Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

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Ellen Emerson writes to her father, Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Concord, Mass. Thoreau writes in his journal:

Chicago, Ill. Ralph Waldo Emerson writes to his wife:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

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On 11 February 1857, the Worcester Daily Spy published an item praising Thoreau’s recent Fitchburg on “The Wild” the week before and notes that it will be repeated on 13 February at Brinley Hall (“Walking or, The Wild“.

On 14 February, Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau delivers “Walking, or The Wild” at Brinley Hall, Worcester (“Walking or, The Wild“).

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Ticknor & Fields sends a check for $45.00 for sales in 1856 of 240 copies of Walden and 6 copies of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Isaiah Williams writes to Thoreau:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

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Thomas Cholmondeley writes to Thoreau:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Bellvale, NY. John Burt writes to Thoreau:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau replies to John Burt’s 23 February request for an autograph:

New York. Amos Bronson Alcott writes to his wife:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau meets John Brown and spends the afternoon talking with him (EJ, 9:81-82; Sanborn 1909, 1:101-5). [Brown was visiting Sanborn and took his noon meal at the Thoreau’s, He told Thoreau about his battle in Kansas the previous June. Emerson, returning from a lecture tour, was also introduced to Brown.]

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau charges out Morton’s New English Canaan … Abstract of New England from Harvard Library (Cameron 1964, 291).

Thoreau writes in his journal:

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Thoreau borrows Grey’s Memoria Technica; New Method of Artificial Memory from Harvard Library (Cameron 1964, 291).

Thoreau writes in his journal:

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Thoreau writes to Ricketson:

Concord, Mass. Thoreau writes in his journal:

New Bedford, Mass. Daniel Ricketson writes to Thoreau:

Thoreau surveys land that his father bought from Julius M. Smith (Moss, 11; MS of plan for the lot, NNPM).

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau plots a cemetery lot for Louis A. Surrette (Moss, 11).

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes to Daniel Ricketson:

Daniel Ricketson writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Amos Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Amos Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:

Ricketson also writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

From Woodlawn, New Bedford,  Amos Bronson Alcott writes to his wife:

Chicago, Illinois. Benjamin B. Wiley writes to Thoreau:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Daniel Ricketson also writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes about watching fishermen in New Bedford:

Daniel Ricketson also writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Amos Bronson Alcott writes to his wife:

Daniel Ricketson writes in his journal:

In Concord, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote to James Elliot Cabot about books possibly available for the Boston Athenaeum Library:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Daniel Ricketson writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Daniel Ricketson writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes to Harrison Gray Otis Blake:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

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Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Fair again. To Sudbury Meadow by boat. The river higher than before and rising. [William Ellery] C[hanning]. and I sail rapidly before a strong northerly wind,—no need of rowing upward, only of steering,—cutting off great bends by crossing the meadows. We have to roll our boat over the road at the stone bridge, Hubbard’s causeway, (to save the wind), and at Pole Brook (to save distance) . . .

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau also surveys a pasture for John Keyes (Moss, 9).

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes to Benajmin B. Wiley:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

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Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his journal on May 2 regarding his activities with Thoreau on May 1:

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Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau also writes to Daniel Ricketson:

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Thoreau writes in his journal:

New Bedford, Mass. Daniel Ricketson responds to Thoreau’s May 13th letter, stating that he will visit Concord to look at the farm Thoreau mentioned (CS 8, no. 2 [June 1973]: 4).

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau replies to Daniel Ricketson’s letter, telling him that the owner of the farm wants to make an early decision regarding selling or renting the property.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

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Daniel Ricketson writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Daniel Ricketson writes in his journal:

Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his journal on 25 May about the events of 24 May:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Daniel Ricketson writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

London, England. Thomas Cholmondeley writes to tell Thoreau that he received the books Thoreau sent him.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

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Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his journal:

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Thoreau writes, “P.M.— To Hill. The weather has been less reliable for a few weeks past than at any other season of the year.” (Journal, 9: 396)

Thoreau “drove this afternoon to Painted-Cup Meadow.” (Journal, 9: 399)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

I have several friends and acquaintances who are very good companions in the house or for an afternoon walk, but whom I cannot make up my mind to make a longer excursion with;  for I discover, all at once, that they are too gentlemanly in manners, dress, and all their habits. I see in my mind’s eye that they wear black coats, considerable starched linen, glossy hats and shoes, and it is out of the question… It would be too much of a circumstance to enter a strange town or house with such a companion. You could not travel incognito; you might get into the papers. You should travel as a common man. If such a one were to set out to make a walking-journey, he would betray himself at every step…Sometimes it is near shiftlessness or want of originality, — the clothes wear them; sometimes it is egotism, that cannot afford to be treated like a common man, — they wear the clothes. They wish to be at least fully appreciated by every stage-driver and schoolboy. They would like well enough to see a new place, perhaps, but then they would like to be regarded as important public personages. They would consider it a misfortune if their names were left of the published list of passengers because they came in the steerage, — and obscurity from which they might never emerge (Journal,9: 400-401).

Thoreau travels to “Bare Hill” (Journal, 9: 402) and is paid $3.00 by Ralph Waldo Emerson for working on his arbor (EAB).

Thoreau writes, ” To Gowing’s Swamp and Poplar Hill… At evening, travel up Assabet. There are many ephemerae [mayflies] in the air; but it is cool, and their great fight is not yet.” (Journal, 9:404-406)

In the morning Thoreau travels “To Lee’s Cliff by river.” (Journal,9:406)

Thoreau also writes to Harrison Gray Otis Blake to inform him that he is traveling to Cape Cod with William Ellery Channing the following week and that he will not be able to see Blake until he returns from his trip.

On 9 June Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his journal regarding the events of 6 June: “On Sunday on our walk along the river-bank, the air full of ephemerides [mayflies], which Henry celebrates as the manna of the fishes” (EJ, 9:100).

Thoreau travels “To river and Ponkawtasset with M[inot]. Pratt” (Journal, 9:409)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Mother was saying to-day that she bough no new clothes for John until he went away into a store, but made them of his father’s old clothes, which made me say that country boys could get enough cloth for their clothes by robbing the scarecrows. So little it need cost to live (Journal, 9:410).

In the evening Thoreau travels to “Violet Sorrel and Calla Swamp” (Journal, 9:410).

Thoreau writes, “At R[alph]. W[aldo]. E[merson].’s a viburnum, apparently nudum var. cassinoides (?) (pyrifolium Pursh), four or five days at least….P.M.— To White Cedar Swamp” (Journal, 9:412).

Thoreau writes, “Friday. 8:30 A.M.— Set out for CAPE COD… At Natural History Rooms…P.M.—At [Benjamin Marston] Watson’s, Plymouth” (Journal, 9:413-414)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

I see large mosses on the beach, crimson and lighter, already spread on the sand. See children going a-flagging and returning with large bundles, for the sake of the inmost tender blade. They go miles for them here (Journal, 9:415).

The Watson’s regale Thoreau with tales from Plymouth. Thoreau writes in his journal:

B[enjamin]. M[arston]. Watson tells me that he learns from pretty good authority that Webster once saw the sea-serpent. It seems it was first seen, in the bay between Manomet and Plymouth Beach, by a perfectly reliable witness (many years ago), who was accustomed to look out on the sea with his glass every morning the first thing as regularly as he ate his breakfast. One morning he saw this monster, with a head somewhat like a horse’s raise six feet above the water, and his body the size of a cask trailing behind. He was careering over the bay, chasing the mackerel, which ran ashore in their fright and were washed up and died in great numbers (Journal, 9:415-417).

Benjamin Marston Watson’s daughter, Ellen, wrote of Thoreau’s travel to Clark’s Island:

          When Thoreau was a young man, he visited Plymouth and Duxbury, and as enthusiastic pedestrians never tire of walking, he attempted to continue his stroll around Captain’s Hill to the north shore of Clark’s Island. When the tide is at its lowest ebb, this does not look so impossible! The sand flats even invite one to pace their shining surface! The channel looks narrow enough to be jumped across, and the three miles, which at high tide are a foaming sea, or a level blue sheet of water, looked but a short stretch to traverse.

Mr. Thoreau gauged everything by his beloved Concord River — there an island could be waded to; here was evidently an island — let us wade over there! But there are island and islands, channels and channels! And a rising tide on a flat in Plymouth Harbour is a swift river, full of danger.

Fortunately for our Concord guest, a small fishing boat was on hand just at the nick of time to save him for his task of writing many volumes for the future joy of all lovers of nature! The skipper landed him at the North End — the back door of the island, so to speak, and here was greeted by the “lord of the isle,” known to all his friends as “Uncle Ed,” Edward Winslow Watson, and a worthy representative of the Pilgrims who spent their first Sunday on this island.

Bluff and hearty was his welcome, and his first question was, “Where d’ye hail from?” Mr. Thoreau, fresh from the rescue, must have been breathless from climbing the cliffs and overcome with the mighty clap on his slender back that welcomed his answer. “From Concord, Sir, my name is Thoreau,” with “You don’t say so!” I’ve read somewhere in one of your books that you ‘lost a hound, a horse, and a dove.’ Now what do you mean by it?”

Mr. Thoreau looked up with shy, dark blue eyes, as someone said he looked like a wild woodchuck ready to run back to his hole, and he was very ruddy of complexion, with reddish brown hair and wore a greatcoat — he looked up then in shy astonishment at this breezy, broad-shouldered, white-haired sea farmer, reader of his books. “Well, Sir, I suppose we have all had our loses.” “That’s a pretty way to answer a fellow,” replied the unsatisfied student of a fellow-poet and lover of nature (TSB, no. 21)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Walked to James Spooner’s farm in a valley amid the woods; also to a swamp where white cedars once grew, not far behind the town, and now full of their buried trunks, though I hear no tradition of trees here… 2 P.M.—Ride to Manomet with [Benjamin Marston] Watson and wife (Journal, 9:420).

