Father seems to have got over the jaundice some weeks since, but to be scarcely the better for all that. The cough he has had so long is at least as bad as ever, and though much stronger than when I wrote before he is not sensibly recovering his former amount of health. On the contrary we cannot help regarding him more & more as a sick man. I do not think it a transient ail—which he can entirely recover from—nor yet an acute disease, but the form in which the infirmities of age have come upon him. He sleeps much in his chair, & commonly goes out once a day in pleasant weather.

  The Harpers have been unexpected enough to pay him-but others are owing a good deal yet. He has taken one man’s note for $400.00, payable I think in April, & it remains to be seen what it is worth. Mother & Sophia are as well as usual. Aunt returned to Boston some weeks ago. Mr Hoar is still in Concord, attending to Botany, Ecology, &c with a view to make his future residence in foreign parts more truly profitable to him. I have not yet had an opportunity to convey your respects to him—but I shall do so.

  I have been more than usually busy surveying the last six weeks running & measuring lines in the woods, reading old deeds & hunting up bounds which have been lost these 20 years. I have written out a long account of my last Maine journey—part of which I shall read to our Lyceum—but I do not know how soon I shall print it. We are having a remarkably open winter, no sleighing as yet, & but little ice.

  I am glad to hear that Charles [Thatcher] has a good situation, but I thought that the 3rd mate lived with and as the sailors. If he makes a study of navigation &c, and is bent on being master soon, well & good It is an honorable & brave life, though a hard one, and turns out as good men as most professions. Where there is a good character to be developed, there are few callings better calculated to develop it.
I wish you a happy new year—

Henry D. Thoreau

  P.M.—I see some tree sparrows feeding on the fine grass seed above the snow, near the road on the hillside below the Dutch house . . .

  P.M.—To Deep Cut

  The wind is southwest, and the snow is very moist, with large flakes . . . (Journal, 10:242).

  4.30 P. M.—At Jonathan Buffum’s, Lynn. Lecture in John B. Alley’s parlor. Mr. J. Buffum describes to me ancient wolf-traps, made probably by the early settlers in Lynn, perhaps after an Indian model; one some two miles from the shore near Saugus, another more northerly; holes say seven feet deep, about as long, and some three feet wide, stoned up very smoothly, and perhaps converging a little, so that the wolf could not get out. Tradition says that a wolf and a squaw were one morning found in the same hole, staring at each other.

  I received your note inviting me to Salem after my lecture Wednesday evening. My first impulse was to go to you; but I reflected that Mr [Parker] Pillsbury had just invited me to Lynn, thro’ Mr Buffum, promising to be there to meet me, indeed, we had already planned some excursions to Nahant, &—and he would be absent on Friday;—so I felt under obligations to him & the Lynn people to stay with them. Jonathan Buffum & Son, Pillsbury & Mr. [Benjamin?] Mudge—My reason for not running over to Salem for an hour, or a fraction of the day, was simply that I did not wish to impair my right to come by & by when I may have leisure to take in the whole pleasure & benefit of such a visit—for I hate to feel in a hurry.

  I shall improve or take an opportunity to spend a day—or part of a clay with you ere long, and I trust that you will be attracted to Concord again, and will find me a better walker than I chanced to be when you were here before.

  I have often thought of taking a walk with you in your vicinity. I have a little to tell you, but a great deal more to hear from you. I had a grand time deep in the woods of Maine in July, &c &c. I suppose that I saw the genista tinctoria in the N. W. part of Lynn—on my way to the boulder & the mill-stone ledge.

  Please remember me to Mr. [George P.?] Bradford.

Yrs truly
Henry D. Thoreau

  The common birch fungus, which is horizontal and turned downward, splits the bark as it pushes out very simply . . .

  I have been so busy surveying of late, that I have scarcely had time to “think” of your proposition, or ascertain what I have for you. The more fatal objection to printing my last Maine-wood experience, is that my Indian guide, whose words & deeds I report very faithfully,—and they are the most interesting part of the story,—knows how to read, and takes a newspaper, so that I could not face him again.

  The most available paper which I have is an account of an excursion into the Maine woods in ’53; the subjects of which are the Moose, the Pine Tree & the Indian. Mr. Emerson could tell you about it, for I remember reading it to his family, after having read it as a lecture to my townsmen. It consists of about one hundred manuscript pages, or a lecture & a half, as I measure. The date could perhaps be omitted, if in the way. On account of other engagements, I could not get it ready for you under a month from this date.

  If you think that you would like to have this, and will state the rate of compensation, I will inform you at once whether I will prepare it for you.

Yrs truly
Henry D. Thoreau

  The river is broadly open, as usual this winter. You can hardly say that we have had any sleighing at all this winter, though five or six inches of snow lay on the ground five days after January 6th. But I do not quite like this warm weather and bare ground at this season. What is a winter without snow and ice in this latitude? The bare earth is unsightly. This winter is but unburied summer . . .

  You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake. You must be able to extract nutriment out of a sandheap. You must have so good an appetite as this, else you will live in vain . . .

  P.M.—To Clintonia Swamp down the brook . . . Melvin would have sworn he heard a bluebird the other day if it had n’t been January . . . (Journal, 10:259-262).

Cordially

T.W. Higginson

  It would be perfectly practicable to go the Madawaska the way you propose—As for the route to Quebec, I do not find the “Sugar-loaf Mts” on my maps. The most direct and regular way, as you know, is substantially Montresor’s & Arnold’s, and the younger John Smith’s—by the Chaudiere; but this is less wild. If your object is rather to see the St. Lawrence River below Quebec, you will probably strike it at the Riviere du Loup. (V. Hodges’s account of his excursion thither via the Allegash. I believe it is on the 2nd Report on the Geology of the Public Lands of Maine & Mass, in ‘37.) I think that our Indian last summer, when we talked of going to the St. Lawrence named another route, near the Madawaska—perhaps the St. francis, which would save the long portage which Hodge made.
 
  I do not know whether you think of ascending the St Lawrence in a canoe—but if you should you might be delayed not only by the current, but by the waves, which frequently run too high for a canoe in such a mighty stream. It would be a be a grand excursion to go to Quebec by the Chaudiere—descend the St Lawrence to the Riviere du Loup & so return by the Madawaska & St Johns to Frederickton, or further—almost all the way down stream a very important consideration
 
  I went to Moosehead in company with a party of four who were going a hunting down the Allegash—& St Johns, and thence by some other stream over into the Restigouche & down that to the Bay of Chaleur—to be gone 6 weeks!
 
  Our northern terminus was an island in Heron Lake on the Allegash (V. Colton’s R. R. & Township map of Maine.) The Indian proposed that we should return to Bangor by the St Johns & Great Schoodic Lake—which we had thought of ourselves—and he showed us on the map where we should be each night. It was then noon, and the next day night, continuing down the Allegash, we should have been at the Madawaska settlements, having made only one or 2 portages, and thereafter, on the St. Johns there would be but one or 2 more falls with short carries, and if there was not too much wind, we could go down that stream 100 miles a day. It is settled all the way below the Madawaska. He knew the route well. He even said that this was easier, and would take but little more time, though much further, than the route we decided on—i.e. by Webster Stream—the East Branch & Main Penobscot to Oldtown—but he may have wanted a longer job. We preferred the latter—not only because it was shorter, but because—as he said, it was wilder.

  We went about 325 miles with the canoe (including 60 miles of Stage between Bangor & Oldtown) were out 12 nights, & spent about 40 dollars apiece, which was more than was necessary We paid the Indian, who was a very good one, $1.50 per day & 50 cts per week for his canoe. This is enough in ordinary seasons. I had formerly paid $2 00 for an Indian & for white batteau-men

  If you go to the Madawaska in a leisurely manner, supposing no delay on account of rain or the violence of the wind, you may reach Mt Kineo by noon, & have the afternoon to explore it. The next day you may get to the head of the Lake before noon, make the portage of 2 ½ miles over a wooden R R & drop down the Penobscot half a dozen miles. The 3d morning you will perhaps walk half a mile bout Pine Stream Falls, while the Indian runs down, cross the head of Chesuncook, & reach the junction of the Caucomgomock & Umbazookskskus by noon, and ascend the latter to Umbazookskskus before entering the lake. The 4th morning you will make the carry of 2 miles to Mud Pond (Allegas water) & a very wet carry it is, & rach Chamberlain Lake by noon, & heron Lake perhaps that night, after a couple of very short carries at the outlet of Chamberlain.

  At the end of 2 days more, you will probably be at Madawaska

  Of course the Indian can paddle twice as far in a day as he commonly does.
 
  Perhaps you would like a few more details—We used (3 of us) exactly 26 lbs of hard bread, 14 lbs of pork, 3 lbs of coffee 12 lbs of sugar (& could have used more) beside a little tea, Ind. meal, & rice & plenty of berries & moosemeat. This was faring very luxuriously. I had not formerly carried coffee—sugar, or rice. But for solid food, I decide that it is not worth the while to carry anything but hard bread & pork, whatever your tastes & habits may be. These wear best—& you have no time nor dishes in which to cook any thing else. Of course you will take a little Ind. meal to fry fish in—& half a dozen lemons also, if you have sugar—will be very refreshing—for the water is warm.

  To save time, the sugar, coffee, tea salt &c &c should be in separate water tight bags labelled and tied with a leather string; and all the provisions & blankets should be put into 2 large India rubber bags, if you can find them water tight—Ours were not.

  A 4-quart tin pail makes a good kettle for all purposes, & tin plates are portable & convenient. Dont forget an India rubber knapsack with a large flap-plenty of dish cloths—
old newspapers, strings, & 25 feet of strong cord.

  Of India rubber clothing the most you can wear, if any, is a very light coat, and that you cannot work in.

  I could be more particular, but perhaps have been too much so already.

  Yrs truly
  Henry D. Thoreau

  I go through the northerly part of Beck Stow’s, north of the new road . . . (Journal, 10:266-267).

  I returned to the thicket and cut a maple about eighteen feet long . . . (Journal, 10:267-270).

   I notice that the corner posts of the old Conantum house, which is now being pulled down, were all set butt up, and are considerably larger at that end . . .

  Mrs. Monroe says that her mother respected my grandfather very much, because he was a religious man. She remembers his calling one day and inquiring where blue vervain grew, which he wanted, to make a syrup for his cough, and she, a girl, happening to know, ran and gathered some . . .

  Saw at Simon Brown’s a sketch, apparently made with pen, on which was written, “Concord Jail, near Boston America,” and on a fresher piece of paper on which the above was pasted, was written, “The jail in which General Sir Archld Campbell &—Wilson were confined when taken off Boston in America by a French Privateer” . . .

  I think it is the coldest day of this winter. The river channel is now suddenly and generally frozen over for the first time . . . (Journal, 10:280-281).

