glad tidings out of that heaven which you disappeared.

  Yrs Sincerely
  Henry D. Thoreau

  Israel Rice says that he does not know that he can remember a winter when we had as much snow as we have had this winter. E. Conant says as much, excepting the year when he was twenty-five, about 1803 . . .

  P.M.—To Walden . . .

  I can now walk on the crust in every direction at the Andromeda Swamp; can run and stamp without danger of breaking through . . .

  Wild says it is the warmest day at 12 M. since the 22d of December . . . I hear the eaves running before I come out, and our thermometer at 2 P.M. is 38º . . .

  See a broad and distinct otter-trail, made last night or yesterday. It came out to the river through the low woods north of Pinxter Swamp, making a very conspicuous trail . . .

  It is a pleasant and warm afternoon, and the snow is melting. Yet the river is still perfectly closed (as it has been for many weeks), both against Merrick’s and in the Assabet, excepting directly under this upper stone bridge . . .

  At 2 P.M. the thermometer is 47º. Whenever it is near 40 there is a speedy softening of the snow.

  I read in the papers that the ocean is frozen,—not to bear or walk on safely,—or has been lately, on the back side of Cape Cod . . .

  The only bare ground is the railroad track, where the snow was shin. The crust still bears, and [I] left the railroad at Androrneda Ponds and went through on crust to Fair Raven. Was surprised to see some little minnows only an inch long in an open place in Well Meadow Brook. As I stood there, saw that they had just felled my bee tree . . .

  I see at bottom of the mill brook, below Emerson’s, two dead frogs. The brook has part way yet a snowy bridge over it. Were they left by a mink, or killed by cold and ice? . . .

  I often think of you and nearly as often feel the prompting to write you, and being alone in the Shanty this afternoon I have concluded to obey the prompting. I say alone, but I can fancy you seated opposite on the settee looking very Orphic or something more mystical. This winter must have been a grand one for your rumination and I conclude that you will thaw out in the spring with the snakes and frogs, more of a philosopher than ever, which perhaps is needless. It has require all my little shares of feelosofy to keep up with my fortitude during the past Hyperborean interregnum. We have usually flattered ourselves that our winters were much milder than of most places in New England or even in the same latitude farther inland, on account of our vicinity to the sea and the Gulf stream in particular. But O! The cold, cold days and weeks we have had in common with the rest of our country North, South, East, and West!

  But we are beginning to relax a little, and ike barn-yard fowls begin to plume ourselves again and pick about, but we hardly begin to lay and cackle yet that will all come in due season, and such a crowing some of us old cocks will make that if you are awake you will perhaps hear at Concord.

  The snow has nearly gone, but or river is still firmly bound, and great sport have gentle and simple young and old, thereon—skating, ice—boats, boys holding sails in their hands are shooting like “mercurial trout” in every direction up and down, even horses and sleighs and loaded wagons have passed where large ships float.

  But I glory in none of this, on the contrary sigh for the more genial past, and hope for no more such desperate seasons. Ah! but March is close here, and she wears at least the gentle name of Spring as Bryant says—and soon may we expect to hear the bluebird and song sparrow again. Then let “hope rule triumphant in the breast,” and buckling our girth a little tighter journey on.

  Dear Thoreau, I am under the greatest obligation to you. Before your Walden I felt quite alone in my best attainments and experiences, but now I find myself sustained and strengthened in my hopes of life. Can we not meet occasionally ere the evil days, should there be any in store for us, come? The accumulated years “notched upon my stick” warn me not to be too prodigal of time. By April then I hope you will be ready to wend this way, and take Spring a little in advance of Concord; then with the bluebirds and sparrows, the robin and thrushes, will I welcome you and associate you.

  I should have told you before that Channing is here in New Bedford. I had but just written his name, when old Ranger announced him, and he is now quietly smoking his pipe by the shanty fire. He arrived on Christmas day, and his first salutation on meeting me at the front door of my house was, “That’s your shanty,” pointing towards it. He is engaged with the editor of the N.B. Mercury, and boards in town, but whereabouts I have not yet discovered. He usually spends Saturday and a part of Sunday with me, and seems to enjoy himself pretty well.

  Mr. Emerson is expected to lecture before our Lyceum to-morrow evening, but from a note I received from him in answer to an invitation to Brooklawn I should think it quite uncertain whether he be here.

  I too have written and delivered a lecture this winter before the Lyceum of our village, Acushnet on Popular Education, into which I contrived to get a good deal of radicalism and had successful time.

  Should your Lyceum be in want of a lecture you might let me know, although I should hardly dare to promise to come,—that is, gratuitously except incidental expenditures. I have commenced a new lecture of a little higher literacy ton upon “The Poet Cowper and his Friends,” and am mediating a grand affair wherein I expect to introduce some of the philosophy I have found in solitude, or rather to publish some of the communications and revelation received from a certain old neighbor and visitor, who occasionally favors by his presence, the world’s outcasts, holding them up by the chin, and occasionally whispering weighty matters into their ears, which at these times are particularly free from wax.

  Channing is not here now, that is in the Shanty, but it being after tea is chatting by the fireside with my wife and daughters, and I am writing by the humming of my fire and the music of my Eolian harp. These are the fine things to have in your windows, and lest you are not acquainted with them I will describe the way to make them.

  Make two wedges of soft wood—make a slight incision in the top of the thick part of the wedges and another in the thin part, which should be shaved down quite thin—then take a strong of saddler’s silk, or several strands of fine silk twisted to the size of the other, waxed or not, as you may see fit, make a knot in each end, the length of the strong to be governed by the width of the window-sash where it is to be placed. Put one end of the strong into the incision upon the top of the wedge and then down the side through the other split in the thin end and the other end likewise on the other widge, then place the two wedges drawing the strong tight between the upper and lower sashes of your window and if the wind be favorable, it will give you a pleasing serenade.

  Write soon and believe me

  Yours very truly
  D.R.

  The papers are talking about the prospect of a war between England and America. Neither side sees how its country can avoid a long and fratricidal war without sacrificing its honor. Both nations are ready to take a desperate step, to forget the interests of civilization and Christianity and their commercial prosperity and fly at each other’s throats. When I see an individual thus beside himself, thus desperate, ready to shoot or be shot, like a blackleg who has little to lose, no serene aims to accomplish, I think he is a candidate for bedlam. What asylum is there for nations to go to? . . .

  Mother says that the cat lay on her bread one night and caused it to rise finely all around her.

  I go on the crust which we have had since the 13th, i.e. on the solid frozen snow, which settles very gradually in the sun, across the fields and brooks. The very beginning of the river’s breaking up appears to be the oozing of water through cracks in the thinnest places, and standing in shallow puddles there on the ice,—which freeze solid at night. The river and brooks are quite shrunken . The brooks flow far under the hollow ice and snow-crust a foot thick . . .

  Miles is repairing the damage done at his new mill by the dam giving away. He is shovelling out the flume, which was half filled with sand, standing in the water. His sawmill, built of slabs, reminds me of a new country. He has lost a head of water equal to two feet by this accident. Yet he sets his mill agoing to show me how it works . . .

  Our young maltesc cat which has been absent five cold nights, the ground covered deep with crusted snow,—her first absence,—and given up for dead, has at length returned at daylight, awakening the whole house with her mewing . . . Various are the conjectures as to her addventures,—whether she has had a fit, been shut up somewhere, or lost, torn in pieces by a certain terrier or frozen to death. In the meanwhile she is fed with all the best that the house affords, minced meats and saucers of warmed milk, and, with the aid of unstinted sleep in all laps in succession, is fast picking up her crumbs. She has already found her old place under the stove, and is preparing to make a stew of her brains there . . .

  Goodwin says that somewhere where he lived they called cherry-birds “port-royals.”

  Haynes of Sudbury brought some axe-helves which he had been making to Smith’s shop to sell to-day . . .

  It is remarkable, that though I have not been able to find any open place in the river almost all winter except under the further stone bridge and at Loring’s Brook,—this winter so remarkable for ice and snow . . .

  P.M.—Walking up the river by Pritchard’s, was surprised to see, on the snow over the river, a great many seeds and scales of birches, though the snow has so recently fallen, there had been but little wind, and it was already spring… The opening in the river at Merrick’s is now increased to ten feet in width in some places . . .

  I had two friends. The one offered me friendship on such terms that I could not accept it, without a sense of degradation. He would not meet me on equal terms, but only be to some extent my patron. He would not come to see me, but was hurt if I did not visit him. He would not readily accept a favor, but would gladly confer one. He treated me with ceremony occasionally, though he could be simple and downright sometimes; and from time to time acted a part, treating me as if I were a distinguished stranger; was on stilts, using made words. Our relation was one long tragedy . . .

  I have been out of town, else I should have acknowledged your letters before. Though not in the best mood for writing I will say what I can now. You plainly have a rare, though a cheap, resource in your shanty. Perhaps the time will come when every country-seat will have one—when every country-seat will be one. I would advice you to see the shanty business out, though you go shanty mad. Work your vein till it is exhausted, or conducts you to a broader one; so that C[hanning] shall stand before your shanty, & say “that is your house.”

  This has indeed been a grand winter for me & for all of us. I am not considering how much I have enjoyed it. What matters is how happy or unhappy we have been, if we have minded our business and advanced our affairs I have made it a part of my business to wade in the snow & take the measure of the ice. The ice on on of out pond was just two feet thick on the first of March—and I have to-day been surveying a wood—lot where I sank about two feet at every step.

  It is high time that you, fanned by the warm breeze of the Gulf Stream, had begun to “lay”—for even the Concord hens have—though one wonders where they find the raw material of egg-shells here. Beware how you put off your laying to any later spring, else your cackling will not have the inspired early spring sound. I was surprised to hear the other day that Channing was in New Bedford. When he was here last (in Dec., I think) he said, like himself, in answer to my inquiry where he lived, that he did not know the same of the place; so it has remained in a degree of obscurity to me. As you have made it certain to me that he is in New Bedford, perhaps I can return the favor by putting you on the track to his boarding house there. Mrs Anold told Mrs Emerson where it was—and the latter thinks, though she may be mistaken, that it was at a Mrs Lindsey’s

  I am rejoiced to hear that you are getting on so bravely with him & his verses. He and I, as you know, have been old cronies.

“Feed the same flock, by fountain, shade, & rill.
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eye-lids of the morn,
We drove afield, and both together heard &c &c &c”

“Bout O the heavy change” now he is gone!

  The C you have seen & described is the real Simon Pure. You have seen him. Many a good ramble may you have together. You will see in him still more of the same kind—to attract & to puzzle you. How to serve him most effectually has long been a problem with his friend. Perhaps it is left for you to solve it. I suspect that the most that you or any one can do for him is to appreciate his genius—to buy & read, & cause others to buy & read his poems. That is the land which he has put forth to the world —Take hold of that. Review them if you can. Perhaps take the risk of publishing something more which he may write.

  Your knowledge of Cowper will help you to know C. He will accept sympathy & aid, but he will not bear questioning—unless the aspects of the sky are particularly auspicious. He will even be “reserve & enigmatic,” & you must deal with him at arm’s length.

  I have no secrets to tell you concerning him, and do not wish to call obvious excellence & defects by far-fetched names. I think I have already spoken to you more, and more to the purpose, on this theme, than I am likely to write now—nor need I suggest how witty & poetic he is—and what an inexhaustible fund of good-fellowship you will find in him.

  As for visiting you in April,—though I am inclined enough to take some more rambles in your neighborhood, especially by the sea-side, I dare not engage myself, nor allow you to expect me. The truth is, I have my enterprises not as ever, at which I tug with ridiculous feebleness, but admirable perseverance—and cannot say when I shall be sufficiently fancy-free for such an excursion.

  You have done well to write a lecture on Cowper. In the expectation of getting you to read it here, I applied to the curators of our Lyceum but alas or Lyceum has been a failure this winter for want of funds. It ceased some weeks since, we a debt—they tell me, to be carried over to the next years’ account. Only one more lecture is to be read by a Signor somebody—an Italian—paid for by private subscription—as a deed of charity to the lecturer. They are not rich enough to offer you your expenses even, though probably a month or two ago they would have been glad of the chance.

  However the old house has not failed yet. That offers you lodging for an indefinite time after you get into it—and in the mean while I offer you bed & board in my father’s house—always expecting hair pillows & new-fangled bedding.

  Remember me to your family

  Yrs
  H.D.T

  The snow is softening. Methinks the lichens are a little greener for it. A thaw comes, and then the birches, which were gray on their white ground before, appear prettily clothed in green. I see various kinds of insects out on the snow now. On the rock this side the Leaning Hemlocks, is the, track of an otter . . .

  Who like the one of old that appeared to Daniel, Zachariah, &c. hath in these latter days appeared unto the least of all Daniels,—Greetings,—

  I have just received and read your genuine epistle of the 5th Inst. You satisfy me fully in regards to C and I trust we shall draw with an even yoke in future. I had though of attempting something by way of reviving his poems. A new public has grown up since their appearance, and their assasinator Poe, lies in the Potter’s Field at Baltimore, without a stone to mark his grave, as somebody in the Home Houral of this week, says: and thus hath Nemesis overtaken him.

  Mrs Ricketson as well as myself have felt a good deal of sympathy for Mrs. C. but of course the matter cannot be spoken of to C.

  I think however, that he is now working for his family. His courage and endurance under the circumstances are wonderful. Unless he has a very strong physical as well as mental constitution, I fear he will suffer, & perhaps break down. I conclude you received my newspaper notice of Mr. Emerson’s explosion before the N.B. Lyceum, although you make no mention of it. You may be surprised at my sudden regard for his genius, but not more so than myself. It came by revelation. I had never, I believe, read a page of his writing when I heard his lecture. How I came to go to hear him I hardly know, and must conclude that my good Gabriel led me there.
Don’t despair of me yet, I am getting along bravely in my shanty & hope to crown in due time. Somehow too, I am getting wonderfully interested in ancient lore, and am delighted to find that there were odd fellows like you & I & C. some hundred years before our data.

  How wonderfully daylight shines upon us at times.

  I no longer wonder that you had Homer, Valmiki, Vyasa &c in your Walden Shanty. They have already peeped into my windows & I shall not be surprised to have them seated within as my guests ere long. You need not be astonished if you hear of my swearing in Sanscrit or at least in Pan scrit!

  I have just got a taste of these old fellows, and what a glorious feast awaits me. What a lucky mortal are you to be the possessor of these priceless treasures, sent you from England. I am about starting upon a pilgrimage into the country of those ancient Hindus, and already in fancy at least see the “gigantic peaks of the Himalayas” and sit beneath “the tremendous heights of the Dhawalagiri range”—so far as the rail way of books can convey me there. Give me your hand Gabriel, and lead the way.

  Now for the present time. We are beginning to have spring here—and I have already heard the warbling of the blue-bird near the Shanty—but did not get a sight of one. The bluebird once appeared here as early as the middle of February, but disappeared as the weather proved colder & did not return until about the middle of March. I am sorry you talk so discouragingly about coming this way this spring. Dont be afraid of me my dear Gabriel—I will do you no harm. I have my fears also. I conclude that I am too social for you, although this is a sin I have never been accused of. Think of it again, about coming here; but dont come unless you get a clear ‘response from your oracle’ I quote Gabriel himself. I am quite humbled at your halting—the cords of love do not draw you and I have none stronger to bring into requisition, but I shall not release you without a struggle.—May I not then expect you in May—things may be done in that month which none other in the calendar admit of. It is the month of May bees—so some fine morning may you alight here a thoro’ maybee fresh from Musketquid. Then you and Channing & I can sit in the little hermitage like the Gymnsophists of old, and you may do the stamping on the ground to any Alexander that may offer himself as intruder.

  I copy from my Journal of this day the following for your edification!

  “Orphics” by a Modern Hundu.

  The ancient Hindus of course wrote no “orphics.” -the gentleman is a Modern.

  In proportion as we see the merits of others we add to our own.

  Mind is every in the Spring—one eternal May morning—the same in its original freshness whether in the Sanscrit, the Greek and other languages or the English as a Medium of expression.

  Mind has an eternal youth.

  “Haunted forever by the eternal mind” is a fine thought of Wordsworth, himself a philosopher and priest of Nature. Man must ever mind this to be true—the thoughtful man.

  Yours warmly
  D. the least

  Your letter as usual was full of wisdom and has done me much good. Your visit here last fall did much to carry me well through the winter. I consider a visit from you a perfect benison, & hope that yon will get a good response for May. I must try to get a look at the old house during the spring,—I thank you for your kind invitation but I am already too much in debt to you. Should I visit Concord it must be in a way not to incommode your household I think I will set up a bed at once in the old house, to be kept as a kind of retreat for a few days at a time occasionally. I should have stated before that Channing and I have passed a word in relation to going to Concord together. So look out!

  I wish to know if you think my sketch of the Concord sage was right—if you received the paper.

  With kind remembrances to your family—Good night.

  I go to bed.

      his
   D.     R.
 a la Bewick   mark

  P.M.—Up River to Hubbard’s Bridge.

  Thermometer +9º at 3.30 P.M. (the same when I return at five). The snow hard and dry, squeaking under the feet; excellent sleighing. A biting northwest wind compels to cover the ears. It is one of the hardest days of the year to bear . . .

  Think of the art of printing, what miracles it has accomplished! Covered the very waste paper which flutters under our feet like leaves and is almost as cheap, a stuff now commonly put to the most trivial uses, with thought and poetry! The woodchopper reads the wisdom of ages recorded on the paper that holds his dinner, then lights his pipe . . .