Thoreau writes, “I go along the sandy road through a region of small hills about half a mile from the sea, between slight gray fences… within half a mile I come to the house of an Indian, a gray one-storied cottage” (Journal, 9:425)

Thoreau walks extensively around the small villages and towns of Cape Cod on this day.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

This beach seems to be laid down too long on the map. The sea never runs very much here, since the shore is protected from the swell by Monomoy…I go along the settled road, where the houses are interspersed with woods, in an unaccountably desponding mood, but when I come out upon a bare and solitary heath am at once exhilarated. This is a common experience in my traveling. I plod along, thinking what a miserable world this is and what miserable fellows that we inhabit it, wondering what tempts men to live in it; but anon I leave the towns behind and am lost in some boundless heath, and life becomes gradually more tolerable, if not even glorious (Journal, 9:431-432).

Thoreau writes,

From Traveller’s home to Small’s in Truro. A muzzling and rainy day with thick driving fog; a drizzling rain, or “drisk,” as one called it. I struck across into the stage-road, a quarter of a mile east, and followed that a mile or more into an extensive bare plain tract called Silver Springs, in the southwest part of Wellfleet…I had shortly before picked up a Mother-Carey’s-chicken, which was just washed up dead on the beach. This I carried tied to the tip of my umbrella, dangling outside. When the inhabitants saw me come up from the beach this stormy day, with this emblem dangling from my umbrella, and saw me set it up in a corner carefully to be out of the way of cats, they may have taken me for a crazy man (Journal, 9:437-439)

Thoreau writes, “Fog still, but I walked about a mile north onward on the beach. The sea was still running considerably. It is surprising how rapidly the water soaks into the sand, and is even dried up between each undulation.” (Journal, 9:442)

Thoreau writes extensively on this day about people he meets and things he sees while traveling. He writes,

A man working on the lighthouse, who lives at the Pond Village, says that he raised potatoes and pumpkins there where a vessel once anchored. That was when they let the saltwater into the pond… Speaking of the effect of oil on the water, this man said that a boat’s crew came ashore safely from their vessel on the Bay Side of Truro some time ago in a storm, when the wind blowed square on to the land, only by heaving over oil (Journal, 9:444-445).

Thoreau begins to “set out for Provincetown” and details his travels along the way (Journal, 9:450-454).

On this day Thoreau

Took the steamer Acorn about 9A.M. for Boston, in the fog. The captain said that the mate to the whale taken on the 17th had been about the steamer all night. It was a thick fog with some rain, and we saw no land nor a single sail, till near Minot’s ledge. The monotony was only relieved by the numerous petrels, those black sea-swallows, incessantly skimming over the undulating [surface], a few inches above and parallel with it, and occasionally picking some food from it. Now they dashed past our stern and now across our bows, as if we were stationary, though going at the rate of a dozen knots an hour. It is remarkable what great solitudes there may be on this bay, notwithstanding all its commerce, and going from Boston to Provincetown you might be wrecked in clear weather, without being seen by any passing vessel (Journal, 9: 454-455)

Thoreau arrives back home in Concord.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Skinner, the harness-maker, tells me that he found a black duck’s nest Sunday before the last, i.e. the 14th, with perhaps a dozen eggs in it, a mere hollow on the top of a tussock, four or five feet within a clump of bushes forming an islet (in the dpring) in Hubbard’s great meadow. He scared up the duck when within a few feet… Looked for the black duck’s nest, but could find no trace of it (Journal, 9:456)

Thoreau travels to “Farmer’s Owl-Nest Swamp” (Journal, 9:456)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Most of the mountain-ash trees on the street are the European, as Prichard’s, Whiting’s, etc. The American ones (Pyrus Aucuparia is the European) in Cheney’s (from Winchendon) row have only opened within a day or two; that American one in Mrs. Hoar’s yard, apparently a week. The fruit of the European one is as large as small peas already.

P.M.— To Gowing’s Swamp (Journal, 9:460).

Thoreau writes,

Stand over a bream’s nest close to the shore at Hubbard’s rear wood. At length she ventures back to it, after many approaches. The apparent young bream, hardly half an inch long, are hovering over it all the while in a little school, never offering to swim away from over that yellow sport; such is their instinct. The old one at length returns and takes up her watch beneath, but I notice no recognition of each other (Journal, 9:460).

Thoeau travels “Up Assabet” (Journal, 9:461).

Thoreau goes “Up Assabet with [H.G.O.] Blake…P.M.— Walk to Lee’s Cliff” (Journal, 9:461)

Thoreau travels

To Ball’s Hill. Yesterday afternoon it was remarkably cool, with wind, it being easterly, and I anticipated a sea-turn. There was a little, a blue mistiness, ere long. The coolness continues, and this morning the sky is full of clouds, but they look to me like dog-day clouds and not rain-threatening. it does not rain (Journal, 9: 462-464).

Thoreau travels to “Gowing’s Swamp” (Journal, 9:465)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Minott says that old Joe Merriam used to tell of his shooting black ducks in the Dam meadows and what luck he had… [George] M[inott]. says that my pool in Gowing’s Swamp used to be call Duck Pond, though he does not know of ducks settling there. Perhaps they did anciently (Journal, 9: 467)

Thoreau travels “Up Assabet with Brown and Rogers” (Journal, 9:467)

Thoreau travels “To Lee’s Cliff by boat” (Journal, 9:468)

Thoreau writes,”Rubus triflorus well ripe. The beach plums have everywhere the crescent-shaped mark made by the curculio, — the few that remain on” (Journal, 9:471).

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Some of the inhabitants of the Cape think that the Cape is theirs and all occupied by them, but in my eyes it is no more theirs than it is the black-birds’, and in visiting the Cape there is hardly more need of my regarding or going through the villages than of going through the blackbirds’ nests. I am inclined to leave them both on one side, or perchance I just glance into them to see how they are built and what they contain. I know that they have spoken for the whole Cape, and lines are drawn on their maps accordingly, but I know these are imaginary, having perambulated many such, and they would have to get me or one of my craft to find them for them. For the most part, indeed with very trifling exceptions, there were no human beings there, only a few imaginary lines on a map (Journal, 9:471-472).

Thoreau travels “To Laurel Glen…[and later] To Gowing’s Swamp” (Journal, 9:472)

In the evening, Thoreau travels “Up Assabet with Sophia [Thoreau]” (Journal, 9:473).

Thoreau writes, “At evening I watch to see when my yellow wasps cease working. For time before sunset there are but few seen going and coming, but for some time after, or as long as I could easily see them ten feet off, I saw one go forth and return from time to time” (Journal, 9:475).

Thoreau travels “To Corner Spring and Cliffs…Thermometer at 93º + this afternoon. Am surprised to find the water of Corner Spring spoiled for the present, however much I clear it out, by the numbers of dead and dying frogs in it” (Journal, 9:476).

Thoreau writes in his journal:

It would be worth the while, methinks, to make a map of the town with all the good springs on it, indicating whether they were cool, perennial, copious, pleasantly located, etc. The farmer is wont to celebrate the virtues of some one on his own farm above all others. Some cool rills in the meadows should be remembered also, for some such in deep, cold, grassy meadows are as cold as springs. I have sometimes drank warm or foul water, not knowing such cold streams were at hand. By many a spring I know where to look for the dipper or glass which some mower has left. When a spring has been allowed to fill up, to be muddied by cattle, or, being exposed to the sun by cutting down the trees and bushes, to dry up, it affects me sadly, like an institution going to decay (Journal, 9:477)

Thoreau writes,

The price of friendship is the total surrender of yourself; no lesser kindness, no ordinary attentions and offerings will buy it. There is forever that purchase to be made with that wealth which you possess, yet only once in a long while are you advertised of such a commodity. I sometimes awake in the night and think of friendship and its possibilities, and a new life and revelation to me, which perhaps I had not experienced for many months. Such transient thoughts have been my nearest approach to realization of it, thoughts which I know of no one to communicate to. I suddenly direct myself in my thoughts, or find myself erected, infinite degrees above the possibility of ordinary endeavors, and see for what grand stakes the game of life may be played. Men, with their indiscriminate attentions and ceremonious good-will, offer you trivial baits, which do not temp; they are not serious enough for success or failure. I wake up in the night to these higher levels of life, as to a day that begins to dawn, as if my intervening life had been a long night. I catch an echo of the great strain of Friendship played somewhere, and feel compensated for months and years of commonplace. I rise into a diviner atmosphere, in which simply to exist and breath is a triumph, and my thoughts inevitably tend toward the grand and infinite… (Journal, 9:479-480)

Thoreau travels “Up Assabet with Loomis and Wilde. Set fire to the carburetted hydrogen from the sawdust shoal with matches, and heard it flash. it must be an interesting sight by night” (Journal, 9:481)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

When I enters the woods there, I was once pursued by a swarm of those wood flies which gyrate around your head and strike your hat like rain-drops. As usual, the kept up with me as I walked, and gyrated about me still, as if I were stationary, advancing at the same time and receiving reinforcements from time to time. Though I switched them smartly for a half a mile with some indigo-weed, they did not mind it in the least, nor a better switch of Salix tristis; but though I knocked many of them, they soon picked themselves up again and came on again…Apparently the same swarm followed me quite through the wood…They did not once sting, though the endeavored sometimes to alight on my face. What they got by their perseverance I do not know, — unless it were a switching (Journal, 9:481-482)

Thoreau travels “To Hemlocks…As I walked through the pasture side of the hill, saw a mouse or two glance before me faint galleries in the grass. They are seldom seen, for these small deer. like the larger, disappear suddenly, as if they exploded before your eyes” (Journal, 9:482)

In the evening Thoreau goes “To Lee’s Cliff” (Journal, 9:482)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

[George] Minott says that old Sam Nutting used to pinch off the first leaves of his melon wines as soon as they had three or four leaves, because they only attracted the bugs, and he was quite successful.