  In cold weather you see not only men’s beards and the hair about the muzzle so foxen whitened with their frozen breath, but countless holes in the banks, which are the nostrils of the earth, white with the frozen earth’s breath . . .

  P.M.—Ride to Cafferty’s Swamp.

  The greatest breadth of the swamp appears to be northeasterly from Adams’s . . .

  At Brister’s further spring, the water which trickles off in various directions between and around little mounds of green grass half frozen . . .

  George Minott tells me that he, when young, used often to go to a store by the side of where Bigelow’s tavern was and kept by Ephraim Jones,—the Goodnow store . . .

  I think that I can send you a part of the story to which I referred within a fortnight. I am to read some of my latest Maine wood experiences to my townsmen this week; and in this case I shall not hesitate to call names.

  The hedges on the Hill are all cut off. The journals think they cannot say too much on improvements in husbandry. It is a safe theme, like piety . . . (Journal, 10:286-287).

  Rice says he saw a whistler (?) duck to-day (Journal, 10:287).

  The snow balls particularly when, as now, colder weather comes after a damp snow has fallen on muddy ground, and it is soft beneath while just freezing above . . .

  I send you this morning, by the Concord & Cambridge expresses, some 80 pages of my Maine Story. There are about 50 pages more of it. I think that it is best divided thus. If, however, this is too long for you, there is a tolerable stopping place after the word “mouse” p. 74, which is about the middle of the whole.

  If there is no objection you can print the whole date 1853.

  I reserve the right to publish it in another form after it has appeared in your magazine.

  Will you please send me the proofs on account of Indian names &c- and also, if you print this, inform me how soon you would like the rest?

Yrs truly
Henry D. Thoreau

  The river is frozen more solidly than during the past winter, and for the first time for a year I could cross it in most places . . .

  A thick mist, spiriting away the snow. Very bad walking. This fog is one of the first decidedly spring signs; also the withered grass bedewed by it and wetting my feet . A still, foggy, and rather warm day. I heard this morning, also, quite a steady warbling from tree sparrows on the dripping bushes . . .

  Almost every bush has its song sparrow this morning, and their tinkling strains are heard on all sides. You see them just hopping under the bush or into some other covert, as you go by, turning with a jerk this way and that, or they flit away just above the ground, which they resemble. It is the prettiest strain I have heard yet . . .

  P.M.—To Fair Haven Hill via Hubbard’s Bath.

  How much more habitable a few birds make the fields! At the end of winter, when the fields are bare and there is nothing to relieve the monotony of the withered vegetation, our life seems reduced to its lowest terms. But let a bluebird come and warble over them, and what a change! The note of the first bluebird in the air answers to the purling rill of melted snow beneath. It is eminently soft and soothing . . .

  Met Channing [William Ellery Channing] and walked on with him to what we will call Grackle Swamp, admiring the mosses . . .

   It is a fine evening, as I stand on the bridge. The waters are quite smooth; very little ice to be seen . . .

  The tree sparrow is perhaps the sweetest and most melodious warbler at present and for some days. It is peculiar, too, for singing in concert along the hedgerows, much like a canary, especially in the mornings. Very clear, sweet, melodious notes, between a twitter and a warble, of which it is hard to catch the strain, for you commonly hear many at once . . .

  P.M.—To Clematis Brook via Lee’s with C. [William Ellery Channing] . . .

  Farmer [Jacob Farmer?] told me this morning that he found a baywing’s egg yesterday, dropped in a footpath! I have not seen that bird yet . . .

  Leaving our boat just below Barrett’s, [Nathan Barrett] we walk down the shore. We see many gulls on the very opposite side of the meadow, near the woods. They look bright-white, like snow on the dark-blue water. It is surprising how far they can be seen, how much light they reflect, and how conspicuous they are . . .

  Returning about 5 P.M. across the Depot Field, I scare up from the ground a flock of about twenty birds . . . (Journal, 10:319-320).

  Going across A. Clark’s field behind Garfield’s, I see many fox-colored sparrows flitting past in a straggling manner into the birch and pitch pine woods on the left, and hear a sweet warble there from time to time . . .

  There are so many sportsmen out that the ducks have no rest on the Great Meadows, which are not half covered with water . . .

  C. [William Ellery Channing] saw a phœbe, i.e. pewee, the 25th . . .

   When returning, we saw, near the outlet of the pond, seven or eight sheldrakes standing still in a line on the edge of the ice, and others swimming close by . . .

  After a cloudy morning, a warm and pleasant afternoon. I hear that a few geese were seen this morning. Israel Rice says that he heard two brown thrashers sing this morning! Is sure because he has kept the bird in a cage. I can’t believe it . . .

  P.M.—To Ball’s Hill . . .

  While I was looking at the eagle (?), I saw, on the hillside far across the meadow by Holbrook’s clearing, what I at first took for a red flag or handkerchief carried along on a pole, just above the woods. It was a fire in the woods, and I saw the top of the flashing flames above the tree-tops . . .

  Another fine afternoon, warmer than before, I think. I walk in the fields now without slumping in the thawing ground, or there are but few soft places, and the distant sand-banks look dry and warm. The frogs are now heard leaping into the ditches on your approach . . .

  They are burning brush nowadays. You see a great slanting column of dun smoke on the northeast of the town, which turns out to be much farther off than you suppose . . .

  C. [William Ellery Channing] says he saw a great many wood turtles on the bank of the Assabet to-day . . .

  It is not important that the poet should say some particular thing, but should speak in harmony with nature. The tone and pitch of his voice is the main thing . . .

  About 9 A.M., C. [William Ellery Channing] and I paddle down the river. It is a remarkably warm and pleasant day. The shore is alive with tree sparrows sweetly warbling, also blackbirds, etc. The crow blackbirds which I saw last night are hoarsely clucking from time to time. Approaching the island, we hear the air full of the hum of bees, which at first we refer to the near trees. It comes from the white maples across the North Branch, fifteen rods off . . .

  P.M.—I go to the meadow at the mouth of the Mill Brook to find the spawn of R. halecina . . .

  Polly Houghton comes along and says, half believing it, of my compass, “This is what regulates the moon and stars” (Journal, 10:362).

  At 4.30 P.M. to West Meadow Field . . .

  I hear the booming of snipe this evening, and Sophia says she heard them on the 6th. The meadows having been bare so long, they may have begun yet earlier. Persons walking up or down our village street in still evenings at this season hear this singular winnowing sound in the sky over the meadows and know not what it is. This “booming” of the snipe is our regular village serenade. I heard it this evening for the first time, as I sat in the house, through the window . . .

  R. Rice tells me that he has seen the pickerel-spawn hung about in strings on the brush, especially where a tree had fallen in . . .

  Sir

  I wish you would go & measure the piece of land that I bought of Mr Brown immediately if you will call at my mill & tell Mr Smith to let Thomas [name] go with you & shew the lines I shall be up next week Wednesday or Saturday if you got the land measured before you will send the measure to me by mail.

  yours Truly
  R. Warner

  I notice at the Conantum house, of which only the chimney and frame now stand, a triangular mass of rubbish, more than half a bushel, resting on the great mantel-tree against an angle in the chimney . . .

  Speaking to J. B. Moore about the partridges being run down, he says that he was told by Lexington people some years ago that they found a duck lying dead under the spire of their old meeting-house (since burned) which stood on the Battle-Ground . . .

  The river is a little higher on account of rain. I see much sweet flag six or eight inches long, floating, it having been cut up apparently by musquash . . .

  I go to find hylodes spawn. I hear some now peeping at mid-afternoon in Potter’s meadow, just north of his swamp . . .(Journal, 10:368-370).

  Frogs are strange creatures. One would describe them as peculiarly wary and timid, another as equally bold and imperturbable. All that is required in studying them is patience. You will sometimes walk a long way along a ditch and hear twenty or more leap in one after another before you, and see where they rippled the water, without getting sight of one of them . . .

  At Fair Haven Pond I see, half a mile off, eight large water-fowl, which I thought at first were large ducks, though their necks appeared long . . .

  Viola ovata on bank above Lee’s Cliff. Edith Emerson found them there yesterday; also columbines and the early potentilla April 13th!!! . . .

  Afterwards, along the wall under the Middle Conantum Cliff, I saw many goldfinches, male and female, the males singing in a very sprightly and varied manner, sitting still on bare trees . . .

  The puddles have dried off along the road and left thick deposits or water-lines of the dark-purple anthers of the elm, coloring the ground like sawdust . . .

  P.M.—To Easterbrooks’s and Bateman’s Pond . . .

  The spawn of April 18th is gone! It was fresh there and apparently some creature has eaten it (Journal, 10:380-381).

  The toads ring now by day, but not very loud nor generally.

  I see the large head apparently of a bullfrog, by the riverside. Many middle-sized frogs, apparently bullfrogs, green above and more or less dark-spotted, with either yellow or white throats, sitting along the water’s edge now . . .

  Approaching the Island, I hear the phe phe, phe phe, phe phe, phe phe, phe, the sharp whistling note, of a fish hawk, and, looking round, see him just afterward launching away from one of the swamp white oaks southwest of the Island. There is about half a second between each note, and he utters them either while perched or while flying . . .

  Your unexpected gift of pear-trees reached me yesterday in good condition, and I spent the afternoon in giving them a good setting out; but I fear that this cold weather may hurt them. However, I am inclined to think they are insured since you have looked on them. It makes ones mouth water to read their names only. From what I hear of the extent of your bounty, if a reasonable part of the trees succeed this transplanting will make a new era for Concord to date from.

  Mine must be a lucky star, for day before yesterday I received a box of May-flowers from Brattleboro, and yesterday morning your peartrees, and at evening a humming-bird’s nest from Worcester. This looks like fairy housekeeping.

  I discovered two new plants in Concord last winter, the Labrador Tea (Ledurn latifolium), and Yew (Taxis baccata).

  By the way, in January I communicated with Dr. Durkee, whose report on glow-worms I sent you, and it appeared, as I expected, that he (and by his account, Agassiz, Gould, Jackson, and others to whom he showed them) did not consider them a distinct species, but a variety of the common, or Lampyris noctiluca, some of which you got in Lincoln. Durkee, at least, has never see the last. I told him that I had no doubt about their being a distinct species. His, however, were luminous throughout every part of the body, as those which you sent me were not, while I had them.

  Is nature as full of vigor to your eyes as ever, or do you detect some falling off at last? Is the mystery of the hog’s bristle cleared up, and with it that of our life? It is the question, to the exclusion of every other interest.

  I am sorry to hear of the burning of your woods, but, thank heaven, your great ponds and your sea cannot be burnt. I love to think of your warm sandy wood-roads, and your breezy island out in the sea. What a prospect you can get every morning from the hill-top east of your house! I think that even the heathen that I am, could say, or sing, or dance morning prayers there of some kind.

  Please remember me to Mrs. Watson, and to the rest of your family who are helping the sunshine yonder.

