Log Search Results

19 January. Concord, Mass. 1860.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—Down river.

  2 P.M.—Thermometer 38. Somewhat cloudy at first . . . (Journal, 13:95-96).

Thoreau also writes to Samuel Ripley Bartlett:

Mr S. Ripley Bartlett,

  Dear Sir,

  I send you with this a letter of introduction to Ticknor & Fields, as you request; though I am rather remote from them.

  I think that your poem was well calculated for our lyceum, and the neighboring towns, but I would advise you, if it is not impertinent, not to have it printed, as you propose. You might keep it by you, read it as you have done, as you may have opportunity, and see how it wears with yourself. It may be in your own way if printed. The public are very cold and indifferent to such things, and the publishers still more so. I have found that the precept “Write with fury, and correct with flegm” required me to print only the hundredth part of what I had written. If you print at first in newspapers, you can afterward collect survives [survivors?] — what your readers demand. That, I should say, is the simplest and safest, as it is the commonest, way. You so get the criticism of the public, & if you fail, no harm is done.

  You may think this harsh advice, but, believe me, it is sincere.

Yrs truly
Henry D. Thoreau

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 572-573)
19 July 1840. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  These two days that I have not written in my journal, set down in the calendar as the 17th and 18th of July, have been really an aeon in which a Syrian empire might rise and fall. How many Persias have been lost and won in the interim. Night is spangled with fresh stars.
(Journal, 1:170)
19 July 1841. Scituate, Mass.?

Ellen Sewall writes in her diary:

  Came a kind letter from Mrs. Thoreau to mother asking a visit from Edmund and expressing a desire that I should visit her this summer also. How little does she imagine the reasons I have for declining utterly any such proposal. Mother wrote her a kind refusal of her invitation for Edmund on account of his being engaged in a school at present.
(Transcript in The Thoreau Society Archives at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods; MS, private owner)
19 July 1842.

Concord, Mass. Ralph Waldo Emerson writes to Margaret Fuller:

  This morning your brother Richard whose face is a refreshment, set out with H. T. on the road to Wachusett. I am sorry that you, & the world after you, do not like my brave Henry any better. I do not like his piece very well, but I admire this perennial threatening attitude, just as we like to go under an overhanging precipice It is wholly his natural relation & no assumption at all.
(The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 3:75)

On their way to Mount Wachusett, Thoreau and Richard Fuller hike from Concord, Mass. through Acton and Stow, stop on a hilltop in Lancaster for lunch and to read Virgil aloud to each other, and stop for the night at an inn in Sterling (“A Walk to Wachusett”).

Richard Fuller recalls in his notebook:

  The morning of the next day arrived, Mr. Thoreau and myself swallowing a good breakfast, and not heeding a threatened storm, with knapsacks filled with day’s provisions and a tent to be alternately carried by each, at about quarter of five, started. We felt all the bracing influences of morning air, and could have descanted long on the wisdom of early-rising, and refuted the arguments of those, who, too fond of the forbidden morning slumber, assert the pre-eminence of a sunset over all other of Nature’s beauties.

  It may be well to premise that no incidents worthy of note occurred during this pilgrimage to the Wachusett. Other adventures than Nature offered we avoided; and we listen[ed], as we went along, to her harmony, thinking that perchance some note of novel sweetness might be struck, which should charm our heart, and awaken within us some new sentiment . . .

  But while meditation’s flow was not impeded, we had got onward, and soon came to a wood that lies between Concord and Stow. Here we cut us each a cane; and I thought on farmers, as I passed out of the wood, and their green fields smiled upon us . . .

  Soon we arrived at Stow. This town was once my habitation . . .

(Thoreau Society Bulletin 121 (Fall 1972):1-4)
19 July 1849. Boston, Mass.

The Youth’s Companion reprints the New-York Daily Tribune article of 2 April (Studies in the American Renaissance, 1995, 173).

19 July 1850. Fire Island, N.Y.

The ship Elizabeth, carrying Margaret Fuller, her husband, and her son, is wrecked. When the news reaches Ralph Waldo Emerson, he sends Thoreau to search for the bodies and Fuller’s manuscripts (The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 261n).

19 July 1851. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  2 P.M.—The weather is warm and dry, and many leaves curl . . . The stump or root fences on the Corner road remind me of fossil remains of mastodons, etc., exhumed and bleached in sun and rain. To-day I met with the first orange flower of autumn.
(Journal, 2:316-320)
19 July 1852. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—R.W.E.’s cliff.

  Phytolacca decandra, poke, in blossom. The Cerasus pumila ripe. The chestnuts on Pine Hill being in blossom reveals the rounded tops of the trees; separates them, and makes a richer and more varied scene . . .

(Journal, 4:239)
19 July 1853. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Clematis has been open a day or two . . . (Journal, 5:319).
19 July 1854. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—To Beck Stow’s and Walden . . .

  In Moore’s Swamp I pluck cool, though not very sweet, large red raspberries in the shade, making themselves dense thickets . . . (Journal, 6:405-406).

Return to the Log Index

Donation

$