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  Saw a small flock of tree sparrows in the sprout-lands under Bartlett’s Cliff . . .

  Was overtaken by an Irishman seeking work. I asked him if he could chop wood. He said he was not long in this country; that he could cut one side of a tree well enough, but he had not learned to change hands and cut the other without going around it,—what we call crossing the carf; They get very small wages at this season of the year, almost give up the ghost in the effort to keep soul and body together. He left me on the run to find a new master.

  I do not remember to have ever seen such a day as this in Concord. There is no snow here (though there has been excellent sleighing it Concord since the 5th), but it is very muddy, the frost coming out of the ground as in spring with us. I went to walk in the woods with R. It was wonderfully warm and pleasant, and the cockerels crowed Just as in a spring day at home. I felt the winter breaking up in Me, and if I had been at home I should have tried to write poetry. They told me that this was not a rare day there . . .

  I go to Walden via the almshouse and up the railroad . . .

  Now, at 10 A.M., there blows a very strong wind from the northwest, and it grows cold apace . . .

  4 P.M. – Up railroad . . .

  It is so easy, at a distance, or when going to a distance, to ask a great favor which one would haggle at near by. I have been ridiculously hindered, and my book is not out, and I must go westward. There is one chapter yet to go to the printer; perhaps two, if I decide to send the second. I must ask you to correct the proofs of this or these chapters. I hope you can and will, if you are not going away. The printer will send you the copy with the proof; and yet, ‘t is likely you will see good cause to correct copy as well as proof. The chapter is Stonehenge, and I may not send it to the printer for a week yet, for I am very tender about the personalities in it, and of course you need not think of it till it comes. As we have been so unlucky asto overstay the market—day,—that is New Year’s—it is not important, a week or a fortnight, now.

  If anything puts it out of your power to help me at this pinch, you must dig up channing out of his earths, and hold him steady to this beneficence. Send the proofs, if they come, to Phillips, Samspon &co., Winter Street.

  We may well go away, if, one of these days, we shall really come home.

  Yours
  R.W. Emerson

  I walk over the meadow above railroad bridge, where the withered grass rises above the ice, the river being low . . . Call at a farmer’s this Sunday afternoon, where I surprise the well-to-do masters of the house lounging in very ragged clothes (for which they think it necessary to apologize, and one of them is busy laying the supper-table (at which he invites me to sit down at last), bringing up cold meat from the cellar and a lump of butter on the end of his knife, and making the tea by the time his mother gets home from church . . .

  Corn grows in the night.

  I understand you have begun to print the Dial, and I am very glad of it on one account, viz., that if it gets out early enough to go to England by the steamer of the first month (April) it does not have to wait another month, as was the case with the last number. But I meant to have had as a first article a letter to the “Friends of the Dial,” somewhat like the rough draft I enclose, and was waiting Mr. Emerson’s arrival to consult him about the name of it. I have now written to him at New York on the subject and told him my whys and wherefores. The regular income of the Dial does not pay the cost of its printing and paper; there are readers enough to support it if they would only subscribe; and they will subscribe if they are convinced that only by doing so can they secure its continuance. He will probably write you on the subject.

  I want to ask a favor of you. It is to forward me a small phial of that black-lead dust which is to be found, as Dr. C . T. Jackson tells me, at a certain lead-pencil manufactory in Concord; and to send it to me by the first opportunity. I want lead in this fine dust to use in a chemical experiment.

Respectfully yours,
E. P. Peabody.

P. S. I hope you have got your money from Bradbury & Soden. I have done all I could about it. Will you drop the enclosed letter for Mrs . Hawthorne into the post-office?