Thoreau writes in his journal:
It is too cold to-day to use a paddle; the water freezes on the handle and numbs my fingers . . .
Andrew Whitney writes to Thoreau in reply to his letter of 25 November:
Your favor of 25th is at hand this evening. We cannot have you between the 4 & 15th of Dec without bringing two lecturers in one week—which we wish to avoid if possible.
If you cannot come the 28th of Dec. will the 2d week in January either the 9th 10th 11th or 12th of the month suit you?—if not, perhaps you can select a day in the 4th week in Jany., avoiding Monday and Saturday.
Write us as soon as possible and make the day as early as you can.—
Yours truly,
Andrew Whitney.
Thoreau writes in his journal:
There is little now to be heard along the river but the sedge rustling on the brink. There is a little ice along most of the shore throughout the day . . .
Thoreau writes in his journal:
Thoreau writes in his journal:
Thoreau writes in his journal:
How much more remote the newly discovered species seems to dwell than the old and familiar ones, though both inhabit the same pond! . . . (Journal, 11:347-350).
Thoreau writes in his journal:
The Greeks and Romans made much of honey because they had no sugar; olive oil also was very important. Our poets (?) still sing of honey, though we have sugar, and oil, though we do not produce and scarcely use it . . .
Thoreau attends a meeting of the Institute of 1770 in which a lecture is given on “Astronomy” and the topic “Should the people ever inflict punishment upon an individual without granting him a regular trial?” is debated (The Transcendentalists and Minerva, 1:83).
Thoreau checks out The poetical works of John Milton, volumes 1, 5, and 6 and an unidentified item recorded as “Notes on Milton” from Harvard College Library (Companion to Thoreau’s Correspondence, 288).
Thoreau writes in his journal:
So when thick vapors cloud the soul, it strives in vain to escape from its humble working-day valley, and pierce the dense fog which shuts out from view the blue peaks in its horizon, but must be content to scan its near and homely hills.
Please you, let the defendant say a few words in defense of his long silence. You know we have hardly done our own deeds, thought our own thoughts, or lived our own lives, hitherto. For a man to act himself, he must be perfectly free; otherwise, he is in danger of losing all sense of responsibility or of self-respect. Now when such a state of things exists, that the sacred opinions one advances in argument are apologized for by his friends, before his face, lest his hearers receive a wrong impression of the man,—when such gross injustice is of frequent occurrence, where shall we look, & not look in vain, for men, deeds, thoughts? As well apologize for the grape that it is sour,—or the thunder that it is noisy, or the lightning that it tarries not. Farther, letterwriting too often degenerates into a communing of facts, & not of truths; of other men’s deeds, & not our thoughts. What are the convulsions of a planet compared with the emotions of the soul? or the rising of a thousand suns, if that is not enlightened by a ray?
Your affectionate brother,
Henry
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