Log Search Results

  P.M.—by boat to Lupine Hill . . .

  I see a woodchuck on the side of Lupine Hill, eight or ten rods off. He runs to within three feet of his hole; then stops, with his head up. His whole body makes an angle of forty-five degrees as I look sideways at it. I see his shining black eyes and black snout and his little erect ears. He is of a light brown forward at this distance (hoary above, yellowish or sorrel beneath), gradually darkening backward to the end of the tail . . .

  P.M.—To Cedar Swamp . . .

  It was quite warm when I first came out, but about 3 P.M. I felt a fresh easterly wind, and saw quite a mist in the distance produced by it, a sea-turn . . .

  P.M.—To  Dugan Desert.

  At Tarbell’s watering-place, see a dandelion, its conspicuous bright-yellow disk in the midst of a green space on the moist bank. It is thus I commonly meet with the earliest dandelion set in the midst of some liquid green patch. It seems a sudden and decided progress in the season . . . Sweet fern at entrance of Ministerial Swamp. A partridge there drums incessantly. [William Ellery] C[hanning]. says it makes his heart beat with it, or he feels it in his breast . . .

  Noticed a man killing, on the sidewalk by Minott’s, a little brown snake with blackish marks along each side of back and a pink belly . . .

  First observe the dandelion well out in R. W. E.’s [Ralph Waldo Emerson] yard; also anemone at Sassafras Shore . . .

  P.M.—Up Assabet . . .

  I listen to a concert of red-wings,—their rich sprayey notes, amid which a few more liquid and deep in a lower tone or undertone, as if it bubbled up from the very water beneath the button-bushes; as if those singers sat lower, Some old and skillful performer touches these deep and liquid notes, and the rest seem to get up a concert just to encourage him. Yet it is ever a prelude or essay with him, as are all good things, and the melody he is capable of and which we did not hear this time is what we remember . . .

  Mr Emerson has just given me a short warning that he is about to send to Concord, which I will endeavor to improve—I am a good deal more wakeful than I was, and growing stout in other respects—so that I may yet accomplish something in the literary way—indeed I should have done so before now but for the slowness and poverty of the Reviews themselves. I have tried sundry methods of earning money in the city of late but without success, have rambled into every booksellers or publisher’s house and discussed their affair with them. Some propose to me to do what an honest man cannot—Among others I conversed with the Harpers—to see if they might not find me useful to them—but they say that they are making fifty thousand dollars annually, and their motto is to let well alone. I find that I talk with these poor men as if I were over head and ears in business and a few thousands were so consideration with me—I almost reproach myself for bothering them thus to no purpose—but it is very valuable experience—and the best introduction I could have.

  We have had a tremendous rain here—last Monday night and Tuesday morning—I was in the city at Giles Waldo’s—and the streets at daybreak were absolutely impassable for the water. Yet the accounts of the storm which you may have seen are exaggerated, as indeed are all such things to my imagination.

  On sunday I heard Mr [Henry Whitney] Bellows preach on the island—but the fine prospect over the bay and narrows form where I sat preached louder than he—though he did far better than the average, if I remember aright.

  I should have like to see Dan. Webster walking about Concord, I suppose the town shook every step he took—But I trust there were some sturdy Concordians who were not tumbled down by the jar, but represented still the upright town. Where was Geo. Minott? he would not have gone far to see him. Uncle Charles should have been there—he might as well have been catching cat naps in Concord as anywhere. And then what a whetter up of his memory this event would have been! You’d have had all the classmates again in alphabetical order reversed—and Seth Hunt & Bob Smith — and he was a student of my fathers—and where’s Put now? and I wonder , you, if Henry’s been to see Geo. Jones yet—A little account with Stow—Balcolm—Bigelow—poor miserable to-a-d (sound asleep) I vow you—what noise was that?—saving grace—and few there be—That’s clear as preaching—Easter Brooks—mora[lly] depraved—How charming is divine p[hi]losophy—Some wise and some otherwise—Heighho! (Sound asleep again)

  Webster’s a smart fellow—bears his age well—how old should you think he was—you does he look as if he were ten years younger than I?

  I met, or rather was overtaken by Fuller, who tended for Mr [Phineas] How, the other day in Broadway — He dislikes New York very much.—The Mercantile Library—ie its librarian—presented me with a stranger’s ticket for a month—and I was glad to read the reviews there—and Carlyle’s late article. – In hastefrom yr affectionate son

Henry D. Thoreau

I have bought some pantaloons—and stockings show no holes yet Thin pantaloons cost $2.25 ready made.