  Dear Sir

  May I ask you to send me or have sent to me Mr Emerson’s lecture on “Country Life.” I am told he is ready to lend his papers to earnest inquirers. I will pay all postages and return the Ms. as soon as read, though, if Mr Emerson do not object, I might wish to copy it. Neither you nor he must think me impertinent. I am where I would almost give my life for light and hence the request.

  Not having your “Wild & Walking” to read, I have been walking in the wild of my own Nature and I am filled with anxious inquiries as to whether I had better remain in this business into which I passively slided. At that time I had many misgivings that it was not a wise step and I have been on the anxious seat ever since. I want labor that I can contemplate with approval and continue to prosecute with delight in sickness, adversity, and old age, should I chance to meet with such. I object to this business that it does not use my faculties, and on the other hand I ask myself if all my trouble is not in me. You dont want to hear my reasons pro and con. You too have been at a parting of the ways and will understand me.

  It is true that while here I have been much helped yet it is in spite of my trade connections which came near spoiling me.

  If I now leave, I shall probably have very little money, but I think some “fire in my belly” which will in the long run do something for me, if I live in the freedom of obedience.

  If I leave, it will be with the expectation of earnestly choosing some sort of “Country Life,” or, if I remain in a city, something that will make me grow. I believe that am I once fairly on deck I should not want to go below again.

  I am ready to tread cheerfully any path of Renunciation if Heavenly Wisdom demand it-with equal alacrity would I, in that high behest, go to the Devil by the most approved modern, respectable, orthodox methods. It is difficult to reconcile the Temporal and the Eternal. I must at some time so decide it that I can use all the “fire in my belly” to some purpose

  I spent, in December, some weeks on a farm in the interior of the State. I walked some distance over the prairie to look at a farm a man wanted me to buy and when the next night I reached my host’s house, I took up “Walden” and came across your translation of Cato’s advice to those about buying farms. It was very welcome and I let this farm alone.

  I would write you a long letter, but I suppose it would only make you smile benignly-and perhaps me, too, when, a year hence, I remembered it.

  Remember me respectfully and lovingly to Mr Emerson

  Your grateful friend
  B. B. Wiley

  Snows hard in afternoon and evening . . .

  A.M.—Down river to look at willows . . .

  I see the fish hawk again [two or three indecipherable words] Island. As it flies low, directly over my head I see that its body is white beneath, and the white on the forward side ofVthe wings beneath, if extended across the breast,would forma regular crescent. Its wings do not form a regular curve in front, but an abrupt angle. They are loose and broad at tips . . .

  P.M.—To Ledum Swamp . . .

  Noticed a man killing, on the sidewalk by Minott’s, a little brown snake with blackish marks along each side of back and a pink belly . . .

  I learn that one farmer, seeing me standing a long time still in the midst of a pool (I was watching for hylodes), said that it was his father, who had been drinking some of Pat Haggerty’s rum, and had lost his way home. So, setting out to lead him home, he discovered that it was I . . .

  See a white-throated sparrow by Cheney’s wall, the stout, chubby bird. After sundown. By riverside.—The frogs and toads are now fairly awake . . .

  While I am behind Cheney’s this warm and still afternoon, I hear a voice calling to oxen three quarters of a mile distant, and I know it to be Elijah Wood’s. It is wonderful how far the individual proclaims himself. Out of the thousand millions of human beings on this globe, I know that this sound was made by the lungs and larynx and lips of E. Wood, am as sure of it as if he nudged me with his elbow and shouted in my ear . . .

  As I sit above the Island, waiting for the Rana palustris to croak, I see many minnows from three quarters to two inches long, but mostly about one inch . . .

  At mouth of the Mill Brook, I hear, I should say, the true R. halecina croak, i.e. with the faint bullfrog-like er-er-er intermixed . . .

  At Hosmer’s medicinal (?) spring, Everett’s farm, Ranunculus repens, abundantly out, apparently several days . . .

  E. Hoar brings me a twig of a willow plucked in Newton, which was killed some weeks ago, when it had just begun to bloom . . .

At Clamshell Shore, I see a clam lying up with open valves . . . Coming back, I talk with Witherell at William Wheeler’s landing. He comes pushing Wheeler’s square-ended boat down-stream with a fish-spear. Says he caught a snapping turtle in the river May 1st. He sits on the side of my boat by the shore a little while, talking with me . . .

  A boy brings me to-day an Attacus Cecropia moth which has come out of a cocoon in his trunk . . .

  Minott remembers the Rana palustris, or yellow-legged one, as “the one that stinks so,” as if that scent were peculiar to it . . .

  About 9 P.M. I went to the edge of the river to hear the frogs . . .

  Cousin Charles says that he drove Grandmother over to Weston the 2d of May; on the 3d it snowed and he rode about there in a sleigh; on the 4th and the 5th, when he returned in a chaise to Concord, it was considered dangerous on account of the drifts . . .

  P.M.—To Assabet by Tarbell’s . . .

  Mr.Wright of the factory village, with whom I talked yesterday, an old fisherman, remembers the lamprey eels well, which he used to see in the Assabet there, but thinks that there have been none in the river for a dozen years and that, the stone-heaps are not made by them . . .

  See in Ludwigia palustris ditch on Hubbard’s land evidently toad-spawn already hatched, or flatted out . . . (Journal, 10:407-409).

  About 8.30 A.M., I go down the river to Ball’s Hill . . . 

  P.M.—To Walden. R. W. E. [Ralph Waldo Emerson] is sure that he heard a cuckoo to-day . . .

  It rained last night, and now I see the elm seed or samaræ generally fallen or falling. It not only strews the street but the surface of the river, floating off in green patches to plant other shores. The rain evidently hastened its fall . . .

  I wade through the great Lee farm meadow . . .

  As I sat in my boat near the Bath Rock at Island, I saw a red squirrel steal slyly up a red maple, as if he were in search of a bird’s nest (though it is early for most), and I thought I would see what he was at . . .

  Hear and see the red-eye on an oak . . .

  10 A.M.—To Hill . . .

  A kingbird. Saw a young robin dead. Saw the Viola palmata, early form, yesterday; how long? Look at White Avens Shore. See what I call vernal grass in bloom in many places . . .

  As I go down the railroad at evening, I hear the incessant evening song of the bay-wing from far over the fields. It suggests pleasant associations. Are they not heard chiefly at this season? . . .

Measured two apple trees by the road from the middle of Bedford and Fitch’s mill. One, which divided at the ground, was thirteen and a half feet in circumference there, around the double trunk; but another, in a field on the opposite side of the road, was the most remarkable tree for size . . .

  A hummingbird yesterday came into the next house and was caught. Flew about our parlor to-day and tasted Sophia’s flowers . . .

  P.M.—To Uvularia perfoliata at Flint’s Pond . . .

  Sat down in the sun in the path through Wright’s wood-lot above Goose Pond, but soon, hearing a slight rustling, I looked round and saw a very large black snake about five feet long on the dry leaves, about a rod off . . .

  E. Hoar [Edward Hoar] detected the other day two ovaries under one scale of a Salix rostrata, and, under another, a stamen and another stamen converted into an ovary . . .

  It rains gently from time to time as I walk, but I see a farmer with his boys, John Hosmer, still working in the rain, bent on finishing his planting . . .

  Measured the large apple tree in front of the Charles Miles house . . .

  While I was measuring the tree, Puffer came along, and I had a long talk with him, standing under the tree in the cool sprinkling rain till we shivered . . .

  The proofs, for which I did ask in the note which accompanied the ms, would have been an all sufficient “Bulletin.”

  I was led to suppose by Mr Emerson’s account,—and he advised me to send immediately—that you were not always even one month ahead. At any rate it was important to me that the paper be disposed of soon.

  I send by express this morning the remainder of the story—of which allow me to ask a sight of the proofs.

  Yrs. truly
  Henry D. Thoreau

  P.M.—To Everett Spring . . .

  R. W. E. [Ralph Waldo Emerson] says that Pratt found yesterday out the trientalis, Trillium cernuum, and Smilacina bifolia . . .

  A cloudy afternoon, with a cool east wind, producing a mist. Hundreds of swallows are now skimming close over the river, at its broadest part, where it is shallow and runs the swiftest, just below the Island, for a distance of twenty rods. There are bank, barn, cliff, and chimney swallows, all mingled together and continually scaling back and forth,—a very lively sight They keep descending or stooping to within a few inches of the water on a curving wing . . .

  3.30 P.M.—To Brister’s Hill.

  Going long the deep valley in the woods, just before entering the part called Laurel Glen, I heard a noise, and saw a fox running along the shrubby side-hill . . .

  Horse-chestnut in bloom. Actæa spicata var. ruba will bloom, apparently, in four or five days. It is now fifteen inches high. Lilac in bloom. Pratt shows me what I take to be Genista tinctoria from the Boulder Field. It has leafed; when? . . .

  P. M.—By cars to Worcester, on way to New York . . . (Journal, 10:439-440).

  5 A. M.—Walk with Blake [H.G.O. Blake], Brown [Theophilus Brown], and Rogers [Seth Rogers] to Quinsigamond Pond, carrying our breakfast. Paddled up the pond northerly three quarters of a mile from the bridge, and lunched in Shrewsbury on the east side . . .

  All through Connecticut and New York the white involucres of the cornel (C.Florida), recently expanded, some of them reddish or rosaccous, are now conspicuous.It is not quite expanded in Concord. It is the most showy indigenous tree now open . . .

  P.M.—To Staten Island.

  See an abundance of Ranunculus abortivus in the wood-path behind Mr. E.’s [William Emerson] house going to seed and in bloom . . .

  Ed. Emerson shows me the egg of a bittern (Ardea minor) form a nest in the midst of the Great Meadows, which four boys found, scaring up the bird, last Monday, the 24th . . .

  E. Hoar [Edward Hoar] finds the Eriophorum vaginatum at Ledum Swamp, with lead-colored scales; how long? . . . (Journal, 10:445-447).

  Farmer [Jacob Farmer] describes an animal which he saw lately near Bateman’s Pond, which he thought would weigh fifty or sixty pounds, color of a she fox at this season, low but very long, and ran some what like a woodchuck . . .

  Edward Emerson shows me the nest which he and another discovered . . .

  As I stand by the riverside some time after sundown, I see a light white mist rising here and there in wisps from the meadow, far and near . . .

  P.M.—To Laurel Glen.

  I see, running along on the flat side of a railroad rail on the causeway, a wild mouse with an exceedingly long tail. Perhaps it would be called the long-tailed meadow mouse . . .

  At 5 P.M., go to see a gray squirrel’s nest in the oak at the Island point . . .

  It looks as if it might rain tomorrow; therefore this is to inform you—if you have not left Worcester on account of the rain, that if the weather prevents my starting tomorrow, I intend to start on Thursday morning—i.e. if it is not decidedly rainy—or something more than a shower, and I trust that I shall meet you at Troy as agreed on.

