the Thoreau Log.

23 July 1839. Concord, Mass.

Ellen Sewall writes to her father Edmund Quincy Sewall Sr. on 31 July:

  Henry Thoreau rowed Aunt and me in his boat a little way up the North Branch, as they call it, on Tuesday, which was very pleasant indeed to me, it being my first sail in a boat. We took tea at Mr. Frost’s [Barzillai Frost] with Mr. and Mrs. Thoreau that afternoon. Mr. Frost inquired about you after he found that I was your daughter, which he did not at first know. Mrs. Frost is quite a still little woman, but seemed amiable and pleasant.

(transcript in The Thoreau Society Archives at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, Lincoln, Mass.; MS, private owner)