Log Search Results

  Ranunculus Purshii will apparently open to-day . . . (Journal, 6:279-283).

  Returning, stopped at Barrett’s sawmill while it rained a little . . . Said that about as many logs were brought to his mill as ten years ago,—he did not perceive the difference,—but they were not so large, and perhaps they went further for them . . .

  See myriads of minute pollywogs, recently hatched, in the water of Moore’s Swamp on Bedford road. Digging again to find a stake in woods, came across a nest or colony of wood ants, yellowish or sand-color, a third of an inch long, with their white grubs, now squirming . . .

  P.M.—To Everett Spring . . .

  R. W. E. [Ralph Waldo Emerson] says that Pratt found yesterday out the trientalis, Trillium cernuum, and Smilacina bifolia . . .

  It is a warm, muggy, rainy evening . . . (Journal, 12:189).

  Excuse me for not acknowledging before the receipt of your beautiful gift of may-flowers. The delay may prove that I did not fear I should forget it, though very busily engaged in surveying. The flowers were somewhat detained on the road, but they were not the less fragrant, and were very superior to any that we can show.

  It chanced that on the very day they arrived, while surveying in the next town, I found more of these flowers than I have ever seen hereabouts, and I have accordingly named a certain path “May-flower Path” on my plan. But a botanist’s experience is full of coincidences. If you think much about some flower which you never saw, you will be pretty sure to find it some day actually growing near by you. In the long run, we find what we expect. We shall be fortunate then if we expect great things.

  Please remember me to your Father & Mother

Yours truly
Henry D. Thoreau

  2 P.M.—To Second Division . . .

  I measure a bear’s boot which F. Monroe brought from Vermont, where it was killed in a trap within a few years . . .

  You are very attentive to Henry’s bequest in sending me, by fit hands, the rare and wise books, which in his last thoughtful hours, he deemed his friend worth inheriting. As every thought of his was a virtue, I shall prize these books the more on his account, and think tenderly of the giver whenever I open them. These volumes are from his choice library. They came to him honorably and are only older in time, but not in wisdom than his own writings. That he has left so much of his essence behind him: of his life, which he said

    —“has been the poem I could have writ,
    But I could not both live and utter it”

is a great happiness to his friends, and partly compensates for his laying aside his sun so soon. None living, had a better right to hold it. Nor do I think of contemporary who accomplished so much in so short a time as he has, whether we regard the weight of matter, or wealth of thought. We may be sure of his being read an prized by coming times, and the place and time pertaining to him will be forever and sweeter for his presence. For as flowers which are cut down with the morning dew upon them, do, for a long while after, retain their fragrancy, so the good actions of a wise man perfume his mind and leave a rich scent behind them; so that his memory is, as it were, watered with these essences, and owes it flourishing to them.

  Though I address this note to the mother, the sister is in my thoughts, also, as I write.

For Henry’s sake,

as for yours,

your obliged friend.
A. Bronson Alcott