Thoreau writes in his journal:
P.M.—Down Turnpike to Red Lily Meadow.
Hear the plaintive note of young bluebirds, a reviving and gleaming of their blue ray. In Moore’s meadow by Turnpike, see the vetch in purple patches weighing down the grass, as if a purple tinge were reflected there . . .
Red lilies in prime, single upright fiery flowers, their throats how splendidly and variously spotted, hardly two of quite the same hue and not two spotted alike,—leopard-spotted,—averaging a foot or more in height, amid the huckleberry and lambkill, etc., in the moist, meadowy pasture . . .
Mary Moody Emerson writes to Thoreau:
Will my young friend visit me tomorrow early as he can? this evening my Sister [Sarah Alden] Ripley sends word she will com, and go to see Mrs. William Emerson, who is in town. I wish for your writings, hoping they will give me a clearer clue to your faith,—its nature, its destination and object. While excited by your original wit and thoughts, I lose sight, perhaps, of the motive and end and infinite responsibility of talent, in any of its endless consequences. To enter the interior of a peculiar organization of mind is desirable to all who think and read in intermittent solitude. They believe, when the novelty of genius opens on their unpractised eye, that the spirit itself must own and feel its natural relations to their God of revelation, where alone every talent can be perfected and bring its additions to the owner; that the faith in the discipline towards moral excellence can alone insure an immortal fame,—or even success and happiness here. God bless you, and this make you useful to your Country and kind prays
M.E.
