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22 December 1849. Boston, Mass.

The Christian Inquirer publishes a notice of James Russell Lowell’s review of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers that appeared in the December issue of the Massachusetts Society Quarterly.

22 December 1850. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Here is an old-fashioned snow-storm. There is not much passing on railroads. The engineer says it is three feet deep above. Walden is frozen, one third of it, though I thought it was all frozen as I stood on the shore on one side only. There is no track on the Walden road. A traveller might cross it in the woods and not be sure it was a road. As I pass the farmers’ houses I observe the cop [sic] of the sled propped up with a stick to prevent its freezing into the snow. The needles of the pines are drooping like cockerels’ feathers after a rain, and frozen together by the sleety snow. The pitch pines now bear their snowy fruit.
(Journal, 126-128)
22 December 1851. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Just saw a little Irish boy, come from the distant shanty in the woods over the bleak railroad to school this morning, take his last step from his last snow-drift on to the schoolhouse door-step, floundering still; saw not his face or his profile, only his mien, and imagined, saw clearly in imagination, his old-worthy face behind the sober visor of his cap . . .
(Journal, 3:148-150)

Thoreau writes in his journal on 23 December:

  Yesterday afternoon I walked to the stone bridge over the Assabet, and thence down the river on the ice to the Leaning Hemlocks, and then crossed the other branch to the house . . .

  I was struck by the amount of small interlaced roots—making almost a solid mass—of some red (?) oaks on the bank which the water had undermined, opposite Sam Barrett’s. Observed by a wall beneath Nawshawtuct where many rabbits appeared to have played and nearly half a pint of dung was dropped in one pile on the snow.

(Journal, 3:151)
22 December 1852. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Wednesday. Surveying the Hunt Farm this and the 20th . . .

  A rambling, rocky, wild, moorish pasture, this of Hunt’s, with two or three great white oaks to shade the cattle, which the farmer would not take fifty dollars apiece for, though the ship-builder wanted them . . .

(Journal, 4:431-432)
22 December 1853. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Surveying the last three days . . .

  P.M.—Got a white spruce for a Christmas-tree for the town out of the spruce opposite J. Farmer’s. It is remarkable how few inhabitants of Concord can tell a spruce from a fir, and probably not two a white from a black spruce, unless they are together. The woodchopper, even hereabouts, cuts down several kinds of trees without knowing what they are . . .

(Journal, 6:20-22)
22 December 1854. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes to H.G.O. Blake:

Mr. Blake,

  [I w]ill lecture for your [Lyceum on the 4]th of January next; and I hope that I shall have time for that good day out of doors. Mr Cholmondeley is in Boston, yet perhaps I may write him to accompany me.

  I have engaged to lecture at New Bedford on the 26 inst, stopping with Daniel Ricketson 3 miles out of town; and at Nantucket on the 28th; so that I shall be gone all next week. They say there is some danger of being weather-bound at Nantucket, but I see that others run the same risk.

  You had better acknowledge the receit of this at any rate, though you should write nothing else, otherwise I shall not know whether you get it; but perhaps you will not wait till you have seen me to answer my letter. I will tell you what I think of lecturing when I see you.

  Did you see the notice of Walden in the last Anti-Slavery Standard? You will not be surprised if I tell you that it reminded me of you.

Yrs,

[Henry D. Thoreau.]

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 358)
22 December 1855.

Concord, Mass. Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—Warm rain and frost coming out and muddy walking . . . (Journal, 8:56-57).

New Bedford, Mass. Daniel Ricketson writes to Thoreau (Concord Saunterer 19, no. 1 (July 1987):25-6; MS, private owner). Thoreau replies 25 December.

22 December 1856. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  To Boston and Cambridge (Journal, 9:194).
22 December 1858. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—To Walden . . .

  The pond is no more frozen than on the 20th. I see where a rabbit has hopped across it in the slosh last night, making a track larger than a man’s ordinarily is (Journal, 11:374-375).

22 December 1859. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Another fine winter day.

  P.M.—To Flint’s Pond. C. [William Ellery Channing] is inclined to walk in the road, it being better walking there, and says: “You don’t wish to see anything but the sky to-day and breathe this air” . . . Three men are fishing on Flint’s Pond, where the ice is seven or eight inches thick . . .

(Journal, 13:37-40)

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