  P.M.—3.30, thermometer 24º. Cut a hole in the ice in the middle of Walden . . .

  I thank you for yours of the 10th. I hope we shall agree to know each other better, and that we shall be able to talk over some matters on which we agree, with others on which we may differ.

  I will say now that money shall not divide us—that is, I am very sure that I shall be willing to pay such sum as you will consider satisfactory. I will not attempt to fix on a price just now, as I wish to write to Mrs. Greeley in Europe and induce her (if I can) to return somewhat earlier in view of the prospect of securing your services.

  I concur entirely in your suggestion that both parties be left at liberty to terminate the engagement when either shall see fit. But I trust no such termination will be deemed advisable, for a year or two at least; and I hope at least a part of your books and other surrounding will follow you to our cottage in the woods after you shall have had time to pronounce us endurable.

  I will write by Saturday’s steamer to Mrs. Greeley, and trust you will make no arrangements incompatible with that we contemplate until further communication between us. I expect to have you join us, if you will, in early summer.

  Your obliged friend,
  Horace Greeley

  It is high time I sent you a word. I have not heard from Harrisburg since offering to go there, and have not been invited to lecture anywhere else the past winter. So you see I am fast growing rich. This is quite right, for such is my relation to the lecture-goers. I should be surprised and alarmed if there were any great call for me. I confess that I am considerably alarmed even when I hear that an individual wishes to meet me, for my experience teaches me that we shall thus only be made certain of a mutual strangeness, which otherwise we might never have been aware of. I have not yet recovered strength enough for such a walk as you propose, though pretty well again for circumscribed rambles & chamber work. Even now I am probably the greatest walker in Concord—it its disgrace be it said. I remember our walks & talks & sailing in the past, with great satisfaction, and trust that we shall have more of them ere long—have more woodings—up—for even in the spring we must still seek “fuel to maintain our fires.”As you suggest, we would fain value one another for what we are absolutely, rather than relatively. How will this do for a symbol of sympathy

  Shall then the maple yield sugar, & not man? Shall the farmer be thus active, & surely have so much sugar to show for it before this very March is gone, while I read the newspaper? While he works in his sugar camp, let me work in mine—for sweetness is in me, & to sugar it shall come; it shall not all go to leaves & wood. I am not a sugar maple man then?

  Boil down the sweet sap which the spring causes to flow within you—Stop not at syrup; go on to sugar, though you present the work with but a single crystal—a crystal not made from trees in your yard, but from the new life that stirs in your pores. Cheerfully skim your kettle, & watch it set & crystalize—making a holiday of it, if you will. Heaven will be propitious to you as to him.

  Say to the farmer, There is your crop, Here is mine. Mine is sugar to sweeten sugar with. If you will listen to me, I will sweeten your whole load, your whole life.

  Then will the callers ask—Where is Blake?—He is in his sugar-camp on the Mt. Mide.—Let the world await him.

  Then will the little boys bless you, & the great boys too, for such sugar is the origin of many condiments—Blakeians, in the sops of Worcester, of new form, with their mottos wrapped up in them.

  Shall men taste only the sweetness of the maple & the cane, the coming year?

  A walk over the crust to Asnybumskit, standing there in its inviting simplicity, is tempting to think of, making a fire on the snow under some rock! The very poverty of outward nature implies an inward wealth in the walker. What a Golconda is he conversant with, thawing his fingers over such a blaze!—but—but—

  Have you read the new poem—”The Angel in the House”?—perhaps you will find it good for you.

  H.D.T

  Tapped several white maples with my knife, but find no sap flowing; but, just above Pinxter Swamp, one red maple limb was moistened by sap trickling along the bark . . . As I return by the old Merrick Bath Place, on the river,—for I still travel everywhere on the middle of the river,—the setting sun falls on the osier row toward the road and attracts my attention . . .

  2 P.M.—The red maple [sap] is now about an inch deep in the quart pail,—nearly all caught since morning . . . Going home, slipped on the ice, throwing the pail over my head to save myself, and spilt all but a pint . . .

  It is still quite tight at Hubbard’s Bath Bend and at Clamshell, though I hesitate a little to cross at these places. There are dark spots in the soft, white ice . . .

  pleasured the snow again. West of railroad, 15; east of railroad, 11 4/5, average 13 2/5, Trillium Woods, 16 3/4. The last measurement was on the 7th, when it averaged about sixteen inches in the open land . . .

  The thickness of the ice on Walden in the long cove on the south side, about five rods from shore, where the water is nineteen and a half feet deep, is just twentysix inches, about one foot being snow ice. In the middle it was twenty-four and a quarter on the 11th. It is the same there now, and undoubtedly it was then twenty-six in the long cove . . .

  Father read in a paper to-day of seven hundred and forty-odd apple tree buds recently taken out of the crop of a partridge . . .

  Set a pail before coming here to catch the red maple sap, at Trillium Wood . . .

  10 A.M.—To my red maple sugar camp. Found that, after a pint and a half had run from a single tube after 3 P. M. yesterday, it had frozen about a half an inch thick, and this morning a quarter of a pint more had run . . .

  I left home about ten and got back before twelve with two and three quarters pints of sap, in addition to the one and three quarters I found collected.

  I put in saleratus and a little milk while boiling, the former to neutralize the acid, and the latter to collect the impurities in a scum. After boiling it till I burned it a little, and my small quantity would not flow when cool, but was as hard as half-done candy, I put it on again, and in a minute it was softened and turned to sugar . . .

  Had a dispute with Father about the use of my making this sugar when I knew it could be done and might have bought sugar cheaper at Holden’s. He said it took me from my studies. I said I made it my study; I felt as if I had been to a university.

  Part of the white maples now begin to flow, some perhaps two or three days. Probably in equally warm positions they would have begun to flow as early as those red ones which I have tapped. Their buds, and apparently some of the red ones, are visibly swollen . . .

  At the red maple which I first tapped, I see the sap still running and wetting the whole side of the tree . . .

  The sugar maple sap flows, and for aught I know is as early as the red . . . As I was returning on the railroad, at the crossing beyond the shanty, hearing a rustling, I saw a striped squirrel amid the sedge on the bare east bank, twenty feet distant . . .

  9 A.M.—Start to get two quarts of white maple sap and home at 11.30 . . .

  You bore a little hole with your knife, and presently the wounded sap-wood begins to glisten with moisture, and anon a clear crystalline tear-like drop flows out and runs down the bark, or drops at once to the snow. This is the sap of which the far-famed maple-sugar is made. That’s the sweet liquor which the Indians boiled a thousand years ago . . .

  The willow and aspen catkins have pushed out considerably since the 1st of February in warm places. I have frequently seen the sap of maples flow in warm days in the winter, in warm localities. This was in twigs. Would it in the trunks of large trees? And if not, is not this an evidence that this sap did not come up from the roots?

  The meadow east of the railroad causeway is bare in many spots, while that on the west is completely and deeply covered; yet a few weeks ago it was deepest on the east . . . Mr. Bull tells me that his grapes grow faster and ripen sooner on the west than the east side of his house . . .

  Elijah Wood, Senior, about seventy, tells me he does not remember that the river was ever frozen so long, nor that so much snow lay on the ground so long . . .

  Sam Barrett tells me that a boy caught a crow in his neighborhood the other day in a trap set for mink . . .

  Still cold and blustering. I come out to see the sand and subsoil in the Deep Cut, as I would to see a spring flower, some redness in the check of Earth. These cold days have made the ice of Walden dry and pretty hard again at top. It is just twenty-four inches thick in the Middle, about eleven inches of snow ice . . .

  I go to Fair Haven via the Andromeda Swamps. The snow is a foot and more in depth there still. There is a little bare ground in and next to the swampy woods at the head of Well Meadow . . .

  I see the scarlet tops of white maples nearly a mile off, down the river, the lusty shoots of last year. Those of the red maple do not show thus.

  I see many little holes in this old and solid snow where leaves have sunk down gradually . . . It is as if the sun had driven this thin shield like a bullet thus deep into the solid snow . . .

  Going by the path to the Springs, I find great beds of oak leaves, sometimes a foot thick, very dry and crisp and filling the path, or one side of it, in the woods for a quarter of a mile, inviting one to lie down. They have absorbed the heat and settled, like the single one seen yesterday in mass a foot or more, making a path . . .

  I go early, while the crust is hard. I hear a few song sparrows tinkle on the alders by the railroad. They skulk and flit along below the level of the ground in the ice-filled ditches; and bluebirds warble . . .

  A woodchuck has been out under the Cliff, and patted the sand, cleared out the entrance to his burrow.

  Muskrat-houses have been very scarce indeed the past winter. If they were not killed off, I cannot but think that their instinct foresaw that the river would not rise. The river has been at summer level through the winter up to April!

  I returned down the middle of the river to near the Hubbard Bridge without seeing any opening . . .

  P.M.—To Hunt’s Bridge . . . Coming home along the causeway, a robin sings (though faintly) as in May . . .

  People are talking about my Uncle Charles. Minott tells how he heard Tilly Brown once asking him to show him a peculiar (inside?) lock in wrestling. “Now, don’t hurt me, don’t throw me hard.” He struck his antagonist inside his knees with his feet, and so deprived him of his legs. Hosmer remembers his tricks in the barroom, shuffling cards, etc. . . .

  The alder scales south of the railroad, beyond the bridge, are loosened . This corresponds to the opening (not merely expansion showing the fuzziness) of the white maple buds.

  There is still but little rain, but the fog of yesterday still rests on the earth. My neighbor says it is the frost coming out of the ground. This, perhaps, is not the best description . . .

  P.M.—To North River at Tarbell’s . . . I am sitting on the dried grass on the south hillside behind Tarbell’s house, on the way to Brown’s . . .

  In the course of the evening, Jerrold [Douglas Jerrold] spoke with high appreciation of Emerson; and of Longfellow, whose Hiawatha he considered a wonderful performance; and of Lowell, whose Fable for Critics he especially admired. I mentioned Thoreau, and proposed to send his works to Dr.—, who, being connected with the Illustrated News, and otherwise a writer, might be inclined to draw attention to them. Douglas Jerrold asked why he should not have them too. I hesitated a little, but as he pressed me, and would have an answer, I said that I did not feel quite so sure of his kindly judgment on Thoreau’s books; and it so chanced that I used the word “acrid,” for lack of a better, in endeavoring to express my idea of Jerrold’s way of looking at men and books.

  The meadow has frozen over, skimmed over in the night. The ducks must have had a cold night of it. I thought [I] heard white-bellied swallows over the house before I arose. The hedges resound with the song of the song sparrow. He sits high on a spray singing, while I stand near . . .

  P.M.—To Hubbard’s second grove, by river.

  At Ivy Tree, hear the fine tseep of a sparrow, and detect the fox-colored sparrow on the lower twigs of the willows and from time to time scratching the ground beneath. It is quite tame,-a single one with its ashy head and mottled breast.

  It is a still and warm, overcast afternoon, and I am come to look for ducks on the smooth reflecting water which has suddenly surrounded the village . . .

  P.M.—Up river in boat.

  The first boats I have seen are out to-day, after muskrats, etc. Saw one this morning breaking its way far through the meadow, in the ice that had formed in the night. How independent they look who have come forth for a day’s excursion! . . . At the Hubbard Bridge, we hear the incessant note of the phoebe,—pevet, pe-e-vet, pevee’,—its innocent, somewhat impatient call . . .

  Hear the crack of Goodwin’s piece close by, just as I reach my boat. He has killed another rat. Asks if I am bound up-stream . . .

  About 8.30 P.M., hear geese passing quite low over the river . . .

  8 A. M.—By boat to V. palmata Swamp for white birch sap . . .

  As I walk in the woods where the dry leaves are just laid bare, I see the bright-red berries of the Solomon’s-seal still here and there above the leaves, affording food, no doubt, for some creatures . . .

  When I return to my boat, I see the snow-fleas like powder, in patches on the surface of the smooth water, amid the twigs and leaves… There is no wind, and the water was perfectly smooth,—a Sabbath stillness till 11 A.M. . . .

  P.M.—Up railroad . . .

  The thermometer at 5 P.M. is 66º+ . . .

  The yellow birch sap runs very fast. I set three spouts in a tree one foot in diameter, and hung on a quart pail; then went to look at the golden saxifrage in Hubbard’s Close. When I came back, the pail was running over. this was about 3 P. M. Each spout dropped about as fast as my pulse, but when I left, at 4 P.M., it was not dropping so fast . . .

  Going up the railroad, I see a male and female rusty grackle alight on an oak near me, the latter apparently a flaxen brown, with a black tail. She looks like a different species of bird. Wilson had heard only a tchuck from the grackle, but this male, who was courting his mate, broke into incipient warbles, like a bubble burst as soon as it came to the surface, it was so aerated. Its air would not be fixed long enough . . .

  Haze all day, with wind from the west, threatening rain. Haze gets to be very thick and perhaps smoky in the afternoon, concealing distinct forms of clouds, if there are any. Can it have anything to do with fires in woods west and southwest? Yet it is warm.

  5 P.M.—Sail on the meadow.

  There suddenly flits before me and alights on a small apple tree in Mackay’s field, as I go to my boat, a splendid purple finch. Its glowing redness is revealed when it lifts its wing’s, as when the ashes is blown from a coal of fire. Just as the oriole displays its gold . . .

  Cold, and froze in the night. The sallow will not open till some time to-day.

  I hear a bay-wing on the railroad fence sing. . .

  P.M.—To Walden and Fair Haven Ponds

  Still cold and windy.

  The early gooseberry leaf-buds in garden have burst,—now like small green frilled horns. Also the amelanchier flower-buds are bursting.

  As I go down the railroad causeway, I see a flock of eight or ten bay-wing sparrows flitting along the fence and alighting on an apple tree. . .

  8 A.M.—Up Assabet.

  See one striped squirrel chasing another round and round the Island, with a faint squeak from time to time and a rustling of the dry leaves. They run quite near to the water.

  Hear the flicker’s cackle on the old aspen, and his tapping sounds afar over the water. Their tapping resounds thus far, with this peculiar ring and distinctness . . .

  P.M.—Sail to Hill by Bedford line.

  Wind southwest and pretty strong; sky overcast; weather cool. Start up a fish hawk from near the swamp white oaks southwest of the Island . . .

  It is warmer and quite still; somewhat cloudy in the cast. The water quite smooth,—April smooth waters. I hear very distinctly Barrett’s sawmill at my landing. The purple finch is singing on the elms about the house, together with the robins . . .

  By 9 A.M. the wind has risen, the water is ruffled, the sun seems more permanently obscured, and the character of the day is changed . . . Ed. Emerson saw a toad in his garden to-day, and, coming home from his house at 11 P.M., a still and rather warm night, I am surprised to hear the first loud, clear, prolonged ring of a toad, when I am near Charles Davis’s house . . .

  5.30 A.M.—To Pinxter Swamp over Hill.

  A little sunshine at the rising. I, standing by the river, see it first reflected from E. Wood’s windows before I can see the sun. Standing there, I hear that same stertorous note of a frog or two as was heard the 13th, apparently from quite across all this flood, and which I have so often observed before. What kind is it? It seems to come from the edge of the meadow . . .

  P.M.—Round Walden.

  The Stellaria media is abundantly out. I did not look for it early, it was so snowy. It evidently blossomed as soon after the 2d of April—when I may say the [snow] began to go off in earnest as possible. The shepherd’s-purse, too, is well out . . .

  P.M.—Start for Conantum in boat, wind southwest. I can hide my oars and sail up there and come back another day. A moist muggy afternoon, rain-threatening, true April weather . . . Meanwhile it grows more and more rain-threatening, – all the air moist and muggy, a great ill-defined cloud darkening all the west, -but I push on till I feel the first drops, knowing that the wind will take me back again . . .

  Now comes the rain with a rush. In haste I put my boat about, raise my sail, and, cowering under my umbrella in the stern, with the steering oar in my hand, begin to move homeward. The rain soon fulls up my sail, and it catches all the little wind. From under the umbrella I look out on the scene . . . Even in the midst of this rain I am struck by the variegated surface of the water, different portions reflecting the light differently, giving what is called a watered appearance. Broad streams of light water stretch away between streams of dark, as if they were different kinds of water unwilling to mingle, though all are equally dimpled by the rain, and you detect no difference in their condition. As if Nature loved variety for its own sake . . .

  A strong northwest wind. The waves were highest off Hubbard’s second grove, where they had acquired their greatest impetus and felt the full force of the wind. Their accumulated volume was less beyond on account of the turn in the river. The greatest undulation is at the leeward end of the longest broad reach in the direction of the wind. I was steering there diagonally across the black billows . . .

  Walden is open entirely to-day for the first time, owing to the rain of yesterday and evening. I have observed its breaking up of different years commencing in ’45, and the average date has been April 4th . . .

  The arbor-vitæ by riverside behind Monroe’s appears to be just now fairly in blossom. I notice acorns sprouted. My birch wine now, after a week or more, has become pretty clear and colorless again, the brown part having settled and now coating the glass.

  Helped Mr. Emerson [Ralph Waldo Emerson] set out in Sleepy Hollow two over-cup oaks, one beech, and two arbor-vitaes . . .

  The river risen again, on account of the rain of the last three days, to nearly as high as on the 11th. I can just get over Hosmer’s meadow . . . The white cedar swamp consists of hummocks, now surrounded by water, where you go jumping from one to another. The fans are now dotted with the minute reddish staminate flowers, ready to open. The skunk cabbage leaf has expanded in one open place there; so it is at least as early as the hellebore of yesterday. Returning, when near the Dove Rock saw a musquash crossing in front. He dived without noise in the middle of the river . . .

