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A B A [Amos Bronson Alcott] thought he could find as good a ground for quarrel in the state taz as Socrates did in the Edict of the Judges. Then I say, Be Consistent, & never more put an apple or a kernel of corn into your mouth. Would you feed the devil? Say boldly “There is a sword sharp enough to cut sheer between flesh & spirit, & I will use it, & not any longer belong to this double faced equivocating mixed Jesuitical universe.”

The Abolitionists should resist, because they are literalists; they know exactly what they object to, & there is a government possible which will content them. Remove a few specified grievances, & this present commonwealth will suit them. They are the new Puritans, & as easily satisfied. But you, nothing will content. No government short of a monarchy consisting of one king & one subject, will appease you. Your objection then to the state of Massachusetts is deceptive. Your true quarrel is with the state of Man.

In the particular it is worth considering that refusing payment of the state tax does not reach the evil so nearly as many other methods within your reach. The state tax does not pay the Mexican War. Your coat, your sugar, your Latin & French & German book, your watch does. Yet these you do not stick at buying.

But really a scholar has too humble an opinion of the population, of their possibilities, of their future, to be entitled to go to war with them as with equals.

This prison is one step to suicide.

He knows that nothing they can do will ever please him. Why should he poorly pound on some one string of discord, when all is jangle?

He goes for strong more than he goes for handsome. (The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 9:445)

  D. H. Thoreau

  Your view concerning Thoreau is entirely in consent with that which I entertain. His general conduct has been satisfactory and I am willing and desirous that whatever falling off there had been in his scholarship should be attributable to his sickness. He had, however, imbibed some notions concerning emulation & college rank, which had a natural tendency to diminish his zeal, if not his exertion. His instructors were impressed with the conviction that he was indifferent, even to a degree that was faulty and that they could not recommend him consistent with the rule, by which they are usually governed in relation to beneficiaries. I have, always, entertained a respect for, and interests in him, and was willing to attribute any apparent neglect, or indifference to his ill health rather than to wilfulness. I obtained from the instructors the authority to state all the facts to the Corporation, and submit the result to their discretion. This I did, and that body granted twenty-five dollars, which was within ten, or at most fifteen dollars of any sum, he would have received had no objection been made. There is no doubt that, from some cause, an unfavorable opinion has been entertained, since his return after his sickness, of his disposition to exert himself. To what it has been owing may be doubtful. I appreciate very fully the goodness of his heart and the strictness of his moral principle; and have done as much for him as, under the circumstances, was possible.

Very respectfully, your humble servant,
Josiah Quincy

A few moments after, it rained heavily for a half-hour . . .

  One man lies in his words, and gets a bad reputation; another in his manners, and enjoys a good one.

  The air is clear, as if a cool, dewy brush had swept the vales and meadows of all haze. A liquid coolness invests them, as if their midnight aspect were suddenly revealed to midday. The mountain outline is remarkably distinct, and the intermediate earth appears more than usually scooped out, like a vast saucer sloping upward to its sharp mountain rim . . .

  8.30 P.M.—To Conantum.

  Moon half full. Fields dusky; the evening one other bright one near the moon. It is a pretty still night . . .

  I have had only bad luck with your manuscript. Two magazines have refused it on the ground of its length, saying that articles ‘To be continued’ are always unpopular, however good. I will try again.

Yours,
Horace Greeley

  Great orange lily beyond stone bridge. Found in the Glade (?) Meadows an unusual quantity of amelanchier berries, -I think of the two common kinds,—one a taller bush, twice as high as my head, with thinner and lighter-colored leaves and larger, or at least some-what softer, fruit, the other a shorter bush, with more rigid and darker leaves and dark-blue berries, with often a sort of woolliness on them. Both these are now in their prime. These are the first berries after strawberries, or the first, and I think the sweetest, bush berries. Somewhat like high blueberries, but not so hard. Much eaten by insects, worms, etc. As big as the largest blueberries or peas. These are the “service-berries” which the Indians of the north and the Canadians use . . .

  Maywecd, say 27th. At Ludwigia Pokc-logan, a cinder-like spawn in a white, frothy jelly . A green bittern, apparently, awkwardly alighting on the trees and uttering its hoarse, zarry note, zskeow-xskeow-xskeow . . .

  Brewer, in a communication to Audubon (as I read in his hundred(?)-dollar edition), makes two kinds of song sparrows, and says that Audubon has represented one, the most common about houses . . .

  Hotter than yesterday and, like it, muggy or close. So hazy can see no mountains. In many spots in the road and by edge of rye-fields the reflected heat is almost suffocating. 93° at 1 P.M.

  Sitting on the Conantum house sill (still left), I see two and perhaps three young striped squirrels, twothirds grown, within fifteen or twenty feet, one or more on the wall and another on the ground. Their tails are rather imperfect, as their bodies. They are running about, yet rather feebly, nibbling the grass, etc ., or sitting upright, looking very cunning. The broad white line above and below the eye make it look very long as well as large, and the black and white stripes on its sides, curved as it sits, are very conspicuous and pretty . . .