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  P.M.—Walked with C. M. Tracy in the rain in the western part of Lynn, near Dungeon Rock . . . (Journal, 12:164).

  To-day it is 53º at 2 P.M., yet cold, such a difference is there in our feelings . . .

  P.M.—To Cliffs and Well Meadow . . .

  I send you herewith an account of the Life, Character, Genius and Works of Thomas Carlyle, by one of the only two men in America capable of giving it. The very best man to do this is, of course, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and this is by the second-best, Mr. Emerson’s pupil, friend and daily companion, Henry D. Thoreau, whose essays and translations of some of the grand Greek Tragedies in The Dial made a deserved sensation. Thoreau is a young man, a scholar, poor of course, and sends this to me to get utterance and bread. I know it is unlike the general staple of your Magazine, but I think it will on that account be relished and give a zest to the work. That it is a brilliant as well as vigorous essay, and gives a Daguerreotype of Carlyle and Carlylism which no man living but Emerson could excel, I believe any scholar would say, and I am confident it would attract many new readers to the Magazine. It would make about a sheet or sixteen pages of the Mag. and would probably have to be divided—I hope but once. If you choose to publish it, and pay as much as you pay others for right good prose (where you are not buying a name) I will make it sell a pile of Magazines, anyhow.

  I offer it first to you, and ask you to let me have your decision upon it as soon as practicable. Keep the MS. till I send for it, as I may think best to offer it to Godey if you don’t want it.

Yours,
Horace Greeley

  I hear part of phoebe’s strain, as I go over the railroad bridge. It is the voice of dying summer. The pads now left on the river are chiefly those of the white lily . . . Nasturtium hispidum still in bloom, and will be for some time . . .

  The Poa hirsuta is left on the upper edge of the meadows (as at J. Hosmer’s), as too thin and poor a grass, beneath the attention of the farmers. How fortunate that it grows in such places and not in the midst of the rank grasses which are cut! With its beautiful fine purple color, its beautiful purple blush, it reminds me and supplies the place of the rhexia now about done. Close by, or held in your hand, its fine color is not obvious,—it is but dull,—but [at] a distance, with a suitable light, it is exceedingly beautiful. It is at the same time in bloom. This is one of the most interesting phenomena of August . . .

  The fall cricket—or is it alder locust?—sings the praises of the day.

  So about 9 A.M. up river to Fair Haven Pond.

  The flooded meadow, where the grasshoppers cling to the grass so thickly, is alive with swallows skimming just over the surface . . .

Sailed across to Bee Tree Hill. This hillside, laid bare two years ago and partly last winter, is almost covered with the Aster macrophyllus, now in its prime. It grows large and rank, two feet high. On one I count seventeen central flowers withered, one hundred and thirty in bloom, and half as many buds. As I looked down from the hilltop over the sprout-land, its rounded grayish tops amid the bushes I mistook for gray, lichen-clad rocks, such was its profusion and harmony with the scenery . . .