  Warren Miles at his new mill tells me that he found a mud turtle of middling size in his brook there last Monday, or the 21st . . .

  A Garfield (I judged from his face) confirmed the story of sheldrakes killed in an open place in the river between the factory and Harrington’s, just after the first great snow-storm (which must have been early in January), when the river was all frozen elsewhere . . .

  Goodwin shot, about 6 P.M., and brought to me a cinereous coot (Fulica Americana) which was flying over the willows at Willow Bay, where the water now runs up . . .

  P.M.—To Hill by boat . . .

  The Great Meadows now, at 3.30 P.M., agitated by the strong easterly wind this clear day, when I look against the wind with the sun behind me, look particularly dark blue . . .

  5 P.M.—Went to see Tommy Wheeler’s bounds.

  Warren Miles had caught three more snapping turtles since yesterday, at his mill, one middling-sized one and two smaller. He said they could come down through his mill without hurt . . .

  The white cedar gathered the 23d does not shed pollen in house till to-day, and I doubt if it will in swamp before to-morrow. Monroe’s larch will, apparently, by day after to-morrow . . .

  The tapping of a woodpecker is made a more remarkable and emphatic sound by the hollowness of the trunk, the expanse of water which conducts the sound, and the morning hour at which I commonly hear it . . .

  I find none of Monroe’s larch buds shedding pollen, but the, anthers look crimson and yellow, and the female flowers are now fully expanded and very pretty . . .

  Again, as so many times, I [am] reminded of the advantage to the poet, and philosopher, and naturalist, and whomsoever, of pursuing from time to time some other business than his chosen one,—seeing with the side of the eye. The poet will so get visions which no deliberate abandonment can secure. The philosopher is so forced to recognize principles which long study might not detect. And the naturalist even will stumble upon some new and unexpected flower or animal . . .

  P.M.—To Cedar Swamp . . .

  It was quite warm when I first came out, but about 3 P.M. I felt a fresh easterly wind, and saw quite a mist in the distance produced by it, a sea-turn . . .

  Immediately on the receipt of your letter, I wrote to Mrs. Greeley its substance. She was then in Dresden, but I wrote to Paris, and she did not receive my letter till the 9th inst. I have now her response, and she is heartily gratified with the prospect that you will come to us and teach our children. She says she thinks it may at least sometimes be best to have instruction communicated by familiar oral conversations while walking in the fields and woods, and that it might not be well to be confined always to the same portion of each day. However, she hopes, as I do, that interest in and love for the children would soon supersede all formal stipulations, and that what is best for them will also be found consistent with what is most agreeable for you.

  Mrs. Greeley will not be home till middle of June, so that I suppose the 1st of July will be about as soon as we should be snugly at home in our country cottage, ready for instruction and profit. Please write me your ideas with regard to the whole matter, including the amount of compensation that you sander fair and just. I Prefer that you should come to us feeling at perfect liberty to leave at any time when you think best to do so; but I hope you will be reconciled to stay with us for one year at least. Of course, this would not preclude your going away to lecture or visit when you should see fit. Please write me soon and fully, and oblige

  Yours,
  Horace Greeley

  It is curious that Thoreau goes to a house to say with little preface what he has just read or observed, delivers it in lump, is quite inattentive to any comment or thought which any of the company offer on the matter, nay, is merely interrupted by it, &, when he has finished his report, departs with precipitation.

  Having fastened my boat at the maple, met, on the bank just above, Luke Dodge, whom I met in a boat fishing up that way once or twice last summer and previous years . . .

  2 P.M.—To bear-berry on Major Heywood road . . .

  I hear the evergreen-forest note close by; and hear and sec many myrtle-birds, at the same time that I hear what I have called the black and white creeper’s note. Have I ever confounded them?

  Over the edge of Miles’s mill-pond, now running off, bumblebee goes humming over the dry brush . . .

  I noticed the other day that the stump of the large oak at Clamshell Hill, cut down fifteen years ago or more, was quite rotten, while the trunk which lay by its side, having never been removed, was comparatively sound . . .

  P.M.—To Cedar Swamp up Assabet.

  There is at length a prospect of fair weather. It will clear up at evening this fourth clay of the rain. The river is nearly as lligli its it has been this spring . . .

  I leave my boat in Hosmer’s poke-logan and walk up the bank. A bluebird’s nest and five eggs in a hollow apple tree three feet from ground near the old bank swallow pit . . .

  P.M.—Walked round by Dennis’s and Hollowell place with Alcott [A. Bronson Alcott].

  It is suddenly very warm. A washinq day, with a slight haze accompanying the strong, warm wind. I see, in the road beyond Luther Homer’s, in different places, two bank swallows . . .

  Walk with Thoreau by the Cottage and Hollowell Place, and dine with him . . .

  Meet my friends and former neighbors in Emerson’s [Ralph Waldo Emerson] parlour’s—Miss Mary Emerson, Mrs. Browne, Miss Jane Whitney, Mrs. Brooks, Mrs. Ripley, Thoreau, Sanborn, and many more, and talk pleasantly on Society—Emerson, Thoreau, Mrs. Emerson, Mrs. Ripley, Sanborn contributing to the entertainment.

  P.M.—Up river to Kalmia glauca Swamp . . .

  Wheeler says that many a pasture, if you plow it up after it has been lying still ten years, will produce an abundant crop of wormwood, and its seeds must have lain in the ground . . .

  P.M.—To beeches.

  As I sat by the Riordan crossing, thought it was the tanager I heard? I think now, only because it is so early, that it may have been the yellow-throat vireo . . .

  Cleared out the Beech Spring, which is a copious one. So I have done some service, though it was a wet and muddy job. Cleared out a spring while you have been to the wars. Now that warmer clays make the traveller thirsty, this becomes an important work . . .

  P.M.—To my boat at Cardinal Shore, hence to Lee’s Cliff . . .

  At the Kalmia Swamp, see and hear the redstart, very lively and restless, flirting and spreading its reddish tail . . .

  Meanwhile I hear a loud hum and see a splendid male hummingbird coming zigzag in long tacks, like a bee, but far swifter, along the edge of the swamp, in hot haste. He turns aside to taste the honey of the Andromeda calyculata (already visited by bees) within a rod of me. This golden-green gem. Its burnished back looks as if covered with green scales dusted with gold. It hovers, as it were stationary in the air, with an intense humming before cash little flower-bell of the humble Andromeda calyculata, and inserts its long tongue in each, turning toward me that splendid ruby on its breast, that glowing ruby. Even this is coal-black in some lights! There, along with me in the deep, wild swamp, above the andromeda, amid the spruce. Its hum was heard afar at first, like that of a large bee . . .

  R. W. E.’s black currant (which the wild Ribes floridum is said to be much like), maybe a day.

  R. W. E. [Ralph Waldo Emerson] says that Agassiz tells him he has had turtles six or seven years, which grew so little, compared with others of the same size killed at first, that he thinks they may live four or five hundred years.

  P.M.—To Kalmia Swamp.

  Go across fields from R. W. E.’s to my boat at Cardinal Shore. In A. Wheeler’s stubble-field west of Deep Cut, a female (?) goldfinch on an oak, without any obvious black, is mewing incessantly, the note ending rather musically . . .

  The swamp is all alive with warblers about the hoary expanding buds of oaks, maples, etc., and amid the pine and spruce. They swarm like gnats now. They fill the air with their little tshree tshree sprayey notes . . .

  Returning, stopped at Barrett’s sawmill while it rained a little . . . Said that about as many logs were brought to his mill as ten years ago,—he did not perceive the difference,—but they were not so large, and perhaps they went further for them . . .

  Water is the first gardener; he always plants grasses & flowers about his dwelling. There came Henry with music-book under his arm, to press flowers in; with telescope in his pocket, to see the birds, & microscope to count stamens; with a diary, jacknife, & twine, in stout shoes, & strong grey trowsers, ready to brave the shrub oaks & smilax, & to climb the tree for a hawk’s nest. His strong legs when he wades were no insignificant part of his armour. Two Alders we have, and one of them is here on the northern border of its habitat.

  The buck-bean in Everett’s Pool abundantly out, say four or five days. It is earlier than at B. Stowe’s.

  I have not for a long time been putting such thoughts together as I should like to read to the company you speak of. I have enough of that sort to say, or even read, but not time now to arrange it. Something I have prepared might prove for their entertainment or refreshment perchance, but I would not like to have a hat carried round for it. I have just been reading some papers to see if they would do for your company; but I thought pretty well of them as long as I read them to myself, when I got an auditor to try them on, I felt that they would not answer. How could I let you drum up a company to hear them?—In find, what I have is either too scattered or loosely arranged, or too light or else is too scientific and matter of fact (I run a good deal into that of late) for so hungry a company.

  I am still a learner, not a teacher, feeding somewhat omnivorously browsing both stalk & leaves—but I shall perhaps be enabled to speak with the more precision & authority by & by—if philosophy & sentiment are not buried under a multitude of details.

  I do not refuse, but accept your invitation—only changing the time—I consider myself invited to Worcester once for all & many thanks to the inviter.

  As for the Harvard excursion, will you let me suggest another? Do you & Brown come to Concord on Saturday, if the weather promises well, and spend the Sunday here on the river or hills or both. So we shall save some of our money, (which is of next importance to our souls) and lose—I do not know what. You say you talked of coming here before, now do it. I do not propose this because I think that I am worth your spending time with—but because I hope that we may prove flint & steel to one another. It is at most only an hour’s ride further, & you can at any rate do what you please when you get here.

  Then we will see if we have any apology to offer for our existence. So come to Concord!—come to Concord!—come to Concord! or————————————your suit shall be defaulted.

  As for the dispute about solitude & society any comparison is impertinent. It is an idling down on the plain at the base of a mountain instead of climbing steading to its top. Of course you will be glad of all the society you can get to go up with. Will you go to glory with me? is the burden of the song. I love society so much that I swallowed it all at a gulp -i.e. all that came in my way. It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner & thinner till there is none at all. It is ither the Tribune on the plain, a sermon on the mount, or a very private exactly still higher up. We are not the less to aim at the summits, though the multitude does not ascend them. Use all the society that will abet you. But perhaps I do not enter into the spirit of your talk.

  H.D.T

  I noticed a cobweb the other day, between the thole-pins of my boat, which was perfectly black with those little fuzzy gnats which fly at that height and take shelter from wind in boats and the like . . .

  After sunset on river.

  A warm summer-like night. A bullfrog trumps once. A large devil’s-needle goes by after sundown. The ring of toads is loud and incessant. It seems more prolonged than it is. I think it not more than two seconds in each case . . .

  Humphrey Buttrick says that he hears the note of the woodcock from the village in April and early in May . . .

  To-day is suddenly overpoweringly warm. Thermometer at 1 P.M., 94º in the shade! but in the afternoon it suddenly fell to 56, and it continued cold the next two days.

  I found five arrowheads at Clamshell Hill. Saw, just before, on the flat meadow on the right, feeding on the edge of the meadow just left bare, along with the peetweets, a bird a size larger with an apparently light-brown back, a ring or crescent of black on its breast and side of neck, and a black patch including the eye. Can it be the Charadrius semipalmatus? or else Wilsonius? It looks like the latter in Wilson’s larger plates. It reminded me of the piping plover, but was not so white; and of the killdeer, but was not so large . . .

  My three kinds of birch sap have now become more acid, especially the white and canoe birch. The black birch is milder and more agreeable. With sugar it is an agreeable drink. I prefer it to cream-o’-tartar water. This is the real birch wine.

  I return herewith the following books to the Library—viz—“Columella of Husbandry” 1. v. “Pennsylvania, Ohio, & Delaware” 1. v. Jesuit Relations for 1639 & 1642 & 3 2. vols.

Yrs

Henry D. Thoreau

  To Painted-Cup Meadow.

  Potentilla argentea, maybe several days. Trifolium pratense.

  A seringo or yellow-browed (??) sparrow’s nest about ten or twelve rods southwest of house-leek rock, between two rocks which are several rods apart northwest and southeast; four eggs. The nest of coarse grass stubble, lined with fine grass, and is two thirds at least covered by a jutting sod. Egg, bluish-white ground, thickly blotched with brown, yet most like a small groundbird’s egg . . .

  To return to Painted-Cup Meadow, I do not perceive the rank odor of Thalictrum Cornuti expanding leaves to-day. How more than fugacious it is! Evidently this odor is emitted only at particular times. A cuckoo’s note, loud and hollow, from a wood-side. Found a painted-cup with more yellow than usual in it, and at length Edith found one perfectly yellow. What a flowery place, a vale of Enna, is that meadow . . . Where you find a rare flower, expect to find more rare ones . . .

  Return via Clamshell. Yellow clover abundantly out, though the heads are small yet. Are they quite open? Comandra umbellata, apparently a day or two.

  Frank Harding caught five good-sized chivin this cold day from the new stone bridge . . .

  Sundown.—To Hill and Island.

  Have noticed within a week, from time to time, the water-line on the bushes along the shore—the water going down—unusually distinct . . .

  As I return in the dusk, many nighthawks, with their great spotted wings, are circling low over the river, as the swallows were when I went out. They skim within a rod of me. After dusk these greater swallows come forth, and circle and play about over the water . . .

  Dear Sir,

  I shall be very glad to help you collect the Nymphaeaceae &c, and to spend another day with you on our river, & in our fields and woods (Concord Saunterer 15, no. 2 (Summer 1980):1-2; MS, private owner).

  I forwarded by mail a copy of my “Week” post paid to James Newberry, Merchant, Rochester, Oakland Co Mich, according to your order, about ten days ago, or on the receipt of your note. I will obtain and forward a copy of “Walden” & also of the “Week,” to California, to your order, post paid, for $2.60 The Postage will be between 60 & 70 cts.

  I thank you heartily for your kind intentions respecting me. The West has man attractions for me, particularly the lake country & the Indians. Yet I do not foresee what my engagements may be in the fall. I have once or twice come near going West a-lecturing, and perhaps some winter may bring me into your neighborhood, in which case I should probably see you. Yet lecturing has commonly proved so foreign & irksome to me, that I think I could only use it to acquire the means with which to make an independent tour another time.

  As for my pen, I can say that it is not altogether idle, though I have finished nothing new in the book form. I am drawing a rather long bow, though it may be a feeble one, but I pray that the archer may receive new strength before the arrow is shot.

  With many thanks

  Yrs truly
  Henry D. Thoreau

  P.M.—To Walden.

  Somewhat warmer at last, after several very cold, as well as windy and rainy, days. Was soothed and cheered by I knew not what at first, but soon detected the now more general creak of crickets. A striped yellow bug . . .

  P. M.—With R. W. E. [Ralph Waldo Emerson] to Perez Blood’s auction . . . 5 P.M.—To Azalea nudiflora, which is in prime . . .

  Achillea Millefolium. Black cherry, apparently yesterday. The Muscicapa Cooperi sings pe pe pe’, sitting on the top of a pine, and shows white rump (?), etc., unlike kingbird.

  Return by J. Hosmer Desert.

  Everywhere now in dry pitch pine woods stand the red lady’s-slippers over the red pine leaves on the forest floor, rejoicing in June, with their two broad curving green leaves,—some even in swamps. Uphold their rich, striped red, drooping sack . . .

  J. Hosmer, who is prosecuting Warner for flowing his land, says that the trees are not only broken off when young by weight of ice, but, being rubbed and barked by it, become warty or bulge out there.

  When I returned to my boat, about five, the weather being mizzling enough to require an umbrella, with an easterly wind and dark for the hour, my boat being by chance at the same place where it was in ’54, I noticed a great flight of ephemeræ over the water . . .

  6.30 P. M.—Up Assabet . . . (Journal, 8:372-373).

  Already the pads are much eaten before they are grown, and underneath, on the under side of almost every one, are the eggs of various species of insect, some so minute as to escape detection at first . . .

  P.M.—To Dugan Desert.

  Cornus alternifolia a day or two, up railroad; maybe longer elsewhere. Spergularta rubra by railroad, it having been dug up last year, and so delayed.

  The cuckoo of June 5th has deserted her nest, and I find the fragments of egg-shells in it; probably because I found it . . .

  The locust in graveyard shows but few blossoms yet. It is very hot this afternoon, and that peculiar stillness of summer noons now reigns in the woods. I observe and appreciate the shade, as it were the shadow of each particular leaf . . .

  Rice tells me he found a turtle dove’s nest on an apple tree near his farm in Sudbury two years ago, with white eggs; so thin a bottom you could see the eggs through.

  Sophia has sent me, in a letter from Worcester, part of an orchid in bloom, apparently Platanthera Hookeri (?), or smaller round-leafed orchis, from the Hermitage Wood, so called, northeast of the town . . .

  P.M.—To some woods southwest of Worcester . . .

  A night-flowering cereus opens three or four times at a Mrs. Newton’s while I am there . . .

  A.M.—Ride with him and Brown [Theophilus Brown] and Sophia [Sophia Thoreau] round a part of Quinsigamond Pond in Shrewsbury . . .

  P.M.—Went to Rev. Horace James’s reptiles (Orthodox) . . .

  At Natural History Rooms, a great cone from a southern pine and a monstrous nutshell from the East Indies (?) . . .

  H. D. Thoreau and his sister S. arrived home this noon from a visit to Worcester. Passed a part of the afternoon on the river with H. D. T. in his little boat,—discussed [William Ellery] Channing part of the time. Took tea and spent the evening at Mr. T’s. (Item) H. D. T. says buy “Margaret.”

