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  Wild says it is the warmest day at 12 M. since the 22d of December . . . I hear the eaves running before I come out, and our thermometer at 2 P.M. is 38º . . .

  It was a rough-cast house when I first knew it. The fire still glowing among the bricks in the cellar. Richard Barrett says he remembers the inscription and the date 1650, but not the rest distinctly . . .

  When we descend on to Goose Pond we find that the snow rests more thickly on the numerous zigzag and horizontal branches of the high blueberries that bend over it than on any deciduous shrub or tree, producing a very handsome snowy maze, and can thus distinguish this shrub, by the manner in which the snow lies on it, quite across the pond . . .

  I need not thank you for your present for I hear its music, which seems to be playing just for us two pilgrims marching over hill and dale of a summer afternoon—up those long Bolton hills and by those bright Harvard lakes, such as I see in the placid Lucerne on the lid—and whenever I hear it, I will recall happy hours passed with its donor.

  When did mankind make that foray into nature and bring off this booty—? For certainly it is but history that some rare virtue in remote times plundered these strains from above, and communicated them to men. Whatever we may think of it, it is a part of the harmony of the spheres you have sent me, which has condescended to serve us Admetuses—and I hope I may so behave that this may always be the tenor of your thought for me.

  If you have any strains, the conquest of your own spear or quill to accompany these, let the winds waft them also to me.
I write this with one of the “primaries” of my osprey’s wings, which I have preserved over my glass for some state occasion—and now it affords.

Mrs. Emerson [Lidian Jackson Emerson] sends her love—Yr friend,
Henry D. Thoreau

  Channing has great respect for McKean, he stands on so low a level. Says he’s great for conversation. He never says anything, hardly answers a question, but keeps at work; never exaggerates, nor uses an exclamation, and does as he agrees to. He appears to have got his shoulder to the wheel of the universe. But the other day he went greater lengths with me, as he and Barry were sawing down a pine, both kneeling of necessity. I said it was wet work for the knees in the snow. He observed, looking up at me, “We pray without ceasing.