I see at bottom of the mill brook, below Emerson’s, two dead frogs. The brook has part way yet a snowy bridge over it. Were they left by a mink, or killed by cold and ice? . . .

  I often think of you and nearly as often feel the prompting to write you, and being alone in the Shanty this afternoon I have concluded to obey the prompting. I say alone, but I can fancy you seated opposite on the settee looking very Orphic or something more mystical. This winter must have been a grand one for your rumination and I conclude that you will thaw out in the spring with the snakes and frogs, more of a philosopher than ever, which perhaps is needless. It has require all my little shares of feelosofy to keep up with my fortitude during the past Hyperborean interregnum. We have usually flattered ourselves that our winters were much milder than of most places in New England or even in the same latitude farther inland, on account of our vicinity to the sea and the Gulf stream in particular. But O! The cold, cold days and weeks we have had in common with the rest of our country North, South, East, and West!

  But we are beginning to relax a little, and ike barn-yard fowls begin to plume ourselves again and pick about, but we hardly begin to lay and cackle yet that will all come in due season, and such a crowing some of us old cocks will make that if you are awake you will perhaps hear at Concord.

  The snow has nearly gone, but or river is still firmly bound, and great sport have gentle and simple young and old, thereon—skating, ice—boats, boys holding sails in their hands are shooting like “mercurial trout” in every direction up and down, even horses and sleighs and loaded wagons have passed where large ships float.

  But I glory in none of this, on the contrary sigh for the more genial past, and hope for no more such desperate seasons. Ah! but March is close here, and she wears at least the gentle name of Spring as Bryant says—and soon may we expect to hear the bluebird and song sparrow again. Then let “hope rule triumphant in the breast,” and buckling our girth a little tighter journey on.

  Dear Thoreau, I am under the greatest obligation to you. Before your Walden I felt quite alone in my best attainments and experiences, but now I find myself sustained and strengthened in my hopes of life. Can we not meet occasionally ere the evil days, should there be any in store for us, come? The accumulated years “notched upon my stick” warn me not to be too prodigal of time. By April then I hope you will be ready to wend this way, and take Spring a little in advance of Concord; then with the bluebirds and sparrows, the robin and thrushes, will I welcome you and associate you.

  I should have told you before that Channing is here in New Bedford. I had but just written his name, when old Ranger announced him, and he is now quietly smoking his pipe by the shanty fire. He arrived on Christmas day, and his first salutation on meeting me at the front door of my house was, “That’s your shanty,” pointing towards it. He is engaged with the editor of the N.B. Mercury, and boards in town, but whereabouts I have not yet discovered. He usually spends Saturday and a part of Sunday with me, and seems to enjoy himself pretty well.

  Mr. Emerson is expected to lecture before our Lyceum to-morrow evening, but from a note I received from him in answer to an invitation to Brooklawn I should think it quite uncertain whether he be here.

  I too have written and delivered a lecture this winter before the Lyceum of our village, Acushnet on Popular Education, into which I contrived to get a good deal of radicalism and had successful time.

  Should your Lyceum be in want of a lecture you might let me know, although I should hardly dare to promise to come,—that is, gratuitously except incidental expenditures. I have commenced a new lecture of a little higher literacy ton upon “The Poet Cowper and his Friends,” and am mediating a grand affair wherein I expect to introduce some of the philosophy I have found in solitude, or rather to publish some of the communications and revelation received from a certain old neighbor and visitor, who occasionally favors by his presence, the world’s outcasts, holding them up by the chin, and occasionally whispering weighty matters into their ears, which at these times are particularly free from wax.

  Channing is not here now, that is in the Shanty, but it being after tea is chatting by the fireside with my wife and daughters, and I am writing by the humming of my fire and the music of my Eolian harp. These are the fine things to have in your windows, and lest you are not acquainted with them I will describe the way to make them.

  Make two wedges of soft wood—make a slight incision in the top of the thick part of the wedges and another in the thin part, which should be shaved down quite thin—then take a strong of saddler’s silk, or several strands of fine silk twisted to the size of the other, waxed or not, as you may see fit, make a knot in each end, the length of the strong to be governed by the width of the window-sash where it is to be placed. Put one end of the strong into the incision upon the top of the wedge and then down the side through the other split in the thin end and the other end likewise on the other widge, then place the two wedges drawing the strong tight between the upper and lower sashes of your window and if the wind be favorable, it will give you a pleasing serenade.

  Write soon and believe me

  Yours very truly
  D.R.