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  I confess that I have very little class spirit, and have almost forgotten that I ever spent four years at Cambridge. That must have been in a former state of existence. It is difficult to realize that the old routine is still kept up. However, I will undertake at last to answer your questions as well as I can in spite of a poor memory and a defect of information.

  1st then, I was born, they say, on the 12th of July 1817, on what is called the Virginia Road, in the east part of Concord.

  2nd I was fitted, or rather made unfit, for college, at Concord Academy & elsewhere, mainly by myself, with the countenance of Phineas Allen, Preceptor.

  3d I am not married.

  4th I dont know whether mine is a profession, or a trade, or what not. It is not yet learned, and in every instance has been practised before being studied. The mercantile part of it was begun here by myself alone.

  —It is not one but legion. I will give you some of the monster’s heads. I am a Schoolmaster—a Private Tutor, a Surveyor—a Gardener, a Farmer—a Painter, I mean a House Painter, a Carpenter, a Mason, a Day-Laborer, a Pencil-Maker, a Glass-Paper Maker, a Writer, and sometimes a Poetaster. If you will act the part of Iolas, and apply a hot iron to any of these heads, I shall be greatly obliged to you.

  5th My present employment is to answer such orders as may be expected from so general an advertisement as the above—that is, if I see fit, which is not always the case, for I have found out a way to live without what is commonly called employment or industry attractive or otherwise. Indeed my steadiest employment, if such it can be called, is to keep myself at the top of my condition, and ready for whatever may turn up in heaven or on earth. For the last two or three years I have lived in Concord woods alone, something more than a mile from any neighbor, in a house built entirely by myself.

  6th I cannot think of a single general fact of any importance before or since graduating

Yrs &c
Henry D Thoreau

  P.S. I beg that the Class will not consider me an object of charity, and if any of them are in want of pecuniary assistance, and will make known their case to me, I will engage to give them some advice of more worth than money.

  A fine, clear day after the coolest night and severest frost we have had . . . .

  After we got to the Baker Farm, to one of the open fields nearest to the tree I had marked, the first thing was to find some flowers and catch some honey-bees. We followed up the bank of the brook for some distance, but the goldenrods were all dried up there, and the asters on which we expected to find them were very scarce . By the pond-side we had no better luck, the frosts perhaps having made flowers still more scarce there. We then took the path to Clematis Brook on the north of Mt. Misery . . . I had cut my initials in the bark in the winter, for custom gives the first finder of the nest a right to the honey and to cut down the tree to get it and pay the damages, and if he cuts his initials on it no other hunter will interfere . . .

  I am surprised to see that some red maples, which were so brilliant a day or two ago, have already shed their leaves, and they cover the land and the water quite thickly. I see a countless fleet of them slowly carried round in the still bay by the Leaning Hemlocks. I find a fine tupelo near Sam Barrett’s now all turned scarlet . . .

  I am glad to learn from Mr. [James Walter] Spooner that you are really coming down, with the tripod too, which is so good news that I hardly dared to expect it.

  It seems a little uncertain whether you intend to read in the morning as well as evening, and so I write to enquire, that there may be no mistake in the announcement. Please let me know by return mail which will be in time.

Very truly yours

B. M. Watson

  Thence we proceeded to Long Pond, stopping at the south end, which is in Freetown, about eight miles from R’s. The main part is in Middleborough . . .

  Went to a place easterly from the south end of the pond, called Joe’s Rock, just over the Rochester line… Went into an old deserted house, the Brady house, where two girls who had lived in the family of R. and his mother had been born and bred, their father Irish, and mother Yankee . . .

  Arthur Ricketson showed me in his collection what was apparently (?) an Indian mortar, which had come from Sampson’s in Middleborough . . .

  Minott tells of a General Hull, who lived somewhere in this county, who, he remembers, called out the whole division once or twice to a muster. He sold the army under him to the English in the last war,—though General Miller of Lincoln besought [him] to let him lead them,—and never was happy after it, had no peace of mind. It was said that his life was in danger here in consequence of his treason . . .

  P.M.—To Walden.

  Young oaks generally reddening, etc., etc. Rhus Toxicodendron turned yellow and red, handsomely dotted with brown.

  At Wheeler’s Wood by railroad, heard a cat owl hooting at 3.30 P.M., which was repeatedly answered by another some forty rods off . . .

  I see undoubtedly the little dipper by the edge of the pads this afternoon, and I think I have not seen it before this season . . .