Log Search Results

  Smooth sumach at Texas house, two days . . . P. Hutchinson says that he can remember when haymakers form Sudbury, thirty or forty years ago, used to come down the river in numbers and unite with concord to clear the weeds out of the river in shallow places and the larger streams emptying in . . .

  Your letter of the 25th, the books, and the Cicada came to hand this evening,—and I am much obliged to you for all of them;—for the books,—because I am very busy with putting the Library in order for examination, & want every book to be in its place; – for the letter, because it gives me interesting facts concerning Cicadas; and for the specimen because it is new to me, as a species or as a variety.

  The Cicada seems to be a female, and of course when living could not make the noise peculiar to the other sex. It differs from my specimens of Cicada septemdecim (& indeed still more from all the other species in my collection). It is not so large as the C.17; it has more orange about its thorax; the wing-veins are not so vividly stained with orange, and the dusky zigzag W on the anterior or upper wings, which is very distinct in the C.17, is hardly visible in this specimen. It has much the same form as the female C.17; but I must see the male in order to determine positively whether it be merely a variety or a different species. I should be very glad to get more specimens and of both sexes. Will you try for them?

  Your much obliged

  Thaddeus William Harris.

  I have been sick and good for nothing but to lie on my back and wait for something to turn up, for two or three months. This has compelled me to postpone several things, among them writing to you to whom I am so deeply in debt, and inviting you and Brown [Theophilus Brown] to Concord—not having brains adequate to such an exertion. I should feel a little less ashamed if I could give any name to my disorder, but I cannot, and our doctor cannot help me to it, and I will not take the name of any disease in vain. However, there is one consolidation in being sick, and that is the possibility that you may recover to be a better state than you were ever in before. I expected in the winter to be deep in the woods of Maine in my canoe long before this, but I am so far from that that I can only take the languid walk in Concord streets.
 
  I do not know how the mistake arose about the Cape Cod excursion. The nearest I have come to that with anybody is that about a month ago Charming proposed to me to go to Truro, on Cape Cod, with him & board there awhile, but I declined. For a week past however I have been a little inclined to go there & sit on the sea-shore a week or more, but I do not venture to propose myself as the companion of him or of any peripatetic man. Not that I should rejoice to have you and Brown or C. sitting there also. I am not sure that C. really wishes to go now—and as I go simply for the medicine of it, while I need it, I should not think it worth the whole to notify him when I am about to make my bitters.

  Since I began this, or within 5 minutes, I have begun to think that I will start for Truro next Saturday morning—the 30th. I do not know at what hour the packet leaves Boston, nor exactly what kind of accommodation I shall find at Truro.

  I should be singularity favored if you and Brown were there at the same time, and though you speak of the 20th of July, I will be so bold as to suggest your coming to Concord Friday night (when, by the way, Garrison & Phillips hold forth here) & going to the Cape with me. Though we take short walks together there we can have long talks, and you & Brown will have time enough for your own excursions besides.

  I received a letter from Cholmondeley last winter, which I should like to show you, as well as his book. He said that he had “accepted the offer to a captaincy in the Salop Militia,” and was hoping to take an active part in the war before long.
 
  I thank you again and again for the encouragement your letters are to me. But I must stop this writing, or I shall have to pay for it.

  Yours Truly
  H.D. Thoreau

  A Mr. Wall, artist, at New Bedford, told me of a high pine wood or swamp some miles down Naushon with “storks’ nests” (!) in the pines . . .

  Returning, I caught sight of Gay Head and its lighthouse with my glass, between Pasque and Nashawena . . .

  See apparently a young bobolink fluttering over the meadow. The garlic not even yet quite.

  In the Wheeler meadow, the bushy one southwest of Egg Rock, the coarse sedge—I think the same with that in the Great Meadows—evidently grows in patches with a rounded outline . . .

  Land at old mill-site and walk through the Lee Woods looking for bird’s nests . . . (Journal, 10:509-510).

  P.M.—To Walden.

  At the further Brister’s Spring, under the pine, I find an rlttacus tuna, half hidden under a skunk-cabbage leaf, with its back to the ground and motionless, on the edge of the swamp. The under side is a particularly pale hoary green. It is somewhat greener above with a slightly purplish brown border on the front edge of its front wings, and a brown, yellow, and whitish eye-spot in the middle of each wing. It is very sluggish and allows rue to turn it over and cover it up with another leaf,—sleeping till the night come . . .

  River at 6 P.M. seven and five eighths inches above summer level . . . (Journal, 13:375-377).

  Madison, capital & 4 lakes (Thoreau’s Minnesota Journey, 24-25).

  As I am writing while the cars are going, I cannot do it up very well, but I will try to make it readable.

  We left Red-Wing yesterday at about 2 P.M. on the Steamer War Eagle and arrived in Prairie du Chien at 8 P.M. to-day. The train for Milwaukee did not leave till 10 o’clock so we had to wait a while. It is rather cooler today than we have had for some time so it is very comfortable travelling. We passed through Madison at 1:30 P.M. and shall arrive in Milwaukee at 6 o’clock this evening If we can find a boat going to mackinaw we shall take it immediately, if not, we shall wait until one does go, which will be in the course of a day anyhow, I suppose. There has been a riot in Milwaukee of which I suppose you have read long before this, but the Milwaukee paper says to-day that the city is quiet.

  For the first 60 or 70 miles of travel to-day we kept in the valley of the Wisconsin River, which we crossed three times . . . You may think that I can write better, but I cannot, for this is one of the roughest roads I ever rode over. Madison is a very pretty place I should think and the lakes which surround it (stopping at Palmyra) are very beautiful. The state house is a large building standing on a rise of ground near the track as we enter the city; it is built out of dark cream colored limestone, which can be quarried all over that section of the state. I have nothing more to say now so Goodbye.

From your loving son

Horace Mann