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17 September 1847. Concord, Mass.

Ralph Waldo Emerson pays Thoreau $15 on account (Ralph Waldo Emerson’s account books. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.).

17 September 1849. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes to Jared Sparks:

Sir,

Will you allow me to trouble you with my affairs?

I wish to get permission to take books from the College library to Concord where I reside. I am encouraged to ask this, not merely because I am an alumnus of Harvard, residing within a moderate distance of her halls, but because I have chosen letters for my profession, and so am one of the clergy embraced by the spirit at least of her rule. Moreover, though books are to some extent my stock and tools, I have not the usual means with which to purchase them. I therefore regard myself as one whom especially the library was created to serve. If I should change my pursuit or move further off, I should no longer be entitled to this privilege.—I would fain consider myself an alumnus in more than a merely historical sense, and I ask only that the University may help to finish the education, whose foundation she has helped to lay. I was not then ripe for her higher courses, and now that I am riper I trust that I am not too far away to be instructed by her. Indeed I see not how her children can more properly or effectually keep up a living connexion with their Alma Mater than by continuing to draw from her intellectual nutriment in some such way as this.

If you will interest yourself to obtain the above privilege for me, I shall be truly obliged to you.

Yrs respectly

Henry D. Thoreau

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 248-250)

Concord, Mass. A. Bronson Alcott writes to his wife Abigail:

Henry and I have bathed since 5 P.M. near the Indian Fishing Place, where lay the Boat Undine[?] . . . I have seen scarce nobody only Thoreau and [Ralph Waldo] Emerson, nor shall, I suppose, while here (The Letters of A. Bronson Alcott, 153).

17 September 1850. Concord, Mass.

The Thoreau family is listed in the 1850 census by W. W. Wilde: “John Thoreau, 63, M[ale]; Cynthia D. 63, F[emale]; Henry D., 33, M; Sophia E., 31, F; Maria Thoreau, 53, F; Margaret Doland, 18, F; Catherine Rioden, 13, F.” (Thoreau Research Newsletter, vol 1 no. 2).

17 September 1851. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Perambulated the Lincoln line. Was it the small rough sunflower which I saw this morning at the brook near Lee’s Bridge? Saw at James Baker’s a buttonwood tree with a swarm of bees now three years in it, but honey and all inaccessible. John W. Farrar tells of sugar maples behind Miles’s in the Corner. Did I see privet in the swamp at the Bedford stone near Giles’s house? Swamp all dry now; could not wash my hands.

(Journal, 3:4)

17 September 1852. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

What produces this flashing air of autumn?—a brightness as if there were not green enough to absorb the light, now that the first frosts wither the herbs. The corn-stalks are stacked like muskets along the fields. The pontederia leaves are sere and brown along the river. The fall is further advanced in the water, as the spring was earlier there . . .

(Journal, 4:354)

17 September 1853. Maine.

In “Chesuncook,” Thoreau writes:

About half an hour after seeing the moose, we pursued our voyage up Pine Stream . . . Joe exclaimed from the stream that he had killed a moose . . . I took hold of the cars of the moose, while Joe pushed his canoe down-stream toward a favorable shore . . . It was a, brownish-black, or perhaps a dark iron-gray, on the back and sides, but lighter beneath and in front. I took the cord which served for the canoe’s painter, and with Joe’s assistance measured it carefully, the greatest distances first, making a knot each time. The painter being wanted, I reduced these measures that night with equal care to lengths and fractions of my umbrella, beginning with the smallest measures, and untying the knots as I proceeded; and when we arrived at Chesuncook the next day, finding a two-foot rule there, I reduced the last to feet and inches; and, moreover, I made myself a two-foot rule of a thin and narrow strip of black ash, which would fold up conveniently to six inches. All this pains I took because I did not wish to be obliged to say merely that the moose was very large . . .

(The Maine Woods, 124-128)

Thoreau writes in his journal:

The head [of the moose], measuring from the root of the ears to the end of the nose or upper lip 2 feet 1/3 inches

Head and neck (from nose to breast (?) direct) 4 ” 3 1/2 ”

Fore leg below level of body 4 ” 9 1/3 ”

Height behind (from the tips of the hoofs to top of back) 6 ” 11 ”

Height from tips of hoofs to level with back above shoulders a 7 ” 5 ”

Extreme length (from nose to tail) 8 ” 2 ”

The ears 10 inches long.

(Journal, 5:425)

17 September 1854. Plymouth, Mass.

Marston Watson writes to Thoreau:

My dear Sir—

Mr James Spooner and others here, your friends, have clubbed together and raised a small sum in hope of persuading you to come down and read them a paper or two some Sunday. They can offer you $10 at least. Mr [A. Bronson] Alcott is now here, and I thought it might be agreeable to you to come down next Saturday and read a paper on Sunday morning and perhaps on Sunday evening also, if agreeable to yourself. I can assure you of a very warm reception but from a small party only.

Very truly yours

B. M. Watson

I will meet you at the Depot on Saturday evening, if you so advise me. Last train leaves at 5—

This is not a “Leyden Hall Meeting” but a private party—social gathering—almost sewing circle. Tho’ perhaps we may meet you at Leyden Hall.

“Watson, a friend from Harvard, has a Plymouth estate ‘Hillside’ that was a favorite spot for most of the transcendentalists.”

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 337-338)

Thoreau replies on 19 September.

17 September 1855. Cambridge, Mass.

Thoreau checks out A memoir of Sebastian Cabot by Richard Biddle and Transactions of the American philosophical society, held at Philadelphia, for promoting useful knowledge from Harvard College Library (Companion to Thoreau’s Correspondence, 291).

Concord, Mass. Thoreau also copies two 16th century maps, entitled “Americae sive novi orbis, nova descriptio” and “Norumbega et Virginia 1597” (Henry David Thoreau papers. Special Collections, Concord (Mass.) Free Public Library).

17 September 1857. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

I go to Fair Haven Hill, looking at the varieties of nabalus, which have a singular prominence now in all woods and roadsides. The lower leaves are very much eaten by insects. How perfectly each plant has its turn!—as if the seasons revolved for it alone . . .

(Journal, 10:35)

17 September 1858. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

P.M.—Ride to Beaver Pond and beyond . . .

Paddle round Beaver Pond in a boat, which I calked with newspaper . . . (Journal, 11:162).