Log Search Results

  Cornus sericea, yesterday at least. Small front-rank polygonum, a smut-like blast in the flower. Small form of arrowhead in Hubbard’s aster meadow, apparently several days. I am struck, as I look toward the Dennis shore from the bathing-place, with the peculiar agreeable dark shade of June, a clear air, and bluish light on the grass and bright silvery light reflected from fresh green leaves . . .

  Saw a farmer on the Neck with one of Palmer’s patent wood legs. He went but little lame and said that he did his own mowing and most of his ordinary farm work, though plowing in the present state of his limb, which had not yet healed, wrenched him some . . .

  This Neck, like the New Bedford country generally, is very flat to my eye, even as far inland as Middleborough. When R. [Daniel Ricketson] decided to take another road home from the latter place, because it was less hilly, I said I had not observed a hill in all our ride . . . I had been expecting to find the aletris about New Bedford, and when taking our luncheon on this neck what should I see rising above the luncheon-box, between me and R., but what I knew must be the Aletris farinosa . . .

  Talked with a farmer by name of Slocum, hoeing on the Neck, a rather dull and countrified fellow for our neighborhood, I should have said . . .

  Heard of, and sought out, the hut of Martha Simons, the only pure-blooded Indian left about New Bedford . . . The squaw was not at home when we first called . . . She ere long came in from the seaside, and we called again. We knocked and walked in, and she asked us to sit down . . .

  A conceited old Quaker minister, her neighbor, told me with a sanctified air, “I think that the Indians were human beings; dost thee not think so?” He only convinced me of his doubt and narrowness.

  The black willow down is now quite conspicuous on the trees, giving them a parti-colored or spotted white and green look, quite interesting, like a fruit . . .

  2 p.m. Leave War Eagle for Prairie du Chien, some 200 miles distant. Mrs. [Margaret Barker] Upham of Clinton with us, has a cousin [John Quincy Adams] Clifton in Bedford. Lake Pepin. 1st northeast then east (?) by sun & compass. Reach Prairie du Chien about 9 A.M. [the] 27th.

  I have not yet received any letter from you, and so I have left word at the post-office to have any which may come, forwarded to Detroit where I may be able to get it. We shall leave this afternoon.

  It is quite a cool day in the wind, though the sun is pretty warm.

Goodbye, your loving son

Horace Mann

P.S. I shall write again from Milwaukee.

  I certify that Henry D. Thoreau, of Concord in this State of Massachusetts, graduated at this seminary in August, 1837; that his rank was high as a scholar in all branches, and his morals and general conduct unexceptionable and exemplary. He is recommended as well qualified as an instructor, for employment in any public or private school or private family.

Josiah Quincy, President of Harvard University

  Yours received. Very well. Please publish Mr. Thoreau’s articles as soon as convenient. I will write him for more

  Yours

  Horace Greeley