  H.D.T.

  Near the upper edge of the wood, I heard, as I had done in ascending, a very peculiar lively and interesting strain from some bird, which note was new to me. At the same time I caught sight of a bird with a very conspicuous deep-orange throat and otherwise dark, with some streaks along the head. This may have been the Blackburnian warbler . . .

  For last expedition to Monadnock, vide September, 1852 . . .

  P.M.—Surveying, for Warner, wood bought of John Brown near Concord line . . .

  Go to Painted-Cup Meadow via Assabet Bath . . .

  Edith Emerson has found, in the field (Merriam’s) just south of the Beck Stow pin grove, Lepidium campestre, which may have been out ten days . . .

  As I was wading in this Wyman meadow, looking for bullfrog-spawn, I saw a hole at the bottom, where it was six or eight inches deep, by the side of a mass of mud and weeds which rose just to the surface three or four feet from the shore . . .

  I sit in my boat in the twilight by the edge of the river . . .

  The marsh hawk’s eggs are not yet hatched. She rises when I get within a rod and utters that peculiar cackling or scolding note, much like, but distinct from, that of the pigeon woodpecker. She keeps circling over the nest and repeatedly stoops within a rod of my head in an angry manner . . .

  P.M.—To Assabet Bath and return by stone bridge . . .

  See a painted turtle digging her nest in the road at 5.45 P.M. . . .

  At the west bank, by the bathing-place, I see that several turtles’ holes have already been opened and the eggs destroyed by the skunk or other animal . . .

  Saw a painted turtle on the gravelly bank just south of the bath-place, west side, and suspected that she had just laid (it was mid-afternoon). So,examining the ground, I found the surface covered with loose lichens, etc., about one foot behind her, and digging, found five eggs just laid one and a half or two inches deep, under one side. It is remarkable how firmly they are packed in the soil, rather hard to extract, though but just buried . . .

  P.M.—To Ledum Swamp . . .

  I see a song sparrow’s nest here in a little spruce just by the mouth of the ditch. It rests on the thick branches fifteen inches from the ground, firmly made of coarse sedge without, lined with finer, and then a little hair, small within,—a very thick, firm, and portable nest, an inverted cone;—four eggs . . .

  P.M.—To Gowing’s Swamp.

  I notice interrupted ferns, which were killed, fruit and all, by the frosts of the 28th and 29th of May, now coming up afresh from the root. The barren fronds seem to have stood it better . . .

  It is pleasant to paddle over the meadows now, at this time of flood, and look down on the various meadow plants, for you can see more distinctly quite to the bottom than ever . . .

  Edward Emerson, Edward Bartlett, and Storrow Higginson came to ask me the names of some eggs to-night . . .

  One egg is hatched since the 8th, and the young bird, all down, with a tinge of fawn or cinnamon, lies motionless on its breast with its head down and is already about four inches long! An hour or two after, I see the old hawk pursue a stake-driver which was flying over this spot, darting down at him and driving him off . . .

  E. Bartlett [Edward Bartlett] has found three bobolinks’ nests . . .

  P.M.—To Bateman’s Pond . . . (Journal, 10:500-501).

  I heard that snapping sound against a pad on the surface, and at the same time saw a pad knocked up several inches, and a ripple in the water there as when a pickerel darts away. I should say without doubt some fish had darted there against the pad, perhaps at an insect on the under side . . .

  He shows me, also one of three eggs found on the 20th in Gourgas’s wood-lot, within a rod of the roadside, in a small slender oak (eighteen feet high), about fourteen feet from the ground, about fifteen rods north of Britton’s corner, in a grove, where two or three small branches left the main stem; eggs somewhat advanced . . .

  When I received the proof of that portion of my story printed in the July number of your magazine, I was surprised to find that the sentence—“It is as immortal as I am, and perchance will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me still.”—(which comes directly after the words “heals my cuts,” page 230, tenth line from the top,) have been crossed out, and it occurred to me that, after all, it was of some consequence that I should see the proofs; supposing, of course, that my “Stet” &c in the margin would be respected, as I perceive that it was in other cases of comparatively little importance to me. However, I have just noticed that that sentence was, in a very mean and cowardly manner, omitted. I hardly need to say that this is a liberty which I will not permit to be taken with my MS. The editor has, in this case, no more right to omit a sentiment than to insert one, or put words into my mouth. I do not ask anybody to adopt my opinions, but I do expect that when they ask for them to print, they will print them, or obtain my consent to their alteration or omission . I should not read many books if I thought that they had been thus expurgated. I feel this treatment to be an insult, though not intended as such, for it is to presume that I can be hired to suppress my opinions.

  I do not mean to charge you with this omission, for I cannot believe that you knew anything about it, but there must be a responsible editor somewhere, and you, to whom I entrusted my MS. are the only party that I know in this matter. I therefore write to ask if you sanction this omission, and if there are any other sentiments to be omitted in the remainder of my article. If you do not sanction it—or whether you do or not —will you do me the justice to print that sentence, as an omitted one, indicating its place, in the August number?

  I am not willing to be associated in any way, unnecessarily, with parties who will confess themselves so bigoted & timid as this implies. I could excuse a man who was afraid of an uplifted fist, but if one habitually manifests fear at the utterance of a sincere thought, I must think that his life is a kind of nightmare continued into broad daylight. It is hard to conceive of one so completely derivative. Is this the avowed character of the Atlantic Monthly? I should like an early reply.

  Yrs truly,
  Henry D. Thoreau

  Storrow Higginson gives me a bobolink’s egg. It is a regular oval, seven eighths by five eighths inch . . . (Journal, 10:507).

  Hotter than yesterday and, like it, muggy or close. So hazy can see no mountains. In many spots in the road and by edge of rye-fields the reflected heat is almost suffocating. 93° at 1 P.M.

  Sitting on the Conantum house sill (still left), I see two and perhaps three young striped squirrels, twothirds grown, within fifteen or twenty feet, one or more on the wall and another on the ground. Their tails are rather imperfect, as their bodies. They are running about, yet rather feebly, nibbling the grass, etc ., or sitting upright, looking very cunning. The broad white line above and below the eye make it look very long as well as large, and the black and white stripes on its sides, curved as it sits, are very conspicuous and pretty . . .

  Land at old mill-site and walk through the Lee Woods looking for bird’s nests . . . (Journal, 10:509-510).

  The erect potentilla is a distinct variety, with differently formed leaves as well as different time of flowering, and not the same plant at a different season . . . (Journal, 10:510).

  Bathing in the cove by railroad . . . (Journal, 10:511).

  Edward Hoar and I propose to start for the White Mountains in a covered wagon, with one horse, on the morning of Thursday the 1st of July, intending to explore the mountain tops botanically, and camp on them at least several times. Will you take a seat in the wagon with us? Mr. Hoar prefers to hire the horse and wagon himself. Let us hear by express, as soon as you can, whether you will join us here by the earliest train Thursday morning, or Wednesday night. Bring your map of the mountains, and as much provision for the road as you can,—hard bread, sugar, tea, meat, etc.,—for we intend to live like gipsies; also, a blanket and some thick clothes for the mountain top.

  I am on the point of starting for the White Mountains in a wagon with my neighbor Edward Hoar, and I write to you now rather to apologize for not writing, than to answer worthily your three notes. I thank you heartily for them. You will not care for a little delay in acknowledging them, since you date shows that you can afford to wait. Indeed, my head has been so full of company, &c., that I could not reply to you fitly before, nor can I now.

  As for preaching to men these days in the Walden strain,—is it of any consequence to preach to an audience of men who can fail? or who can be revived? There are few beside. Is it any success to interest these parties? If a man has speculated and failed, he will probably do these things again, in spite of you or me.

  I confess that it is rare that I rise to sentiment in my relations to men,—ordinarily to a mere patient, or may be wholesome good-will. I can imagine something more, but the truth compels me to regard the ideal and the actual as two things.

  Channing has come, and as suddenly gone, and left a short poem, “Near Home,” published (?) or printed by Munroe, which I have hardly had time to glance at. As you may guess, I learn nothing of you from him.

  You already foresee my answer to your invitation to make you a summer visit—I am bound for the Mountains. But I trust that you have vanquished, ere this, those dusky demons that seem to lurk around the Head of the River. You know that this warfare is nothing but a kind of nightmare—and it is our thoughts alone which give those unworthies any body or existence.

  I made an excursion with Blake, of Worcester, to Monadnoc, a few weeks since. We took our blankets and food, spent two nights on the mountain, and did not go into a house. Alcott has been very busy for a long time repairing an old shell of a house, and I have seen very little of him. I have looked more at the houses which birds build. Watson made us all very generous presents from his nursery in the spring especially did he remember Alcott. Excuse me for not writing any more at present, and remember me to your family.

  Yours,
  H. D. Thoreau

  Spent the noon close by the old Dunstable graveyard, by a small stream north of it . . .

  Walked to and along the river and bathed in it . . .

  I returned through the grass up the winding channel of our little brook to the camp again . . .

  Put up at a tavern in Merrimack, some miles after passing over a pretty high, flat-topped hill in road, whence we saw the mountains (with a steep descent to the interval on right). 7 P. M.—I walked by a path through the wood northeast to the Merrimack . . .

  Leaving Loudon Ridge on the right we continued on by Hollow Road—a long way through the forest without houses—through a part of Canterbury into Gilmanton Factory village . . .

  We continue along through Gilmanton to Meredith Bridge, passing the Suncook Mountain on our right, a long, barren rocky range overlooking Lake Winnepiseogee . . .

  Camped within a mile south of Senter Harbor, in a birch wood on the right near the lake . . .

  Stop at Tamworth village for the night . . .

  We fished in vain in a small clear pond by the roadside in Madison . . .

  Saw the bones of a bear at Wentworth’s house, and camped, rather late, on right-hand side of road just beyond, or a little more than four miles from Jackson . . .

  Began the ascent by the mountain road at 11.30 A.M. . . . [At three miles] was the foot of the ledge and limit of trees, only their dead trunks standing, probably fir and spruce, about the shanty where we spent the night with the colliers . . .

  I got up about half an hour before my party and enjoyed a good view, though it was hazy, but by the time the rest arrived a cloud invested us all, a cool driving mist, which wet you considerably, as you squatted behind a rock . . .

  About 8.15 A.M., being still in a dense fog, we started directly for Tuckerman’s Ravine . . .

  But following down the edge of the stream, the source of the Ellis River, which was quite a brook within a stone’s throw of its head, we soon found it very bad walking in the scrubby fir and spruce, and therefore, when we had gone about two thirds the way to the lake, decided to camp in the midst of the dwarf firs, clearing away a space with our hatchets . . .

  I ascended the stream in the afternoon and got out of the ravine at its head, after dining on chiogenes tea, which plant I could gather without moving from my log seat . . .

