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  He has just had four of his fir trees next his house cut, they shaded his windows so. They were set out by Coolidge, E. thinks twenty-eight years ago. The largest has thirty-seven annual rings at the base and measures at one foot from the ground forty-six and a half inches in circumference; has made, on an average, about half an inch of wood in every direction . . .

  I remember that in the spring you invited me to visit you. I feel inclined to spend a day or two with you and on your hills at this season, returning perhaps by way of Brattleboro. What if I should take the cars for Walpole next Friday morning? Are you at home? And will it be convenient and agreeable to you to see me then? I will await an answer.

  I am but poor company, and it will not be worth the while far you to put yourself out on my account; yet front time to time I have some thoughts which would be the better for an airing. I also wish to get some hints from September on the Connecticut to help me understand that season on the Concord; to snuff the mustly fragrance of the decaying year in the primitive woods. There is considerable cellar room in my nature for such stores, a whole row of bins waiting to be filled before I can celebrate my Thanksgiving. Mould is the richest of soils, yet I am not mould. It will always be found that one flourishing institution exists & battens on another mouldering one. The Present itself is parasitic to this extent.

  Your fellow traveller
  Henry D. Thoreau

  Landing at Bittern Cliff, I see that fine purple grass; how long? At Baker’s shore, I at length distinguished fairly the Sagittaria simplex, which I have known so long, the small one with simple leaves. But this year there are very few of them, being nearly drowned out by the high water . . .

  At the pool by the oaks behind Pratt’s, I see the Myriophyllum ambiguum still, and going to seed, greening the surface of the water . . .

  At Botrychium Swamp, Nabalus altissimus . . . In the evening, by the roadside, near R.W.E.’s [Ralph Waldo Emerson] gate, find a glow-worm of the common kind. Of two men, Dr. Bartlett [Charles Bartlett] and Charles Bowen, neither had ever seen it! . . .

  The autumnal dandelion is a prevailing flower now, but since it shuts up in the afternoon it might not be known as common unless you were out in the morning or in a dark afternoon. Now, at 11 A.M., it makes quite a show, yet at 2 P.M. I do not notice it . . .

  Hear that F. Hayden saw and heard geese a fortnight ago! . . .

  We are so accustomed to see another forest spring up immediately as a matter of course, whether from the stump or from the seed, when a forest is cut down, never troubling about the succession, that we hardly associate the seed with the tree, and do not anticipate the time when this regular succession will cease and we shall be obliged to plant, as they do in all old countries . . .

  Dr. Denniston, to whom I recommended you to go, has kindly consented on his way from New Bedford to Northhampton, to go to Concord to see you. He has had much experience and success in the treatment of bronchitis, and I hope his visit to you will result in your placing yourself under his care, which I much desire.

  Should the Doctor have the time, and you feel able, please show him a little of the Concord worthies and much oblige,

Yours truly,
D. Ricketson

  Saw and heard the white-bellied swallows this morning for the first time. Took boat at Stedman Buttrick’s, a gunner’s boat, smelling of muskrats and provided with slats for bushing the boat. Having got into the Great Meadows, after grounding once or twice on low spits of grass ground, we begin to see ducks which we have scared . . .