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  Lay on the dead grass in a cup-like hollow sprinkled with half-dead low shrub oaks. As I lie flat, looking close in among the roots of the grass, I perceive that its endless ribbon has pushed up about one inch and is green to that extent,—such is the length to which the spring has gone here,—though when you stand up the green is not perceptible. It is a dull, rain dropping and threatening afternoon, inclining to drowsiness. I feel as if I could go to sleep under a hedge. The landscape wears a subdued tone, quite soothing to the feelings; no glaring colors . . .

  2.30 P.M.—To Lee’s Cliff on foot.

  A still, warm, overcast clay with a southwest wind (this is what the Indians made so much of), and the finest possible dew-like rain in the air from time to time, now more of the sun. It is now so warm that I go back to leave my greatcoat for the first time, and the cooler smell of possible rain is refreshing . . .

  9 P.M.—Quite a heavy thunder-shower,—the second lightning, I think.

  The vivid lightning, as I walk the street, reveals the contrast between day and night. The rising cloud in the west makes it very dark and difficult to find my way . . .

  We see and hear more birds than usual this mizzling and still day, and the robin sings with more vigor and promise than later in the season.

  The white cedar gathered the 23d does not shed pollen in house till to-day, and I doubt if it will in swamp before to-morrow. Monroe’s larch will, apparently, by day after to-morrow . . .

  The tapping of a woodpecker is made a more remarkable and emphatic sound by the hollowness of the trunk, the expanse of water which conducts the sound, and the morning hour at which I commonly hear it . . .

  P.M.—Up Assabet to White Cedar Swamp . . . We sit on the shore at Wheeler’s fence, opposite Merriams’s.  At this season we still go seeking the sunniest, the most sheltered, and warmest place. [William Ellery] C[hanning]. says this is the warmest place he has been in this year . . .

  I have been spending a fortnight in New Bedford, and on my return find your last letter awaiting me.

  I was sure that you would find Newcomb inexhaustible, if you found your way into him at all. I might say, however, by the way of criticism, that he does not take firm enough hold on this world, where surely we are bound to triumph.

  I am sorry to say that I do not see how I can furnish you with a copy of my essay on the wild. It has not been prepared for publication, only for lectures, and would cover at least a hundred written pages. Even if it were ready to be dispersed, I could not easily find time to copy it. So I return the order.

  I see that you are turning a broad furrow among the books, but I trust that some very private journal all the while holds its own through their midst. Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside. I should say read Goethe’s Autobiography, by all means, also Gibbon’s Haydon the Painter’s —& our Franklin’s of course; perhaps also Alfieris, Benvenuto Cellini’s, & DeQuincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater since you like Autobiography.

  I think you must read Coleridge again & further—skipping al his theology—i.e. If you value precise definitions and discriminating use of language. By the way, read DeQuincey’s reminiscences of Coleridge & Wordsworth.

  How shall we account for our pursuits if they are original. We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of a common mint. If others have their losses, which they are busy repairing, so have I mine, & their hound and horse may perhaps be the symbols of some of them. But also I have lost, or am in the danger of losing, a far finer & more etherial treasure, which commonly no loss of which they are conscious will symbolize—this I answer hastily & and with some hesitation, according as I now understand my own words.

  I take this occasion to acknowledge, & thank you for, your long letter of Dec. 21st. So poor a correspondent am I. If I wait for the fit time to reply, it commonly does not come at all, as you see. I require the presence of the other party to suggest what I shall say. Methinks a certain polygamy with its troubles is the fate of almost all men. They are married to two wives—their genius (a celestial muse) and also to some fair daughter of the earth. Unless these two were fast friends before marriage, and so are afterward, there will be but little peace in the house.

  In answer to your questions, I must say that I never made, nor had occasion to use a filter of any kind; but, no doubt, they can be brought in Chicago.

  You cannot surely identify a plant from a scientific description until after long practice.

  The “Millers” you speak of are the perfect or final state of the insect. The Chrysalis is the silken bag they spun when caterpillars, & occupied in the nymph state.

  Yrs truly
  Henry D. Thoreau

  Dear Sir

  May I ask you to send me or have sent to me Mr Emerson’s lecture on “Country Life.” I am told he is ready to lend his papers to earnest inquirers. I will pay all postages and return the Ms. as soon as read, though, if Mr Emerson do not object, I might wish to copy it. Neither you nor he must think me impertinent. I am where I would almost give my life for light and hence the request.

  Not having your “Wild & Walking” to read, I have been walking in the wild of my own Nature and I am filled with anxious inquiries as to whether I had better remain in this business into which I passively slided. At that time I had many misgivings that it was not a wise step and I have been on the anxious seat ever since. I want labor that I can contemplate with approval and continue to prosecute with delight in sickness, adversity, and old age, should I chance to meet with such. I object to this business that it does not use my faculties, and on the other hand I ask myself if all my trouble is not in me. You dont want to hear my reasons pro and con. You too have been at a parting of the ways and will understand me.

  It is true that while here I have been much helped yet it is in spite of my trade connections which came near spoiling me.

  If I now leave, I shall probably have very little money, but I think some “fire in my belly” which will in the long run do something for me, if I live in the freedom of obedience.

  If I leave, it will be with the expectation of earnestly choosing some sort of “Country Life,” or, if I remain in a city, something that will make me grow. I believe that am I once fairly on deck I should not want to go below again.

  I am ready to tread cheerfully any path of Renunciation if Heavenly Wisdom demand it-with equal alacrity would I, in that high behest, go to the Devil by the most approved modern, respectable, orthodox methods. It is difficult to reconcile the Temporal and the Eternal. I must at some time so decide it that I can use all the “fire in my belly” to some purpose

  I spent, in December, some weeks on a farm in the interior of the State. I walked some distance over the prairie to look at a farm a man wanted me to buy and when the next night I reached my host’s house, I took up “Walden” and came across your translation of Cato’s advice to those about buying farms. It was very welcome and I let this farm alone.

  I would write you a long letter, but I suppose it would only make you smile benignly-and perhaps me, too, when, a year hence, I remembered it.

  Remember me respectfully and lovingly to Mr Emerson

  Your grateful friend
  B. B. Wiley