  Returning, I sprained my ankle in jumping down the brook, so that I could not sleep that night, nor walk the next day . . .

  In the afternoon we rode along, three of us, northward and northwestward on our way round the mountains, going through Gorham. We camped about a mile and a half west of Gorham, by the roadside, on the bank of Moose River . . .

  We dined at Wood’s tavern in Randolph, just over Randolph Hill, and here had a pretty good view of Madison and Jefferson, which rose from just south the stream there, but a cloud rested on the summits most of the time . . .

  We put up at a store just opposite the town hall on Jefferson Hill . . .

  Boiled tea for our dinner by the little pond, the head of the Pemigewasset . . .

  Rode on and stopped at Morrison’s (once Tilton’s) Inn in West Thornton . . .

  About the mountains were wilder and rarer birds, more or less arctic, like the vegetation. I did not even hear the robin on them, and when I had left them a few miles behind, it was a great change and surprise to hear the lark, the wood pewee, the robin, and the bobolink (for the last had not done singing) . . .

  Lodged at tavern in Franklin, west side of river . . .

  Spent the noon on the bank of the Contoocook in the northwest corner of Concord, there a stagnant river owing to dams . . .

  Reached Weare and put up at a quiet and agreeable house, without any sign or barroom . . .

  It is surprising how much more bewildering is a mountain-top than a level area of the same extent. Its ridges and shelves and ravines add greatly to its apparent extent and diversity. You may be separated from your party by only stepping a rod or two out of the path . . .

  The former wished to show me what he thought an owl’s nest he had found . . . (Journal, 11:62-64).

  From wall corner saw a pinkish patch on side-hill west of Baker Farm, which turned out to be epilobium, a rod across. Through the glass it was as fine as a moss, but with the naked eye it might have been mistaken for a dead pine bough . . .

  I see much eriocaulon floating, with its mass of white roots uppermost, near the shore in Goose Pond. I suspect it may have been loosened up by the musquash, which either feeds on it, or merely makes its way through its dense mats . . .

  Edward Bartlett and another brought me a green bittern, this year’s bird, apparently full grown but not full plumaged, which they caught near the pool on Heywood’s land behind Sleepy Hollow . . .

  Landed at the Bath-Place and walked the length of Shad-bush Meadow . . .

  I see there what I take to be a marsh hawk of this year, hunting by itself . . .

  The best show of lilies is on the west side of the bay, in Cyrus Hosmer’s meadow, above the willow-row. Many of them are not open at 10 o’clock A.M . . .

  Landed at Fair Haven Pond to smell the Aster macrophyllus . . .

  We ate our dinner on the hill by Rice’s . . .

  While bathing at Rice’s landing, I noticed under my arm, amid potamogeton, a little pickerel between two and two and a half and three inches long, with a little silvery minnow about one inch long in his mouth . . .

  Emerson [Ralph Waldo Emerson] is gone to the Adirondack country with a hunting party. Eddy [Edward Emerson] says he has carried a double-barrel gun, one side for shot, the other for ball . . .

  In the upper part of J. Farmer’s lane I find huckleberries which are distinctly pear-shaped, all of them . . . (Journal, 11:79-81).

  Looking north from Hubbard’s Bridge about 4 P.M., the wind being southeasterly, I am struck by the varied lights of the river. The wind, which is a considerable breeze, strikes the water by a very irregular serrated edge about mid-channel, and then abruptly leaves it on a distinct and regular meandering line, about eight feet from the outer edge of the pads on the west side . . .

  I see a pout this afternoon in the Assabet, lying on the bottom near the shore, evidently diseased . . .

  Edith Emerson gives me an Asclepias tuberosa from Naushon, which she thinks is now in its prime there . . .

  It is cloudy and misty dog-day weather, with a good deal of wind, and thickening to occasional rain this afternoon. This rustling wind is agreeable, reminding me, by its unusual sound, of other and ruder seasons . . .

  I go along plum path behind Adolphus Clark’s. This is a peculiar locality for plants . . . (Journal, 11:91-94).

  P.M.—To the Miles blueberry swamp and White Pond . . .

  As I am paddling up the north side above the Hemlocks, I am attracted by the singular shadows of the white lily pads on the rich-brown muddy bottom . . .

  I landed to get the wood pewee nest in the Lee Wood . . .

  Suggesting to C. [William Ellery Channing] an Indian name for one of our localities, he thought it had too many syllables for a place so near the middle of town,—as if the more distant and less frequented place might have a longer name, less understood and less alive in its syllables . . .

  There is brought me this afternoon Thalictrum Cornuti, of which the club-shaped filaments (and sepals?) and seed-vessels are a bright purple and quite showy . . .

  I notice the black willows from my boat’s place to Abner Buttrick’s, to see where they grow, distinguishing ten places . . .

  Wars are not yet over. I hear one in the outskirts learning to drum every night . . .

  C. [William Ellery Channing] saw pigeons to-day.

  P. M.—To Annursnack via swimming-ford . . .

  Having left my note-book at home, I strip off a piece of birch bark for paper . . .

  I sit under the oaks at the east end of Hubbard’s Grove, and hear two wood pewees singing close by . . .

  Channing’s poem “Near Home” was printed (if not published) by James Munroe and Co. Boston. C. brought it to me some seven weeks ago with the remark—“Knowing your objection to manuscript, I got it printed”—and I do not know that he presented it to anyone else. I have not been to the city of late, but Emerson told me that he found a small pile of them at Munroe’s, and bought two or three; though Munroe said that he was forbidden to advertise it. Of course this is equivalent to dedicating it “to whom it may concern.” Others also have bought it, for fifty cents; but C. still persists, in his way, in saying that it is not published. Ought not a poem to publish itself?

  I am glad if you are not weary of the Maine Woods, partly because I have another and a larger slice to come. As for the presidency,—I cannot speak for my neighbors, but, for my own part, I am politically so benighted (or belighted?) that I do not know what Seward’s qualifications are. I know, however, that no one in whom I could feel much interest would stand any chance of being elected. But the nail which is hard to drive is hard to draw.

  Yours truly

  Henry D. Thoreau

  I see thistle-down, grayish-white, floating low quite across Fair Haven Pond . . .

  We have our first green corn to-day, but it is late . . . (Journal, 11:113-114).

  Flannery tells me that at about four o’clock this morning he saw white frost on the grass in the low ground near Holbrook’s meadow . . .

  P.M.—To Poplar Hill and the Great Fields . . .

  I notice hard backs clothing their stems now with their erected leaves, showing the whitish under sides . . . (Journal, 11:116).

  Emerson [Ralph Waldo Emerson] says that he and Agassiz [Louis Agassiz] and Company broke some dozens of ale-bottles, one after another, with their bullets, in the Adirondack country, using them for marks! . . .

  Channing, [William Ellery Channing] thinking of walks and life in the country, says, ‘You don’t want to discover anything new, but to discover something old,’ i.e. be reminded that such things still are . . .

  P.M.—Sail to Ball’s (?) Hill . . . (Journal, 11:120-123).

  I gather from Nut Meadow Brook, not far below the road, a potamogeton (perhaps P. Claytoni (heterophyllus of Gray), which Russell said was the one by road at Jenny Dugan’s). It is still out. Has handsome broad, grassy immersed leaves and somewhat elliptic floating ones . . .

  Minott tells me that once, one very dry summer, when but part of these meadows had been cut, Moore and Hosmer got the owners to agree to have them burnt over, in the expectation that it would improve the quality of the grass, and they made quite an affair of it,—had a chowder, cooked by Moore’s boys, etc.; but the consequence was that this wool-grass came in next year more than ever . . .

  I see round-leaved cornel fruit on Heywood Peak, now half China-blue and half white, each berry . . . (Journal, 11:129).

  Before bathing at the Pokelogan, I see and hear a school of large suckers, which have come into this narrow bay and are swiftly dashing about and rising to the surface, with a bubbling sound, as if to snatch something from the surface . . .

  J. Farmer shot a sharp-shinned hawk this morning, which was endeavoring to catch one of his chickens. I bring it home and find that it measures seventeen inches in length and thirty in alar extent, and the tail extends four inches beyond the closed wings . . .

  Returning, rather late afternoon, we saw some forty martins sitting in a row and twittering on the ridge of his old house, apparently preparing to migrate . . .

  As I am now returning over Lily Bay, I hear behind me a singular loud stertorous sound which I thought might have been made by a cow out of order, twice sounded . . . (Journal, 11:137-138).

  At the Pout’s Nest, Walden, I find the Scirupus debilis, apparently in prime, generally aslant . . .

  Edward Bartlett brings me a nest found three feet from the ground in an arbor-vitæ, in the New Burying-Ground, with one long-since addled egg in it . . .

  At the pool by the oaks behind Pratt’s, I see the Myriophyllum ambiguum still, and going to seed, greening the surface of the water . . .

  At Botrychium Swamp, Nabalus altissimus . . . In the evening, by the roadside, near R.W.E.’s [Ralph Waldo Emerson] gate, find a glow-worm of the common kind. Of two men, Dr. Bartlett [Charles Bartlett] and Charles Bowen, neither had ever seen it! . . .

  The common light-sheathed Scirpus Eriophorum still . . . (Journal, 11:142).

  The hazelnut bushes up this way are chiefly confined to the drier river-bank. At least they do not extend into the lower, somewhat meadowy land further inland. They appear to be mostly stripped. The most I get are left hanging over the water at the swimming-ford . . .

  Went down to the pond-hole behind where I used to live. It is quite full of water. The middle or greater part is densely covered with target leaves, crowding one another and curling up on their edges . . .

  I find many high blueberries, quite fresh, overhanging the south shore of Walden . . .

  Hear a warbling vireo, sounding very rare and rather imperfect. I think this is what I have mistaken for the young purple finch note . . .

  P.M.—To Ledum Swamp . . .

  Stopped and talked with W——W—— and ate a watermelon with him on the grass . . .

  What a contrast to sink your head so as to cover your ears with water, and hear only the confused noise of the rushing river, and then to raise your ears above water and hear the steady creaking of crickets in the aerial universe! . . .

  Storrow Higginson brings from Deerfield this evening some eggs to show me,—among others apparently that of the Virginian rail . . .

  Gather half my grapes, which for some time have perfumed the house . . .

  P.M.—To Owl Swamp.

  I perceive the dark-crimson leaves, quite crisp, of the white maple on the meadows, recently fallen . . .

  It requires a different intention of the eye in the same locality to see different plants, as, for example, Juncacew and Graminew even;i.e.,I find that when I am looking for the former, I do not see the latter in their midst . . .

  Rice says he saw two meadow-hens when getting his hay in Sudbury some two months ago, and that they breed there . . .

  Very heavy rain all yesterday afternoon, and to-day it is somewhat cooler and clearer and the wind more northwesterly, and I see the unusual sight of ripples or waves curving up-stream off Cardinal Shore, so that the river might seem to be flowing that way . . .