George Bradford says he finds in Salem striped maple and Sambucus pubens. He (and Tuckerman?) found the Utricularia resupinata once in Plymouth, and it seems to correspond with mine at Well Meadow (Journal, 9:483-484)

Thoreau writes “smooth sumach out since the 16th” (Journal, 9:484)

Thoreau is traveling to Boston and from there to the woods of Maine and visits a natural history library. he details his observations at the library in his journal. (Journal, 9:484-485)

Thoreau writes, ” At Bangor. — Thatcher’s moose-horns hanging in his barn spread two feet eight inches. There is one more prong on one side than the other. This is small” (Journal, 9:485).

Thoreau writes, “At a mile and a half north of Bangor, passed the spot, at Treat’s Falls, where the first settler and fur trader, one Treat, lived” (Journal, 9:486).

Thoreau writes in his journal:

There were two public houses near together, and they wanted to detain us at the first, even took off some of our baggage in spite of us; but, on our protesting, shouted “let them go! let them go!” as if it was any of their business. Whereupon we, thanking them for the privilege, rode on…(Journal, 9:489)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

As we paddled along, we saw many peetweets, also the common iris or blue flag, along the rocky shore, and here and afterwards great fields of epilobium or fire-weed, a mass of color…We looked down on the unpretending buildings and grounds of the Kinco House, as on a little flat map, oblong-square at out feet….

It suggested to me how unexplored still are the realms of nature, that what we know and have seen is always an insignificant portion. We may any day take a walk as strange as Dante’s imaginary one to L’Inferno or Paradiso (Journal, 9:489-490)

Thoreau writes in The Maine Woods,

At breakfast this Saturday morning, the Indian, apparently curious to know what would be expected of him the next day, whether we should go along or not, asked me how I spent Sunday when at home. I told him that I commonly sat in my chamber reading, etc., in the forenoon, and went to talk in the afternoon. At which he shook his head and said, “Er, that is ver bad.” “How do you spend it?” I asked. He said that he did no work, that he went to church at Oldtown when he was at home; in short, he did as he had been taught by the whites. This lead to a discussion on which I found myself as the minority. He stated that he was a protestant, and asked me if I was. I did not at first know what to say, but I thought that I could answer with truth that I was (The Maine Woods, 182)

Thoreau writes “As we sat on the bank, two canoes, containing men, women, and children, probably from Chesuncook, returned down the stream. We supposed that they had been a-berrying this Sunday morning…

This canoe implies a long antiquity in which its manufacture has been gradually perfected. It will ere long, perhaps, be ranked among the lost arts…” (Journal, 9:495)

Thoreau writes in his journal: “There were some yellow lilies (Nuphar), Scutellaria gatericulata, clematis (abundant), sweet-gales, “great-smilicina” (Did I mean S. racemosa?), and beaked hazel, the only hazel I saw in Maine” (Journal, 9:494)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

As I remember, Hodge mistakes when he says that it “is erroneously represented on the charts, for it extends in a north-northeasterly, south-southwesterly direction about twelve miles.” He appears to be thinking of the easterly part. On the north side there is quite a clearing, as we had been advised to ascend the bare hill there for the sake of the prospect…

Great trunks of trees stood dead and bare far out in the lake, making the impression of ruined piers of a city that had been, while behind, the timber lay criss-a-cross for half a dozen rods or more over the water….

We were glad to find on this carry some raspberries, and a few of the Vaccinium Canodense berries, which had begun to be ripe here (Journal, 9:494-495)

In The Maine Woods, Thoreau writes,

When we awoke it had done raining, though it was still cloudy. The fire was put out, and the Indian’s boots, which stood under the eaves of the tent, were half full of water. He was more improvident is such respects than either of us, and he had to thank us for keeping his powder dry… When I rounded the precipice, though the shore was bare of trees, without rocks, for a quarter mile at least, my companion [Joesph Polis] was not to be seen. It was as if he had sunk into the earth. This was the more unaccountable to me, because I knew that his feet were, since our swamp walk, very sore, and that he wished to keep up with the party; and besides this was very bad walking, climbing over or about the rocks. I hastened along, hallooing and searching for him, thinking he might be concealed behind a rock, yet doubting if he had not taken the other side of the precipice, but the Indian had got along still faster in his canoe, til he was arrested by the falls, about a quarter of a mile below. He then landed, and said that we could go no farther that night…. The darkness in the woods was by this so thick that it alone decided the question. We must camp where we were (The Maine Woods, 241-261)

Thoreau is reunited with Joseph Polis and his Native American guide kills a moose.

In his journal, Thoreau writes:

To a philosopher there is a sense no great and no small, and I do not often submit to the criticism which objects to comparing so-called great things with small. It is often a question which is most dignified by the comparison, and, beside, it is pleasant to be reminded that ancient worthies who dealt with affairs of state recognized small and familiar objects known to ourselves. We are surprised at the permanence of the relation (Journal, 9:496)

Thoreau and his traveling companions cook the moose they had killed the previous day.

Thoreau writes,

Jackson, being some miles below this, in the East Branch, the 6th of October, Twenty years ago, says, “There are several small gravelly islands covered with a profusion of deep purple beach plums, but since they had been frozen they were sound to be tasteless and insipid.” We did not see any of these. (Journal, 9:499)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

I saw at the end of this carry small Apocynum cannabinum on the rocks, also more of the spurred gentian….

Here were many Canada blueberries and, on the rocks, a new Allium or garlic, with purple flowers, and the Lobelia Kalmii, both on bare rocks just below the falls. On the main land were Norway pines and sandy soil, and Baeromyees roseus and Desmodium Canadense, — a new soil for this river (Journal, 9:500)

Thoreau writes “At a small river coming in from the south a few miles below Nicketow, the Penobscot is crooked and the place is called Payt-gum-kiss, or Petticoat, according to [Joseph] P[olis].” (Journal, 9:500)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Though for six weeks before leaving home we had been scarcely able to lie under more than a single sheet, we experienced no hot weather in Maine. The air was uniformly fresh, and bracing like that of a mountain to us, and, though the inhabitants like to make it out that it is as warm there as is in Massachusetts, we were not to be cheated. it is so much the more desirable at this season to breathe the raspberry air of Maine (Journal, 9:501)

Thoreau writes, “Rode to Pushaw Lake with Thatcher and Hoar.

Duck-meat, apparently a new kind, there. I. thinks there’s little if any red cedar about Bangor” (Journal, 9:501)

In the evening, Thoreau “Rode to Old Fort Hill at the bend of the Penobscot some three miles above Bangor, to look for the site of the Indian Town, — perhaps the ancient Negas? Found several arrowheads and two little dark and crumbling fragments of Indian earthenware, like black earth.” (Journal, 9:502)

Thoreau travels

To the high hill and ponds in Bucksport, some ten or more miles out.

A withdrawn, wooded, and somewhat mountainous country. There was a little trout-pond just over the highest hill, very muddy, surrounded by a broad belt of yellow lily pads. Over this we pushed with great difficulty on a rickety raft of small logs, using poles thirty feet long, which stuck in the mud (Journal, 9:502-503)

Thoreau writes, “Take cars for Portland, and at the evening the boat for Boston. A great deal of cat-tail flag by railroad between Penobscot and Kennebec. Fine large ponds about Belgrade” (Journal, 9:503)

Thoreau arrives

home at 8:30 A.M.

I find that B[enjamin]. M[arston]. Watson sent me from Plymouth, July 20th, six glow-worms, of which two remain, the rest having escaped. he says they were found by his family on the evenings of the 18th and 19th of July. “They are very scarce, these being the only ones we have found as yet. They were mostly found on the way from the barn to James’s cottage, under the wild cherry trees on the right hand, in the grass where it was very dry, and at considerable distance from each other. We have had no rain for a month” (Journal, 10:3)

Thoreau writes, “I see the blackbirds flying in flocks (which did not when I went away July 20th) and hear the shrilling of my alder locust” (Journal, 10:5)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

How meanly and miserably we live for the most part! We escape fate continually by the skin of our teeth, as the saying is. We are practically desperate. But as every mean, in respect to material wealth, aims to become independent or wealthy, so, in respect to our spirits and imagination, we should have some spare capital and superfluous vigor, have some margin and leeway in which to move. What kind of gift is life unless we have spirits to enjoy it and taste its true flavor? if, in respect to spirits, we are to be forever cramped and in debt? In our ordinary estate we have not, so to speak, quite enough air to breathe, and this poverty qualifies our piety; but we should have more than enough and breathe it carelessly. Poverty is the rule. We should first of all be full of vigor like a strong horse, and beside have the free and adventurous spirit of his driver; i.e., we should have a reserve of elasticity and strength that we may at anytime be able to put ourselves at the top of our speed and go beyond our ordinary limits, just as an invalid hires a horse. Have the gods sent us into this world, — to this muster, — to do chores, hold horses, and the like, and not given us any spending money? (Journal, 10:6-7)

Thoreau writes,

Red cohosh berries well ripe in front of Hunt’s, perhaps a week or more, — a small round, conical spike, two and a half inches long by one and three quarters, of about thirty cherry-red berries. The berries oblong, seven sixteenths of an inch by six sixteenths, with a seam on one side, on slender pedicels about five eighths of an inch long (Journal, 10:8)

Thoreau writes, “J. Farmer saw some days ago a black-headed gull, between a kingfisher and common gull in size, sailing lightly on Bateman’s Pond. it was very white beneath and bluish-white above. Corallorhiza multiflora and Desmodium rotundifolium, how long?” (Journal, 10:8)

Thoreau writes “Lycopodium lucidulum, how long?” (Journal, 10:8)

Thoreau observes “Myriophyllum ambiguum, apparently var. limosum, except that it is not nearly linear-leafed but pectinate, well out how long?” (Journal, 10:8)

Thoreau travels “To Hubbard’s Close” (Journal, 10:8)

Thoreau writes, “[William Ellery] Channing has brought me from Plymouth and [Benjamin Marston] Watson Drosera filiformis, just out of bloom, from Great South Pond, Solidago tenuifolia in bloom, Sabbatia chlorides, and Coreopsis rosea” (Journal, 10:9)

Thoreau travels to “Conantum.

