Log Search Results

  Henry has been to Worcester twice and is going again next Friday tho I understand one of the papers there criticised the first lecture very severely, Henry says he does not know what they will say to the last, for that they will not like (it is the one I was so disgusted with), but the next one they may like better, however it was their own proposition to have him come, and I think they will have enough of him.

  You probably think ere this I have forgotten to answer your letter but it is not so. I have waited until now that I might send some definite word about that Job I spoke of. You will recollect I told you one of the owners lived in Cincinate. He has come on and wishes to have the farm immediately surveyed and laid into house lots. there is some twenty acres of it. So you see it is quite a Job and there will be probably some small jobs. Mr. [Nehemia] Emmerson will wait untill you come which must by as soon as Thursday.  I hope it will be so you can come as I have some Jobs to do on the lots as soon as laid nut & I think we both can make a good living at it. Let me see you if possible if not drop, a fine that we may not be in suspense. All well as usual. Give my best respects to all and say to them we should he happy to see them at Haverhill.

  Yours

  C H Dunbar

  A smart frost in the night, the plowed ground and platforms white with it . . .

  I hear the first towhee finch. He says to-wee, to-wee, and another, much farther off than I supposed when I went in search of him, says whip your ch-r-r-r-r-r-r, with a metallic ring. I hear the first catbird also, mewing, and the wood thrush, which still thrills me,—a sound to be heard in a new country,—from one side of a clearing . . .

  6 A.M.—Up railroad.

  Everything looks bright and as if it were washed clean. The red maples, now fully in bloom, show red tops . . .

  9 A.M.—To Cliffs and thence by boat to Fair Haven.

  I see the scrolls of the ferns just pushed up, but yet wholly invested with wool. The sweet-fern has not yet blossomed; its anthers are green and close, but its leaves, just beginning to expand . . .

  Early starlight by riverside.

  The water smooth and broad. I hear the loud and incessant cackling of probably a pigeon woodpecker,—what some time since I thought to be a different kind. Thousands of robins are filling the air with their trills . . .

  P.M.—By boat with Sophia to Conantum, a maying.

  The water has gone down very fast and the grass has sprung up. There is a strong, fresh marsh scent wafted front the meadows, much like the salt marshes. We sail with a smart wind from the northeast, yet it is warm enough. Horse-mint is seen springing up, and for two or three days at the bottom of the river . . .

  While I am behind Cheney’s this warm and still afternoon, I hear a voice calling to oxen three quarters of a mile distant, and I know it to be Elijah Wood’s. It is wonderful how far the individual proclaims himself. Out of the thousand millions of human beings on this globe, I know that this sound was made by the lungs and larynx and lips of E. Wood, am as sure of it as if he nudged me with his elbow and shouted in my ear . . .

  As I sit above the Island, waiting for the Rana palustris to croak, I see many minnows from three quarters to two inches long, but mostly about one inch . . .