  A very hot day.

  Two Sternothærus odoratus by heap in Sanborn’s garden, one making a hole for its eggs, the rear of its shell partly covered. See a great many of these out to-day on ground . . .

  Walking under an apple tree in the little Baker Farm peach orchard, heard an incessant shrill musical twitter or peeping, as from young birds, over my head, and, looking up, saw a hole in an upright dead bough, some fifteen feet from ground. Climbed up and, finding that the shrill twitter came from it, guessed it to be the nest of a downy woodpecker, which proved to be the case . . .

  Much pine pollen is washed up on the northwest side of the pond. Must it not have come from pines at a distance. Very hot day, as was yesterday,—98° at 2 P.M., 99° at 3, and 128° in sun. Nighthawks numerously squeak at 5 P.M. . . .

  On the 12 ult I forwarded the two books to California, observing your directions in every particular, and I trust that Uncle Sam will discharge his duty faithfully. While in Worcester this week I obtained the accompanying daguerreotype—which my friends think is pretty good—though better looking than I.

  Yrs
  Henry D Thoreau

  Ricketson [Daniel Ricketson] says that they say at New Bedford that the song sparrow says, Maids, maids, maids,—hang on your tea-kettle-ettle-ettle-ettle-ettle. R. W. E. [Ralph Waldo Emerson] imitates the wood thrush by he willy willy—ha willy willy—O willy O . . .

  Spent the forenoon in H. D. T.’s room, copying titles of books, &c.—called by invitation at R. W. Emerson’s at 4 P.M. with Thoreau—on the way called on Mrs. Brooks, the abolitionist. Walked to Walden Pond with Emerson and his children, and Thoreau; took tea at E’s. Thoreau returned with Ellen and Edith E. while Mr. E., his son Eddy, 12 years of age, and myself stopped and bathed in Walden Pond. Our conversation was principally upon birds and flowers that we met upon the way. Met Mrs. Ripley, Mrs. Goodwin, Miss Ripley and Dr. C. Francis at Mr. E.’s on our return. Returned at 9 with T. to his father’s and to bed at ten.

  In R.’s mowing, apparently lueerne, out some days. His son Walton showed me one of four perfectly white eggs taken from a hole in an apple tree eight feet from ground. I examined the hole. He had seen a bluebird there, and I saw a blue feather in it and apparently a bluebird’s nest . . .

  Lunched by the spring on the Brady farm in Freetown . . .

  Went off to Nelson’s Island (now Briggs’s) in Long Pond by a long, very narrow bar (fifty rods I paced it), in some places the water over shoes and the sand commonly only three or four feet wide . . . R. [Daniel Ricketson] dreams of residing here.

  Brewer, in a communication to Audubon (as I read in his hundred(?)-dollar edition), makes two kinds of song sparrows, and says that Audubon has represented one, the most common about houses . . .

  Saw a farmer on the Neck with one of Palmer’s patent wood legs. He went but little lame and said that he did his own mowing and most of his ordinary farm work, though plowing in the present state of his limb, which had not yet healed, wrenched him some . . .

  This Neck, like the New Bedford country generally, is very flat to my eye, even as far inland as Middleborough. When R. [Daniel Ricketson] decided to take another road home from the latter place, because it was less hilly, I said I had not observed a hill in all our ride . . . I had been expecting to find the aletris about New Bedford, and when taking our luncheon on this neck what should I see rising above the luncheon-box, between me and R., but what I knew must be the Aletris farinosa . . .

  Talked with a farmer by name of Slocum, hoeing on the Neck, a rather dull and countrified fellow for our neighborhood, I should have said . . .

  Heard of, and sought out, the hut of Martha Simons, the only pure-blooded Indian left about New Bedford . . . The squaw was not at home when we first called . . . She ere long came in from the seaside, and we called again. We knocked and walked in, and she asked us to sit down . . .

  A conceited old Quaker minister, her neighbor, told me with a sanctified air, “I think that the Indians were human beings; dost thee not think so?” He only convinced me of his doubt and narrowness.

  A Mr. Wall, artist, at New Bedford, told me of a high pine wood or swamp some miles down Naushon with “storks’ nests” (!) in the pines . . .

  Returning, I caught sight of Gay Head and its lighthouse with my glass, between Pasque and Nashawena . . .

  P. M.—I paddled up the Acushnet, about a mile above the paper-mill, as far as the ruined mill, in Walton’s [Walton Ricketson] skiff with Arthur [Arthur Ricketson] . . .

  Borrowed Roberts’s boat, shaped like a pumpkin-seed, for we wished to paddle on Great Quitticus. We landed and lunched on Haskell’s Island, which contains some twenty-five or thirty acres . . .

  Rode on to the old Pond Meeting-house, whence there is a fine view of Assawampsett . . .

  Two men spoke of loon’s eggs on a rocky isle in Little Quitticus . . .

  As we were returning, a Mr. Sampson was catching perch at the outlet from Long Pond, where it emptied into Assawampsett with a swift current . . .

  Looked at the birds in the Natural History Rooms in Boston. Observed no white spots on the sparrow hawk’s wing, or on the pigeon or sharp-shinned hawk’s. Indeed they were so closed that I could not have seen them. Am uncertain to which my wing belongs . . .

  In the main stream, at the Rock, I am surprised to see flags and pads, laying the foundation of an islet in the middle, where I hail thought it deep before. Apparently a hummock lifted by ice sunk there in the spring . . .

  Pink-colored yarrow. Epilobium coloratum, a day or more. Young partridges (with the old bird), as big as robins . . .

  The large evening-primrose below the foot of our garden does not open till some time between 6.30 and 8 P.M. or sundown. It was not open when I went to bathe, but freshly out in the cool of the evening at sundown, as if enjoying the serenity of the hour.

  Campanula aparinoides, roadside opposite centaurea, several days. Early low blueberries ripe.

  Crossed the river at bath place. On the sandy bank opposite, saw a wood tortoise voraciously eating sorrel leaves, under my face. In A. Hosmer’s ice-bared meadow south of Turnpike, hear the distressed or anxious peet of a peetweet . . .

  P.M.—To Gowing’s Swamp.

  The purple finch still sings over the street. The sagittaria, large form, is out, roadside . . .

  Sophia saw this afternoon two great snap-turtles fighting near the new stone bridge . . . Sam Wheeler, who did not know there were snapping turtles here, says he saw opposite to his boarding-house, on the sidewalk, in New York, the other day, a green turtle which weighed seven hundred and twenty pounds . . .

  5 P.M.—Up Assabet.

  As I was bathing under the swamp white oaks at 6 P.M., I heard a suppressed sound often repeated, like, perhaps, the working of beer through a bung-hole, which I had already suspected to [be] produced by owls. I was uncertain whether it was far or near. Proceeding a dozen rods up-stream on the south side, toward where a catbird was incessantly mewing, I found myself suddenly within a rod of a gray screech owl sitting on an alder bough with horns erect, turning its head from side to side and up and down, and peering at me in that same ludicrously solemn and complacent way . . .

  Landed at path end, Great Meadows . . .

  Bathed and lunched under the oak at Tarbell’s first shore . . . It is about as cool a place as you can find, where you get the southwest breeze from over the broad meadow, for it draws through the valley behind. While sitting there, saw, some twenty-five rods up-stream, amid the pads on the south side, where we had passed, several apparently young ducks, which soon disappeared again in the meadow-grass . . .

  Hear the plaintive note of young bluebirds, a reviving and gleaming of their blue ray. In Moore’s meadow by Turnpike, see the vetch in purple patches weighing down the grass, as if a purple tinge were reflected there . . .

  Red lilies in prime, single upright fiery flowers, their throats how splendidly and variously spotted, hardly two of quite the same hue and not two spotted alike,—leopard-spotted,—averaging a foot or more in height, amid the huckleberry and lambkill, etc., in the moist, meadowy pasture . . .

  M.E.

  Orchis lacera, apparently several days, lower part of spike, willow-row, Hubbard side, opposite Wheildon’s land. See quite a large flock of chattering red-wings, the flight of first broods . . .

  Anthony Wright found a lark’s nest with fresh eggs on the 12th in E. Hubbard’s meadow by ash tree . . . While drinking at Assabet Spring in woods, noticed a cherry-stone on the bottom . . .

  When I crossed the entrance to the pond meadow on a stick, a pout ran ashore and was lodged so that I caught it in the grass, apparently frightened. While I held it, I noticed another, very large one approach the shore very boldly within a few feet of me. Going in to bathe, I caught a pout on the bottom within a couple of rods of the shore. It seemed sick. Then, wading into the shallow entrance of the meadow, I saw a school of a thousand little pouts about three quarters of an inch long without any attending pout, and now have no doubt that the pout I had caught (but let go again) was tending them . . .

Evening by river to Ed. Hosmer’s . . . Returning after ten, by moonlight, see the bullfrogs lying at full length on the pads where they trump.

“Its very nakedness has power
To aid the hour,”

  Says old Sir Walter. However, the “old Bobbin Woman was steady to her Bible,” where each page unfolded words of comfort and assurance. Yet the memory of intelligence and extensive mentality will never fail to give a vivid pleasure to reflection,—if shaded by the faith of future uncertainties,—’t is well to admit the decrees of unerring rectitude. If you write to M.E. it will brighten the solitude so desired. Had I been detaining by nothing but weather! but I must pack up my daylight.

  Mary Emerson

  Again scare up a woodcock, apparently seated or sheltered in shadow of ferns in the meadow on the cool mud in the hot afternoon . . .

  As I come by the apple tree on J. P. B.’s land, where I heard the young woodpeckers hiss a month or so ago, I now see that they have flown, for there is a cobweb over the hole.

  Plucked a handful of gooseberries at J. P. B.’s bush . . .

  Caught a middle-sized copper-colored devil’s-needle (with darker spots on wings), sluggish, on a grass stem, with many dark-colored elliptical eggs packed closely to outside, under its breast.

  These hot afternoons I go panting through the close sprout-lands and copses, as now from Cliff Brook to Wheeler meadow, and occasionally come to sandy places a few feet in diameter where the partridges have dusted themselves . . . Mr. Russell [John Russell] writes to-day that he visited the locality of the Magnolia glauca the 18th, on Cape Cod, and saw lingering still a few flowers and flower-buds . . .

  Pasture thistle, not long . . .

  P.M.—To Walden for hydropeltis . . .

  Saw at Hydropeltis Meadow a small bullfrog in the act of swallowing a young but pretty sizable apparently Rana palustris, such as now hop about, an inch and a half long. He took it down head foremost, and as the legs were slowly taken in,—stuffing himself,—for the legs were often straightened out,—I wondered what satisfaction it could be to the larger to have that cold slimy fellow, entire, lying head to tail within him! I sprang to make him disgorge . . .

  Solidago strieta, Ingraham Path, well out, some days. Chimaphila maculata, three flowers, apparently but few days, while the umbellata is quite done there. Leaves just shooting up . . .

  Lycopus Virginicus, with its runners, perhaps some days, in Hosmer Flat Meadow . . .

  The street is now strewn with bark under the buttonwood at the brick house. Has not the hot weather taken the bark off?

  The air begins to be thick and almost smoky.

  The sun’s disk is seen round and red for a long distance above the horizon, through the thick but cloudless atmosphere, threatening heat,—hot, dry weather . . .

  P.M.—To Poorhouse Pasture . . .

  It is very still and sultry this afternoon, at 6 P.M. even. I cannot even sit down in the pasture for want of air, but must keep up and moving, else I should suffocate. Thermometer ninety-seven and ninety-eight to-day . . .

As I was paddling by Dodge’s Brook, a great devil’s needle lit on my paddle, between my hands. It was about three inches long and three and a half in spread of wings, without spots, black and yellow, with green eyes (?). It kept its place within a few inches of my eyes, while I was paddling some twenty-five rods against a strong wind, clinging closely. Perhaps it chose that place for coolness this hot day.

  To-day, as yesterday, it is more comfortable to be walking or paddling at 2 and 3 P.M., when there is wind, but at five the wind goes down and it is very still and suffocating.

  I afterward saw other great devil’s-needles, the forward part of their bodies light-blue and very stout . . .

  3.30 P.M.—To Climbing Fern . . . (Journal, 8:431-432).

  Pratt lave me a chimney swallow’s nest, which he says fell clown Wesson’s chimney with young in it two or three days ago . . .

  Amaranthus hybridus and albus, both some days at least; first apparently longest.

  This is a perfect dog-day. The atmosphere thick, mildewy, cloudy. It is difficult to dry anything. The sun is obscured, yet we expect no rain. Bad hay weather. The streams are raised by the showers of yesterday and day before . . . All the secrets of the river bottom are revealed. I look down into sunny depths which before were dark. The wonderful clearness of the water, enabling you to explore the river bottom and many of its secrets now, exactly as if the water had been clarified. This is our compensation for a heaven concealed . . .

  Erigeron Canadensis, some time. Alisma mostly gone to seed. Tboroughwort, several days. Pentliorum, a good while. Trichostema has now for some time been springing up in the fields, giving out its aromatic scent when bruised, and I see one ready to open.

  For a morning or two I have noticed dense crowds of little tender whitish parasol toadstools, one inch or more in diameter, and two inches high or more, with simple plaited wheels, about the pump platform; first fruit of this dog-day weather . . .

  As I am going across to Bear Garden Hill, I see much white Polygala sanguinea with the red in A. Wheeler’s meadow (next to Potter’s) . . .

  As I look out through the woods westward there, I see, sleeping and gleaming through the stagnant, misty, glaucous dog-day air, i.e. blue mist, the smooth silvery surface of Fair Haven Pond. There is a singular charm about it in this setting. The surface has a dull, gleaming polish on it, though draped in this glaucous mist . . .

  Since July 30th, inclusive, we have had perfect dog days without interruption. The earth has suddenly [become] invested with a thick musty mist. The sky has become a mere fungus. A thick blue musty veil of mist is drawn before the sun. The sun has not been visible, except for a moment or two once or twice a day, all this time, nor the stars by night. Moisture reigns. You cannot dry a napkin at the window, nor press flowers without their mildewing. You imbibe so much moisture from the atmosphere that you are not so thirsty, nor is bathing so grateful as a week ago. The burning heat is tempered, but as you lose sight of the sky and imbibe the musty, misty air, you exist as a vegetable, a fungus . . .

  The Great Meadows being a little wet,—hardly so much as usual,—I took off my shoes and went barefoot some two miles through the cut-grass, from Peter’s to Sphoerocarpa Pools and backward by river. Very little grass cut there yet. The cut-grass is bad for tender feet, and you must be careful not to let it draw through your hands, for it will cut like a fine saw . . .

  A green bittern comes, noiselessly flapping, with stealthy and inquisitive looking to this side the stream and then that, thirty feet above the water. This antediluvian bird, creature of the night, is a fit emblem of a dead stream like this Musketicook. This especially is the bird of the river. There is a sympathy between its sluggish flight and the sluggish flow of the stream . . .

  At length from July 30th inclusive the cloud-like wreaths of mist of these dog-days lift somewhat, and the sun shines out more or less, a short time, at 3 P.M.

  The sun coming out when I am off Clamshell, the abundant small dragon-flies of different colors, brightblue and lighter, looped along the floating vallisneria . . .

  Our river is so sluggish and smooth that I can trace a boat that has passed half an hour before, by the bubbles on its surface, which have not burst. I have known thus which stream another party had gone up long before. A swift stream soon blots out such traces . . .

  Conantuin hillside is now literally black with berries. What a profusion of this kind of food Nature provides, as if to compensate for the scarcity last year! Fortunate that these cows in their pasture do not love them, but pass them by. The blackberries are already softening, and of all kinds there are many, many more than any or all creatures can gather. Theyare literally five or six species deep . . . You go daintily wading through this thicket, picking, perchance, only the biggest of the blackberries—as big as your thumb—and clutching here and there a handful of huckleberries or blueberries, but never, perchance, suspecting the delicious cool blue-bloomed ones under all. This favorable moist weather has expanded some of the huckleberries to the size of bullets. Each patch, each bush, seems fuller and blacker than the last . . .

  Choke-cherries near House-leek Rock begin to be ripe, though still red. They are scarcely edible, but their beauty atones for it. See those handsome racemes of ten or twelve cherries each, dark glossy red, semitransparent. You love them not the less because they are not quite palatable . . .

  P.M.—To Walden.

  The wind, or motion of the air, makes it much cooler on the railroad causeway or hills, but in the woods it is as close and melting as before . . .

  Heard this forenoon what I thought at first to be children playing on pumpkin stems in the next yard, but it turned out to be the new steam-whistle music, what they call the Calliope (!) in the next town . . .

  P. M.—With a berry party, ride to Conantum.

  At Blackberry Steep, apparently an early broadleafed variety of Desmodium paniculatum, two or three days. This and similar plants are common there . . .

  3.30 P. M.—When I came forth, thinking to empty my boat and go a-meditating along the river,—for the full ditches and drenched grass forbade other routes, except the highway,—and this is one advantage of a boat,—I learned to my chagrin that Father’s pig was gone. He had leaped out of the pen some time breakfast, but his dinner was untouched. Here was an ugly duty not to be shirked,—a wild shoat that weighed but ninety to be tracked, caught, and penned,—an afternoon’s work, at least (if I were lucky enough to accomplish it so soon), prepared for me, quite different from what I had anticipated . . .

  P. M.—Up Assabet.

The river is raised about two feet! My boat is nearly even full, though under the willows . . .

