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11 April 1855. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Rained in the night. Awake to see the ground white with snow, and it is still snowing, the sleet driving from the north at an angle of certainly not more than thirty or thirty-five degrees with the horizon, as I judge by its course across the window-panes. By mid-afternoon the rain has so far prevailed that the ground is bare. As usual, this brings the tree sparrows and F. hyemalis into the yard again.
(Journal, 7:302)

Franklin B. Sanborn writes in his journal:

  Tonight we had a call from Mr. Thoreau, who came at eight and staid till ten—He talked about a variety of things—about Latin and Greek, which he thought ought to be studied, and about other things. In his tones and gestures he seemed to me to imitate Emerson—so that it was annoying to listen to him, though he said many good things—He looks, too, like Emerson—coarser, but with something of that serenity—and—sagacity which E—has. Thoreau looks eminently sagacious—like a sort of wise wild beast. He dresses plainly, wears a beard on his throat, and has a brown complexion—
(Transcendental Climate, 1:222)

11 April 1856. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  8.30 A.M.—To Tarbell’s to get black and canoe birch sap.

  Going up the railroad, I see a male and female rusty grackle alight on an oak near me, the latter apparently a flaxen brown, with a black tail. She looks like a different species of bird. Wilson had heard only a tchuck from the grackle, but this male, who was courting his mate, broke into incipient warbles, like a bubble burst as soon as it came to the surface, it was so aerated. Its air would not be fixed long enough . . .

(Journal, 8:273-278)

Liverpool, England. Nathaniel Hawthorne writes to Ticknor & Fields:

  I wish you would send me two copies of Thoreau’s books—“Life in the Woods,” and the other one, for I wish to give them to two persons here (Thoreau Society Bulletin, 119 (Spring 1972):1-4).
11 April 1857. New Bedford, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  8 P.M.—Went to the Head of the River to see them catch smelts. The water there is fresh when the tide is out. They use nets five or six feet square, stretched from the ends of crossed semicircular hoops, at the ends of poles about twelve feet long. The net bags down when raised. There were twenty or thirty fishermen standing close together, half on cash side of the narrow river, each managing one of these nets . . .
(Journal, 9:325-327)
11 April 1858. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—To Lee’s Cliff . . .

  I notice at the Conantum house, of which only the chimney and frame now stand, a triangular mass of rubbish, more than half a bushel, resting on the great mantel-tree against an angle in the chimney . . .

(Journal, 10:364-365)
11 April 1859. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Rain all day (Journal, 12:133).

A. Bronson Alcott writes to his wife Abigail:

  Life is full of compensations, so say the philosophers, and to make good the saying, comes the last of them, and I think, if not the wisest, very wise, certainly, and entertaining, Thoreau, to pass the afternoon and drink tea with Anna and myself, without you. And spend an hour after, talking delightfully.
(The Letters of A. Bronson Alcott, 301)

Alcott also writes in his journal:

  Comes Thoreau and sups with us. We discuss thought and style. I think his more primitive than that of any of our American writers—in solidity, in organic robust quality unsurpassed, as if Nature had built them out for herself and breathed into them free and full, seasoning every member, articulating every sense with her salubrities and soul of soundness. He is rightly named Thorough, Through, the pervading Thor, the sturdy sensibility and force in things.
(The Journals of Bronson Alcott, 315)
11 April 1860. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—To Cliffs . . . (Journal, 13:244).
11 April 1861. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Going to law. I hear that Judge Minott of Haverhill once told a client, by way of warning, that two millers who owned mills on the same stream went to law about a dam, and at the end of the lawsuit one lawyer owned one mill and the other the other.
(Journal, 14:337)
11 August 1851. Boston, Mass.

A. Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:

  Thoreau rode with me to Cambridge, and we passed the forenoon in Harvard Library. I looked at the compartment of English Poetry (of the Elizabethan age), but found nothing of worth to bring home. T. dined with me, and took from my library for perusal “Rei Rusticae Auctores Latini Veteres: Cato, Columella, Varro & Palladius,” for which I paid a couple of shillings at the London book-stalls, and am glad to find so good a reader for it.
(The Journals of Bronson Alcott, 252-253)
Cambridge, Mass. Thoreau checks out Collections of the New York Historical Society, volume 11, part 1, and Travels into North America by Pehr Kalm, volumes 1, 2, and 3 from Harvard College Library (Companion to Thoreau’s Correspondence, 290).

Boston, Mass. Thoreau checks out Principles of Zoölogy by Louis Agassiz and Augustus A. Gould and The animal kingdom, arranged in conformity with its organization by Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Cuvier from the Boston Society of Natural History.

(Emerson Society Quarterly, no. 24 (March 1952):24)
11 August 1852. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Wednesday. Alcott here the 9th and 10th. He, the spiritual philosopher, is, and has been for some months, devoted to the study of his own genealogy,—he whom only the genealogy of humanity, the descent of man from God, should concern! He has been to his native town of Wolcott, Connecticut, on this errand, has faithfully perused the records of some fifteen towns, has read the epitaphs in as many churchyards, and, wherever he found the name Alcock, excerpted it and all connected with it,—for he is delighted . . .

  C. says he keeps a dog for society, to stir up the air of the room when it, becomes dead, for he experiences awful solitudes. Aknother time thinks we must cultivate the social qualities, perhaps had better keep two dogs apiece . . .

(Journal, 4:292-295)
11 August 1853. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  5 A.M.—Up North Branch.

  A considerable fog. The weeds still covered by the flood, so that we have no Bidens Beckii. B. chrysanthemoides just out. The small, dull, lead-colored berries of the Viburnma dentatum now hang over the water. The Amphicarpa amonoica appears not to have bloomed . . .

  P.M.—To Conantum.

  This is by some considered the warmest day of the year thus far; but, though the weather is melting hot, yet the river having been deepened and cooled by the rains, we have none of those bathing days of July, ’52 . . . At the Swamp Bridge Brook, flocks of cow troopials now about the cows . . .

(Journal, 5:367-371)

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