Concord, Mass. Thoreau writes in his journal:
The longest silence is the most pertinent question most pertinently put. Emphatically silent. The most important question, whose answers concern us more than any, are never put in any other way. It is difficult for two strangers, mutually well disposed, so truly to bear themselves toward each other that a feeling of falseness and hollowness shall not soon spring up between them. The least anxiety to behave truly vitiates the relation. I think of those to whom I am at the moment truly related, with a joy never expressed and never to be expressed, before I fall asleep at night, though I am hardly on speaking terms with them these years. When I think of it, I am truly related to them.
Clinton, Mass. The Clinton Saturday Courant reviews Thoreau’s lecture of 1 January:
The lecture on Wednesday evening last by Mr. Thoreau, was one of those intellectual efforts which serve to wile away an hour very pleasantly, but which leave little or nothing impressed upon the memory of real value. The subject was “Cape Cod.” A description of a walk upon the sea shore, with reflections upon shipwrecks and their effects upon the inhabitants in a certain case, with anecdotes, and a few historical reminiscences, made up the burthen of his story.