  A. Hosmer is pleased because from the cupola of his new barn he can see a new round-topped mountain in the northwest . . .

  Fringed gentian out well, on easternmost edge of the Painted-Cup Meadows, by wall . . .

  The squirrels know better than to open unsound hazelnuts. At most they only peep into them . . .

  I paddle about the pond, for a rarity . . .

  I gather quite a lot of perfectly fresh high blueberries overhanging the south side, and there are many green ones among them still. They are all shrivelled now in swamps commonly . . .

  It rained as hard as I remember to have seen it for about five minutes at six o’clock P. M., when I was out, and then suddenly, as it were in an instant, the wind whirled round to the westward, and clear sky appeared there and the storm ended,—which had lasted all day and part of the previous night . . .

  Paddle round Beaver Pond in a boat, which I calked with newspaper . . . (Journal, 11:162).

  It is a wonderful day. As I look westward, this fine air—“gassy,” C. [William Ellery Channing] calls it—brings out the grain of the hills . . .

  Mr. Warren brings to me three kinds of birds which he has shot on the Great Meadows this afternoon . . .

  Along the middle and bottom of the hollows is the indistinct trail of wild animals—foxes, etc.—and sportsmen. C. [William Ellery Channing] thinks this might be called Fox Path . . . (Journal, 11:168-169).

  Miss Pratt shows me a small luminous bug found on the earth floor of their shed (I think a month ago) . . . (Journal, 11:170).

  A.M.—Go with Russell to the rooms of the Essex Institute,—if that is the name . . .

  P.M.—Walked with Russell to Marblehead above railroad . . . (Journal, 11:170-173).

  Cooked our supper in a salt marsh some two miles this side of Gloucester, in view of the town. We had cooked our tea for dinner with dead bayberry bushes; now we used the chips and bark which the tide had deposited in little parcels on the marsh, having carried water in our dippers from a brook, a quarter of a mile . . .

  Put up in Gloucester . . .

  We then set out to find our way to Gloucester over the hills, and saw the comet very bright in the northwest. After going astray a little in the moonlight, we fell into a road which at length conducted us to the town . . .

  Edward Hoar says he found last year Datura Stramonium in their garden . . .

  In the evening Mr. Warren brings me a snipe and a pectoral sandpiper . . .

  Melvin says he has found the pigeon hawk’s nest here . . .

  The farmers digging potatoes on shore pause a moment to watch my sail and bending mast . . .

  The fisherman Haynes thinks that the large flock of peetweet-like birds which I saw on the meadow one fall were what he calls “black-backs” . . .

  The gentian (Avdrewsii), now generally in prime, loves moist, shady banks , and its transcendent blue shows best in the shade and suggests coolness; contrasts there with the fresh green;—a splendid blue, light in the shade, turning to purple with age . . .

  P.M.—To White Pond . . .

  See what must be a solitary tattler feeding by the water’s edge, and it has tracked the mud all about . . .

  Take perhaps our last bath in White Pond for the year . . .

  I see undoubtedly the little dipper by the edge of the pads this afternoon, and I think I have not seen it before this season . . .

  Minott tells me of a great rise of the river once in August, when a great many ‘marsh-birds,’ as peeps, killdeer, yellow-legs, etc., came inland, and he saw a flock of them reaching from Flint’s Bridge a mile down-stream over the meadows, and making a great noise . . .

  Sailed to Baker Farm with a strong northwest wind . . .

  P.M.—Paddle about Walden . . .

  How many men have a fatal excess of manner! There was one came to our house the other evening, and behaved very simply and well till the moment he was passing out the door. He then suddenly put on the airs of a well-bred man, and consciously described some are of beauty or other with his head or hand. It was but a slight flourish, but it has put me on the alert . . .

  P.M. (before the above).—Paddled up the Assabet. Strong north wind, bringing down leaves.

  Many white and red maple, bass, elm, and black willow leaves are strewn over the surface of the water, light, crisp colored skiffs. The bass is in the prime of its change, a mass of yellow . . .

  P.M.—To Easterbrooks Country . . .

  The comet makes a great show these nights . . .

  Dear Sir,

  I wrote to you more than a month ago respecting what was due to me from the Atlantic monthly, but I have not heard from you. Perhaps you have not received my note. As I count, your magazine is indebted to me for thirty-three pages at six dollars a page—$198.00

  I should be glad to know if you receive this, and also when I may expect to be paid.

  Yrs
  Henry D. Thoreau

  Now, methinks, the autumnal tints are brightest in our streets and in the woods generally. In the streets, the young sugar maples make the most show. The street is never more splendid . . .

  I go to the Cliffs. The air is clear, with a cold north-west wind, and the trees beginning to be bare . . .

  As I go along the Groton road, I see afar, in the middle of E. Wood’s field, what looks like a stone jug or post, but my glass reveals it a woodchuck, a great, plump gray fellow, and when I am nearly half a mile off, I can still see him nibbling the grass there . . .

  I find the fringed gentian abundantly open at 3 and at 4 P.M . . .

  Most exposed button-bushes and black willows are two thirds bare, and the leaves which remain on the former are for the most part brown and shrivelled . . .

  This town has made a law recently against cattle going at large, and assigned a penalty of five dollars. I am troubled by an Irish neighbor’s cow and horse, and have threatened to have them put in the pound. But a lawyer tells me that these town laws are hard to put through, there are so many quibbles . . .

  On the top of Ball’s Hill, nearly half-way its length, the red pine-sap, quite fresh, apparently not long in bloom, the flower recurved . . .

  Paddling slowly back, we enjoy at length ver perfect reflections in the still water . . .

  The colors of the oaks are far more distinct now than they were before. See that white and that black oak, side by side, young trees, the first that peculiar dull crimson (or salmon) red, with crisped edges, the second a brownish and greenish yellow, much sun still in its leaves.

  There is less wind these days than a week or fort night ago; calmer and more Indian-summer-like days . . .

  Willows generally turn yellow, even to the little sage willow, the smallest of all our species, but a foot or two high, though the Salixalba hardly attains to more than a sheen, polish . . .

  Methinks the reflections are never purer and more distinct than now at the season of the fall of the leaf, just before the cool twilight has come, when the air has a finer grain. Just as our mental reflections are more distinct at this season of the year, when the evenings grow cool and lengthen and our winter evenings with their brighter fires may, be said to begin . . .

  Little did the fathers of the town anticipate this brilliant success when they caused to be imported from further in the country some straight poles with the tops cut off, which they called sugar maple trees,—and a neighborin gmerchant’s clerk, as I remember, by way of jest planted beans about them. Yet these which were then jestingly called bean-poles are these days far the most beautiful objects noticeable in our streets . . .

  P.M.—Ride to Sam Barrett’s mill . . .

  Hosmer says that the rill between him and Simon Brown generally runs all night and in the fore part of the day, but then dries up, or stops, and runs again at night, or it will run all day in cloudy weather . . .

  Standing on Hunt’s Bridge at 5 o’clock, the sun just ready to set, I notice that its light on my note-book is quite rosy or purple, though the sun itself and its halo are merely yellow, and there is no purple in the western sky . . .

  Walked along the dam and the broad bank of the canal with Hosmer . . .

  Another remarkably warm and pleasant day, if not too hot for walking; 74º at 2 P.M. . . .

  W. W. introduces me to his brother in the road. The latter was not only a better-dressed but a higher-cultured man than the other, yet looking remarkably like him,—his brother! . . .

  Most leaves now on the water. They fell yesterday . . .

  P. M.—Up Assabet, for a new mast, the old being broken in passing under a bridge.

  Talked with the lame Haynes, the fisherman . . .

  I see Heavy Haynes fishing in his old gray boat, sinking the stern deep . . .

  C. [William Ellery Channing] tells of hearing after dark the other night frequent raucous notes which were new to him, on the ammannia meadow, in the grass . . .

  One tells me that he saw geese go over Wayland the 17th . . .

  A man at work on the Ledum Pool, draining it, says that, when they had ditched about six feet deep, or to the bottom, near the edge of this swamp, they came to old flags, and he thought that the whole swamp was once a pond and the flags grew by the edge of it . . .

  P.M.—To Woodis Park over Hill . . .

The brilliant autumnal colors are red and yellow and the various tints, hues, and shades of these. Blue is reserved to be the color of the sky, but yellow and red are the colors of the earth flower . . .

  Chestnut trees are generally bare, showing only a thin crescent of burs, for they are very small this year. I climb one on Pine Hill, looking over Flint’s Pond, which, indeed, I see from the ground . . .

  Returning in an old wood-path from top of Pine Hill to Goose Pond, I see many goldenrods turned purple—all the leaves . . .

  The largest scarlet oak that I remember hereabouts stands by the penthorum pool in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery, and is now in its prime . . .

  One shopkeeper has hung out woollen gloves and even thick buckskin mittens by his door, foreseeing what his customers will want as soon as it is finger-cold, and determined to get the start of his fellows . . .

  A moderate northerly wind and pleasant, clear day. There is a slight rustle from the withered pontederia . . .

  We have a cool, white sunset, Novemberish, and no redness to warm our thoughts . . .

  Here is an Indian-summer day. Not so warm, in-deed, as the 19th and 20th, but warm enough for pleasure . . .

  How handsome the great red oak acorns now! I stand under the tree on Emerson’s lot. They are still falling . . .

  P.M.—To Baker Farm, on foot . . .

  Nature now, like an athlete, begins to strip herself in earnest for her contest with her great antagonist Winter. In the bare trees and twigs what a display of muscle! . . .

  I see that Prichard’s mountain ash (European) has lately put forth new leaves when all the old have fallen, and they are four or five inches long! . . . (Journal, 11:263-264).

  As I sit on the Cliff there, the sun is now getting low, and the woods in Lincoln south and east of me are lit up by its more level rays, and there is brought out a more brilliant redness in the scarlet oaks, scattered so equally over the forest, than you would have believed was in them . . . (Journal, 11:264-270).

  I have not seen anything of your English Australian yet. Edward Hoar, my companion in Maine and at the White Mts., his sister Elizabeth, and a Miss Prichard, another neighbor of ours, went to Europe in the Niagara on the 6th. I told them to look out for you under the Yardley Oaks, but it seems that they will not find you there.

  I had a pleasant time in Tuckerman’s Ravine at the White Mts in July, entertaining four beside my self under my little tent through some soaking rains; & more recently I have taken an interesting walk with Channing about Cape Ann. We were obliged to “dipper it” a good way, on account of the scarcity of fresh water, for we got most of our meals by the shore.

  C[hanning] is understood to be here for the winter,—but I rarely see him.

