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  I should not have delayed sending you my manuscript so long, if I had not known that delay would be no inconvenience to you, and advantage to the sender. I will remind you, to save time, that I wish to be informed for what term the book is to be the property of the publishers, and on what terms I can have 30 copies cheaply bound in boards without immediate expense.—If you take it—It will be a great convenience to me to get through with the printing as soon as possible, as I wish to take a journey of considerable length and should not be willing that any other than myself should correct the proofs.

  If you will inform me as soon as may be, whether you want the manuscript, and what are the most favorable terms on which you will print & publish it, you will greatly oblige

Y’rs &c
Henry D. Thoreau

I am preaching, mind you, to bare walls, that is to myself; and if you have chanced to come in and occupy a pew—do not think that my remarks are directed at you particularly, and so slam the seat in disgust. This discourse was written long before these exciting times.

Some absorbing employment on your higher ground—your upland farm, wither no catpath leads—but where you mount alone with your hoe—Where the life-ever—lasting grows—you raise a crop which needs not to be brought down into the valley to a market, which you barter for heavenly products.

Do you separate distinctly enough support of your body from that of your essence? By how distinct a course commonly are these two ends attained! Not that they should not be attained by one & the same means—that indeed is the rarest success—but there is no half and half about it.

I shall be glad to read my lectures to a small audience in Worcester, such as you describe, and will only require that my expenses be paid. If only the parlor be large enough for an echo, and the audience will embarrass themselves with hearing as much as the lecture would otherwise embarrass himself with reading. But I warn you that this is no better calculated for a promiscuous audience than the last two which I read to you. It requires in every sense a concordant audience

I will come on Sunday next and spend Sunday with you, if you wish it. Say so if you do.

Drink deep or taste not of the Peirian spring. Be not deterred by the melancholy on the path which leads to immortal health & joy. When they tasted of the water of the river over which they were to go, they thought that tasted a little bitterish to the palate, but it proved sweeter when it was down

H D T

  5 P. M.—To Lupine’s Hill by boat.

  The carnival of the year commencing—a warm, moist, hazy air, the water already smooth and uncommonly high, the river overflowing, and yellow lilies all drowned, their stems not long enough to reach the surface. I see the boat-club, or three or four in pink shirts, rowing at a distance . . .

  Larch cones are now conspicuous and handsome,—dark-crimson, about half an inch long. Pitch pine cones, too, are now handsome. The larch has a little of the sweetness of the fir, etc . . . As I sail down toward the Clamshell Hill about an hour before sunset, the water is smoothed like glass, though the breeze is as strong as before . . .

  P.M.—To Middle Conantum Cliff . . .

  While we sit by the path in the depths of the woods three quarters of a mile beyond Hayden’s, confessing the influence of almost the first summer warmth, the wood thrush sings steadily for half an hour, now at 2.30 P.M., amid the pines,—loud and clear and sweet . . .

  I find the feathers apparently of a brown thrasher in the path, plucked since we passed here last night. You can generally find all the tail and quill feathers in such a case. The apple bloom is very rich now . . . C. [William Ellery Channing] says he has seen a green snake . . .

  To Painted-Cup Meadow.

  Potentilla argentea, maybe several days. Trifolium pratense.

  A seringo or yellow-browed (??) sparrow’s nest about ten or twelve rods southwest of house-leek rock, between two rocks which are several rods apart northwest and southeast; four eggs. The nest of coarse grass stubble, lined with fine grass, and is two thirds at least covered by a jutting sod. Egg, bluish-white ground, thickly blotched with brown, yet most like a small groundbird’s egg . . .