the Thoreau Log.
2 January 1853. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  9 A.M.—Down railroad to Cliffs . . . We build a fire on the Cliffs. When kicking to pieces a pine stump for the fat knots which alone would burn on this icy day, at the risk of spoiling my boots, having looked in vain for a stone, I thought how convenient would be an Indian stone axe to batter it with . . . We soon had a roaring fire of fat pine on a shelf of rock, from which we overlooked the icy landscape.
(Journal, 4:440-444)

Concord, Mass. William Ellery Channing writes in his journal:

  Again walked this morning to see the coats of ice . . . Fire on cliffs of fat pine (William Ellery Channing notebooks and journals. Houghton Library, Harvard University).

New York, N.Y. Horace Greeley writes to Thoreau:

  Friend Thoreau,—

  I have yours of the 29th, and credit you $20. Pay me when and in such sums as may be convenient. I am sorry you and C [George William Curtis] cannot agree so as to have your whole MS. printed. It will be worth nothing elsewhere after having partly appeared in Putnam’s. I think it is a mistake to conceal the authorship of the several articles, making them all (so to speak) editorial; but if that is done, don’t you see that the elimination of very flagrant heresies (like your defiant Pantheism) becomes a necessity? If you had withdrawn your MS., on account of the abominable misprints in the first number, your ground would have been far more tenable.

  However, do what you will.

  Yours,

  Horace Greeley

“George William Curtis, the editor of the Putnam’s and an old friend of Thoreau, insisted on omitting certain ‘heretical’ passages from his “Excursion to Canada” without consulting the author. As a result, the manuscript was withdrawn after only three of the five installments had appeared.”

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 293)

Log Index

Log Pages

Donation

$