  P. M.—To Fair Haven Hill and Walden . . .

  I go across lots like a hunting dog. With what tireless energy and abandonment they dash through the brush and up the sides of hills! I meet two white foxhounds, led by an old red one. How full of i t they are! How their tails work! They are not tied to paths; they burst forth . . .

  The other evening, returning down the river, I think I detected the convexity of the earth within a short distance. I saw the western landscape and horizon, reflected in the water fifty rods behind me, all lit up with the reflected sky . . .

  7 P.M.—The river has risen about two inches today, and is now within six inches of the top of Hoar’s wall.

  The Hypericum nautilum is well out at this hour. The river, is now at a standstill, some three feet above its usual level . . .

  An arrowhead in Peter’s Path. How many times I have found an arrowhead by that path, as if that had been an Indian trail! Perchance it was, for some of the paths we travel are much older than we think . . .

  Beck says of the small circwa (C. alpina), “Many botanists consider this a mere variety of the preceding.” I am not sure but it is more deeply toothed than the large. Its leaves are of the same color with those of the large at Bittern Cliff, but more decidedly toothed . . .

  The low wood-paths are strewn with toadstools now, and I begin to perceive their musty scent,—great tumbae, or, as R. W. E. says, tuguria,—crowding one another by the path-side when there was not a fellow in sight; great towers that have fallen and made the plain shake; ponderous wheels that have lost their fellows, broken their axles, abandoned by the toady or swampy teamsters. Some whose eaves have been nibbled apparently by turtles. Ricketson says he saw a turtle eating a toadstool once. Some great dull-yellow towers,—towers of strength, to judge from their mighty columns . . .

  Pratt is collecting his parsnip seed. This the second or third cutting. It takes three cuttings, the central umbellets ripening first. It takes a sharp knife not to shake out the seeds . . . (Journal, 8:468)

Chenopodium hybridium, a tall rank weed, five feet at least, dark-green, with a heavy (poisonous?) odor compared to that of stramonium; great maple(?)—shaped leaves. How deadly this peculiar heavy odor! . . .

  What a variety of old garden herbs—mints, etc.—are naturalized along an old settled road, like this to Boston which the British travelled! And then there is the site, apparently, of an old garden by the tarnyard, where the spearmint grows so rankly. I am intoxicated with the fragrance. Though I find only one new plant (the cassia), yet old acquaintances grow so rankly, and the spearmint intoxicates me so, that I am bewildered, as it were by a variety of new things. An infinite novelty. All the roadside is the site of an old garden where fragrant herbs have become naturalized . . .

  It is then red with a white check, often slightly pear-shaped, semitransparent with a lustre, very finely and indistinctly white-dotted . . . (Journal, 9:6-8).

  Now, perhaps, get thoroughwort. The lecheas in the Great Fields are now turning red, especially the fine one.

  As I go along the hillsides in sprout-lands, amid the Solidago stricta, looking for the blackberries left after the rain, the sun warm as ever, but the air cool nevertheless, I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. Hear it, but see it not. It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time . . .

  Dog-day weather as for clouds, but less smoky than before the rains of ten days ago . . .

  I spent my afternoon among the desmodiums and lesped’ezas, sociably. The further end of Fair Haven Hill-side is a great place for them.

  All the lespedezas are apparently more open and delicate in the woods, and of a darker green, especially the violet ones . . .

  N. B. Water so high I have not. seen early meadow aster lately (Journal, 9:12-13).

  P.M.—Up Assabet.

  Owing to the rain of the 8th and before, two days and two nights, the river rose to within six inches of the top of Hoar’s wall. It had fallen about one half, when the rain began again on the night of the 20th, and again continued about two nights and two days, though so much did not fall as before ; but, the river being high, it is now rising fast. The Assabet is apparently at its height, and rushing very swiftly past the Hemlocks . . .

  I see a bed of Antennaria margaritacea, now in its prime, by the railroad, and very handsome. It has fallen outward on all sides ray-wise, and rests on the ground, forming [a] perfectly regular circle, four feet in diameter and fifteen inches high, with a dark ash-colored centre, twenty inches in diameter, composed of the stems, then a wide circumference, one foot or more broad, of dense pearly masses of flowers covered with bees and butterflies . . .

  Polygonum tenue abundant and in bloom, on side of Money-Diggers’ Hill, especially at south base, near apple tree. The choke-cherry by fence beyond spring, being dead ripe and a little wilted, is at length tolerable eating . . .

  It rained a little last night, and the river at 3 P. M. is at the same height as last night. It is not remembered when it was so high at this season. I have not seen a white lily nor a yellow one in the river for a fortnight . . .

  Silvery cinquefoil now begins to show itself commonly again. Perhaps it is owing to the rain, springlike, which we have in August.

  I paddle directly across the meadow, the river is so high, and land cast of the elm on the third or fourth row of potatoes. The water makes more show on the meadows than yesterday, though hardly so high . . .

  Mr. Rice says that the brook just beyond his brother Israel’s in Sudbury rises and runs out before the river, and then you will see the river running up the brook as fast as the brook ran down before.

  Apparently half the pads are now afloat, notwithstanding the depth of the water, but they are almost all white lily pads . . .

  The fall cricket—or is it alder locust?—sings the praises of the day.

  So about 9 A.M. up river to Fair Haven Pond.

  The flooded meadow, where the grasshoppers cling to the grass so thickly, is alive with swallows skimming just over the surface . . .

Sailed across to Bee Tree Hill. This hillside, laid bare two years ago and partly last winter, is almost covered with the Aster macrophyllus, now in its prime. It grows large and rank, two feet high. On one I count seventeen central flowers withered, one hundred and thirty in bloom, and half as many buds. As I looked down from the hilltop over the sprout-land, its rounded grayish tops amid the bushes I mistook for gray, lichen-clad rocks, such was its profusion and harmony with the scenery . . .

  Unusually cold last night . . .

  The cardinals in this ditch make a splendid show now,though they would have been much fresher and finer a week ago. They nearly fill the ditch for thirty-five rods perfectly straight, about three feet high. I count at random ten in one square foot, and as they are two feet wide by thirty-five rods, there are four or five thousand at least . . .

  P.M.—To tortoise eggs, Marlborough road.

  Potentilla Norvegica again. I go over linnæa sproutlands. The panicled cornel berries are whitening, but already mostly fallen . . .

  I open the painted tortoise nest of June 10th, and find a young turtle partly out of his shell . He is roundish and the sternum clear uniform pink. The marks on the sides are pink. The upper shell is fifteen sixteenths of an inch plus by thirteen sixteenths. He is already wonderfully strong and precocious. Though those eyes never saw the light before, he watches me very warily, even at a distance. With what vigor he crawls out of the hole I have made, over opposing weeds! He struggles in my fingers with great strength . . .

  P. M.—To J. Farmer’s by river.

  The Helianthus decapetalus, apparently a variety, with eight petals, about three feet high, leaves petioled, but not wing-petioled, and broader-leaved than that of August 12th . . .

  P.M.—To Vaccinium Oxycoccus Swamp.

  Fair weather, clear and rather cool.

  Pratt shows me at his shop a bottle filled with alcohol and camphor. The alcohol is clear and the camphor beautifully crystallized at the bottom for nearly an inch in depth, in the form of small feathers, like a boar frost. He has read that this is as good a barometer as any . . .

  There sits one by the shore who wishes to go with me, but I cannot think of it. I must be fancy-free. These is no such mote in the sky as a man who is not perfectly transparent to you,—who has any opacity. I would rather attend to him earnestly for half an hour, on shore or elsewhere, and then dismiss him. He thinks I could merely take him into my boat and then not mind him. He does not realize that I should by the same act take him into my mind, where there is no room for hire, and my bark would surely founder in such a voyage as I was contemplating I know, very well that I should never reach that expansion of the river I have in my mind . . .

  Some are so inconsiderate as to ask to walk or sail with me regularly every day—I have known such—and think that, because there will be six inches or a foot between our bodies, we shall not interfere! These things are settled by fate. The good ship sails—when she is ready. For freight or passage apply to—? ? Ask my friend where. What is getting into a man’s carriage when it is full, compared with putting your foot in his mouth and popping right into his mind without considering whether it is occupied or not? If I remember aright, it was only on condition that you were asked, that you were to go with a man one mile or twain. I Suppose a man asks not you to go with him, but to go with you. Often, I would rather undertake to shoulder a barrel of pork and carry it a mile than take into my company a man. It would not be so heavy a weight . . .

  If you chance to be going to Cambridge. . . will . . . you take a small volume to the library. . . It is so rare a book I do not like to trust the expressmen with it . . . (The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 429)

  He has just had four of his fir trees next his house cut, they shaded his windows so. They were set out by Coolidge, E. thinks twenty-eight years ago. The largest has thirty-seven annual rings at the base and measures at one foot from the ground forty-six and a half inches in circumference; has made, on an average, about half an inch of wood in every direction . . .

  I remember that in the spring you invited me to visit you. I feel inclined to spend a day or two with you and on your hills at this season, returning perhaps by way of Brattleboro. What if I should take the cars for Walpole next Friday morning? Are you at home? And will it be convenient and agreeable to you to see me then? I will await an answer.

  I am but poor company, and it will not be worth the while far you to put yourself out on my account; yet front time to time I have some thoughts which would be the better for an airing. I also wish to get some hints from September on the Connecticut to help me understand that season on the Concord; to snuff the mustly fragrance of the decaying year in the primitive woods. There is considerable cellar room in my nature for such stores, a whole row of bins waiting to be filled before I can celebrate my Thanksgiving. Mould is the richest of soils, yet I am not mould. It will always be found that one flourishing institution exists & battens on another mouldering one. The Present itself is parasitic to this extent.

  Your fellow traveller
  Henry D. Thoreau

  Clear bright days of late, with a peculiar sheen on the leaves,—light reflected from the surface of each one, for they are grown and worn and washed smooth at last, no infantile downiness on them . . .

  I think we may detect that some sort of preparation and faint expectation preceded every discovery we have made. We blunder into no discovery but it will appear that we have prayed and disciplined ourselves for it. Some years ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain, and concluded that it did not grow here. A month or two ago I read again, as many times before, that its blossoms were very small . . .

  It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I [am] in a thrilled and expectant mood, perhaps wading in some remote swamp where I have just found something novel and feel more than usually remote from the town. Or some rare plant which for some reason has occupied a strangely prominent place in my thoughts for some time will present itself. My expectation ripens to discovery. I am prepared for strange things . . .

  My father & mother regret that your indisposition is likely to prevent your coming to Concord at present. It is as well that you do not, if you depend on seeing me, far I expect to go to New Hampshire the latter part of the week. I shall be glad to see you afterward, if you are prepared for & can endure my unsocial habits.

  1 would suggest that you have one or two of the teeth-which you can best spare, extracted at once—for the sake of your general no less than particular health. This is the advice of one who has had quite his share of toothache in this world.—I am a trifle stouter than when I saw you last, yet far—far short of my best estate. I thank you for two newspapers which you have sent me—am glad to see that you have studied out the history of the ponds, got the Indian names straightened—which means made more crooked—&c &c I remember them with great satisfaction. They are all the more interesting to me for the mearn & sandy solid that surrounds the. Heaven is not one [of] your fertile Ohio bottoms, you may depend on it. Ah, the Middleboro Ponds!—Great Platte Lakes! Remember me to the perch in them. I trust that I may have some better craft that that oarless pumpkin-seed the next time I navigate them.

  From the size of your family I infer that Mrs, Ricketson & your daughters have returned from Franconia. Please remember me to them, & also to Arthur & Walton & tell the latter that if in the course of his fishing he should chance to come across the shell of a terrapin & will save it for me, I shall be exceedingly obliged to him.

  Channing dropped in on us the other day, but soon dropped out again.
 
  Yrs
  Henry D. Thoreau

  The river smooth, though full, with the autumn sheen on it, as on the leaves. I see painted tortoises with their entire backs covered with perfectly fresh clean black scales, such as no rubbing nor varnishing can produce, contrasting advantageously with brown arid muddy ones. One little one floats past on a drifting pad which he partly sinks . . .

  Gathered four or five quarts of Viburnum nudum berries, now in their prime, attracted more by the beauty of the cynics than the flavor of the fruit. The berries, which are of various sizes and forms,—elliptical, oblong, or globular,—are in different stages of maturity on the same cynic, and so of different colors,—green or white, rose-colored, and dark purple or black,—i.e. three or four very distinct and marked colors, side by side. If gathered when rose-colored, they soon turn dark purple and are soft and edible, though before bitter. They add a new and variegated wildness to the swampy sprout-lands . . .

  What are those small yellow birds, with two white bars on wings, about the oak at Hubbard’s Grove? Aralia racemosa berries just ripe, at tall helianthus by bass [?] beyond William Wheeler’s; not edible. Indian hemp out of bloom. Butterflies in road a day or two. The crackling flight of grasshoppers. The grass also is all alive with them, and they trouble me by getting into my shoes, which are loose, and obliging me to empty them . . .

  Dear Sir

  Having read your “Week on the Concord” which you sent D W Vaughan a short time since, I enclose $1.27 for which will you please send me a copy of the same.

  I have your “Walden” which I have read several times. If you can send me any writings of yours besides the above works I will esteem it a favor and will immediately remit you the amount due

  I consider that the moderate price I pay for excellent writings does not remove my obligation to their author and I most gladly take this occasion to tender you my warmest thanks for the pleasure and improvement you have afforded me

Yours very truly

B. B. Wiley

  Will not the prime of goldenrods and asters be just before the first severe frosts?

  As I ride along in the cars, I think that the ferns, etc., are browned and crisped more than usual at this season, on account of the very wet weather.

  Found, on reaching Fitchburg that there was an interval of three and a half hours between this and the Brattleboro train . . .

  Took the cars again in Westminster. The scenery began to be mountainous and interesting in Royalston and Athol, but was more so in Irving. In Northfield first observed fields of broom-corn very common, Sorghum saccharatum, taller than corn. Alcott says they bend down the heads before they gather them, to fit them for brooms . . .

  Mrs. Charles C. (?) Frost showed me a painted list of the flowers of B., furnished by him to a newspaper in B. some years since. He saws he finds Aster simplex and A. ptarmicoides there (according to Oakes the latter is not found in New England out of Vermont), the latter now covered by the high water of the river . . .

  A.M.—Walked down the railroad about a mile, returning partly by river-bank.

  The depot is on the site of “Thunderbolt’s” house. He was a Scotch highwayman. Called himself Dr. Wilson (?) when here. The prevailing polygonum in B. was a new one to me . . .

  Frost said that Dr. Kane left B. the morning of the day I arrived, and had given him a list of arctic plants brought home by him, which he showed me . . .

  Climbed the hill behind Mr. Addison Brown’s. The leaves of the Tiarella cordifolia very abundant in the woods . . .

  P.M.—Up the bank of the Connecticut to West River, up that to a brook, and up that nearly to hospital.

  The Connecticut, though unusually high (several feet more than usual), looks low, there being four or five or six rods of bare gravel on each side, and the bushes and weeds covered with clayey soil from a freshet. Not a boat to be seen on it. The Concord is worth a hundred of it for my purposes . . .

  Frost gives me an aster which he thinks A. concinnus of Wood; grows in woods and yet longer leaved.

  P.M.—Clearing up. I went a-botanizing by the Coldwater Path, for the most part along a steep wooded hillside on Whetstone Brook and through its interval .

  In the last heavy rain, two or three weeks since, there was a remarkable freshet on this brook, such as has not been known before, the bridge and roach carried away, the bed of the stream laid bare, a new channel being made, the interval covered with sand and gravel, and trees (buttonwood, etc.) brought down; several acres thus buried. Frost escaped from his house on a raft. I observed a stream of large bare white rocks four or five rods wide, which at first I thought had been washed down, but it seems this was the former bed of the stream . . .

  I hear that two thousand dollars’ worth of huckleberries have been sold by the town of Ashby this season . . .

  The Connecticut is about twenty rods wide between Brattleboro and Hinsdale. This mountain, according to Frost, 1064 feet high. It is the most remarkable feature here. The village of Brattleboro is peculiar for the nearness of the primitive wood and the mountain. Within three rods of Brown’s house was excellent botanical ground on the side of a primitive wooded hillside, and still better along the Coldwater Path. But, above all, this everlasting mountain is forever lowering over the village, shortening the day and wearing a misty cap each morning . . .

  P.M.—To and up a brook north of Brown’s house . . .

  A very interesting sight from the top of the mountain was that of the cars so nearly under you, apparently creeping along, you could see so much of their course . . .

  The most interesting sight I saw in Brattleboro was the skin and skull of a panther (Felis concolor) (cougar, catamount, painter, American lion, puma), which was killed, according to a written notice attached, on the 15th of June by the Saranac Club of Brattleboro, six young men, on a fishing and hunting excursion. This paper described it as eight feet in extreme length and weighing one hundred and ten pounds. The Brattleboro newspaper says its body was “4 feet 11 inches in length, and the tail 2 feet 9 inches; the animal weighed 108 pounds.” I was surprised it its great size and apparent strength. It gave one a new idea of our American forests and the vigor of nature here . . .

  Looked at the falls and rocks. River higher than usual at this season, yet could cross all but about twenty feet on the rocks . . .

  Ascended the Fall Mountain with a heavy valise on my back, against the advice of the toll-man. But when I got up so soon and easily I was amused to remember his anxiety. It is seven hundred and fifty feet high, according to Gazetteer. Saw great red oaks on this hill, particularly tall, straight, and bare of limbs, for a great distance, amid the woods. Here, as at Brattleboro, a fine yiew of the country immediately beneath you; but these views lack breadth, a distant horizon. There is a complete view of the falls from this height.