  I should be pleased to see your face here in the course of the Indian summer, which may still be expected—if any authority can tell us when the phenomenon does occur. We would like to hear the story of your travels—for if you have not been fairly intoxicated with Europe, you have been half-seas-over, & so probably can tell more about it—

  [Yours truly
  Henry D. Thoreau]

  Many black oaks are bare in Sleepy Hollow. Now you easily detect where larches grow, viz in the swamp north of Sleepy Hollow. They are far more distinct than at any other season (Journal, 11:271-275).

  A cool gray November afternoon; sky overcast . . .

  The gardener can see only the gardener’s garden, wherever he goes. The beauty of the earth answers exactly to your demand and appreciation.

  Apples in the village and lower ground are now generally killed brown and crisp, without having turned yellow, especially the upper parts, while those on hills and [in] warm places turned yellowish or russet, and so ripened to their fall . . .

  How long we will follow an illusion! On meeting that one whom I call my friend, I find that I had imagined something that was not there.I am sure to depart sadder than I came. Nothing makes me so dejected as to have met my friends, for they make me doubt if it is possible to have any friends. I feel what a fool I am. I cannot conceive of persons more strange to me than they actually are; not thinking, not believing, not doing as I do; interrupted by me . . .

  Your truly welcome note of the 31st ult. reached me only this evening. I am sorry our English Australian has not been in Concord. He is quite an original, and appeared to be as familiar with the Concord worthies, as though he had been a fellow townsman of theirs. He is a young man, but has seen a good deal of the world, inside and outside,—has lived some years in and about London, and fellowshipped with all sorts of folks, authors, gypsies, vagrants, &c., his accounts of which are entertaining—talks easy and well, has no vain pretensions, although I found incidentally that he is highly connected—I believe, with the family of the celebrated Lord Lyttleton, of monody memory – wears common cheap clothes, and carries his own baggage, a small leathern bag, is short and rather stout, full beard and of sandy complexion, smokes a pipe a good deal, likes malt liquor and an occasional glass of whiskey or gin, but he is by no means intemperate, only English and cosmopolitan habits. He has a little book in project to be called “Pots of Beer,” the chapters headed Pot First, Pot Second, &c., so on—Conversations and reflections over these inspiring vessels. (P.S. Of wrath?)

  I told Channing about him (who, by the way—C.—I found at his old post at the Mercury office, last week), and he said that you would not like his pipe. This puts me to thinking, as Jack Downing would say, and I want to take this opportunity to apologize for having so often offended you by my untimely puffs. I assure you, in future, that I will strive to refrain in your presence, for I am ready to “acknowledge the corn,” and plead guilty, craving pardon for my manifold sins against your purer tastes.

  I feel deeply disappointed and somewhat chagrined at my failure in going to Europe, and hope to master sufficient courage to embark again next spring, when I shall probably go from New York, whence like the decensus averni there is no return. You would like to know more about my voyage. I was really “half seas over,” as you intimate, in more senses than one, for my sea-sickness operated on my brain like a potent stimulus, accompanied with the most painful vertigo. I felt somewhat as I conclude a dancing dervish might, after having spun round for some time, that is if they ever do so, or is it only the Shakers that perform these gyrations? But the newspaper I send you will give you an account of my experiences on board ship. The paragraph about the moose is quite Thoreau -ish / -ian—take your choice—and the phrase, tribute to the sea, is, I think, borrowed from your account of your winter voyage to Nantucket, some years ago.

  I have published my history of New Bedford in a neat duodecimo of 400 pages, and am prospecting for a volume of poems—also writing some sketches called “Smoke from my Pipe”—in the second chapter of which I introduce a certain philosopher, a friend of mine, who built his own house, earned his own livelihood, and lived alone some years, a genial man, a scholar, &c. Can you guess him out? I think I may also introduce, all of course, in a respectful and quiet way, some other of the Concordian band—but more of this anon, as we authors say, when we roll out our line.

  I am quite tempted by your kind invitation to visit Concord during the “Indian summer,” should such a boon come this month. I may go for Boston soon, and may also possibly get as far as Concord for a few days—but whether I do or not, I want you to come down and visit me, I value your acquaintance highly, and I want to see Mr. Emerson and Father Alcott once more. Life is too short, and noble men and women too scarce, for me to lose any opportunity of enjoying the society of such, when I can do so without obtrusion.

  With my warm regards to your family and my other Concord friends, and hoping to hear from you again very soon, I remain, yours faithfully,

  Daniel Ricketson.

  Please return the newspaper.

  I am amused by your account of your party in the rain under your little tent. I trust your friends were quite contented with your hospitality.

  Take one of our selectmen and put him on the highest hill in the township, and tell hire to look! What,probably, would he see? What would he select to look at? Sharpening his sight to the utmost, and putting on the glasses that suited him best, aye, using a spy-glass if he liked, straining his optic nerve, to its utmost, and making a full report. Of course, he would see a Brocken spectre of himself. Now take Julius Cesar, or Emanuel Swedenborg, or a Fiji-Islander, and set him up there! Let them compare notes afterward. Would it appear that they had enjoyed the same prospect? . . .

  The large shallow cups of the red oak acorns look like some buttons I have seen which had lost their core . . .

  He stays and discusses matters and men for an hour or two, and admirably. I suspect he deals better with matters, somewhat, than with men, but masterly with either, and anything he meddles with or takes seriously in hand. I am proud of him. I should say he inspired love, if indeed the sentiment he awakens did not seem to partake of something yet purer, if that were possible, and as yet nameless from its rarity and excellency. Certainly he is better poised and more nearly self-sufficient than other men.

  I was much pleased with your lively and life-like account of your voyage. You were more than repaid for your trouble, after all. The coast of Nova-Scotia which you sailed along from Windsor westward is particularly interesting to the historian of this country, having been settled earlier than Plymouth. Your “Isle of Haut” is properly “Isle Haute” or the High Island of Champlain’s map. There is another off the coast of Maine. By the way, the American elk, of American authors, (Cervus Canadensis) is a distinct animal from the moose (cervus alces), though the latter is also called elk by many.

  You drew a very vivid portrait of the Australian—short & stout, with a pipe in his mouth, and his book inspired by beer, Pot 1st, Pot 2 &c. I suspect that he must be pot-bellied withal. Methinks I see the smoke going up from him as from a cottage on the moor. If he does not quench his genius with his beer, it may burst into a clear flame at last. However, perhaps he intentionally adopts the low style.

  What do you mean by that ado about smoking and my “purer tastes”? I should like his pipe as well as his beer, at least. Neither of them is so bad as to be “highly connected,” which you say he is, unfortunately. Did you ever see an English traveller who was not? Even they who swing for their crimes may boast at last that they are highly connected.—No! I expect nothing but pleasure in “smoke from your pipe.”

  You & the Australian must have put your heads together when you concocted those titles—with pipes in your mouths over a pot of beer. I suppose that your chapters are Whiff the 1st—Whiff the 2nd &c But of course it is a more modest expression for “Fire from my Genius.”

  You must have been very busy since you came back, or before you sailed, to have brought out your History, of whose publication I had not heard. I suppose that I have read it in The Mercury. Yet I am curious to see how it looks in a volume, with your name on the title page.

  I am more curious still about the poems. Pray put some sketches into the book—your shanty for frontispiece; Arthur & Walton’s boat, (if you can) running for Cuttyhunk in a tremendous gale, not forgetting “Be honest boys” &c nearby; the Middleboro Ponds with a certain island looming in the distance; the Quaker meetinghouse, and the Brady House, if you like; the villagers catching smelts with dip nets in the twilight, at the head of the River &c &c. Let it be a local and villageous book as much as possible. Let some one make a characteristic selection of mottoes from your shanty walls, and sprinkle them in an irregular manner, at all angles, over the fly leaves and margins, as a man stamps his name in a hurry; and also canes, pipes, and jacknives, of all your patterns, about the frontispiece. I can think of plenty of devices for tail-pieces. Indeed I should like to see a hair-pillow, accurately drawn, for one; a cat with a bell on, for another; the old horse with his age printed in the hollow of his back; half a cocoa-nut shell by a spring; a sheet of blotted paper; a settle occupied by a settler at full length, &c &c &c. Call all the arts to your aid. Dont wait for the Indian Summer, but bring it with you

  Yrs, truly
  H. D. T.

  P.S. Let me ask a favor. I am trying to write something about the autumnal tints, and I wish to know how much our trees differ from English & European ones in this respect. Will you observe, or learn of me what English or European trees, if any, still retain their leaves in Mr. [James] Arnold’s garden (the gardener will supply the true names) & also if the foliages of any (& what) European or foreign trees there have been brilliant the past month. If you will do this, you will greatly oblige me. I return the newspaper with this.

  What struck me was a certain emptiness beyond, between the hemlocks and the hill, in the cool, washed air, as if I appreciated even here the absence of insects from it. It suggested agreeably to me a mere space in which to walk briskly. The fields are bleak, and they are, as it were, vacated. The very earth is like a house shut up for the winter, and I go knocking about it in vain . . .

  Rounding the Island just after sunset, I see not only the houses nearest the river but our own reflected in the river by the Island . . .

  Goodwin, laying wall at Miss Ripley’s, observed to me going by, ‘Well, it seems that——thought that he had lived long enough.’ He committed suicide within a week, at his sister’s house in Sudbury . . .

  Animals generally see things in the vacant way I have described. They rarely see anything but their food, or some real or imaginary foe. I never saw but one cow looking into the sky . . .

  To Baker Farm aspen via Cliffs . . .

  In the path below the Cliff, I see some blue-stemmed golden rod turned yellow as well as purple. The Jersey tea is fallen, all but the terminal leaves. These, however, are the greenest and apparently least changed of any indigenous plant, unless it be the sweet-fern . . .

  Your very pleasant and encouraging letter reached me on Monday (the 8th). Pleasant from the cheerful spirit in which it was written, and encouraging from the appreciation you express for the little portraits of my late travelling experiences I sent you.

  This forenoon I made a visit to Arnold’s grounds, walking to and from through the woods and fields most of the way on the route by the upper road by which the wind-mill stands. In company with the gardener, rejoicing in the appropriate and symphonious name of Wellwood Young, whose broad Gaelic accent rendered an attentive ear necessary to catch the names, I made the following list. The Scotch larch, for instance, he said came from Norroway (Norway), the yellow fringes of which were still hanging on the branches.

  The following is the list I made in accordance with your request. I give the names without any order, just as we happened to meet the trees. Horse-chestnut, quite full of yellow and green foliage. English walnut, do. Beech, Linden, Hawthorn (nearly perfect in green foliage, only a little decayed at the top, but in a sheltered place), Silver Linden, Copper Beech, Elm, Weeping Ash, Weeping Willow, Scotch Larch, Euanimus Europeus (Gardener’s name), I suppose correct. These are all European or English, I believe.

  I give a few others not European, viz: Osage orange (or Maclura), Cornus Florida (handsome) Tulip, three-thorned Acacia, Mexican Cypress.

