Thoreau writes in his journal:
In [Daniel] Ricketson’s shanty. [Daniel] R[icketson]. has seen white-bellied swallows more than a week. I walk down the side of the river and see Walton’s ice-boat left on the bank.
Hear [Daniel] R[icketson]. describing to Alcott his bachelor uncle James Thornton. When he awakes in the morning he lights the fire in his stove (all prepared) with a match on the end of a stick, without getting up. When he gets up he first attends to his ablutions, being personally very clean, cuts off a head of tobacco to clean his teeth with, eats a hearty breakfast, sometimes, it was said, even buttering his sausages. Then he goes to a relative’s store and reads the Tribune till dinner, sitting in a corner with his back to those who enter. Goes to his boarding-house and dines, eats an apple or two, then in the afternoon frequently goes about the solution of some mathematical problem (having once been a schoolmaster), which often employs him a week.
Amos Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:
A.M. In house and shanty, Thoreau and [Daniel] Ricketson treating of nature and the wild. Thoreau has visited R. before and won him as a disciple, though not in the absolute way he has [Harrison Gray Otis] Blake if Worcester, whose love for his genius partakes of the exceeding tenderness of women, and is a pure Platonism in the fineness and delicacy of the devotee’s sensibilities. But [Daniel] R[icketson]. is himself, and plays the manly part in the matter, defending himself against the master’s twistiness and tough ‘thoroughcraft’ with spirit and ability.
Ricketson also writes in his journal:
Spent the day at home, in the Shanty during the forenoon with Mr. [Amos Bronson] Alcott and Thoreau talked on high themes, rather religious. Alcott walked to town this P.M. Thoreau and I walked as far as Woodlee with him, parted, and we crossed to the railroad and so up to Tarkiln Hill, and through the woods thence home. [William Ellery] Channing and [Amos Bronson]Alcott walked up from town together to tea.
