Log Search Results

27 November 1853. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Now a man will eat his heart, if ever, now while the earth is bare, barren and cheerless, and we have the coldness of winter without the variety of ice and snow; but methinks the variety and compensation are in the stars now. How bright they are now by contrast with the dark earth! . . .

  It is too cold to-day to use a paddle; the water freezes on the handle and numbs my fingers . . .

(Journal, 5:520-521)
27 November 1854. Nantucket, Mass.

Andrew Whitney writes to Thoreau in reply to his letter of 25 November:

Dear Sir

  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.

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 352-353)
27 November 1855. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—By river to [Jacob] Farmer’s. He gave me the head of a gray rabbit which his boy had snared . . .

  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 . . .

(Journal, 8:34-36)
27 November 1856. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—Take a turn down the river. A painted tortoise sinking to the bottom, and apparently tree sparrows along the shore (Journal, 9:140).
27 November 1857. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Standing before Stacy’s large glass windows this morning, I saw that they were gloriously ground by the frost. I never saw such beautiful feather and fir-like frosting. His windows are filled with fancy articles and toys for Christmas and New-Year’s presents, but this delicate and graceful outside frosting surpassed them all infinitely. I saw countless feathers with very distinct midribs and fine pinnæ. The half of a to rise in each case up along the sash, and feathers branched off from it all the way, nearly horizontally. Other crystals looked like pine plumes the size of life. If glass could be ground to look like this, how glorious it would be! . . .
(Journal, 10:208-210)
27 November 1858. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Those barren hollows and plains in the neighborhood of Walden are singular places . . .

  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).

27 November 1859. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—To Colburn Farm wood-lot north of C. Hill . . .

  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 . . .

(Journal, 12:453-454)
27 October 1835. Cambridge, Mass.

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).

27 October 1836. Cambridge, Mass.

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).

27 October 1837. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  The prospect is limited to Nobscot and Annursnack. The trees stand with boughs downcast like pilgrims beaten by a storm, and the whole landscape wears a sombre aspect.

  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.

(Journal, 1:6)
Thoreau also writes to his sister Helen:

Dear H.

  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

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 15; MS missing, copy in the Henry David Thoreau collection. Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library)

Return to the Log Index

Donation

$