Standing amid the pipes of the Great Meadow, I hear a very sharp creaking peep, no doubt from a rail quite near me, calling to or directing her young . . . (Journal, 13:404-306).

Dear Sir

  I shall be very happy to read to your association three lectures on the evenings named, but the question is about their character. They will not be scientific in the common, nor, perhaps, in any sense. They will be such as you might infer from reading my books. As I have just told Mr. Morse, they will be transcendental, that is, to the mass of bearers, probably moonshine. Do you think that this will do? Or does your audience prefer lamplight, or total darkness these nights? I dare say, however, that they would interest those who are most interested in what is called nature.

  Mr Morse named no evenings & I have not had time to hear from, or make any arrangement with him.

Yrs respectfully

Henry D. Thoreau

Dear Sir,
  Allow me to thank you for your two speeches on the Hyatt case, & for two Patent Office Reports on Agriculture

  Especially, I wish to thank you for your speech on the Barbarism of Slavery, which, I hope and suspect, commences a new era in the history of our Congress; when questions of national importance have come to be considered occasionally from a broadly ethical, and not from a narrowly political point of view alone.

  It is refreshing to hear some naked truth, moral or otherwise, uttered there – which can always take care of itself when uttered, and of course belongs to no party. (That was the whole value of Gerrit Smith’s presence there, methinks, though be did go to bed early.) Whereas this has only been employed occasionally to perfume the wheel-grease of party or national politics.

  The Patent Office Reports on Agriculture contain much that concerns me, & I am very glad to possess now a pretty complete series of them.

Yrs truly
Henry D. Thoreau