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  Passed a very little boy in the street to-day, who had on a home-made cap of a woodchuck-skin, which his father or elder brother had killed and cured, and his mother or elder sister had fashioned into a nice warm cap. I was interested by the sight of it, it suggested so much of family history, adventure with the chuck, story told about [it], not without exaggeration, the human parents’ care of their young these hard times . . .

  C. [William Ellery Channing] saw a dozen robins to-day on the ground on Ebby Hubbard’s hill by the Yellow Birch Swamp. One tells me that George Hubbard told him he saw blackbirds go over this afternoon . . .

  As I go down the Boston road, I see an Irishman wheeling home from far a large damp and rotten pine log for fuel. He evidently sweats at it, and pauses to rest many times. He found, perhaps, that his wood-pile was gone before the winter was, and he trusts thus to contend with the remaining cold. I see him unload it in his yard before me and then rest himself. The piles of solid oak wood which I see in other yards do not interest me at all, but this looked like fuel. It warmed me to think of it . . .

  Turn in at the gate this side of Moore’s and sit on the yellow stones rolled down in the bay of a digging, and examine the radical leaves, etc., etc. . . . (Journal, 14:321).

  I send you with this a paper called The Higher Law, it being much shorter & easier to prepare than that on Walking. It will not need to be divided on account of its length, as indeed the subject does not permit it. I should like to know that you receive it & also about what time it will be published.

Yours truly

H D. Thoreau
by S. E. Thoreau

  One roll of letters has gone today to Concord & to New York, and perhaps I shall still have time to get this into the leathern bag, before it is carted to the wharf. I have to thank you for your letter which was a true refreshment. Let who or what pass, there stands the dear Henry,—if indeed any body had a right to call him so,—erect, serene, & undeceivable. So let it ever be! I should quite subside into idolatry of some of my friends, if I were not every now & then apprised that the world is wiser than any one of its boys, & penetrates us with its sense, to the disparagement of the subtleties of private gentlemen. Last night, as I believe I have already told Lidian, I heard the best man in England make perhaps his best speech: Cobden, who is the cor cordis, the object of honor & belief to risen & rising England a man of great discretion, who never overstates, nor states prematurely, nor has a particle of unnecessary genius or hope to mislead him, no wasted strength, but calm, sure of his fact, simple & nervous in stating it, as a boy in laying down the rules of the game of football which have been violated—above all educated by his dogma of Free Trade, lead on by it to new lights & correlative liberalities, as our abolitionists have been by their principle to so many Reforms. Then this man has made no mistake he has dedicated himself to his work of convincing thus kingdom of the impolicy of corn laws, lectured in every town where they would hear him, & at last carried his point against immense odds, & yet has never accepted any compromise or stipulation from the Government. He might have been in the ministry. He will never go there, except with absolute empire for his principle, which cannot yet be awarded. He had neglected & abandoned his prosperous calico printing to his partners. And the triumphant League have subscribed between 60 & 80000 pounds, as the Cobden Fund; whereby he is made independent.—It was quite beautiful, even sublime, last night, to notice the moral radiations which this Free Trade dogma seemed to throw out, all-unlooked-for, to the great audience, who instantly & delightedly adopted them. Such contrasts of sentiments to the vulgar hatred & fear of France & jealousy of America, that pervaded the Newspapers. Cobden himself looked thoughtful & surprised, as if he saw a new Future. Old Col. Perronet Thompson, the Father of Free Trade, whose catechism on the Corn Laws set all these Brights & Cobdens first on cracking this nut, was present, & spoke in a very vigorous rasp-like tone. [Milner] Gibson, a member of the Brit. government, a great Suffolk Squire, & a convert to these opinions, made a very satisfactory speech and our old Abolition Friend, George Thompson, brought up the rear, though he, whom I now heard for the first time, is merely a piece of rhetoric & not a man of facts & figures & English solidity, like the rest. The audience play no inactive part, but the most acute & sympathizing, and the agreeable result was the demonstration of the arithmetical as well as the moral optimism of peace and generosity.

  Forgive, forgive this most impertient [sic] scribble.

Your friend,
R. W. E.

I really did not mean to put you off with a Report when I began. But—

  3 P.M.—Went round by Tuttle’s road, and so out on to the Walden road . . .

  About Brister’s Spring the ferns, which have been covered with snow, and the grass are still quite green.