  Saw a pair of middle-sized black hawks hovering a1 >out this cliff, with some white spots, with peculiar shrill snapping notes like a gull, a new kind to me . . .

  Rode the last mile into Walpole with a lumberer, who said that when he commenced operations at Bellows Falls be thought that there was not more than one hundred thousand there, but they had already got out four millions . Ile imported some of those masts I had seen go through Concord from Canada West. They were rafted along Lake Erie . . .

  Erigeron annuus, four feet high, by roadside; also Ranaunculus Pennsylvanicus, or bristly crowfoot, still in bloom. Vide press. A fine view of the Connecticut valley from the hilltop, and of Aseutney Mountain, but not of Monadnock . . .

  In Alcott’s yard, sprung up from his bird’s seed, hemp, like common except fragrant . . .

  8 A.M.—Up Assabet.

  Gathered quite
a parcel of grapes, quite ripe. Difficult; to break off the large bunches without some dropping off. Yet the best are more admirable for fragrance than for flavor. Depositing them in the bows of the boat, they filled all the air with their fragrance, as we rowed along against the wind, as if we were rowing through an endless vineyard in its matuity.

The Aster Tradescanti now sugars the banks densely, since I left, a week ago. Nature improves this her last opportunity to empty her lap of flowers . . .

  Aster lævis apparently in prime; very handsome its long, slanting, broad-topped wands by the roadside, even in dry soil, its rays longer and richer purple than usual . . .

  Diplopappus linariifolius in prime. River gone down more than I expected after the great rise, to within some eighteen inches of low-water mark, but on account a freshet. 1 have seen no Bidens Beckii nor chrysanthemuoides nor Polygonum amphibium var. aquaticum in it, nor elsewhere the myriophyllums this year. The witchhazel at Conantum just begun here and there . . .

  Rain in afternoon. Rain again in the night, hard (Journal, 9:87).

  Asclepias Cornuti discounting. The seeded parachutes which I release soon come to earth, but probably if they waited for a stronger wind to release them they would be carried far . . .

  Scare up turtle cloves in the stubble. Uva-ursi berries quite ripe. Find, for first time in Concord, Solanum nigrum,berries apparently just ripe, by a rock northwest of corydalis. Thus I have within a week found in Concord two of the new plants I found up-country. Such is the advantage of going abroad,—to enable [you] to detect your own plants. I detected them first abroad, because there I was looking for the strange.

  It Is a warm and very hazy dav, with wreaths of mist in horizon . . .

  I have returned from New Hampshire, and find myself in statu quo. My journey proved one of business purely. As you suspected, I saw Alcott, and I spoke to him of you, and your good will toward him; so now you may consider yourself introduced. He would be glad to hear from you about a conversation in New Bedford. He was about setting out on a conversing tour to Fitchburg, Worcester, & 3 or 4 weeks hence Waterbury Ct, New York, Newport (?) & Providence (?). You may be sure that you will not have occasion to repent of any exertions which you may make to secure an audience for him. I send you one of his programmes, lest he should not have done so himself.

  I am sorry to hear so poor an account of C[hanning]. Perhaps he will turn up & show his better side again.

  You propose to me teaching the following winter. I find that I cannot entertain the idea. It would require such a revolution of all my habits I think, as would sap the very foundation of me. I am engaged to Concord & my vein private pursuits by 10,000 ties & it would be suicide to cut them. If I were weaker, & not somewhat stronger physically, I should be more tempted. I am so busy that I cannot even think of visiting you. The days are not long enough or I am strong enough to do the work of the day before bed-time

  Excuse my paper. It chances to be the best I have.

  Yrs
  Henry D. Thoreau

  Not a sign of an artichoke flower yet below Moore’s! May they not be earlier elsewhere?

  At brook, cohush and arum berries still fresh, and Viburnum acerifolium berries. Apparently Asplenium Thelypteroides, a large fern, its under side covered with linear fruit . . .

  Yours of the 23rd is received, and I notice what you say in regard to Mr. Alcott’s class; but I fear that I shall hardly prove able to undertake the business of obtaining one for him. It is entirely out of my line and very much averse to my taste, to solicit from any one. People are so ready to ride a “high horse,” as soon as you present anything to them that is left for their consideration or decision, that shrink at once from any such collision. Still should anything turn up whereby I may effect the object a third party, I shall be very glad so to do. In the mean time I am ready to listen to any suggestions Mr. Alcott may make to me in the premises.

  I am sorry that I shall not have the pleasure of a visit from you this fall, but as you need companionship so much less than I do I suppose the pleasure would not be reciprocal were we to meet. I am becoming quite a historical sketcher, and have already commenced publishing a history of New Bedford, or rather of the old township of Dartmouth, which included Ned Bedford, also the township of Westport, Fairhaven, and the present Dartmouth.

  Have you ever observed how many of the Indian names of rivers, lakes, &c, end in et? Assawampsett, Acushnet, Paceamanset, &c., &c. I am informed by a person who appeared to have some knowledge of Indian words that et signifies water—the Taunton river was called Nemasket for several miles from its outlet from the Middleborough Ponds —then Tetiquet or Tetiquid. Now I come to my object—did not your own Musketquid have the final syllable quet? If the fact can be established that et meant water, I should have no hesitation on making the alteration.

  Please remember me most truly to your family, and to Mr. Emerson and his, when you next meet him.

  Trusting that when the right time comes around we shall meet once more, I remain,

  Yours faithfully,
  D. Ricketson

  It had not got down before this last rain but to within some eighteen inches, at least, of the usual level in September.

  P.M.—To Harrington road . . .

  P.M.—To Clamshell by boat.

Solidago speciosa not quite out!! Viburnum nudum berries are soon gone. I noticed none to speak of in Hubbard’s Swamp, September 15th. Start up a snipe in the meadow. Bathed at Hubbard’s Bath, but found the water very cold. Bathing about over . . .

  Poke berries in the sprout-land cast of the red huckleberry still fresh and abundant, perhaps a little past prime. I never saw so many. The plants stand close together, and their drooping racemes three to five inches long, of black or purplish-black berries . . .

  The pea-vine fruit is partly ripe, little black-dotted leans, about three in a pod.

  I can hardly clamber along the grape cliff now without getting my clothes covered with desmodium ticks,—there especially the rotundifolium and paniculatum. Though you were running for your life, they would have time to catch and cling to your clothes,—often the whole row of pods of the D. paniculatum, like a piece of a saw blade with three teeth. You pause at a convenient place and spend a long time picking them off, which it took so short a time to attach. They will even cling to your hand as you go by. They cling like babes to the mother’s breast, by instinct. Instead of being caught and detained ourselves by birdlime, we are compelled to catch these seeds and carry them with us . . .

  Dr. Reynolds told me the other day of a Canada lynx (?) killed in Andover, in a swamp, some years ago, when he was teaching school in Tewksbury; thought to be one of a pair, the other being killed or seen in Derry. Its large track was seen in the snow in Tewksbury and traced to Andover and back . . .

  Minott tells of a General Hull, who lived somewhere in this county, who, he remembers, called out the whole division once or twice to a muster. He sold the army under him to the English in the last war,—though General Miller of Lincoln besought [him] to let him lead them,—and never was happy after it, had no peace of mind. It was said that his life was in danger here in consequence of his treason . . .

  P.M.—To Walden.

  Examined an Asclepias Cornuti pod, already opening by the wall. As they dry, the pods crack and open by the seam along the convex or outer side of the pods, revealing the seeds, with their silky parachutes . . .

  Succory still, with its cool blue, here and there, and Hieracium Canadense still quite fresh, with its very pretty broad strap-shaped rays . . .

  I am amused to see four little Irish boys only five or six years old getting a horse in a pasture, for their father apparently, who is at work in a neighboring field. They have all in a row got hold of a very long halter and are leading him. All wish to have a hand in it. It is surprising that he obeys such small specimens of humanity . . .

  P. M.—Down river.

  Wind from northeast. Some water milkweed flying. Its pods small, slender, straight, and pointed perfectly upright ; seeds large with much wing . . .

  I hear that a Captain Hurd, of Wayland or Sudbury, estimates the loss of river meadow-hay this season in those two towns on account of the freshet at twelve hundred tons.

  Sally Cummings and Mike Murray are out on the Hill collecting apples and nuts. Do they not rather belong to such children of nature than to those who have merely bought them with their money? There are few apples for them this year, however, and it is too early for walnuts (too late for hazelnuts). The grapes are generally gone, and their vines partly bare and yellowed, though without frost. I amuse myself on the hilltop with pulling to pieces and letting fly the now withered and dry pasture thistle tops. They have a much coarser pappus than the milkweeds . . .

  It is well to find your employment and amusement in simple and homely things. These wear best and yield most . . .

  P.M.—Carried Sophia and Aunt up the Assabet.

The reflections of the bright-tinted maples very perfect. The common notes o£ the chickadee, so rarely heard for a long time . . .

  At length I discover some white pine cones, a few, on Emerson Heater Piece trees. They are all open, and the seeds, all the sound ones but one, gone. So September is the time to gather them . . .

  Sophia brings home large freshly ripe thimble-berries, with some unripe, a second crop, apparently owing to the abundance of rain for the last six weeks.

  The Indian summer continues. Solidagos now generally show woolly heads along the fences and brooks. E. Hosmer said yesterday that his father remembered when there was but one store in Concord, and that the little office attached to Dr. Heywood’s house, kept by Beatton . . .

  It is perfect Indian summer, a thick haze forming wreaths in the near horizon. The sun is almost shorn of its rays now at mid-afternoon, and there is only a sheeny reflection from the river . . .

  P.M.—To Hubbard’s Close.

  Huckleberries perfectly plump and fresh on the often bare bushes (always (else) red-leaved). The bare gray twigs begin to show, the leaves fast falling. The maples are nearly bare. The leaves of red maples, still bright, strew the ground, often crimson-spotted on a yellow ground . . .

  A smart frost, which even injured plants in house. Ground stiffened in morning; ice seen.

  River lower than for some months. Banks begin to wear almost a Novemberish aspect. The black willow almost completely bare; many quite so. It loses its leaves about same time with the maples . . .

  P.M.—To chestnuts, down Turnpike.

  I notice these flowers on the way by the roadside, which survive the frost . . .

  Found amid the sphagnum on the dry bank on the south side of the Turnpike, just below Everett’s meadow, a rare and remarkable fungus, such as I have heard of but never seen before. The whole height six and three quarters inches, two thirds of it being buried in the sphagnum . . .

  As I stood looking at Emerson’s bound under the railroad embankment, I heard a smart tche-day-dayday close to my car, and, looking up, saw four of these birds, which had come to scrape acquaintance Nvith me, hopping amid the alders within three and four feet of me. I had heard them further off at first, and they had followed me along the hedge. They day-day‘d and lisped their faint notes alternately . . .

  P.M.—A-chestnutting down Turnpike and across to Britton’s, thinking that the rain now added to the frosts would relax the burs which were open and let the nuts drop.

  The sugar maples are now in their glory, all aglow with yellow, red, and green. They are remarkable for the contrast they afford of deep blushing red on one half and green on the other . . .

  I forgot to say that there are sometimes two meats within one chestnut shell, divided transversely, and each covered by its separate brown-ribbed skin¹ . . .

  The fall, now and for some weeks, is the time for flocks of sparrows of various kinds flitting from bush to bush and tree to tree—and both bushes and trees are thinly leaved or bare—and from one seared meadow to another . . .

  I have often noticed the inquisitiveness of birds, as the other day of a sparrow, whose motions I should not have supposed to have any reference to me, if I had not watched it from first to last. I stood on the edge of a pine and birch wood. It flitted from seven or eight rods distant to a pine within a rod of me, where it hopped about stealthily and chirped awhile . . . I could see nothing peculiar about it. But when I brought my glass to bear on it, I found that it was almost steadily eying me and was all alive with excitement . . .

  The river-banks have now assumed almost their November aspect. The button-bushes are nearly bare. The water is smooth, the sun warm, and the reflections particularly fine and distinct . . .

  I wish to thank you again for those books. They are the nucleus of my library. I wrote to you on the receipt of them last winter, (directing as now) but not having heard from you, do not know in what part of the world this may find you. Several here are enquiring if you have returned to England, as you had just started for the Crimea at the last account. The books have long been shelved in cases of my own construction made partly of the driftwood of our river. They are the admiration of all beholders. Alcott and Emerson, besides myself, have been cracking some of the nuts.

  Certainly I shall never pay you for them. Of those new to me the Rig Veda is the most savory that I have yet tasted. As primitive poetry, I think as any extant. Indeed all the Pedantic literature is priceless. There they stand occuping two shelves, headed by Froissart, stretching round Egypt and India “Ultima Thule,” as a fit conclusion. What a world of variety. I shall browse there for some winters to come. Whole was has given place to pece on your side, perhaps a more serious war still is breaking out here. I see to hear its disant mutterings, though it may be ong before the bolt will fall in our midst. There has not been anything which you could call union between the North and South in this country for many years, and there cannot be so long as slavery is in the way. I only wish that Northern—that any men—were better material, or that I for one had more skill to deal with them; that the north had more spirit and would settle the question at once, and here instead of struggling feebly and protractedly away of on the plains of Kansas. They are on the eye of a Presidential election, as perhaps you know. and all good people are praying that of the three candidates, Fremont may be the man; but in my opinion the issue is quite doubtful. As far as I have observed, the worst man stands the best chance in this country. But as for politics, what I most admire now-a-days, is not the regular governments but the irregular primitive ones, like the Vigilance committee in California and even the free state men in Kansas. They are the most divine.—I have just taken a run up country, as I did with you once, only a little farther, this time; to the Connecticut river in New Hampshire, where I saw Alcott, King of men. He is among those who ask after you, and takes a special interest in the oriental books He cannot say enough about them. “And then that he should send you a library! Think if it!”

  I am sorry that I can give but a poor account of myself. I got “run down” they say, more than a year ago, and have not yet got fairly up again, It has not touched my spirits however, for they are as indifferently tough, as sluggishly resilient, as a dried fungus. I would it were the kind called punk; that they might catch and retain some heavenly spark. I dwell as much aloof from society as ever: find it just as impossible to agree in opinion with the most intelligent of my neighbors; they not having improved one jot, nor I either. I am still immersed in nature, have much of the time a living sense of the breadth of the field on whose verge I dwell. The great west and north west stretching on infinitely far and frand and wild, qualifying all out thoughts. That is the only America I know. I prize this western reserve chiefly for its intellectual value. That is the road to new life and freedom,—if ever we are dissatisfied with this and not to exile as in Siberia and knowing this, one need not travel it. That great northwest where several of our shrubs, fruitness here, retain and mature their fruits properly.

  I am pleased to think of you in that England, where we all seem to have originated, or at least sojourned which Emerson values so much, but which I know so little about. That island seems as full of good things as a nut is of meat: and I trust that it still is sound nut without mould or worm. I hope that by this time you are settled in your mind and satisfactorily employed there.

  My father mother and sister send their best wishes, and would he glad to see you in this country again. We are all quite anxious to hear that you are safe and sound : I in particular hope that you are in all respects unscathed by the battle of life, ready for still worthier encounters.

Yours,

H. D. T.

  Father told me about his father the other night,—that he remembers his father used to breakfast before the family at one time, on account of his business, and lie with him. His father used to cat the under crusts of biscuits, and he the upper His father died in 1801, aged forty-seven. When the war came on, he was apprentice or journeyman to a cooper who employed many hands. He called them together, and told them that on account of the war his business was ruined and he had no more work for them . . .

  Spent the afternoon in Worcester.

  By cars in evening to Allyn’s Point and Steamer Commonwealth to New York.

  In Worcester I saw Theo Brown who was very glad to hear from you In the evening we went together to see Harry Blake. Both these gentlemen were well. Mr Blake is an enthusiast in matters which the world passes by as of little account. Since I returned here I have taken two morning walks with Chas Newcomb. He suggested that he would like to walk to the White Mountains with me some time and it may yet be done. He walks daily some miles and seems to be in pretty good health. He says he would like to visit Concord, but named no time for that purpose.

  I am anxious to know a little more of Confucius. Can you briefly, so that it will not take too much of your time, write me his views in regard to Creation, Immortality, man’s preexistence if he speaks of it, and generally anything relating to man’s Origin, Purpose, & Destiny.

  I would also like much to know the name of the leading Hindu philosophers and their ideas on the preceding topics

  Is Swedenborg a valuable man to you, and if so, why?

  Do not think me too presuming because I ask you these questions. I am an inquirer (as indeed I always hope to be) and have to avail myself of the wisdom of those who have commenced life before me. Though I cannot hope that my existence will be of any direct benefit to you, yet I cannot fail to exert influence somewhere, and that it may be of an elevating character, I wish to make my own the experience of collective humanity.

  I shall leave here next Thursday Nov 6 for Chicago. My address there will be care of Strong & Wiley I shall undoubtedly spend the winter there and how much longer I shall stay I cannot tell.

  I suggested brevity in your remarks about the views of those philosophers. This was entirely for your convenience. I shall read appreciatingly and most attentively whatever you find time to write.

  I suggested brevity in your remarks about the views of those philosophers. This was entirely for your convenience. I shall read appreciatingly and most attentively whatever you find time to write.

