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3 December 1855. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  A pleasant day. No snow yet (since that first whitening which lasted so long), nor do I see any ice to speak of.

  Hear and see, of birds, only a tree sparrow in the willows on the Turnpike . . . (Journal, 8:38).

3 December 1856. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  About as much more snow as fell on the 29th November has fallen in the night upon that, so stilly that we were not aware of it till we looked out. It has not even lodged on the window-sashes, and I am first convinced it has fallen by seeing the old tracks in the road covered . . .

  How I love the simple, reserved countrymen, my neighbors, who mind their own business and let me alone, who never waylaid nor shot at me, to my knowledge, when I crossed their fields, though each one has a gun in his house! For nearly twoscore years I have known, at a distance, these long-suffering men, whom I never spoke to, who never spoke to me, and now feel a certain tenderness for them, as if this long probation were but the prelude to an eternal friendship . . .

(Journal, 9:149-152)
3 December 1857. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Surveying the Richardson lot, which bounds on Walden Pond, I turned up a rock near the pond to make a bound with, and found under it, attached to it, a collection of black ants (say a quarter of an inch long) an inch in diameter, collected around one monster black ant as big as four or five at least, and a small parcel of yellowish eggs(?). The large ant bad no wings and was probably their queen . . .
(Journal, 10:219-220)
3 December 1858. Concord, Mass.
Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—To Walden . . .

  I carry hatchet and rake in order to explore the Pout’s Nest for frogs and fish,—the pond not being frozen . . . R. W. E. [Ralph Waldo Emerson] saw quite a flock of ducks in the pond (Walden) this afternoon . . .

(Journal, 11:361-364)
3 December 1859. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Rode with a man this forenoon who said that if he did not clean his teeth when he got up, it made him sick all the rest of the day, but he had found by late experience that when he had not cleaned his teeth for several days they cleaned themselves . . . X [Francis Jackson Merriam] was betrayed by his eyes, which had a glaring film over them and no serene depth into which you could look. Inquired particularly the way to Emerson’s and the distance, and when I told him, said he knew it as well as if he saw it . . .

  When I hear of John Brown and his wife weeping at length, it is as if the rocks sweated.

(Journal, 13:3-4)
3 December 1860.

Concord, Mass. Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—To Hill . . .

  Talking with Walcott and Staples to-day, they declared that John Brown did wrong. When I said that I thought he was right, they agreed in asserting that he did wrong because he threw his life away, and that no man had a right to undertake anything which he knew would cost him his life . . .

(Journal, 14:290-292)

Boston, Mass. Hobart & Robbins writes to Thoreau:

Mr. Henry D. Thoreau Concord, N. H.

Dr. Sir

  Enclosed are Nine Dollars, to pay our order of the 26th.

  Return the enclosed bill receipted.

Yr’s Resp’y

Hobart & Robbins

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 602; MS, Henry David Thoreau papers (Series IV). Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library)
3 February 1839. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes his poems “The deeds of kings and meanest hedger” and “The Evening Wind” in his journal:

THE EVENING WIND
The eastern mail comes lumbering in,
With outmost waves of Europe’s din;
The western sighs adown the slope,
Or ‘mid the rustling leaves doth grope,
Laden with news from Californ’,
Whate’er transpired hath since morn,
How wags the world by brier and brake,
From hence to Athabasca lake.
(Journal, 1:72-73)
3 February 1841. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  It steads us to be as true to children and boors as to God himself. It is the only attitude which will suit all occasions; it only will make the earth yield her increase, and by it do we effectually expostulate with the wind (Journal, 190-192).

Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his journal on 4 February:

  I went to the Rainers’ concert last night in our Court House. When I heard them in Boston, I had some dreams about music: last night, nothing. Last night I enjoyed the audience. I looked with a great degree of pride & affection at the company of my townsmen & townswomen & dreamed of that kingdom & society of Love which we preach.
(The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 7:419)
3 February 1843. Concord, Mass.

Lidian Jackson Emerson writes to her husband Ralph Waldo:

  Henry liked the Lecture well enough, but declareth that the more obstruse a discourse is “the more popular will it be”—which proposition I report to you as “Henry’s last”—paradox. He gives some good reasons withal—which the reporter has not time to recal. Has any one told you that Moses Prichard’s lecture was very good indeed? at least in Henry’s opinion who is the only person I have heard speak of it . . . Henry lectures the week after next on Sir Walter R.
(Selected Letters of Lidian Jackson Emerson, 122-123)
3 February 1852. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  About 6 P. M. walked to the Cliffs via railroad.

  Snow quite deep. The sun had set without a cloud in the sky,—a rare occurrence, but I missed the clouds, which make the glory of evening . . .

  Venus is now like a little moon in the west, and the lights in the village twinkle like stars. It is perfectly still and not very cold . . .

  The reflector of the cars, as I stand over the Deep Cut, makes a large and dazzling light in this air . . .

  Now through the Spring Woods and up Fair Haven Hill. Here, in the midst of a clearing where the choppers have been leaving the woods in pieces to-day, and the tops of the pine trees are strewn about half buried in snow, only the saw-logs being carried off, it is stiller and milder than by day . . .

  The moonlight now is very splendid in the untouched pine woods above the Cliffs, alternate patches of shade and light . . .

(Journal, 3:270-276)

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