Hear the mole crickets nowadays. Collinsonia (very little left) not out” (Journal, 10:9)

Thoreau writes extensively on this day and spends much of his time measuring and examining trees and nature and rides “to Austin Bacon’s, Natick…A[ustin]. Bacon showed me a drawing apparatus which he said he invented, very simply and convenient, also microscopes and many glasses for them which he made” (Journal, 10:10)

In the evening Thoreau travels “To Hill and meadow” (Journal, 10:13)

Thoreau travels “Up Assabet with Bradford and Hoar.

B[Radford]. tells me he found the Malaxis lilifolia on Kineo. Saw there a tame gull as large as a hen, brown dove-color. A lumberer called some timber ‘frowy.’ B. has found Cassia Chamaecrista by the side of the back road between Lincoln and Waltham, about two miles this side of Waltham (Journal, 10:14)

Thoreau travels “To Conantum” and discusses blackberries. (Journal, 10:14)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

I read the other day in the Tribune that a man apparently about seventy, and smart at that, went to the police in New York and asked for a lodging, having been left by the cars or steamboat when on his way to Connecticut. When they asked his age, native place, etc., he said his name was McDonald; he was born in Scotland in 1745, came to Plymouth, Mass., in 1760, was in some battles in the Revolution, in which he lost an eye; had a son eighty-odd years old, etc., but, seeing a reporter taking notes, he was silent. Since then I heard that an old man named McDonald, one hundred and twelve years old, had the day before passed through Concord and was walking to Lexington, and I said at once he must be a humbug…But I afterward remembered reading nearly a year ago of a man of his name and age in St. Louis, who said he had married a wife in Concord before the Revolution, and then began to think that his story might be all true. So it seems that a veteran of a hundred and twelve, after an absence of eighty-seven years, may come back to the town where he married his wife in order to hunt up his relatives, and not only have no success, but be pronounced a humbug!!! (Journal, 10:16-17)

Thoreau travels to “Owl-Nest Swamp” (Journal,10: 17)

In the evening Thoreau travels “To Conantum” (Journal, 10:18)

Thoreau travels “To Flint’s Pond” and writes about the flowers and plants he observes there. (Journal, 10:19-20)

Thoreau travels “To Fair Haven Pond by boat” (Journal, 10:22)

In the evening, Thoreau travels “To Yellow Birches” and writes about what he observes there. (Journal:10, 22)

Thoreau “Rode to Prospect Hill, Waltham.

The Polygonum Pennsylvanicum there. One Chimaphila maculate on the hill. Tufts of Woodsia Hvensis. Hedyotis longifolia still flowering commonly, near the top, in a thin wood. Gerardia tennifolia by the road in Lincoln, and a slate-colored snowbird back” (Journal, 10:24)

Thoreau travels

To Bateman’s Pond…

Penetrating through the thicket of that swamp, I see a great many very straight and slender upright shoots, the slenderest and tallest that I ever saw. They are the Prinos lavigatus. I cut one and brought it home in a ring around my neck,— it was flexible enough for that, — and found it to be seven and a half feet long and quite straight, eleven fortieths of an inch in diameter at the ground and three fortieths diameter at the other end, only the last foot or so of this year’s growth. It had a light-grayish bark, rough dotted. Generally they were five or six feet high and not bigger than a pipe-stem anywhere. This comes of its growing in dense dark swamps, where it makes a good part of the underwood (Journal, 10:24)

Thoreau writes “I now see those brown shaving-like stipules of the white pine leaves, which are falling, i.e. the stipules, and caught in cobwebs.

River falls suddenly, having been high all summer” (Journal, 10: 25)

Thoreau travels “To Assabet, west bank. turned off south at Derby’s Bridge and walked through a long field, half meadow half upland” (Journal, 10:25-26)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

returning to my boat, at the white maple, I see a small round flock of birds, perhaps blackbirds, dart through the air, as thick as a charge of shot,— now comparatively thin, with regular intervals of sky between them, like the holes in the strainer of a watering-pot, now dense and dark, as if closing up their ranks when they roll over one another and stoop downward (Journal, 10:28)

Thoreau writes,

To the Hill for white pine cones.

Very few trees have any. I can only manage small ones, fifteen or twenty feet high, climbing til I can reach the dangling green pickle-like fruit in my right hand, while I hold to the main stem with my left. The cones are now all flowing with pitch, and my hands are so covered with it that I cannot easily cast down the cones where I would, they stick to my hands so. I cannot touch the basket, but carry it on my arm; nor can I pick up my coat, which I have taken off, unless with my teeth, or else I kick it up and catch it on my arm. Thus I go from tree to tree, from time to time rubbing my hands in brooks and mud-holes, in the hope of finding something that will remove pitch like grease, but in vain. it is the stickiest work I ever did. I do not see how the squirrels that gnaw them off and then open them scale by scale keep their paws and whiskers clean. They must know of, or possess, some remedy for pitch that we know nothing of. How fast I could collect cones, If I could only contract with a family of squirrels to cut them off for me! (Journal, 10:28-29)

Thoreau writes,

To Cardinal Ditch and Peter’s.

Cardinal-flower, nearly done. beach plum, almost ripe. Squash vines on the Great Fields, generally killed and blackened by frost (though not so much in our garden), revealing the yellow fruit, perhaps prematurely. Standing by peter’s well, the white maples by the bank of the river a mile off now give a rosaceous tinge to the edge of the meadow. I see lambkill ready to bloom a second time. Saw it out on the 20th; how long? (Journal, 10:30)

Thoreau travels “Up railroad and to Clamshell” (Journal, 10:30)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

To Owl Swamp (Farmer’s)

In an open part of the swamp, started a very large wood frog, which gave one leap and squatted still. I put down my finger, and, though it shrank a little at first, it permitted me to stroke it as long as I pleased. having passed, it occurred to me to return and cultivate its acquaintance. To my surprise, it allowed me to slide my hand under it and lift it up, while it squatted cold and moist on the middle of my palm, panting naturally. I brought it close to my eye and examined it. It was very beautiful seen thus early, not the dull dead-leaf color which I had imagined, but its back was like burnished bronze armor defined by a varied line on each side, where, as it seemed, the plates of armor united. It had four or five dusky bars which matched exactly when the legs were folded, showing that the painter applied his brush to the animal when in that position, and reddish-orange soles to its delicate feet. There was a conspicuous dark-brown patch along the head, whose upper edge passed directly through the eye horizontally, just above its centre, so that the pupil and all below were dark and the upper portion of the iris golden. I have since taken up another in the same way (Journal, 10:31-32)

Thoreau observes “Nabaluls Fraseri, top of Cliffs, — a new plant, — yet in prime and not long out. The nabalus family generally, apparently now in prime” (Journal, 10:32)

Thoreau travels “To Great Yellow Birch, with the Watsons” and is given glow worms by them. (Journal 10, 32-34)

Thoreau travels

to Fair Haven Hill, looking at the varieties of nabalus, which have a singular prominence now in all woods and roadsides. The lower leaves are very much eaten by insects. How perfectly each plant has its turn! — as if the seasons revolved for it alone. Two months ago it would have taken a sharp eye to have detected this plant. One of those great puffballs, three inches in diameter, ripe (Journal, 10:35)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Coming home through the street in a thunder-shower at ten o’clock this night, it was exceedingly dark. I met two person within a mile, and they were obliged to call out from a rod distant lest we should run against each other. When lightning lit up the street, almost as plain as day, I saw that it was the same green light that the glow-worm emits. Has the moisture something to do with it in both cases? (Journal, 10:36)

Thoreau writes, “Still somewhat rainy, — since last evening” (Journal, 10: 36)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Another mizzling day…

We walked in some trodden path on account of the wet grass and leaves, but the fine grass overhanging paths, weighed down with dewy rain, wet our feet nevertheless. We cannot afford to omit seeing the beaded grass and wetting our feet. This is our first fall rain, and makes a dividing line between the summer and fall. Yet there has been no drought the past summer (Journal, 10:36)

Thoreau travels “To Carallorhiza rock and Tobacco-pipe Wood, northeast of Spruce Swamp” (Journal, 10:37)

Thoreau writes,

The Ripley beeches have been cut. I can’t find them. There is one large one, apparently on Baker’s land, about two feet in diameter near the ground, but fruit hollow. I see yellow pine-sap, in the woods just cast of where the beeches used to stand, just done, but the red variety is very common and quite fresh generally there (Journal, 10:39)

Thoreau writes,

Up the Assabet.

The river is considerably raised and also muddied by the recent rains.