  Yours truly
  B. B. Wiley

  I have hardly had time & repose enough to write to you before. I spent the afternoon of Friday (it seems some months ago) in Worcester, but failed to see Blake, he having “gone to the horse race”! in Boston;—to atone for which I have just received a letter from him, asking me to stop at Worcester & lecture on my return—I called on [Theo] Brown & [T.W.] Higginson, & in the evening came by way of Norwich to N.Y. in the steamer Commonwealth, and though it was so windy in land, had a perfectly smooth passage, and about as good a sleep as usually at home. Reached N Y about 7am, too late for the John Potter (there was’nt any Jonas) so I spent the forenoon there, called on Greeley (who was not in) met [F.A.T] Bellew in Broadway and walked into his workshop, red at the Astor Library &c &c—I arrived here about 30miles from N.Y. about 5pm Saturday, in company with Miss E. Peabody, who was returning in the same covered wagon from the Landing to Eagleswood, which last place she has just left for the winter. This is a queer place—There is no large long stone building, which cost some $40000, in which I do not know exactly who or how many work—(one or two familiar faces, & more familiar names have turned up)—a few shops & offices, an old farm house and Mr. [Marcus} Spring’s perfume privately residence within 20 rods of the main building. “The City of Perth Amboy” is about as big as Concord and Eagleswood is 1 ¼ miles S W of it, on the bay side. The central fact here is evidently Mr. [Theodore] Wel’d school—recently established—around which various other things revolve. Saturday evening I went to the school room, hall, or what not, to see the children & their teachers & patrons dance. Mr Weld, a kind looking man with a long white beard, danced with them, & Mr [E.J.] Cutler his assistant, lately from Cambridge, who is acquainted [with] Sanborn, Mr Spring—and others. This Sat. eve-dance is a regular thing, & it is thought something strange if you dont attend. They take it for granted that you want society!

  Sunday forenoon, I attended a sort of Quaker meeting at the same place—(The Quaker aspect & spirit prevails here—Mrs Spring says “—does thee not?”) where it was expected that the spirit would move me I having been previously spoken to about it) & it, or something else, did, an inch or so. I said just enough to set them a little by the ears & make it lively. I had excused myself by saying that I could not adapt myself to a particular audience, for all the speaking & lecturing here has reference to the children, who are far the greater part of the audience, & they are not so bright as N.E. children Imagine them sitting close to the wall all around a hall—with old Quaker looking men & women here & there. There sat Mrs. Weld (Grimke) & her sister, two elderly grayheaded ladies, the former in extreme Bloomer costume, which was what you may call remarkable Mr. [Arnold] Buffin with broad face & a great white beard, looking like a pier head made of the cork tree with the bark on, as if he could buffet a considerable wave;—James G Birney, formerly candidate for the Presidency, with another particularly white head & beard—Edward Palmer, the anti-money man (for whom communities were made) with [word] ample beard some-what grayish. Some of them I suspect are very worth people. Of course you are wondering to what extent all these make one family—to what extent 20. Mrs [Caroline] Kirkland, and this [a name] only to me, I saw—She has just bought a lot here. They all know more about your neighbors & acquaintances than you suspected.

  On sunday evening, I read the moose—story to the children to their satisfaction. Ever since I have been constantly engaged in surveying Eagleswood—though woods ravines marshes & along the shore, dodging the tide—though cat briar mud & beggar ticks—having no time to look up or to think where I am (it takes 10 or 15 minute before each meal to pick the beggar ticks out of my clothes—burrs & the rest are left—rents mended at the first convenient opportunity) ( shall be engaged perhaps as much longer. Mr Spring wants me to help him about setting out an orchard & vineyard—Mr Birney asks me to survey a small piece for him, & Mr. Alcott who has just come down here for the 3d Sunday—says that Greeley (I left my name for him) invites him & me to go to his home with him next Sunday morning & spend the Sunday.

  It seems a twelve-month since I was not here—but I hope to get settled deep into my den again ere long. The hardest thing to find here is solitude & Concord. I am at Mr Spring’s house- Both he & she & their family are quite agreeable.

  I want you to write to me immediately—(just left off to talk French with the servant man—) & let Father & Mother put in a word-to them & to aunts—

  Love from
  Henry

  I have been here much longer than I expected, but have deferred answering you, because I could not foresee when I shall return. I do not know yet within three or four days. This uncertainty makes it impossible for me to appoint a day to meet you, until it shall be too late to bear from you again. I think, therefore, that I must go straight home. I feel some objection to reading that “What shall it profit” lecture again in Worcester; but if you are quite sure that it will be worth the while (it is a grave consideration), I will even make an independent journey from Concord for that purpose. I have read three of my old lectures (that included) to the Eagleswood people, and, unexpectedly, with rare success-i. e., I was aware that what I was saying was silently taken in by their ears.

  You must excuse me if I write mainly a business letter now, for I am sold for the time,-am merely Thoreau the surveyor here,-and solitude is scarcely obtainable in these parts . . .

  I have been here much longer than I expected, but have deferred answering you, because I could not foresee when I shall return. I do not know yet within three or four days. This uncertainty makes it impossible for me to appoint a day to meet you, until it shall be too late to hear from you again. I think, therefore, that I must go straight home. I feel some objection to reading that “What shall it profit” lecture again in Worcester; but if you are quite sure that it will be worth the while (it is a grave consideration), I will even make an independent journey from Concord for that purpose. I have read three of my old lectures (that included) to the Eagleswood people, and, unexpectedly, with rare success—i.e., I was aware that what I was saying was silently taken in by their ears.

  You must excuse me if I write mainly a business letter now, for I am sold for the time, am merely Thoreau the surveyor here,—and solitude is scarcely obtainable in these parts.

  Alcott has been here three times, and, Saturday before last, I went with him and Greeley, by invitation of the last, to G.’s farm, thirty-six miles north of New York. The next day A. and I heard Beecher preach; and what was more, we visited Whitman the next morning (A. had already seen him), and were much interested and provoked. He is apparently the greatest democrat the world has seen. Kings and aristocracy go by the board at once, as they have long deserved to. A remarkably strong though coarse nature, of a sweet disposition, and much prized by his friends. Though peculiar and rough in his exterior, his skin (all over (?)) red, he is essentially a gentleman. I am still somewhat in quandary about him, feel that he is essentially strange to me, at any rate; but I am surprised by the sight of him. He is very broad, but, as I have said, not fine. He said that I misapprehended him. I am not quite sure that I do. He told us that he loved to ride up and down broadway all day on an omnibus, sitting beside the driver, listening to the roar of the carts, and sometimes gesticulating and declaiming Homer at the top of his voice. He has long been an editor and writer for the newspaper,—was editor of the New Orleans Cresent” once; but now has no employment but to read and write in the forenoon, and walk in the afternoon, like all the rest of the scribbling gentry.

  I shall probably be in Concord next week; so you can direct to me there.

  As I stood looking clown the hill over Emerson’s young wood-lot there, perhaps at 3 .30 P.M., the sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs of bare young chestnuts and birches, very dense and ascendant with a marked parallelism, they reminded me of the lines of gossamer at this season . . .

  Several inches of snow, but a rather soft and mild air still. Now see the empty chalices of the blue-curls and the rich brown-fruited pinweed above the crust. (The very cat was full of spirits this morning, rushing about and frisking on the snow-crust, which bore her alone: When I came home from New Jersey the other day, was struck with the sudden growth and stateliness of our cat Min,—his cheeks puffed out like a regular grimalkin. I suspect it is a new coat of fur against the winter chiefly. The cat is a third bigger than a month ago, like a patriarch wrapped in furs; and a mouse a day, I hear, is nothing to him now.) This as I go through the Depot Field, where the stub ends of corn-stalks rise above the snow . . .

  Sophia, describing the first slight whitening of snow a few weeks ago, said that when she awoke she noticed a certain bluish-white reflection on the wall and, looking out, saw the ground whitened with snow . . .

  With this little snow of the 29th ult. there is pretty good sledding, for it lies solid.

  I see the old pale-faced farmer out again on his sled now for the five-thousandth time . . .

  Slate-colored snowbirds flit before me in the path, feeding on the seeds on the snow, the countless little brown seeds that begin to be scattered over the snow, so much the more obvious to bird and beast. A hundred kinds of indigenous grain are harvested now, broadcast upon the surface of the snow. Thus at a critical season these seeds are shaken down on to a clean white napkin, unmixed with dirt and rubbish, and off this the little pensioners pick them . . .

  Then walked up the railroad. The clear strawcolored grass and some weeds contrasting with the snow it rises above. Saw little in this walk . . .

  As for the sensuality in Whitman‘s “Leaves of Grass,” I do not so much wish that it was not written, as that men and women were so pure that they could read it without harm.

  How I love the simple, reserved countrymen, my neighbors, who mind their own business and let me alone, who never waylaid nor shot at me, to my knowledge, when I crossed their fields, though each one has a gun in his house! For nearly twoscore years I have known, at a distance, these long-suffering men, whom I never spoke to, who never spoke to me, and now feel a certain tenderness for them, as if this long probation were but the prelude to an eternal friendship . . .

  7.30 A.M.—Take a run down the riverside.

  Scare up a few sparrows, which take shelter in Keyes’s arbor-vitæ row. The snow has now settled, owing to the rain, and presents no longer a level surface . . .

  2 P.M.—By Clamshell and back over Hubbard’s Bridge . . .

  Sophia says that just before I came home Min caught a mouse and was playing with it in the yard. It had got away from her once or twice, and she had caught it again; and now it was stealing off again, as she lay complacently watching it with her paws tucked under her, when her friend Riordan’s stout but solitary cock stepped up inquisitively, looked down at it with one eye, turning his head, then picked it up by the tail . . .

  My first botany, as I remember, was Bigelow’s “Plants of Boston and Vicinity,” which I began to use about twenty years ago, looking chiefly for the popular names and the short references to the localities of plants . . . I was never in the least interested in plants in the house. But from year to year we look at Nature with new eyes. About half a dozen years ago I found myself again attending to plants with more method, looking out the name of each one and remembering it. I began to bring them home in my hat, a straw one with a scaffold listing to it,—which I called my botanybox . . .

  P.M.—Walked over the Hill.

  The Indians have at length got a regular load of wood. It is odd to see a pile of good oak wood beside their thin cotton tents in the snow . . .

  It is a perfectly cloudless and simple winter sky. A white moon, half full, in the pale or dull blue heaven and a whiteness like the reflection of the snow, extending up from the horizon all around a quarter the way up to the zenith. I can imagine that I see it shooting up like an aurora. This at 4 P.M. About the sun it is only whiter than elsewhere, or there is only the faintest possible tinge of yellow there . . .

  My themes shall not be far-fetched. I will tell of homely every-day phenomena and adventures. Friends! Society! It seems to the that I have an abundance of it, there is so much that I rejoice and sympathize with, and men, too, that I never speak to but only know and think of. What you call bareness and poverty is to me simplicity. God could not be unkind to me if he should try . . .

  Skating is fairly begun. The river is generally frozen over, though it will bear quite across in very few places. Much of the ice in the middle is dark and thin, having been formed last night, and when you stamp you sec the water trembling in spots here and there . . .

  What is wanting above is merely an engraving of Eagleswood, which I have used. I trust that you got a note from me at Eagleswood about a fortnight ago. I passed thru’ Worcester on the morning of the 25th of November, and spent several hours (from 3.30 to 6.20) in the travellers’ room at the Depot, as in a dream, it now seems. As the first Harlem train unexpectedly connected with the first from Fitchburg, I did not spend the forenoon with you, as I had anticipated, on account of baggage &c—If it had been a seasonable hour I should have seen you, i.e. if you had not been gone to a horse-race. But think of snaking a call at half past three in the morning! (Would it not have implied a 3 o clock in the morning courage in both you & me?) As it were ignoring the fact that mankind are really not at home—are not out, but so deeply in that they cannot be seen—nearly half their hours at this season of the year. I walked up & down the Main Street at half past 5 in the dark, and paused long in front of [Theo] Brown’s store trying to distinguish its features; considering whether I might safely leave his “Putnam” in the door handle, but concluded not to risk it. Meanwhile a watchman (?) seemed to be watching me, & I moved off. Took another turn around there, a little later, and had the very earliest offer to the Transcript from an urchin behind, whom I actually could not see, it was so dark. So I withdrew, wondering if you & B would know that I had been there. You little dream who is occupying Worcester when you are all asleep. Several things occurred there that night, which I will venture to say were not put into the Transcript. A cat caught a mouse at the depot, & gave it to her kitten to play with. So the world famous tragedy does on by night as well as by day, & nature is emphatically wrong. Also I saw a young Irishman kneel before his mother, as if in prayer, while she wiped a cinder out of his eye with her tongue; and I found that it was never too late (or early?) to learn something.—These things transpired whole you and B. were, to all practical purposes, no where, & good for nothing,—not even for society,—not for horse races, nor the taking back of Putman’s Magazine. It is true I might have recalled you to life, but it would have been a cruel act, consider the kind of life you would have come back to.

  However, I would fain write to you now by broad daylight, and report to you some of my life, such as it is, and recall you to your life which is not always lived by you, even by day light.

  Blake! Blake! Are you awake? Are you aware what an ever-glorious morning this is? What long expected never to be repeated opportunity is now offered to get life & knowledge?

  For my part, I am trying to wake up, to wring slumber out of my pores; For, generally, I take events as unconcernedly as a fence post,—absorb wet & cold like it, and am pleasantly ticked with lichens slowly spreading over me. Could I not be content then to be a cedar post, which lasts 25 years? Would I not rather be that than the farmer that set it? or he that preaches to that farmer?—& go to the heaven of posts at last? I think I should like that as well as any would like it. But I should not care if I sprouted into a living tree, put forth leaves & flowers, & have fruit.

  I am grateful for what I am & have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite—only a sense of existance. Well anything for variety. I am ready to try this for the next 1000 years, & exhaust it. How sweet to think of! My extremities well charred, and my intellectual part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it—for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.

  What are all these years made for? And now another winter comes, so much like the last? Cant we satisfy the beggars once and for all? Have you got in your wood for this winter? What else have you got in? Of what use a great fire on the hearth & a confounded little fire in the heart? Are you prepared to make a decisive campaign—to pay for your costly tuition—to pay for the suns of past summers—for happiness & unhappiness lavished upon you?

  Does not Time go by swifter than the swiftest quine trotter or racker?

  Stir up Brown—Remind him of his duties, which outrun the date & span of Worcester’s years past & to come. Tell him to be sure that he is on the Main Street, however, narrow it may be—& to have a lit sign, visible by night as well as by day.

  Are they not patient waiter—They who wait for us? They shall not be losers.

  It takes my feet a few moments to get used to the skates . I see the track of one skater who has preceded me this morning. This is the first skating. I keep mostly to the smooth ice about a rod wide next the shore commonly . . . (Journal, 9:165-9)

  On the whole it sounds to me very brave & American after whatever deductions. I do not believe that all the sermons so called that have been preached in this land put together are equal to it for preaching—

  We ought to rejoice greatly in him. He occasionally suggests something a little more than human. You cant confound him with the other inhabitants of Brooklyn or New York. How they must shudder when they read him! He is awfully good.

  To be sure I sometimes feel a little imposed on. By his heartiness & broad generalities he puts me into a liberal frame of mind prepared to see wonders as it were sets me upon a hill or in the midst of the plain—stirs me well up, and then—throws in a thousand of brick. Though rude & sometimes ineffectual, it is a great primitive poem,—an alarum or trumpet—not ringing through the American camp. Wonderfully like the Orientals, too, considering that when I asked him if he had read them, he answered, “No: tell me about them.”

  I did not get fair in conversation with him,—two more being present,—and among the few things which I chanced to say, I remember that one was, in answer to him which I chanced to say, I remember that one was, in answer to him as representing America, that I did not think much of America or of politics, and so on, which may have been somewhat of a damper to him.

  Since I have seen him, I find that I am not disturbed by any brag or egoism in his book. He may turn out the least of a braggart of all, having a better right to be confident.

  He is a great fellow.

  There is scarcely a particle of ice in Walden yet, and that close to the edge, apparently, on the west and northwest sides. Yet Fair Haven was so solidly frozen on the 6th that there was fishing on it, and yesterday I met Goodwin bringing a fine lot of pickerel from Flint’s, which was frozen at least four itches thick. This is, no doubt, owing solely to the greater depth of Walden . . .

  From a little east of Wyman’s I look over the pond westward. The sun is near setting, away beyond Fair Haven. A bewitching stillness reigns through all the woodland and over the snow-clad landscape. Indeed, the winter day in the woods or fields has commonly the stillness of twilight. The pond is perfectly smooth and full of light . . .

  When I get as far as my bean-field, the reflected white in the winter horizon of this perfectly cloudless sky is being condensed at the horizon’s edge, and its hue deepening into a dun golden, against which the tops of the trees—pines and elms—are seen with beautiful distinctness, and a slight blush begins to suffuse the eastern horizon, and so the picture of the day is done and set in a gilded frame.

  Such is a winter eve. Now for a merry fire, some old poet’s pages, or else serene philosophy, or even a healthy book of travels, to last far into the night . . .

  It is remarkable how suggestive the slightest drawing, as a memento of things seen. For a few years past I have been accustomed to stake a rude sketch in my journal of plants, ice, and various natural phenomena, and though the fullest accompanying description may fail to recall my experience, these rude outline drawings do not fail to carry me back to that time and scene. It is as if I saw the same thing again, and I may again attempt to describe it in words if I choose . . .

