Log Search Results | The Walden Woods Project

Ralph Waldo Emerson writes to his aunt Mary Moody Emerson:

Henry Thoreau has just come, with whom I have promised to make a visit, a brave fine youth he is (Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2:154).

1 September 1839. Tyngsboro, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Under an oak on the bank of the canal in Chelmsford. From Ball’s Hill to Billerica meeting house the river is a noble stream of water, flowing between gentle hills and occasional cliffs, and well wooded all the way. It can hardly be said to flow at all, but rests in the lap of the hills like a quiet lake. The boatmen call it a dead stream. For many long reaches you can see nothing to indicate that men inhabit its banks. Nature seems to hold a sabbath herself to-day,—a still warm sun on river and wood, and not breeze enough to ruffle the water. Cattle stand up to their bellies in the river, and you think Rembrandt should be here. Camped under some oaks in Tyngsboro, on the east bank of the Merrimack, just below the ferry.

(Journal, 1:90-91; A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 42-120)

1 September 1841. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Each generation thinks to inhabit only a west end of the world, and have intercourse with a refined and civilized Nature, not conceiving of her broad equality and republicanism. They think her aristocratic and exclusive because their own estates are narrow. But the sun indifferently selects his rhymes, and with a liberal taste weaves into his verse the planet and the stubble.

Let us know and conform only to the fashions of eternity.

(Journal, 1:278-279)

1 September 1842. Concord, Mass.

Nathaniel Hawthorne writes in his notebook on 2 September:

Yesterday afternoon, while my wife, [Sophia Peabody Hawthorne] and Louisa, and I, were gathering the windfallen apple in our orchard, Mr. Thorow arrived with the boat. The adjacent meadow being overflowed by the rise of the stream, he had rowed directly to the foot of the orchard, and landed at the bars, after floating over forty or fifty yards of water, where people were making hay, a week or two since. I entered the boat with him in order to have the benefit of a lesson in rowing and paddling. My little wife, who was looking on, cannot feel very proud of her husband’s proficiency. I managed, indeed, to propel the boat by rowing with two oars; but the use of the single paddle is quite beyond my present skill. Mr. Thorow had assured me that it was only necessary to will the boat to go in any particular direction, and she would immediately take that course, as if imbued with the spirit of the steersman. It may be so with him, but certainly not with me; the boat seemed to be bewitched, and turned its head to very point of the compass except the right one. He then took the paddle himself, and though I could observe nothing peculiar in his management of it, the Musketaquid immediately became as docile as a trained steed. I suspect that she has not yet transferred her affections from her old master to her new one. By and bye, when we are better acquainted, she will grow more tractable, especially after she shall have the honor of bearing my little wife, who is loved by all things, living and inanimate. We propose to change her name from Musketaquid (the Indian name of Concord River, meaning the river of meadows) to Pond Lily—which will be very beautiful and appropriate, as, during the summer season, she will bring home many a cargo of pond lilies from along the river’s weedy shore. It is not very likely that I shall make such long voyages in her as Mr. Thorow has. He once followed our river down to the Merrimack, and thence, I believe to Newburyport—a voyage of about eighty miles, in this little vessel.

(The American Notebooks, 167-168)

1 September 1846. Maine.

Thoreau writes:

The next forenoon, Tuesday, September 1, I started with my companion in a buggy from Bangor for ‘up river,’ expecting to be overtaken the next day night at Mattawamkeag Point, some sixty miles off, by two more Bangoreans, who had decided to join us in a trip to the mountain. We had each a knapsack or bag filled with such clothing and articles as were indispensable, and my companion carried his gun . . .

(The Maine Woods, 4-9)

1 September 1849. Concord, Mass.

A. Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:

Go to Concord, send Elizabeth home, see Thoreau a while, and sleep at Emerson’s (The Journals of Bronson Alcott, 211).

1 September 1851. Concord, Mass.

Concord, Mass. Thoreau writes in his journal:

The fruit of the trilliums is very handsome. I found some a month ago, a singular red, angular-cased pulp, drooping, with the old anthers surrounding it three quarters of an inch in diameter; and now there is another kind, a dense crowded cluster of many ovoid berries turning from green to scarlet or bright brickcolor. Then there is the mottled fruit of the clustered Solomon’s-seal, and also the greenish (with blue meat) fruit of the Convallaria multiflora dangling from the axils of the leaves.

(Journal, 2:440)

Concord, Mass. The town selectmen decide to employ a surveyor to perambulate the Concord borders:

The Selectmen of Concord at a meeting held for that purpose appointed Aaron A. Kelsey and Henry David Thoreau of said Concord as substitutes for said board in the perambulation of the town lines of said Concord, the acts of whom shall be and stand as the perambulations of said lines as if made by us.

In witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands this first day of September in this year eighteen hundred and fifty one. John S. Keyes, [John Shepard Keyes] A. G. Fay, [Addison G. Fay] Selectmen of Concord.

(Concord Town Archives)

See entry 15 September.

1 September 1852. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

4 P.M.—To Walden.

Paddling over it, I see large schools of perch only an inch long, yet easily distinguished by their transverse bars. Great is the beauty of a wooded shore seen from the water, for the trees have ample room to expand on that side, and each puts forth its most vigorous bough to fringe and adorn the pond. It is rare that you see so natural an edge to the forest. Hence a pond like this, surrounded by hills wooded down to the edge of the water, is the best place to observe the tints of the autumnal foliage. Moreover, such as stand in or near to the water change earlier than elsewhere . . .

(Journal, 4:335-340)

1 September 1853. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Thursday. P.M.—To Dugan Desert and Ministerial Swamp.

The character of the past month, as I remember, has been, at first, very thick and sultry, dogdayish, the height of summer, and throughout very rainy, followed by crops of toadstools, and latterly, after the dogdays and most copious of the rains, autumnal, somewhat cooler, with signs of decaying or ripening foliage. The month of green corn and melons and plums and the earliest apples,—and now peaches,—of rank weeds . . .

There are two kinds of simplicity,—one that is akin to foolishness, the other to wisdom. The philosopher’s style of living is only outwardly simple, but inwardly complex . . .

(Journal, 5:407-412)

1 September 1854. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

A misty morning followed by a still, cloudy, misty day, through which has fallen a very little rain this forenoon already. Now I notice a few faint chipping sparrows, busily picking the seeds of weeds in the garden . . .

P. M.—Along river to E. Hosmer’s [Edmund Hosmer].

A very little mizzling. The Aster Tradescanti is perhaps beginning to whiten the shores on moist banks. I see a fine (reddish) topped grass in low lands, whitened like a thin veil with what it has caught of this dewy rain . . .

(Journal, 7:3-4)

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