I saw a red squirrel run along the bank under the hemlocks with a nut in its mouth. He stopped near the foot of a hemlock, and, hastily pawing a hole with his fore feet, dropped the nut, covered it up, and retreated part way up the trunk of the tree, all in a few moments. I approached the shore to examine the deposit, and he, descending betrayed no little anxiety for his treasure and made two or three motions to recover the nut before he retreated (Journal, 10:39-40)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

The red maple has fairly begun to blush in some places by the river. I see one, by the canal behind Barrett’s mill, all aglow against the sun. These first trees that change are most interesting, since they are seen against others still freshly green, — such brilliant red on green. I go half a mile out of my way to examine such a red banner. A single tree becomes the crowning beauty of some meadow vale and attracts the attention of the traveler from afar. At the eleventh hour of the year, some tree which has stood mute and inglorious in some distant vale thus proclaims its character as effectually as it stood by the highway-side, and it leads our thoughts away from the dusty road into those brave solitudes which it inhabits. The whole tree, thus ripening in advance of its fellow, attains a singular preeminence. I am thrilled at the sight of it, bearing aloft its scarlet standard for its regiment of green-clad foresters around. The forest is the more spirited (Journal, 10:42-43)

Thoreau writes,

The season is waning. A wasp just looked in upon me. A very warm day for the season…

These are warm, serene, bright autumn afternoons. I see far off the various-colored gowns of cranberry pickers against the green of the meadow. The river stands a little way over the grass again, and the summer is over (Journal, 10:44)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

I am surprised to find that, yesterday having been a sudden very warm day, the peaches have mellowed suddenly and wilted, and I find many more fallen than even after previous rains. Better if ripened more gradually.

How out of all proportion to the value of an idea, when you come to one, — in Hindoo literature, for instance, — it the historical fact about it, — the when, where, etc., it was actually expressed, and what precisely it might signify to a sect of worshippers! Anything that is called history of India — or of the world — is impertinent beside any real poetry or inspired thought which is dateless (Journal, 10:46)

Thoreau reflects on the protection of nature,

I see that E. Wood has sent a couple of Irishman, with axe and bush-whack, to cut off the natural hedges and sumach, Roxbuty waxwork, grapes, etc., which have sprung up by the walls on this hill farm, in order that his cows may get a little more green. And they have cut down two or three of the very rare celtis trees, not found anywhere else in town. The Lord deliver us from these vandalic proprietors! The botanist and lover of nature has, perchance, discovered some rare tree which has sprung up by a farmer’s wall-side to adorn and bless it, sole representative of its kind in these parts. Strangers send for a seed or a sprig from a distance, but, walking there again, he finds that the farmer has sent a raw Irishman, a hireling just arrived on these shores, who was never there before, — and we trust, will never be let lose there again, — who knows not whether he is hacking at the upas tree or the Tree of Knowledge, with axe and stub-scythe to exterminate it, and he will know it no more forever. What is trespassing? This hessian, the day after he was landed, was whirled twenty miles into the interior to do this deed of vandalism on our favorite hedge. I would as soon admit a living mud turtle into my herbarium. If some are prosecuted for abusing children, others deserve to be prosecuted for maltreating the face of nature committed to their care (Journal, 10:50-51)

Thoreau writes, “All sorts of men come to Cattle-Show. I see one with a blue hat.

I hear that some have gathered fringed gentian. Pines have begun to be parti-colored with yellow leaves” (Journal, 10: 51)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

What poor crack-brains we are! easily upset and unable to take care of ourselves! If there were a precipice at our doors, some would be found jumping off to-day for fear that, if they survived, they might jump off to-morrow….

Consider what actual phenomena await us. To say nothing of life, which may be rare and difficult to detect, and death, which is startling enough, we cannot begin to conceive anything so surprising and thrilling but that something more surprising may be actually presented to us….

According to Upanishads, “As water, when rained down on elevated ground, runs scattered off in the valleys, so ever runs after difference a person who beholds attributes different (from the soul.”

“As pure water, which is thrown down on pure ground, remains alike, so also, O Gautama, is the soul of the thinker who knows.” (Journal, 10:53-54)

Thoreau travels “To second stone bridge and down Assabet home” (Journal, 10:55)

Thoreau writes,

The chief incidents in [George] Minott’s life must be more distinct and interesting to him now than  immediately after they occurred, for he has recalled and related them so often that they are stereotyped in his mind. Never having travelled far from his hillside, he does not suspect himself, but tell his stories with fidelity and gusto to the minutest details, — as much as Herodotus his histories (Journal, 10: 56)

Thoreau writes in his journal,

Getting over the wall near Sam Barrett’s the other day, I had gone a few rods in the road when I met Prescott Barrett, who observed, “Well, you take a walk round the square sometime.” So little does he know of my habits. I go across lots over his grounds every three or four weeks, but I do not know that I ever walked round the square in my life.

How much more agreeable to sit in the midst of old furniture like [George] Minott’s clock and secretary and looking-glass, which have come down from other generations, than in that which was just brought from the cabinet-maker’s and smells of varnish, like a coffin! To sit under the face of an old clock that has been ticking one hundred and fifty years, — there is something mortal, not to say immortal, about it! A clock that began to tick when Massachusetts was a province. Meanwhile John Beatton’s heavy tombstone is cracked quite across and widely opened (Journal, 10:58-59)

Thoreau writes,

While I lived in the woods I did various jobs about the town, — some fence-building, painting, gardening, carpentering, etc., etc. One day a man came from the east edge of the town and said that he wanted to get me to brick up a fireplace, etc., etc., for him. I told him that I was not a mason, but he knew that I had built my own house entirely and would not take no for an answer. SO I went.

It was three miles off, and I walked back and forth each day, arriving early and working as late as if I were living there. The man was gone away most of the time, but had left some sand dug up in his cow-yard for me to make mortar with. I bricked up a fireplace, papered a chamber,  but my principal work was whitewashing ceilings. Some were so dirty that many coats would not conceal the dirt. In the kitchen I finally resorted to yellow-wash to cover the dirt. I took my meals there, witting down with my employer (when he got home) and his hired men. I remember the awful condition of the sink, at which I washed one day, and when I came to look at what was called the towel I passed it by and wiped my hands on the air (Journal, 10:61-62)

Thoreau writes,

It is evident that some phenomena which belong only to spring in that latitude, as the peeping of hylodes and blossoming of some flowers that long since withered here were there still freshly in bloom, in that fresher and cooler atmosphere, — the call for instance. To say nothing of the myrtle-bird and F. hyemalis which breed there, but only transiently visit us in spring and fall. Just as a river which here freezes only a certain distance from the shore, follow it further north, is found to be completely bridged over. The toads, too, as I have said, rang at this season. What is summer where Indian corn will not ripen (Journal, 10:66)

Thoreau writes,

The frontier houses preserve many of the features of the logging-camp….

Looking up Trout Stream, it seems as a wild a place for a man to live as we had seen. What a difference between a residence there and within five minutes walk of the depot! What different men the two live must turn out! (Journal, 10:70)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Such is the dwelling place of man; but go to a caucus in the village to-night or to a church to-morrow, and see if there is anything said to suggest that the inhabitants of those houses know what kind of world they live in. But hark! I hear the tolling of a distant funeral bell, and they are conveying a corpse to the churchyard from one of the houses that I see, and its serious sound is more in harmony with this scenery than any ordinary bustle could be. It suggests that man must die to his present life before he can appreciate his opportunities and the beauty of the abode that is appointed him.

I do not know how to entertain one who can’t take long walks. The first thing that suggests itself is to get a horse and draw them, and that brings us at once into contact with stablers and dirty harness, and I do not get over my ride for a long time. I give up my forenoon to them and get along pretty well, the very elasticity of the air and promise of the day abetting me, but they are as heavy as dumplings by mid-afternoon. If they can’t walk, why won’t they take an honest nap and let me go in the afternoon? But, come two o’clock, they alarm me by an evident disposition to sit. In the midst of the most glorious Indian-summer afternoon, there they sit, breaking your chairs and wearing out the house, with their backs to the light, taking no note of he lapse of time (Journal, 10:73-74)

Thoreau travels “Up Assabet” (Journal, 10:77)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

It has come to this, — that the lover of art is one, and the lover of nature another, though true art is but the expression of our love of nature. It is monstrous when one cares but little about trees but much about Corinthian columns, and yet this is exceedingly common (Journal, 10:80)

Thoreau writes,

This is the end of the sixth day of glorious weather, which I am tempted to call the finest in the years, so bright and serene the air and such a sheen from the earth, so brilliant the foliage, so pleasantly warm (except, perhaps, this day, which is cooler), too warm for a thick coat, — yet not sultry nor oppressive, — so ripe the season and our thoughts. Certainly these are the most brilliant days in the year, ushered in perhaps, by a frosty morning, as this. As a dewy morning in the summer compared with a parched and sultry, languid one, so a frosty morning at this season compared with a merely dry or foggy one. These days you may say the year has ripened like a fruit by frost, and puts on brilliant tints of maturity but not yet of decay. it is not sere and withered as in November. See the heaps of apples in the fields and at the cider-mill, of pumpkins in the fields, and the stacks or corn-stalks and the standing corn. Such is the season. The morning frosts have left a silvery hue one the fine pasture grasses. They have added to a kindred color. (Journal, 10: 85)

Thoreau writes:

Mr. Conant of Acton tells me that there was a grist mill built over the river by Sam Barrett’s grandfather, and that he remembers going to it when he was fourteen. He went in at the Lee house and crossed the river by the bridge at the mill. he says that it is as much as sixty years since the mill was standing. [George] Minott thinks it is not quite so long since. He remembers the bridge there, not a town one, nor strong enough for a horse and cart.  Thinks the mill was discontinued because Dr. Lee complained of it flooding his woodland. They used to stop their carts this side and carry their bags back and forth over the bridge on their shoulders. Used a small and poor road across to Lee’s farm. (Journal, 10:87)

Thoreau travels “To Annursnack.

