Thoreau writes in his journal:
It takes my feet a few moments to get used to the skates . I see the track of one skater who has preceded me this morning. This is the first skating. I keep mostly to the smooth ice about a rod wide next the shore commonly . . . (Journal, 9:165-9)
Thoreau writes to H.G.O. Blake:
On the whole it sounds to me very brave & American after whatever deductions. I do not believe that all the sermons so called that have been preached in this land put together are equal to it for preaching—
We ought to rejoice greatly in him. He occasionally suggests something a little more than human. You cant confound him with the other inhabitants of Brooklyn or New York. How they must shudder when they read him! He is awfully good.
To be sure I sometimes feel a little imposed on. By his heartiness & broad generalities he puts me into a liberal frame of mind prepared to see wonders as it were sets me upon a hill or in the midst of the plain—stirs me well up, and then—throws in a thousand of brick. Though rude & sometimes ineffectual, it is a great primitive poem,—an alarum or trumpet—not ringing through the American camp. Wonderfully like the Orientals, too, considering that when I asked him if he had read them, he answered, “No: tell me about them.”
I did not get fair in conversation with him,—two more being present,—and among the few things which I chanced to say, I remember that one was, in answer to him which I chanced to say, I remember that one was, in answer to him as representing America, that I did not think much of America or of politics, and so on, which may have been somewhat of a damper to him.
Since I have seen him, I find that I am not disturbed by any brag or egoism in his book. He may turn out the least of a braggart of all, having a better right to be confident.
He is a great fellow.