Log Search Results

16 August. Concord, Mass.
Thoreau writes in his journal: “Hear it raining again early when I awake, as it did yesterday, still and steady, as if the season were troubled with a diabetes. P. M. – To Cardinal Ditch… Channing [William Ellery Channing] tells me that he saw a white bobolink in a large flock of [cardinal-flowers] to-day… Talked with Minott, who sits in his wood-shed, having, as I notice, several seats there for visitors, – one a block on a sawhorse, another a patchwork mat on a wheelbarrow, etc., etc… At sunset paddled to Hill. Goodwin has come again to fish, with three poles, hoping to catch some more of those large eels…” (Journal, 11:106-10).
16 December 1836. Cambridge, Mass.

Thoreau submits an essay on the prompt “Show how it is that a writer’s nationality and individual genius may be fully manifested in a Play or other Literary work upon a Foreign or Ancient subject—and yet full justice be done to the Subject,” for an assignment given him on 25 November.

(Thoreau’s Harvard Years, part 2:12; Early Essays and Miscellanies, 66-72)
16 December 1837. Concord, Mass.
Thoreau writes in his journal:

  The woods were this morning covered with thin bars of vapor,—the evaporation of the leaves according to Sprengel,—which seemed to have been suddenly stiffened by the cold. In some places it was spread out like gauze over the tops of the trees, forming extended lawns, where elves and fairies held high tournament;
“before each van
Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears,
Till thickest legions close.”
The east was glowing with a narrow but ill-defined crescent of light, the blue of the zenith mingling in all possible proportions with the salmon-color of the horizon. And now the neighboring hilltops telegraph to us poor crawlers of the plain the Monarch’s golden ensign in the east, and anon his “long levelled rules” fall sectorwise, and the humblest cottage windows greet their lord.
(Journal, 1:17-18)
16 December 1850. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Walden is open still. The river is probably open again (Journal, 2:124-125).

Thoreau also designs a cow barn and stanchions to be built in Northboro, Mass. for David Loring (A Catalog of Thoreau’s Surveys in the Concord Free Public Library, 9; Henry David Thoreau papers. Special Collections, Concord (Mass.) Free Public Library [see 80a-g]).

16 December 1852. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Observed the reflection of the snow on Pine Hill from Walden, extending far beyond the true limits of a reflection, quite across the pond . . . (Journal, 4:430)
16 December 1853. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  The elms covered with hoar frost, seen in the east against the morning light, are very beautiful. These days, when the earth is still bare and the weather is so warm as to create much vapor by day, are the best for these frost works.

  Would you be well, see that you are attuned to each mood of nature . . .

(Journal, 6:19)
16 December 1854.

New York, N.Y. The National Anti-Slavery Standard reviews Walden and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.

Cambridge?, Mass. Franklin B. Sanborn writes in his journal:

  After Lowell and Dwight went the talk fell into one channel again—first about Thoreau—whom Mr Alcott described much as he did on Tuesday. Dana had not read him—but had supposed him a man of abstractions altogether—Mr A—quoted what Dr [Thaddeus W.] Harris said of him—”If Emerson had not spoilt him he would have made a good—naturalist.”
(Transcendental Climate, 215)
16 December 1855. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Steady, gentle, warm rain all forenoon, and mist and mizzling in the afternoon, when I go round by Abel Hosmer’s and back by the railroad . . . As we go over the bridge, admire the reflection of the trees and houses from the smooth open water over the channel, where the ice has been dissolved by the rain.
(Journal, 8:51-52)
16 December 1856. Rome, Italy.

Thomas Cholmondeley writes to Thoreau:

My dear Thoreau,—

  I wish that I was an accomplished young American lady, for then I could write the most elegant and “recherche” letters without any trouble or thought. But now, being an Englishman, even my pleasures are fraught with toil and pain. Why, I have written several letters to you, but always, on reading them over to myself, I was obliged to burn them, because I felt they were bad letters, and insufficient for a passage of the ocean. To begin, then, a new and a good letter, I must acquaint you that I received your former communication, which gave me the sincerest pleasure, since it informed me that the books which I sent came to hand, and were approved of. I had indeed studied your character closely, and knew what you would like. Besides, I had, even from our first acquaintance, a previous memory of you, like the vision of a landscape a man has seen, he cannot tell where . . .

  Farewell, dear Thoreau. Give my best love to your father, mother, and sister, and to old Channing; and convey my respect to Mr. Emerson and Mr. Alcott; and when next you go to Boston, call at my old lodgings, and give my regards to them there. If you write to Morton, don’t forget me there. He is a clever lad, is n’t lie? Also my respect to Mr. Theodore Parker, whose sermons are rather to be heard than read.

Ever yours, and not in haste,
Thos. Cholmondeley

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 448-455)
16 December 1857. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Begins to snow about 8 A.M., and in fifteen minutes the ground is white, but it soon stops. Plowed grounds show white first (Journal, 10:224).

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