The eight fine day, warmer than the last two. I find one or two house-leek blossoms even yet fresh, and all the rest crisp…Looking from the Hill. The autumnal tints generally are much duller now than three or four days ago. (Journal, 10:88)

Thoreau observes that “Maple fires are burnt out generally, and they have fairly begun to fall and look smoky in the swamps. When my eyes were resting on those smoke-like bare trees, it did not at first occur to me why the landscape was not as brilliant as a few days ago. The outside trees in the swamps lose their leaves first” (Journal, 10:90)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

It is indeed a golden autumn. These ten days are enough to make the reputation of any climate. A tradition of these days might be handed down to posterity. They deserve a notice in history, in the history of Concord…Was there ever such an autumn? And yet there was never such a panic and hard time in the commercial world. The merchants and banks are suspending and failing all the country over, but not the sand-banks, solid and warm, and streaked with bloody blackberry vines. You may run upon them as you please, — even as the crickets do, and find their account in it. They are the stockholders in these banks, and I hear them creaking their content. You may see them on change any warmer hour. in these banks, too, and such as these, are my funds deposited, a fund of health and enjoyment. Their (the crickets) prosperity and happiness and, I trust, mine do not depend on whether the New York banks suspend or no. We do not rely on such slender security as the thin paper of the Suffolk Bank. To put your trust in such a bank is to be swallowed up and undergo suffocation. Invest, I say, in these country banks. Let your capital be simplicity and contentment. Withered goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis) is no failure, like a broken bank, and yet in its most golden season nobody counterfeits it. nature needs no counterfeit-detector. I have no compassion for, nor sympathy with, this miserable state of things. Banks built of granite, after some Grecian or Roman style, with their porticoes and their safes of iron, are not so permanent, and cannot give me so good security for capital invested in them, as the heads of withered hardhack in the meadow. I do not suspect the solvency of these. I know who is their president and cashier. (Journal, 10:92-92)

Thoreau writes, “Rain at last, and end of the remarkable days. The springs and rivers have been very low. Millers have not water enough to grind their grists” (Journal, 10:98)

Thoreau travels “Up Assabet.

It clears up entirely by noon, having been cloudy in the forenoon, and is as warm as before now” (Journal, 10:99)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

The trainers are out with their band of music, and I find my account in it, though I have not subscribed for it. I am walking with a hill between me and the soldiers. I think, perhaps, it will be worth while to keep within hearing of these strains this afternoon, Yet I hesitate. I am wont to find music unprofitable; it is a luxury. it is surprising, however, that so few habitually intoxicate themselves with music, so many with alcohol. I think, perchance, I may risk it, it will whet my senses so; it will reveal a glory where none was seen before. it is remarkable that men too must dress in bright colors and march to music once in the year. nature, too, assumes her bright hues now, and think you a subtile music may not be heard amid the hill? No doubt these strains sometimes suggest to Abner, walking behind in his red-streaked pants, an ideal which he had lost sight of, or never perceived. it is remarkable that our institutions can stand before music, it is so revolutionary. (Journal, 10:103)

Thoreau travels “To Conantum.

Clear and pleasant afternoon, but cooler than before. At the brook beyond Hubbard’s Grove, I stand to watch the water-bugs (Gyrinus). The shallow water appears now more than usually clear there, as the weather is cooler, and the shadows of these bugs on the bottoms, half a dozen times as big as themselves, with a narrow and well-defined halo about them. (Journal, 10:104-105)

Thoreau writes,

Mr. Sanborn tells me that he looked off from Wachusett last night, and that he saw the shadow of the mountain gradually extend itself eastward not only over the earth but finally on to the sky in the horizon. Though it extended as much as two diameters of the moon on to the sky, in a small cone. This was like the spectre of the Brocken. (Journal, 10:108)

Thoreau writes,

What a wild and rich domain that Easterbrooks Country! Not a cultivated, hardly a cultivatable field in it, and yet it delights all natural persons, and feeds more still. Such great rocky and moist tracts, which daunt the farmer, are reckoned as unimproved land, and therefore worth but little; but think of the miles of huckleberries, and of barberries, and of wild apples, so fair, both in flower and fruit, resorted to by men and beasts: Clark, Brown, Melvin, and the robins, these at least, were attracted thither this afternoon. (Journal, 10:112)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

it is pitiful to see a man of sixty, a philosopher, perchance, inquiring for a bearing apple orchard for sale. if he must have one, why did he not set it out when he was thirty? How mean and lazy, to be plucking the fruit of another man’s labor. The old man I saw yesterday lives on peaches and milk in their season, but then he planted them.

Is not the poet bound to write his own biography? is there any other work for him but a good journal? We do not wish to know how this imaginary hero, but how he, the actual hero, lived from day to day. (Journal, 10:115)

Thoreau travels

To Hill.

Ground pretty white with frost. the stiffened and frosted weeds and grass have an aggrieved look. The lately free-flowing blades of grass look now like mourning tresses sculptured stiffly in marble; they lie stiff and dishevelled. A very narrow strip of ice has formed along the riverside, in which I see a pad or two, wearing the same aggrieved look, like the face of the child that cried for spilt milk, its summer irrevocably gone. (Journal, 10:116)

Thoreau travels

Up Assabet.

The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polydoly at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum, which I had not identified. Apparently Aspidium cristatum elsewhere.

I can find no bright leaves now in the woods. Witch-hazel, etc., are withered, turned brown, or yet green. See by the droppings in the woods where small migrating birds have roosted.

I see a squirrel’s nest in a white pine, recently made, on the hillside near the witch-hazels. (journal, 10:123)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

I find my account in this long-continued monotonous labor of picking chestnuts all the afternoon, brushing the leaves aside without looking up, absorbed in that, and forgetting better things awhile. my eye is educated to discover anything on the ground, as chestnuts, etc. It is probably wholesomer to look at the ground much than at the heavens. As I go stooping and brushing the leaves aside by the hour, I am not thinking of chestnuts merely, but I find myself humming a thought of more significance. This occupation affords a certain broad pause and opportunity to start again afterward, — turn over a new leaf. (Journal, 10:125)

Thoreau writes

A rainy day and easterly wind, — an easterly storm. I see flying very high over the meadow, from the east, eleven large birds, leisurely circling a little by the way, surveying the bare meadow (Journal, 10:126)

Thoreau writes in his journal,

Hard rain in the night and almost steady rain through the day, the second day. Wind still easterly or northeasterly….

A driving east or northeast storm. I can see through the drisk only a ile. The river is getting partly over the meadows at last, and my spirits rise with it. me-thinks this rise of the waters must effect every thought and deed in the town. It qualifies my sentence and life. I trust there will appear in the Journal some flow, some gradual filling of the springs and raising of the streams, that the accumulating grists may be ground. A storm is a new, and in some respects more active, life in nature. They, at least, sympathize with the movements of the watery element and the winds. (Journal, 10:126)

Thoreau writes

The real facts of a poet’s life would be more value to us than any work of his art. I mean that the very scheme and form of his poetry (so called) is adopted at a sacrifice of vital truth and poetry. Shakespeare has left us his fancies and imaginings, but the truth of his life, with its becoming circumstances, we know nothing about. The writer is reported, the liver not at all. Shakespeare’s house! how hollow it is! No man can conceive of Shakespeare in that house. But we want the basis of fact, of an actual life, to complete our Shakespeare, as much as a statue wants its pedestal. A poet’s life with this broad actual basis would be as superior to Shakespeare’s as a lichen, with its base or thallus, is superior in the order of being a fungus. (Journal, 10:131)

Thoreau writes extensively on this day. In his journal he writes,

All at once a low-slanted glade of sunlight from one of heaven’s west windows behind me fell on the bare gray maples, lighting them up with and incredibly intense and pure white light; then, going out there, it lit up some white birch stems south of the pond, then the gray rocks and the pale reddish young oaks of the lower cliffs, and then the very pale brown-meadow-grass, and at last the brilliant white breasts of two ducks, tossing on the agitated surface far off on the pond, which I had not detected before. It was but a transient ray, and there was no sunshine afterward, but the intensity of the light was surprising and impressive, like a halo, a glory in which only the just deserved to live.

It was as if the air, purified by the long storm, reflected these few rays from side to side with a complete illumination, like a perfectly polished mirror, while the effect was greatly enhanced by the contrast with the dull dark clouds and somber earth. As if Nature did not dare at once to let in the full blaze of the sun to this combustible atmosphere. It was a serene, elysian light, in which the deeds I have dreamed of but not realized might be performed. At the eleventh hour, late in the year, we have visions of the life we might have lived. No perfectly fair weather ever offered such an arena for noble acts. it was such a light as we behold but dwell not in! (Journal, 10:133)

Thoreau writes,

There are some things of which I cannot at once tell whether I have dreamed them or they are real; as if they were just, perchance, establishing, or else losing, a real basis in my world. This is especially the case in the early morning hours, when there is a gradual transition from dreams to waking thoughts, from illusions to actualities, as from darkness, or perchance moon and star light, to sunlight. Dreams are real, as is the light of the stars and moon, and theirs is said to be a dreamy light. Such early morning thoughts as I speak of occupy a debatable ground between dreams and waking thoughts. They are a sort of permanent dream in my mind. At least, until we have for some time changed our position from prostrate to erect, and commence or faced some of the duties of the day, we cannot tell what we have dreamed from what we have actually experienced. (Journal, 10:141)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Another, the eighth, day of cloudy weather, though no rain to-day…

There’s a very large and complete circle round the moon this evening, which part way round is a faint rainbow. It is a clear circular space, sharply and mathematically cut out of a think mackerel sky. (Journal, 10:147)

Thoreau writes,

If you are afflicted with melancholy this season, go to the swamp and see the brave spears of skunk-cabbage buds already advanced toward a new year. Their gravestones are not bespoken yet. Who shall be a sexton to them? Is it the winter of their discontent? Do they seem to have lain down to die, despairing of skunk-cabbagedom? “Up and at ’em,” “Give it to ’em,” “Excelsior,” “Put it through,” — these are their mottoes. Mortal human creatures must take a little respite in this fall of the year; their spirits do flag a little. There is a little questioning of destiny, and thinking to go like cowards to where the “weary shall be at rest.” But not so with the skunk-cabbage. its withered leaves fall and are transfixed by a rising bud. Winter and death are ignored; the circle of life is complete. Are these false prophets? Is it a lie or a vain boast underneath the skunk-cabbage bud, pushing it upward and lifting the dead leaves with it?  (Journal, 10:150-151)

Thoreau travels “To Fair Haven Pond Over Cliffs.

