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  When I crossed the entrance to the pond meadow on a stick, a pout ran ashore and was lodged so that I caught it in the grass, apparently frightened. While I held it, I noticed another, very large one approach the shore very boldly within a few feet of me. Going in to bathe, I caught a pout on the bottom within a couple of rods of the shore. It seemed sick. Then, wading into the shallow entrance of the meadow, I saw a school of a thousand little pouts about three quarters of an inch long without any attending pout, and now have no doubt that the pout I had caught (but let go again) was tending them . . .

  When I entered the woods there, I was at once pursued by a swarm of those wood flies which gyrate around your head and strike your hat like rain-drops. As usual, they kept up with me as I walked, and gyrated about me still, as if I were stationary, advancing at the same time and receiving reinforcements from time to time. Though I switched them smartly for half a mile with some indigo-weed, they did not mind it in the least . . .

  Boiled tea for our dinner by the little pond, the head of the Pemigewasset . . .

  Rode on and stopped at Morrison’s (once Tilton’s) Inn in West Thornton . . .

  Gather a few Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum. Raspberries, in one swamp, are quite abundant and apparently at their height (Journal, 12:237-238).

  Look down on a field of red-top now in full bloom, a quarter of a mile west of this hill,—a very dense and red field,—at 2.30 P. M. of this warm and slightly hazy but not dogdayish day, in a blazing sun . . .

  For such an excursion as you propose I would recommend you to carry as food for one for six days:

  2 or 3 lbs. of boiled corned beef (I and my companions have preferred it to tongue).

  2 lbs. of sugar.

  ¼ lb. of tea (or ½ lb. of coffee).

  2 lbs. of hard bread, and a half a large loaf of home-made bread, (ready buttered if you like it), consuming the last first; or 4½ lbs. of hard bread alone.

  Also a little moist and rich plum cake, of which you can take a pinch from time to time.

  2 or 3 lemons will not come amiss to flavor poor water with.

  If you multiply this amount by 8, the number of your party, subtract from 5 to 10 per cent.

  Carry these different articles in separate cotton or linen bags labelled, and a small portion of the sugar in a box by itself for immediate use. (The same of salt, if you expect to get game or fish.)

  As for clothing and other articles, I will state exactly what I should take in such a case (besides what I wore and what were already in my pockets), my clothes and shoes being old, but thick and stout.

  1 shirt.

  1 pair socks.

  2 pocket-handkerchiefs.

  1 thick waist-coat.

  6 bosoms (or dickies).

  Towel and soap.

  Pins, needles, and thread.

  A blanket.

  A thick night cap (unless your day cap is soft and close fitting.)

  A map of the route, and a compass.

  (Such other articles as your peculiar taste and pursuits require.)

  A hatchet, (for a party of half a dozen a light but long handled axe), for you will wish to make a great fire, however warm, and to cut large logs.

  Paper and stamps.

  Jack knife.

  Matches; some of these in a water-tight vial in your vest pocket.

  A fish line and hooks, a piece of salt pork for bait, and a little salt always in your pocket, so as to be armed in case you should be lost in the woods.

  Wastepaper and twine.

  An iron spoon and a pint tin dipper for each man, in which last it will be well to insert a wire handle, whose curve will coincide with that of the dipper’s edge, and then you can use it as a kettle, if you like, and not put out the fire.

  A four quart tin pail will serve very well for your common kettle.

  An umbrella.

  For shelter, either a tent or a strong sheet large enough to cover all. If a sheet, the tent will be built shed-fashion, open to the fair weather side; two saplings, either as they stand or else stuck in the ground, serving for main posts, a third being placed horizontally in the forks of these, 6 or 7 feet from the ground, and two or three others slanted backward from it. This makes the frame on which to stretch your sheet, which must come quite down to the ground on the sides and the back.

  You will lie, of course, on the usual twigged bed, with your feet to the front.

  We have not yet been able to give this volume such an examination as would justify us in pronouncing absolute judgment upon it. For its amiable author, we have much respect. His mode of life is sui generis—all alone by himself in the woods of Concord, an enthusiastic child and lover of Nature, in spirit an occupant of an ideal world, and with the eye of genius ‘in a fine phrenzy rolling’—and this production of his is equally peculiar. We have spent many years ‘on the Merrimack river,’ our dear, native stream; but this was ‘long, long age.’ We shall accept this invitation of Mr. Thoreau to pass ‘a week’ with him on the same river, and, making that the starting-point from which to ascent to ‘cloud-land,’ we shall accompany him on the wings of imagination as far as we can sustain such a flight. Of our entertainment and success, we may report hereafter.

  The numerous admirers of [Thomas] Carlyle and [Ralph Waldo] Emerson will read this book with a relish; for Mr. T. writes in their vein, and to some extent in their dialect, and is a match for them in felicitous conceits and amusing quaintnesses; yet he is not a servile imitator—only an admirer, by affinity and kindred one of a trinity, having his own sphere in which to move, and his own mission to consummate. As a specimen of his thinking and speaking, take the following, suggested by a grave-yard:

  It is remarkable that the dead lie every where under stones,— . . . ‘Having reached the term of his natural life;’—would it not be truer to say, Having reached the term of his unnatural life?