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Thoreau writes in his journal:

P.M.—Down railroad, measuring snow, and to Fair Haven Hill . . .

Going by the path to the Springs, I find great beds of oak leaves, sometimes a foot thick, very dry and crisp and filling the path, or one side of it, in the woods for a quarter of a mile, inviting one to lie down. They have absorbed the heat and settled, like the single one seen yesterday in mass a foot or more, making a path . . .

(Journal, 8:236-239)

1 April 1857. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

8 A.M.—Up Assabet.
See an Emys guttata sunning on the forgotten whether I ever saw it in this river. Hear a phoebe, and this morning the tree sparrows sing very sweetly about Keyes’s arbor-vitae and Cheney’s pines and apple trees . . .

(Journal, 9:315)

Thoreau writes to Daniel Ricketson:

Dear Ricketson,

I got your note of welcome night before last. Channing is not here, at least I have not seen nor heard of him, but depend on meeting him in New Bedford. I expect if the weather is favorable, to take the 4 :30 train from Boston tomorrow, Thursday, pm—for I hear of no noon train, and shall be glad to find your wagon at Tarkiln Hill, for I see it will be rather late for going across lots.

Alcott was here last week, and will probably visit New Bedford withing a week or 2.

I have seen all the spring signs you mention and a few more, even here. Nay I heard one frog peep nearly a week ago, methinks the very first one in all this region. I wish that there were a new more signs

Spring in myself—however, I take it that there are as many within us as we think we hear without us. I am decent for steady pace but not yet for a race. I have a little cold at present, & you speak of rheumatism about the head & shoulders. Your frost is not quite out. I suppose that the earth itself has a little cold & rheumatism about these times, but all these things together produce a very fair general result. In a concert, you know, we must sing our parts feebly sometimes that we may not injure the general effect. I shouldn’t wonder if my two-year old invalidity has been a positively charming feature to some amateurs favorable located. Why not a blasted man, as well as a blasted tree, on your lawn? If you should happen not to see me by the train named, do not go again, but wait at home for me, or a note from

Yrs
Henry D Thoreau

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 472-473)

Daniel Ricketson writes in his journal:

Spend the day at home with Mr. [Amos Bronson] Alcott; I find him a genial, highly gifted man. H. D. Thoreau arrived to-night from Concord; met him at Tarkiln Hill . . . [It is possible Ricketson is in error about the date of Thoreau’s arrival, considering Thoreau’s 1 April letter.] (Daniel Ricketson and His Friends, 300).

1 April 1858. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

I observed night before last, as often before, when geese were passing over in the twilight quite near, though the whole heavens were still light and I knew which way to look by the honking, I could not distinguish them. It takes but a little obscurity to hide a bird in the air. How difficult, even in broadest daylight, to discover again a hawk at a distance in the sky when you have once turned your eyes away! . . .

(Journal, 10:338-342)

1 April 1859. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Melvin, the sexton, says that when Loring’s Pond was drained once—perhaps the dam broke—he saw there about all the birds he has seen on a salt marsh . . .

P.M.—To Assabet over meadows in boat . . .

(Journal, 12:104-105)

1 April 1860. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

3 P.M.—Up Assabet in boat . . .

As we paddle up the Assabet we hear the wood turtles—the first I have noticed—and painted turtles rustling down the bank into the water, and see where they have travelled over the sand and the mud . . .

(Journal, 13:237-239)

1 August 1831. Concord, Mass.

George Moore writes in his journal:

Monday evening, Aug. 1. Attended a Teacher’s Meeting at Mr. Thoreau’s, and a very pleasant one it was, too, with the exception of a few mosquito bites (The Transcendentalists and Minerva, 2:460).

1 August 1841. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

The best thought is not only without sombreness, but even without morality. The universe lies out spread in floods of white light to it. The moral aspect of nature is a jaundice reflected from man. To the innocent there are no cherubim nor angels. Occasionally we rise above the necessity of virtue into an unchangeable morning light, in which we have not to choose in a dilemma between right and wrong, but simply to live right on and breathe the circumambient air. There is no name for this life unless it be the very vitality of vita. Silent is the preacher about this, and silent must ever be, for he who knows it will not preach.

(Journal, 1:265)

1 August 1844. Concord, Mass.

Ralph Waldo Emerson gives an address on “The emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies” and “Thoreau not only rang the bell, but previously had gone about the village, giving notice at the house-doors that Emerson would speak at the vestry.”

(The Personality of Emerson, 88)

1 August 1846. Concord, Mass.

The annual meeting of the Concord Women’s Anti-Slavery Society is held on the doorstep of Thoreau’s Walden Pond house to commemorate the 2nd anniversary of the freeing of slaves in the West Indies.

1 August 1851.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Left [Plymouth] at 9 A.M., August 1st. After Kingston came Plympton, Halifax, and Hanson, all level with frequent cedar swamps, especially the last,—also in Weymouth (Journal, 2:367-370).

Boston, Mass. Thoreau checks out Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, volume 4, part 1, and Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee country, the extensive territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek confederacy, and the country of the Chactaws by William Bartram from the Boston Society of Natural History.

(Emerson Society Quarterly, no. 24 (March 1952):24)

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