Log Search Results

2 April 1852. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  6 A. M.—To the riverside and Merrick’s pasture . . .

  As a fair day is promised, and the waters are falling, decide to go to the Sudbury meadows with C., 9 A. M. Started some woodcocks in a wet place in Hi Wheeler’s stubble-field. Saw six spotted tortoises (Emys gutata), which had crawled to the shore by the side of the Hubbard Bridge causeway . . .

  The Charles Miles Run full and rumbling . . .

  Saw a striped squirrel in the wall near Lee’s. Brigham, the wheelwright, building a boat . . .

  Israel Rice’s dog stood stock-still so long that I took him at a distance for the end of a bench. He looked much like a fox, and his fur was as soft. Rice was very ready to go with us to his boat, which we borrowed, as soon as he had driven his cow into the barn where her calf was, but she preferred to stay out in the yard this pleasant morning. He was very obliging, persisted, without regard to our suggestions that we could help ourselves, in going with us to his boat, showed us after a larger boat and made no remark on the miserableness of it. Thanks and compliments fell off him like water off a rock . . .

  Steered across for the oaks opposite the mouth of the Pantry . . . After coming in sight of Sherman’s Bridge, we moored our boat by sitting on a maple twig on the east side, to take a leisurely view of the meadow . . .

  Landed on Tall’s Island . . .

  We landed near a corn-field in the bay on the west side, below Sherman’s Bridge, in order to ascend Round Hill, it still raining gently or with drops far apart. From the top we see smoke rising from the green pine hill in the southern part of Lincoln . . .

  Return to our boat. We have to go ashore and upset it every half-hour, it leaks so fast, for the leak increases as it sinks in the water in geometrical progression . . .

  We land in a steady rain and walk inland by R. Rice’s barn, regardless of the storm, toward White Pond. Overtaken by an Irishman in search of work. Discovered some new oaks and pine groves and more New England fields. At last the drops fall wider apart, and we pause in a sandy field near the Great Road of the Corner, where it was agreeably retired and sandy, drinking up the rain . . .

  At Hubbard’s Bridge, count eight ducks going over. Had seen one with outstretched neck over the Great Meadows in Sudbury. Looking up, the flakes are black against the sky. And now the ground begins to whiten. Get home at 5.30 P.M.

(Journal, 3:377-386)

Thoreau also writes to Thomas Wentworth Higginson:

  Dear Sir,

  I do not see that I can refuse to read another lecture, but what makes me hesitate is the fear that I have not another available which will entertain a large audience, though I have thoughts to offer which I think will be quite as worthy of their attention. However I will try, for the prospect of earning a few dollars is alluring. As far as I can foresee, my subject would be Reality rather transcendentally treated. It lies still in “Walden or Life in the Woods.” Since you are kind enough to undertake the arrangements, I will leave it to you to name an evening of next week—decide on the most suitable room—and advertise if this is not taking you too literally at your word

  If you still think it worth the while to attend to this, will you let me know as soon as may be what evening will be most convenient

  Yrs with thanks

  Henry D. Thoreau

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 278-279)
2 April 1853. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  5.30 A. M.—Down railroad . . .

  Found twenty or thirty of the little brown nuts of the skunk-cabbage deposited on a shelf of the turf under an apple tree by E. [Ebenezer] Hubbard’s close, as I have done before . . .

  P. M. to Second Division Brook . . . Was that Rana fontinalis or pipiens in the pool by E. Wood’s railroad crossing? The first large frog I have seen. C. [William Ellery Channing] says a wasp lit on him. A wood tortoise by river above Derby’s Bridge . . . Heard the hooting owl in Ministerial Swamp . . . Cheney’s elm blossomed to-day . . . Observed the first female willow just coming out, apparently Salix eriocephala, just beyond woods by Abel Hosmer’s field by railroad.

(Journal, 5:83-86)

Concord, Mass. William Ellery Channing writes in his journal:

  Bost. & 2 Div. Brook. Wood tortoise Fox-colord Sparrow, owl? (William Ellery Channing notebooks and journals. Houghton Library, Harvard University).
2 April 1854. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—To Conantum via Nut Meadow Brook . . .

  At Lee’s Cliff the red-stemmed moss . . . (Journal, 6:182-183).

New York, N.Y. Horace Greeley writes to Thoreau:

Dear Thoreau,—

  Thank you for your kindness in the matter of Margaret. Pray take no further trouble; but if anything should come in your way, calculated to help me, do not forget.

Yours,

Horace Greeley.

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 325)
2 April 1855. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Not only the grass but the pines also were greener yesterday for being wet. To-day, the grass being dry, the green blades are less conspicuous than yesterday. It would seem, then, that this color is more vivid when wet, and perhaps all green plants, like lichens, are to some extent greener in moist weather. Green is essentially vivid, or the color of life, and it is therefore most brilliant when a plant is moist or most alive. A plant is said to be green in opposition to being withered and dead . . .
(Journal, 7:280-281)
2 April 1856. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  8 A.M.—To Lee’s Cliff via railroad, Andromeda Ponds, and Well Meadow.

  I go early, while the crust is hard. I hear a few song sparrows tinkle on the alders by the railroad. They skulk and flit along below the level of the ground in the ice-filled ditches; and bluebirds warble . . .

  A woodchuck has been out under the Cliff, and patted the sand, cleared out the entrance to his burrow.

  Muskrat-houses have been very scarce indeed the past winter. If they were not killed off, I cannot but think that their instinct foresaw that the river would not rise. The river has been at summer level through the winter up to April!

  I returned down the middle of the river to near the Hubbard Bridge without seeing any opening . . .

(Journal, 8:239-243)
2 April 1857. New Bedford, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Go to New Bedford.

  A great change in the weather. I set out apple trees yesterday, but in the night it was very cold, with snow, which is now several inches deep. On the sidewalk in Cambridge I see a toad, which apparently hopped out from under a fence last evening, frozen quite hard in a sitting posture. Carried it into Boston in my pocket, but could not thaw it into life . . .

(Journal, 9:315)

Amos Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:

  Henry Thoreau comes to tea. Also [William] Ellery Channing . . . and all talk till into the evening late . . . (ABAJ, 298).
2 April 1858. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—To yew and R.W.E.’s [Ralph Waldo Emerson] Cliff . . .

  It is not important that the poet should say some particular thing, but should speak in harmony with nature. The tone and pitch of his voice is the main thing . . .

(Journal, 10:342-345)
2 April 1859. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—To Lee’s Cliff (walking) . . .

As I go down the street just after sunset, I hear many snipe to-night . . . (Journal, 12:106-109).

2 April 1860. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  2 P.M.—Thermometer 31º, or fallen 40º since yesterday, and the ground slightly whitened by a flurry of snow . . .

  Walked to the Mayflower Path and to see the great burning of the 31st . . .

(Journal, 13:239-241)
2 April 1861. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  A drifting snow-storm, perhaps a foot deep on an average. Pratt thought the cowslip was out the 14th (Journal, 14:335).

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