Another cloudy afternoon after a clear morning.

When I enter the woods I notice the drier crispier rustle of withered leaves on the oak trees, — a sharper susurrus. (Journal, 10:152)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

I think that most men, as farmers, hunters, fishers, etc., walk along a river’s bank, or paddle along its stream, without seeing the reflections. Their minds are not abstracted from the surface, from surfaces generally. it is only a reflecting mind that sees reflections. I am aware often that I have been occupied with shallow and commonplace thoughts, looking for something superficial, when I did not see the most gloripus reflections, though exeactly in the line of my vision. If the fisherman was looking at the reflection, he would not know when he had a nibble! I know from my own experience that he may cast his line right over the most elysian landscape and sky, and not catch the slightest notion of them. You must be in an abstract mood to see reflections however distinct. I was even startled by the sight of that reflected red oak as if it were a black water-spirit. When we are enough abstracted, the opaque earth itself reflects images to us; i.e., we are imaginative, see visions, etc. Such a reflection, this inky, leafy tree, against the white sky, can only be seen at this season. (Journal, 10:156-157)

Thoreau travels “To the Easterbrooks moraine via Ponkawtasset-top.” (Journal, 10:157)

Thoreau writes,

I leave the railroad at Walden Crossing and follow the path to Spanish Brook. How swift Nature is to repair the damage that man does! When he has cut down a tree and left only a white-topped and bleeding stump, she comes at once to the rescue with her chemistry, and covers it decently with a fresh coat of green cup and bright cockscomb lichens, and it becomes an object of new interest to the lover of nature! Suppose it were always to remain a raw stump instead! It becomes a shell on which this humble vegetation spreads and displays itself, and we forget the death of the larger in the life of the less. (Journal, 10:160)

Thoreau writes,

I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass o fmankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excited you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you. The important fact is its effect on me. He thinks that I have no business to see anything else but just what he defines the rainbow to be, but I care not whether my vision of truth is a waking thought or dream remembered, whether it is seen in the light or in the dark. It is the subject of the visions, the truth alone, that concerns me. The philosopher for whom rainbows, etc., can be explained away never them. With regard to such objects, I find that it is not the themselves (with which the men of science deal) that concern me; the point of interest is somewhere between me and them (i.e. the objects)…. (Journal, 10:165)

Thoreau writes “Very warm  but rather cloudy weather, after rain in the night. Wind southwest. Thermometer on north of the house 70º at 12 M. Indian summer. The cocks crow in the soft air. They are very sensitive to atmospheric changes.” (Journal, 10:166)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

P.M. — To Bateman’s Pond with R[alph].W[aldo].E[merson].

Stedmen Buttrick, speaking of R[alph].W[aldo].E[merson].’s cow that was killed by lightning and not found for some days, said that they heard a “bellering” of the cows some days before they found her, and they found the ground much trampled about the dead cow;  that was the way with cows in such cases; if such an accident happened to one of their number, they would have spells of gathering around her and “bellering.”

[George] Minott adorns whatever part of nature he touches; whichever way he walks he transfigures the earth for me.  If a common man speaks of Walden Pond to me, I see only a shallow, dull-colored body of water without reflections or peculiar color, but if [George] Minott speaks of it, I see the green water and reflected hills at once, for he has been there.  I hear the rustle of the leaves from woods which he goes through.

This has been another Indian-summer day,  Thermometer 58 degrees at noon. (Journal, 10:168)

Thoreau writes that it is a “warm cloudy, rain-threatening morning… a flock of geese are going over from northeast to southwest, or parallel with the general direction of the coast and great mountain-ranges…The children, instinctively aware of its importance, rushed into the house to tell their parents” (Journal, 10:169)

Thoreau writes

Surveying for  Stedman Buttrick and Mr. Gordon.

Jacob Farmer says that he remembers well a particular bound (which is the subject of dispute between the above two men) from this circumstance: He, a boy, was sent, as the representative of his mother, to witness the placing of the bounds to her lot, and he remembers that, when they had fixed the stake and stones, old Mr. Nathan Barrett asked him if he had a knife about him, upon which he pulled out his knife and gave it to him. Mr. Barrett cut a birch switch and trimmed it in the presence of young Farmer, and then called out, “Boy, here’s your knife;” but as the boy saw that he was going to strike him when he reached his hand for the knife, he dodged into a bush which alone received the blow. And Mr. Barrett said that if it had not been for that, he would have got a blow which would have made him remember that bound as long as he lived, and explained to him that this was his design in striking him. (Journal, 10:172-173)

Thoreau “heard, day before yesterday, much firing of guns in the chestnut woods by Curly-pate Hill, probably at gray squirrels. George Buttrick says it is late for them; were thickest in chestnut time.

That cellar-hole off northwest of Brooks Clark’s is where Boaz Brown used to live.” (Journal, 10:174)

Thoreau writes in his journal,

I find that I can see the sun set from almost any hill in Concord, and some within the confines of the neighboring towns, and though this takes place at just about 5 P.M., when the cows come in, get to the post-office by the time the mail is distributed. See the sun rise or set if possible each day. let that be your pill. How speedily the night comes on now! There is duskiness in the afternoon light before you are aware of it, the cows have gathered about the bars, waiting to be let out, and, in twenty minutes, candles gleam from distant windows, and the walk for this day is ended. it remains only to get home again. Who is weary? Why do we cease work and go to bed? Who taught men thus to spend their nights and days? Yet I must confess that I am surprised when I find that particular wise and independent persons conform so far as regularly to go to bed and get up about the same time with their neighbors. (Journal, 10:175-176)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

I find my hands stiffened and involuntarily finding their way to my pockets. no wonder that the weather is a standing subject of conversation, since we are so sensitive. if we had not gone throough several winters, we might well be alarmed at the approach of cold weather. With this keener blast from the north, my hands suddenly fail to fulfill their office, as it were begin to die. We must put on armor against the new for. I am almost world-ridden suddenly. I can hardly tie and untie my shoe-strings. What a story to tell the inhabitants of the tropics, —  perchance that you went to walk, after many months of warmth, when suddenly the air became so cold and hostile to your nature, that it benumbed you so that you lost the use of some of your limbs, could not untie your shoe-strings or unbutton your clothes! This cold weather makes us step more briskly. (Journal, 10;178)

Thoreau observes “the obvious falling of leaves (i.e. not to include the fall of the pitch pines and larches and the complete fall of the birches, white willows, etc.) ended about the first of November. A very few bright-colored leaves on small shrubs, such as oak sprouts, black cherry, blueberry, etc., have lingered up to this time in favorable places. by the first of November, or at most a few days later, the trees generally wear, in the main, their winter aspect, their leaves gradually fading until spring.” (Journal, 10:181-182)

Thoreau writes, “Rain last night” (Journal, 10:185)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

The sunlight is a peculiarly thin and clear yellow, falling on the pale-brown bleaching herbage of the fields at this season. There is no redness in it. This is November sunlight. Much cold, skate-colored cloud, bare twigs seen gleaming toward the light like gossamer, pure green of pines whose old leaves rustling on the hillsides, very pale brown, bleaching, almost hoary fine grass or hay in the fields, akin to the frost which has killed it, and flakes of clear yellow sunlight falling on it here and there, — such is November.

The fine grass is killed by the frost, withered and bleached till it is almost silvery, has clothed the fields for a long time.

Now, as in the spring, we rejoice in sheltered and sunny places. (Journal, 10:186)

Thoreau writes

In Stow’s sprout-land west of railroad cut, I see where a mouse which has a hole under a stump has eaten out clean the insides of the little Prinos verticillatus berries. These may be the doubtful seeds of the 14th. What pretty fruit for the mice, these bright prinos berries! They run up the twigs in the night and gather this shining fruit, take out the small seeds, and eat their kernels at the entrance to their burrows. The ground is strewn with them there. (Journal, 10:189)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

In books, that which is most generally interesting is what comes home to the most cherished private experience of the greatest number. It is not the book of him who has travelled the farthest over the surface of the globe, but of him who has lived the deepest and been the most at home. If an equal emotion is excited by a familiar homely phenomenon as by the Pyramids, there is no advantage in seeing the Pyramids. It is on the whole better, as it is simpler, to use the common language. We require that the reporter be very permantentlt planted before the facts which he observes, not merely a passer-by; hence the facts cannot be too homely. A man is worth most to himself and to others, whether as an observer, or poet, or neighbor, or friend, where he is most himself, most contented and at home. There his life is the most intense and he loses the fewest moments. familiar and surrounding objects are the best symbols and illustrations of his life. If a man who has had deep experiences should endeavor to describe them in a book of travels, it would be to use the language of a wandering tribe instead of a universal language. The poet has made the best roots in his native soil of any man, and is the hardest to transplant. The man who is often thinking that it is better to be somewhere else than where he is excommunicates himself. if a man is rich and strong anywhere, it must be on his native soil. Here I have been these forty years learning the language of these fields that I may the better express myself. If I should travel to the prairies, I should much less understand them, and my past life would serve me but ill to describe them. many a weed here stands for more of life to me than the big trees of California would if I should go there. We only need travel enough to give our intellects an airing. In spite of Malthus and the rest, there will be plenty of room in this world, if every man will mind his own business. I have not heard of any planet running against another yet. (Journal, 10:190-191)

Thoreau travels

Up Assabet.

