the Thoreau Log.
1 April 1840. Concord, Mass.

Edmund Quincy Sewall Jr. writes in his journal:

  I received a “Hingham Patriot” from home today. I bought two oranges and gave Joseph Keyes one and Jesse [Harding] half of another. Jesse gave me some raisons. In the evening we had a nice time.

  Before supper Mr John had made a fire in our room and we boiled a “monkey” full of clams leaving them to cool while we eat supper.

  After supper we went and eat them and they were delicious. Then we put some more clams into the broth to boil and Mr John went down and got the boys and they all came up into the room.

  When they were done and cool we eat them broth and all and then put on another lot which we eat also. We had been rendered cautious by our last nights misfortune and had a box for a table when eating and a seat when waiting for them to be done. We also set the monkey into a tin pan so that if it did upset it might be saved if possible from going on the carpet. We met with no accident however saving that a single clam dropped out of the window where they were put to cool which was afterwards brought in and eaten by Charles [Henry Cummings].

  We then went to the Lyceum expecting that a Phrenologist would lecture. His apparatus was there but the lecturer had not arrived. A man there set out his casts and several real skulls on the desk but immediately put them back again. One of the skulls was that of a British soldier who fell in the Battle of Concord. It was dug up in Lincoln. It was only the upper half of the head. There was the bullet hole through which the ball which killed him had passed. A Mr. [David Greene] Haskins lectured on Roger Williams the founder of Rhode Island—a description of his life. Bought 2 cents worth of burnt almonds going home. I forgot to say while speaking of the lecture that he said that the Pilgrims were so poor that when a man had invited his neighbor to a dish of clams (very apropos to our clam feast) he returned thanks that they were permitted “such of the abundance of the seas and of treasures hid in the sand.”

(MS, “E. Q. Sewall Diary,” Sewall Family papers. American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.)

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