  It has been a warm, clear, glorious winter day, the air full of that peculiar vapor. How short the afternoons! I hardly get out a couple of miles before the sun is setting. The nights are light on account of the snow, and, there being a moon, there is no distinct interval between the day and night. I see the sun set from the side of Nawshawtuct, and make haste to the post-office with the red sky over my shoulder. When the mail is distributed and I come forth into the street on my return, the apparently full moon has fairly commenced her reign, and I go home by her light . . .

  I but recently returned from New Jersey after an absence of a little, over a month, and found your letter awaiting me. I am glad to hear that you have walked with [Charles] Newcomb, though I fear that you will not have many more opportunities to do so. I have no doubt that in his company you would ere long find yourself, if not on those White Mountains you speak of, yet on some equally high, though not laid down in the geographies.

It is refreshing to hear of your earnest purposes with respect to your culture, & I can send you Do better wish, than that they may not be thwarted by the cares and temptations of life. Depend on it, now is the accepted time, & probably you will never find yourself better disposed or freer to attend to your culture than at this moment. When They who inspire us with the idea are ready, shall not we be ready also?

  I do not now remember anything which Confucious has said directly respecting man’s “origin, purpose, and destiny.” He was more practical than that. He is full of wisdom applied to human relations—to the private life—the Family Government &c. It is remarkable that according to his own account of the sum & substance of his teaching is, as you know, to Do as you would be done by.

  He also said—(I translate from the French) [“] Conduct yourself suitably towards the persons of your family, then you will be able to instruct and to direct a nation of men.”

  “To nourish one sens with a little rice, to drink water, to have only his bended arom to support his head, is a state which has also its satisfaction. To be rich and honored by inquitious means, is for me as the floating cloud which passes.”

  As soon as a child is born he must respect its faculties; the knowledge which will come to it by & by does not resemble at all its present state. If it arrives at the age of 40 or 50 years, without having learned anything, it is no more worthy of any respect.”

  This last, I think, will speak to your condition.

  But at this rate I might fill many letters.

  Our acquaintance with the Ancient Hindoos is not at all personal. The few names that can be relied on are very shadowy. It is however tangible works that we know. The best I think of are the Bhagvat-Geeta (an episode in an ancient heroic poem called the Mahabarata)—the Vedas—the Vishnu Purana—The Institutes of Menu—&c

  I cannot say that Swedenbord has been directly & practically valuable to me, for I have not been a reader of him, expect to a slight extent—but I have the highest regard for him and trust that I shall read all his works in some world or other. He had a wonderful knowledge of our interior & spiritual life—though his illuminations are occasionally blurred by trivialities. He comes nearer to answering, or attempting to answer, literally, your questions concerning man’s origin, purpose & destiny than any of the worthies I have referred to, But I think that this is not altogether a recommendation; since such an answer to these questions cannot be discovered, any more than perpetual motion, for which no reward is now offered. The noblest man it is, methink, that knows, & by his life suggests, the most about these things. Crack away at these nuts however as long as you can—the very exercise will ennoble you & you may get something better than the answer you expect—

  Yrs
  Henry D. Thoreau

  I see some of those great andromeda puffs still hanging (in the twigs behind Assabet Spring, black and shrivelled bags. The river is generally open again. The snow is mostly gone. In many places it is washed away down to the channels made by the mice, branching galleries . . .

  3 P.M.—To Walden.

  The high northwest wind of this morning, with what of cold we have, has made some of those peculiar raketoothed icicles on the dead twigs, etc., about the edge of the pond at the east end. To produce this phenomenon is required only open water, a high wind, and sufficiently cold weather to freeze the spray . . .

  I wish that I was an accomplished young American lady, for then I could write the most elegant and “recherche” letters without any trouble or thought. But now, being an Englishman, even my pleasures are fraught with toil and pain. Why, I have written several letters to you, but always, on reading them over to myself, I was obliged to burn them, because I felt they were bad letters, and insufficient for a passage of the ocean. To begin, then, a new and a good letter, I must acquaint you that I received your former communication, which gave me the sincerest pleasure, since it informed me that the books which I sent came to hand, and were approved of. I had indeed studied your character closely, and knew what you would like. Besides, I had, even from our first acquaintance, a previous memory of you, like the vision of a landscape a man has seen, he cannot tell where . . .

  Farewell, dear Thoreau. Give my best love to your father, mother, and sister, and to old Channing; and convey my respect to Mr. Emerson and Mr. Alcott; and when next you go to Boston, call at my old lodgings, and give my regards to them there. If you write to Morton, don’t forget me there. He is a clever lad, is n’t lie? Also my respect to Mr. Theodore Parker, whose sermons are rather to be heard than read.

Ever yours, and not in haste,
Thos. Cholmondeley

  At Clamshell, to my surprise, scare up either a woodcock or a snipe. I think the former, for I plainly saw considerable red on the breast, also a light stripe along the neck. It was feeding alone . . .

  A very cold day. Thermometer at 8 A.M. -8° (and I hear of others very much lower at an earlier hour), -2° at 11.45.

  I find the first beyond Littleton, snow enough to whiten the ground and it deepens all the way to Amherst. The steam of the engine hugs the earth very close. Is it because it [is] a very clear, cold day? . . .

  At my lecture, the audience attended to me closely, and I was satisfied; that is all I ask or expect generally. Not one spoke to me afterward, nor needed they. I have no doubt that they liked it, in the main, though few of them would have dared say so, provided they were conscious of it. Generally, if I can only get the ears of an audience, I do not care whether they say they like my lecture or not. I think I know as well as they can tell. At any rate, it is none of my business, and it would be impertinent for me to inquire. The stupidity of most of these country towns, not to include is in its innocence infantile. Lectured in (vestry) of the orthodox church . . .

  Got home at 1.30 P.M.

  P. M.—To Walden.

Walden froze completely over last night. This is very sudden, for on the evening of the, 15th there was not a particle of ice in it . In just three days, then, it has been completely frozen over, and the ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick, a transparent green ice, through which I see the bottom where it is seven or eight feet deep. I detect its thickness by looking at the cracks, which are already very numerous . . .

  P. M.—To Walden.

  The pond is open again in the middle, owing to the rain of yesterday. I go across to the cliffs by way of the Andromeda Ponds . . .

  So much time had elapsed since I wrote you that I feared I should get no reply; I was therefore surprised & delighted as well as encouraged when your letter of 12th reached me. I do not want to encroach on your time but I shall take the liberty of writing to you occasionally, in hopes of drawing out a response, even though it be a criticism, for this would be valuable to me, as I do not want to slumber in false security. Like those knights who loudly sang hymns while they were passing the enchanted isle, I will remember that I am going to tell you some of my outward, though more of my inward life. This of itself will be a strong incentive to virtue.

  The arrival of your letters at this time makes me think of Napoleon’s practice of leaving letters unopened for weeks till in many cases there was no necessity for a reply. Though I wanted your views, I kept on in my path and already more than dimly apprehended that no man can penetrate the secrets of creation & futurity—Still I like to dwell on those themes, particularly the latter, as I have never found a present worthy to have permanent dominion over me. I like to send my thoughts forward to meet my destiny more than half way and prepare myself to meet with alacrity any decree of Eternal Fate. I am obliged for the excellent quotation from Confucius and the idea given of his teachings. I trust that if on this planet I attain the age of 40 years, I shall by the wisdom that may be mine merit the respect of those whose standard is infinitely high and whose motto is excelsior. “To be rich & honored by iniquitous means if for me as the floating cloud which passes” speaks to me with power. The last No of the Westminster magazine contains an article on Buddhism which I presume you may have seen. It does not mention him (Confucius) though as you told me he was above all sects

  On my way back to Providence after my unforgotten Concord visit, I pondered deeply on what you had told me “to follow the faintest aspiration &c.” I perhaps almost resolved to give up my Western plans of trade. Soon after, I walked with Newcomb and I of course fully agree with you in your high estimate of him and when you speak of my few opportunities for repeating these walks, I hope you only refer to my distance—not to his health. He asked me if I knew any active outdoor sphere he was qualified to fill and from what he said I doubt not he would come here did such a place present itself He could much better than I afford to let books alone, as he has studied much more and has a more original and powerful mind, at least for metaphysical thoughts. It would give me deep satisfaction to have him here if I am to remain here. Just before your letter reached me I had been thinking of a future White Mountain trip with him and was not putting it far off. It is a good plan for traders to go to higher spheres occasionally.

  I will give you some of my reasons for coming here though I withhold such as these from “buisness men” or “worldlings” technically so called. (I have told these to no other person) I think I can truly say that I am content with my outward circumstances but I hope at some future day to sustain a refined intercourse with some good & gentle being while I can call wife, or better still companion and I know that all persons would not be satisfied to live on what would content me. At that time I should want to carry out my ideas of life as well as I can now but I should want to give my companion the facilities to carry out her views. Again, unless I deceive myself, I wish to be liberal beyond the sphere of my own family. The perfect transparency of souls that I would have between us leads me to say that I also had some thought of reputation. While in business formerly I travelled courses that I shall never tread again, and this, united with the success that generally accompanies able industry but which at the same time whets the edge of envy & malice & also my habit of refusing to justify my acts raised against me in some quarters the voice of calumny, though it is true that it is most often applied to those concerns where I feel that censure may be due. Not from any inconvenience of this kind however did I leave Providence, for such would have been the very thing to make me resin there, as I am ready and like to face difficulties & dangers, My former partner is my personal friend, but as partners I feel that we were entirely united to each other and I dissolved that connection against his will and that of his present associate Had it not been for my personal relations to him I should have recommended there, as my friends wished me to do, but such a course would have been brought me into direct competition with him and would inevitably have taken away much of his profit and that I will not do particularly as here is a field large enough for all where I am specially invited to take a prominent part in a large house. Do not imagine from what I said that my former cause was a type of all that is disgraceful in man. I was intensely busy and acted thoughtlessly & unintelligently and my acts were such as are all the time adroitly done by decent men rather with eclat than with damage to their reputation. That other then do the same however is no excuse for me and having during the quiet of my past summer drunk some of what eternal truth I see & feel my errors and so help me God shall not again fall into them. My very retirement from trade was in the eyes of my detracting neighbors not the least of my short-comings though I know it to be one of the most fortunate things I ever did. As I place character however infinitely before reputation, I am not necessarily pledged to trade again. The fact that I am almost invariably popular and flattered & courted in Providence circles shows me that I need a higher monitor than the voice of the multitude who must necessarily know so little of the motives that actuates me. So little do detracting remarks puzzle my temper that were in it my way I should gladly assist any of the quintette club that try to injure me though of course with the littleness of soul which they display I cannot have particular love for them. I trust that if I have future antagonists they may be greater than these little men who have never the manliness to face me. I expect to find in Montaigne somewhere the story of Alexander the great who when urged to punish a slanderer, refused, saying he would live so purely that all men would see the fellow spoke falsely

  I thus give you the leading motives that influenced me to come here. Since I arrived I heard that one of my leading prospective partners is dissatisfied with the determination I have shown to attend to higher things than trade. I am perfectly aware that I have lost caste with mere traders. The gentleman referred to is now here and our grand council will soon begin. Waden will not change color during its continuance nor the Concord stop flowing. I am here at the wish of others as well as the result of my own reasoning but I will not become a common business drudge for all the wealth of Chicago. Instead of a trader I am going to be a man. I believe a divine life can be nourished even in this Western Shrine of Mammon. Should our Council not end in a partnership, I have no settled plans for the future. I should in all probability soon favor myself with a visit to Concord. Were I more gifted I would now leave trade forever and be your Plato. I freely admit to you that this kind of life is not what pleases me. Do not interpret my remarks into this grumbling of disappointment, for I am what the world call singularly favored by fortune. I await the result of our Council calmly though my wishes would lead me to the haunts of Nature. If you think my ideas erroneous write a severe criticism for me. I would like to have you tell me just what you think

  I have a good deal of leisure now. I have read Montaigne’s Essays to some extent & with unfailing interest. The ancient anecdotes make the valuable part of the book to me though they are so well incorporated with his generally sensibly & pithy remarks that no common man can approach him. I have read some of Emerson, a man to whom I am much indebted. I saw his notice of Mr [Samuel] Hoar. You mentioned to me Miss [Elizabeth] Hoar when I was there. In one respect of infinite moment I think Emerson has put in for me the key-stone of an arch which has cost me much labor & travail to build. He will be here next moth to lecture and I shall call on him, as he asked me to do. Most men here are intensely devoted to trade but I have found one with whom I have unreserved & delightful intercourse—Rec Rush R Shippen the Unitarian minister. Mr Emerson will remember him. He is no ways priestly but has that opens guileless countenance that wins the fullest confidence. He is of course intelligent & well-informed. He generously places his library at my disposal. I gladly accepted an invitation to take tea with him tomorrow as there is entire absence of ceremony. I am glad to find such a man with whom I can talk of the Infinite & Eternal. In addition to his library I have access to a public one of about 2000 volumes & I think I an largely extend my facilities Very few books I read but I like to look at the tables of contents the engravings & portraits of others. The N.Y. Tribune often has things of more than transient interest. Some of their political articles are most powerful. Their notice of “Walden” introduced it to me.

  I take walks of considerable length almost daily and think I am in that respect the most enthusiastic of the plus 100,000 people here. I generally go along the Lake shore. I have to go 3 miles to reach woods any way. The Lake is the great feature of the place. Everything being level I have nothing on the land to meet my New England bred eyes and have learned (from Newcomb) to watch the clouds and I fit it not the least valuable of his suggestion. One cloudy morning I saw in the East over the Lake as the moon rose what resembled a vast bird with outstretched wings holding her course towards the East. I recorded in my journal that I might consider it emblematic of my own desire of progress towards the source of [word torn out] inward illumination. One morning I saw in the East a perpendicular pillar of cloud that would have answered well enough to guide any Israelites that were going in that direction—another morning I saw on the hitherto level surface of the frozen lake ice-hills of considerable size. I was glad to see hills anywhere.

  The Lake water is carried over the city for drinking &c. It is almost always discolored by storms that which come moderately clear I fancy I can render white by beating with my hands and if it allowed to stand, a sediment of lime is deposited. It makes some trouble with strangers’ digestive organs and I am not entirely accustomed to it. If you have at your tongue’s end a description of your own way to make a filter, I should probably put it in practice & should appreciate your kindness. I have been wondering how you know the different species of plants as described by science. Is the description so accurate that you know them at sight?

  Are millers that come round or summer lamps Chrysalides and into what are they next transformed?

  I have written much more than I expected to do. I hope I may ere long have a reply from you. Please remember me to Mr Emerson if you meet him. I am

  Yours sincerely
  B B Wiley

  P.M.—Surveying for Cyrus Jarvis.

  Snows more or less all day, making an inch or two.

  P.M.—To Walden and Baker Farm with Ricketson, it still snowing a little.

  Turned off from railroad and went through Wheeler, or Owl, Wood. The snow is very light, so that sleighs cut through it, and there is but little sleighing. It is verv handsome now on the trees by the main path in Wheeler Wood . . .

  It was very pleasant walking thus before the storm was over, in the soft, subdued light. We are also more domesticated in nature when our vision is confined to near and familiar objects . . .

  A strong wind from the northwest is gathering the snow into picturesque drifts behind the walls. As usual they resemble shells more than anything, sometimes prows of vessels, also the folds of a white napkin or counterpane dropped over a bonneted head. There are no such picturesque snow-drifts as are formed behind loose and open stone walls. Already yesterday it had drifted so much, i.e. so much ground was bare, that there were as many carts as sleighs in the streets . . .

  Walden completely frozen over again last night. Goodwin & Co. are fishing there to-day. Ice about four inches thick, occasionally sunk by the snow beneath the water . . .

  I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a companion only one clay in a week, unless it were one or two I could name, I find that the value of the week to one has been seriously affected. It dissipates my days, and often it takes me another week to get over it . . .

  P.M.—To Warren Miles’s mill.

  We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. We must make root, send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day. I am sensible that I am imbibing health when I open my mouth to the wind. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always . . .

  Parker, the Shaker that was, my assistant, says that the first year he came to live with W—, he worked on the farm, and that when he was digging potatoes on at jog (of about an acre) next to the site of the old Lee house, he found snakes’ eggs in many hills . . .

  I think it will not be worth the while for me to come to Worcester to lecture at all this year. It will be better to wait till I am—perhaps unfortunately—more in that line. My writing has not taken the shape of lectures, and therefore I should be obliged to read one of three or four old lectures, the best of which I have read to some of your auditors before. I carried that one which I call “Walking, or the Wild,” to Amherst, N.H., the evening of that cold Thursday, and I am to read another at Fitchburg, February 3. I am simply their hired man. This will probably be the extent of my lecturing hereabouts.

  I must depend on meeting Mr. [David A.] Wasson some other time.

  Perhaps it always costs me more than it comes to to lecture before a promiscuous audience. It is an irreparable injury done to my modesty even,—I become so indurated.

  O solitude! obscurity! meanness! I never triumph so as when I have the least success in my neighbor’s eyes. The lecturer gets fifty dollars a night; but what becomes of his winter? What consolation will it be hereafter to have fifty thousand dollars for living in the world? I should like not to exchange any of my life for money.

  These, you may think, are reasons for not lecturing, when you have no great opportunity. It is even so, perhaps. I could lecture on dry oak leaves; I could, but who could hear me? If I were to try it on any large audience, I fear it would be no gain to them, and a positive loss to me. I should have behaved rudely toward my rustling friends.

  I am surveying instead of lecturing, at present. Let me have a skimming from your “pan of unwrinkled cream.”

H. D. T.