  There were numerous shrubs in full leaf, among them the Guelder Rose. Vines, Bignonia radicans and Bignonia cuminata.

  I send a few leaves. The largest green leaf is the American Linden—the smaller, the European copper leaved Beech. One English Elm (green), and two smaller and narrower leaves, the Euanimus Europeus.

  I am sorry the list is no fuller, but I think it includes all in these grounds. The location is quite sheltered. I could not ascertain from the gardener what trees exhibited particular brilliancy of foliage last month. I conclude, however, that these I have named were quite fresh up to the last of October.

  It is barely possible I may reach Concord on Saturday next and remain over Sunday, but hardly probable as they say.

  Channing I understand has been to Concord since I wrote you last, and is now here again. Is he not quite as much a “creature of moods” as old Sudbury Inn? But I am in poor mood for writing, and besides it is nearly dark ( 5 p.m.).

  May I not hear from you again soon, and may I not expect a visit also ere long? As this is only a business letter I trust you will excuse its dulness. Hoping I have supplied you (Channing has just come in) with what you wanted, I conclude.

  Yours faithfully,
  D. R.

  P. S. If I should not go to Concord I will endeavor to get one of my books to you soon.

  Speaking of twiggy mazes, the very stubble and fine pasture grasses unshorn are others reflecting the light, too, like twigs; but these are of a peculiar bleached brownish color, a principal ingredient in the russet of the earth’s surface . . .

  Now for a brisk and energetic walk, with a will and a purpose. Have done with sauntering, in the idle sense. You must rush to the assault of winter. Make haste into the outskirts, climb the ramparts of the town, be on the alert and let nothing escape your observation . . .

  Last night was quite cold, and the ground is white with frost. Thus gradually, but steadily, winter approaches . . .

  As I stand on the hill at 9 A.M., it looks like snow; the sky is overcast; smokes go up thickly from the village, answering to the frost in the chinks; and there is a remarkable stillness, as if it were earlier, the effect of the colder weather merely, as it were stiffening things . . .

  Now all that moves migrates, or has migrated. Ducks are gone by. The citizen has sought the town . . .

  A very fine snow falling, just enough to whiten the bare spots a little. I go to look for evergreen ferns before they are covered up . . .

  Slight as the snow is, you are now reminded occasionally in your walks that you have contemporaries, and perchance predecessors. I see the track of a fox which was returning from his visit to a farmyard last night, and, in the wood-path, of a man and a dog . . .

  Methinks the wintergreen, pipsissewa, is our handsomest evergreen, so liquid glossy green and dispersed almost all over the woods . . .

  The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard. I ask only that one fourth part of my honest thoughts be spoken aloud . . .

  Leaving my boat, I walk through the low wood west of Dove Rock, toward the scarlet oak. The very sunlight on the pale-brown bleached fields is an interesting object these cold days. I naturally look toward [it] as to a wood-fire. Not only different objects are presented to our attention at different seasons of the year, but we are in a frame of body and of mind to appreciate different objects at different seasons. I see one thing when it is cold and another when it is warm . . .

  Am surprised to see Fair Haven Pond completely frozen over during the last four days. It will probably open again. Thus, while all the channel elsewhere is open and a mere edging of ice amid the weeds is seen, this great expansion is completely bridged over, thus early . . .

  The lambkill and water andromeda are turned quite dark red where much exposed;in shelter are green yet . . . (Journal, 11:334-335).

  Martial Miles tells me of a snapping turtle caught in the river at Waltham, about October 1st, he thinks, which weighed fifty-five pounds (?). He saw it. There were two fighting . . . (Journal, 11:335-338).

  See small water-bugs in Nut Meadow Brook in one place.Probably they were not to be found in the late cold weather, 12th, 13th, etc . . . (Journal, 11:338-339).

  When I looked out this morning, the landscape presented a very pretty wintry sight, little snow as there was . . .

  Saw a scarlet oak some sixteen inches in diameter at three feet from ground blown down evidently in that southeast wind some months ago . . .

  I go through the Dennis Swamp by railroad . . .

  While most keep close to their parlor fires this cold and blustering Thanksgiving afternoon, and think with compassion of those who are abroad, I find the sunny south side of this swamp as warm as their parlors, and warmer to my spirit . . .

  Here was evidently warmer water, probably a spring, and they had crowded to it. Looking more attentively, I detected also a great many minnows about one inch long either floating dead there or frozen into the ice,—at least fifty of them . . .

  I am at Montreal & I think I shall pass south not far from you. I shall be on Tuesday evening at the Revere at Boston. I am going to spend the winter in the West Indies. What do you say to come there too?

  Yrs ever
  Thos Cholmondeley

  How much more remote the newly discovered species seems to dwell than the old and familiar ones, though both inhabit the same pond! . . . (Journal, 11:347-350).

  At the annual meeting of the Association of the Alumni of Harvard College, held in July last, a committee, appointed at a previous meeting “to take into consideration the state of the college library, and to devise means for its increase, maintenance, and administration,” made their report in print, a copy of which has been sent to you. A committee has lately been appointed to carry the recommendations of this report into effect, in behalf of whom we now ask of you a contribution to aid in supplying the deficiencies that have been made known.

  If you should not yet have examined the report, we earnestly ask that it may receive your particular attention, together with the statements appended thereto from the president, the librarians, and other officers of the college, showing such pressing want of means to keep up with the advance of the age, that professors and tutors are obliged to expend a portion of their moderate salaries in the purchase of new and expensive books, which should be found in the library, for their use and for that of the students.

  The college has ever maintained the highest rank among the institutions of learning in the United States, and the influence which it has exerted on the intellectual and moral culture not only of this community, but, to a great extent, of the whole country, is very generally acknowledged. In aiding it to maintain this pre-eminence and to continue the exercise of this salutary influence, the library is of the highest importance; yet the provision for its increase is utterly inadequate to supply, from year to year, even a moderate portion of the new works actually needed to meet the reasonable expectation of its friends and of the community.

  This state of things seems to call earnestly upon all who have been at any time connected with the college, to make some return for the advantages which they have received from the munificence of its former benefactors, by providing in their turn for the wants that have arisen in the lapse of years and the progress of literature and science; it calls on the community, in the midst of which the college is situated, to sustain one of its noblest ornaments in a manner creditable to itself and to the country, and it calls on the friends of education generally to assist in maintaining at Cambridge the highest standard of scholarship.

  Again referring to the printed statements for a more particular account of the wants of the library, we respectfully urge you to aid us in obtaining such a fund for investment as may be necessary for its proper support, feeling sure that only a general misapprehension of its resources has prevented the friends of the college and the community at large from placing it long ago beyond the need of such an appeal. To keep scholarship at Cambridge even with the advance of knowledge in this age, requires, for the annual purchase of new works, the income of a fund of not less than one hundred thousand dollars, and such a fund we hope to obtain.

  While the exigencies of the case seem to demand a liberal subscription from those whose means will warrant it, we beg every one to respond to our call in some amount, however small, remembering that a few dollars from each one of the many who have not the ability to give largely, will in the aggregate be an important aid to the library.

  We request you, therefore, on the receipt of this communication, or as soon after as may be convenient, to return the annexed paper, with your name and the amount of your donation, (either enclosing the money, or stating the time when we may expect to receive it,) to Henry G. Denny, Secretary and Treasurer of the Committee, 42, Court Street, or to Amos A. Lawrence, Esq., Treasurer of Harvard College, 30, Court Street, Boston. You will also confer a great favor by obtaining, as far as you have the power, further subscriptions, or by promoting bequests from those who are liberally disposed, in aid of the fund.

  Should you not have received a copy of the report, please send your post-office address to the secretary of the committee, and one will be forwarded immediately.

  We are, Sir, respectfully,

Your obedient servants,

Thomas G. Cary,

George Livermore,

Henry G. Denny

  Thomas Cholmondeley, my English acquaintance, is here, on his way to the West Indies. He wants to see New Bedford, a whaling town. I told him that I would like to introduce him to you there, thinking more of his seeing you than New Bedford. So we propose to come your way tomorrow. Excuse this short notice, for the time is short. If, on any account, it is inconvenient to see us, you will treat us accordingly.

Yours truly
Henry D. Thoreau

  Dear Sir

  Referring to our file of letters from 1857 we find a note from you of which the enclosed is a copy.

  As our letter to which it is a reply was missent we doubt not but our answer to yours of a few months since has been subjected to the same, or a similar irregularity.

Respectfully yours &c.

Ticknor & Fields

pr Clark

  Crossing the fields west of our Texas house, I see an immense flock of snow buntings, I think the largest that I ever saw. There must be a thousand or two at least. There is but three inches, at most, of crusted and dry frozen snow, and they are running amid the weeds . . .

  Dear Sir,

  In our last account we credited you capl [cash?] on the balance of copies of Walden, including quite a number of copies then on hand unsold—as the Edition was so nearly out we paid for all at that time. We have never been out of the book but there is very little demand for it so the 16 cops. rqd were in the edition printed. We enclose ck $11 [16? 18?] .25 for 15 cops Concord River sold leaving in our hands 17 cops.

Truly yours
W. D. Ticknor & Co.

  I return to the Library Marquette’s “Recit des Voyages” &c the unbound reprint, one volume.

Yrs respectfully
Henry D. Thoreau

  The pond is no more frozen than on the 20th. I see where a rabbit has hopped across it in the slosh last night, making a track larger than a man’s ordinarily is (Journal, 11:374-375).

  Colder last night. Walden undoubtedly frozen at last,—what was left to freeze . . . (Journal, 11:375).

  The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast. Goodwin says that he once had a partridge strike a twig or limb in the woods as she flew, so that she fell and he secured her . . . Now that the sun is setting, all its light seems to glance over the snow-clad pond and strike the rocky shore under the pitch pines a at the northeast end . . .

  I walk over the meadow above railroad bridge, where the withered grass rises above the ice, the river being low . . . Call at a farmer’s this Sunday afternoon, where I surprise the well-to-do masters of the house lounging in very ragged clothes (for which they think it necessary to apologize, and one of them is busy laying the supper-table (at which he invites me to sit down at last), bringing up cold meat from the cellar and a lump of butter on the end of his knife, and making the tea by the time his mother gets home from church . . .

  Aunt Jane says that she was born on Christmas Day, and they called her a Christmas gift, and she remembers hearing that her Aunt Hannah Orrock was so disconcerted by the event that she threw all the spoons outdoors, when she had washed them, or with the dishwater. Father says that he and his sisters (except Elizabeth) were born in Richmond Street, Boston, between Salem and Hanover Streets, on the spot where a bethel now stands, on the left hand going from Hanover Street . . .

  Heavy Haynes was fishing a quarter of a mile this side of Hubbard’s Bridge. He had caught a pickerel, which the man who weighed it told me (he was apparently a brother of William Wheeler’s, and I saw the fish at the house where it was) weighed four pounds and three ounces . . .