Paddling along, a little above the Hemlocks, I hear, I think, a boy whistling upon the bank above me, but immediately perceive that it is the whistle of the locomotive a mile off in that direction. I perceived that it was distant, and therefore, the locomotive, the moment that the key was changed from a very high to a low one. Was it because distant sounds are commonly on a low key? (Journal, 10:193-194)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Some poets have said that writing poetry was for youths only, but not so. In that fervid and excitable season we only get the impulse which is to carry us onward in our future career. Ideals are then exhibited to us distinctly which all our lives after we may aim at but not attain. The mere vision is little compared with the steady corresponding endeavor thitherward. It would be vain for us to be looking ever into promised lands toward which in the meanwhile we were not steadily and earnestly travelling, whether the way led over a mountain-top or through a dusky valley. In youth, when we are most elastic and there is a spring to us, we merely receive an impulse in the proper direction. To suppose that this is  equivalent to having travelled the road, or obeyed the impulse faithfully throughout a lifetime, is absurd. We are shown fair scenes in order that we may be tempted to inhabit them, ant not simply tell what we have seen. (Journal, 10:202)

Thoreau writes,

It is surprising how much, from the habit of regarding writing as an accomplishment, is wasted on form. A very little information or wit is mixed up with a great deal of conventionalism in the style of expressing it, as with a sort of preponderating paste or vehicle. Some life is not simply expressed, but a long-winded speech is made, with an occasional attempt to put a little life into it. (Journal, 10:206)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

[George] Minott’s is a small, square, one-storied and unpainted house, with a hipped roof and at least one dormer window, a third the way up the south side of a long hill which is some fifty feet high and extends east and west.A traveler of taste may go straight through the village without being detained a moment by any dwelling, either in the form or surroundings being objectionable, but very few go by this house without being agreeably impressed, and many are therefore led to inquire who lives in it. Not that its form is so incomparable, nor even its weather-stained color, but chiefly, I think, because of its snug and picturesque position on the hillside, fairly lodged there, where all children like to be, and its perfect harmony with its surrounding and position. for if, preserving this form and color, it should be transplanted to the meadow below, nobody would notice it more than a schoolhouse which was lately of the same form. It is there because somebody was independent or bold enough to carry out the happy thought of placing it high on the hillside. It is the locality, not the architecture, that takes us captive. There is exactly such a site, only of course less room on either side, but few if any, even of the admiring travelers, have thought of this as a house-lot, or would be bold enough to place a cottage there. (Journal, 10:207-208)

Thoreau “Was struck by the appearance of a small hickory near the wall, in the rocky ravine just above the trough. its trunk was covered with loose scales unlike the hickories near it and as much as the shagbark; but probably it is a shaggy or scaly barked variety of Carya glabra. It may be well to observe it next fall. The husk is not thick, like that of the shagbark, but quite thin, and splits into four only part way down. The shell is not white nor sharply four-angled like the other, but it is rather like pignut.” (Journal, 10:210)

Thoreau travels “Around Ebby Hubbard’s woodlot” (Journal, 10:211)

Thoreau writes,

A week or son ago, as I learn, Miss Emeline Barnett told a little boy who boards with her, and who was playing with an open knife in his hand, that he must be careful not to fal  down and cut himself with it, for once Mr. David Loring, when he was a little boy, fell down with a knife in his hand and cut his throat badly. It was soon reported, among the children at least, that little Daivd Loring, the grandson of the former, had fallen down with a knife in his hand as he was going to school, and nearly cut his throat; next, that Mr. David Loring the grandfather (who lives in Framingham) had committed suicide, had cut his throat, was not dead, indeed, but was not expected to live; and in this form the story spread like wildfire over the town and county. Nobody expressed surprise. his oldest acquaintances and best friends, his legal adviser, all said, “Well I can believe it.” He was known by many to have been speculating in Western lands, which, owing to the hard times, was a failure, and he was depressed in consequence. Sally Cummings helped spread the news. Said there was no doubt of it, but there was Fay’s wife ([David] L[oring].’s daughter) knew nothing of it yet, they were as merry as crickets over there. Other stated that Wetherbee, the expressman, had been over to Northboro, and learned that Mr. Loring had taken poison in Northboro. Mr. Rhodes was stated to have received a letter from Mr. Robbins of Framingham giving all the particulars. Mr. Wild, it was said, had also got a letter from his son Silas in Framingham, to whom he had written, which confirmed the report…A child at school wrote to her parents at Northboro, telling the news. Mrs. Loring’s sister lives there, and it chances that her husband committed suicide. They were, therefore, slow to communicate the news to her, but at length could not contain themselves longer and told it. The sister was terribly affected; wrote to her son ([David] L[oring].’s nephew) in Worcester, who immediately took the cars and went to Framingham and he arrived there met his uncle just putting his family into the cars. He shook his hand very heartily indeed, looking, however, hard at his throat, but said not a word about his errand. (Journal, 10:215-216)

Thoreau observes “A still, warm, cloudy, rain-threatening day” (Journal, 10:216)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Walking in Ebby Hubbard’s woods, I hear a red squirrel barking at me amid the pine and oak tops, and now I see him coursing from tree to tree. How securely he travels there, fifty feet from the ground, leaping from the slender, bending twig of one tree across an interval of three or four feet and catching at the nearest twig of the next, which so bends under him that it is at first hard to get up it. his travelling a succession of leaps in the air at that height without wings! And yet he gets along about as rapidly as on the ground. (Journal, 10:218)

Thoreau writes,

I find that, according to the deed of Duncan Ingraham to John Richardson in 1797, my old bean-field on Walden Pond then belonged to George Minott. (Minott thinks he bought it off an Allen.) This was Deacon George Minott, who lived in the house next below the East Quarter schoolhouse, and was a brother of my grandfather-in-law. He was directly descended from Thomas Minott, who, according to Shattuck, was secretary of the Abbot of Walden (!) in Essex, and whose son  George was born at Saffron Walden (!) and afterwards was one of the earliest settlers of Dorchester. (Journal, 10:219)

Thoreau surveys the Richardson lot near Walden Pond. (Journal, 10:219)

Thoreau surveys Richardson’s Fair Haven lot. (Journal, 10: 220)

Thoreau writes “At noon a few flakes fell.” (Journal, 10:220)

Thoreau writes in his journal: “Flannery tells me he is cutting in Holbrook’s Swamp, in the Great Meadows, a lonely place. He sees a fox repeatedly there, and also a white weasel, — once with a mouse in its mouth, in the swamp.” (Journal, 10:220)

Thoreau writes, “Running the long northwest side of Richardson’s Fair Haven Lot. It is a fair, sunny, and warm day in the woods for the season.” (Journal, 10:220)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Staples says he came to Concord some twenty-four years ago a poor boy with a dollar and three cents in his pocket, and he spent the three cents for a drink at Bigelow’s tavern, and now he’s worth “twenty hundred dollars clear.” He remembers many who inherited wealth whom he can buy out to-day. I told him that he had done better than I in a pecuniary respect, for I had only earned my living. (Journal, 10:221)

Thoreau writes,

In sickness and barrenness it is encouraging to believe that our life is dammed and is coming to a head, so that there seems to be no loss, for what is lost in time is gained in power. All at once, unaccountably, as we are walking in the woods or sitting in our chamber, after a worthless fortnight, we cease to feel mean and barren. (Journal, 10:222)

Thoreau writes about finding a dead bird. (Journal, 10:223-224)

Thoreau travels “To Easterbrooks Country with [Daniel] Ricketson.

A hen-hawk circling over that wild region. See its red tail.

The cellar stairs at the old Hunt house are made of square oak timbers; also the stairs to the chamber of the back part of apparently square maple (?) timber, much worn. The generous cellar stairs!” (Journal,10:224)

Thoreau writes,

Walking over the Andromeda Ponds between Walden and Fair Haven, which have only frozen just enough to bear me, I see in springy parts, where the ice is thin, good-sized pollywogs wiggling away, scared by the sound of my steps and cracking of the ice. They appear to keep in motion in such muddy pond-holes, where a spring wells up from the bottom till midwinter, if not all winter. (Journal, 10:224)

Thoreau writes “Surveying for heirs of J. Richardson, G. Heywood and A. Brooks accompanying.” (Journal,10:224)

Thoreau writes,

Snows all day,— first snow of any consequence, three or four inches in all.

Humphrey Buttrick tells me that he has shot little dippers. He also saw the bird which Melvin shot last summer (a coot), but he never saw one of them before. The little dipper must, therefore, be different from a coot. Is it not a grebe? (Journal, 10:225)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

The commonest and cheapest sounds, as the barking of a dog produce the same effect on fresh and healthy ears that the rarest music does. it depends on your appetite for sound. Just as crust is sweeter to a healthy appetite than a confection-ery to a pampered or diseased one. It is better that these cheap sounds be music to us than that we have the rarest cars for music in any other sense. I have lain awake at night many a time to think of the barking of a dog which I had heard long before, bathing me being again in those waves of sound, as a frequenter of the opera might lie awake remembering the music he had heard….

One while we do not wonder that so many commit suicide, life is so barren and worthless; we only live on by an effort of the will. Suddenly our condition is ameliorated, and even the barking of a dog is a pleasure to us. So closely is our happiness bound up with our physical condition, and one reacts on the other.

Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and the hounds and traps, his race survives. (Journal, 10:227-228)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

After some rain yesterday and in the night, there was a little more snow, and the ground is still covered. I am surprised to find Walden still closed since Sunday night, notwithstanding the warm weather since it skimmed over, and that Goose Pond bears, though covered with slosh; but ice under water is slow to thaw. it does not break up so soon as you would expect. Walking over it, I thought I saw an old glove on the ice or slosh, but, approaching, found it to be a bull-frog, flat on its belly with its legs stretched out…I found it to be alive, though it could only partially open its eyes…It was evidently nearly chilled to death and could not jump, though there was then no freezing. I looked round a good while and finally found a hole to put it into, squeezing it through. Perhaps in such warm rain the surface water becomes warmer that at the bottom, and so tempts the frogs up onto the ice through a hole, This one was wholly unscathed by any animal, but would have surely frozen stiff in the night. (Journal, 10:229)