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31 January 1860. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  2 P.M.—To Bedford Level.

  Thermometer 45. Fair but all overcast. Sun’s place quite visible. Wind southwest.

  Went to what we called Two-Boulder Hill, behind the house where I was born. There the wind suddenly changed round 90° to northwest, and it became quite cold (had fallen to 24° or 24° [sic] at 5.30) . . . .

(Journal, 13:116-117)
31 January 1861. Baltimore, Md.

Joseph Stubbs, from the Office of The Adams Express Company, writes to Thoreau:

Mr Hy. D. Thoreau Concord

  Your Pcl and Bill for Collection, $10 oo on H. A. Lucas Balto has been presented and Payment Refused

Please advise us at once what disposition we shall make of the Goods, as they are held subject to your order, and at your RISK AGAINST FIRE, AND OTHER DANGERS.

  Answer on THIS SHEET.

Respectfully yours,

For the Company

Jos. Stubbs

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 605)
31 July 1836. Brookfield, Mass.

Charles Wyatt Rice writes to Thoreau (The Correspondence (2013, Princeton), 1:9-10). Thoreau replies 5 August.

31 July 1839. Concord, Mass.

Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his journal:

  Last night came to me a beautiful poem from Henry Thoreau, “Sympathy.” The purest strain & the loftiest, I think, that has yet pealed from this unpoetic American forest. I hear his verse with as much triumph as I point to my Guido when they praise half-poets & half-painters.
(Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 7:230-1)

Ellen Sewall writes to her father Edmund Quincy Sewall Sr.:

  Oh, I can not tell you half I have enjoyed here till I get home! I have had so many delightful walks with Aunt [Prudence Ward] and the Mr. Thoreaus that a full account of them all would fill half a dozen letters. I have wished Edmund [Edmund Quincy Sewall Jr.] with me again and again, and the rest of you too; he would have enjoyed these pleasant excursions as well as me and I should have admired to have him with us . . .

  She [Prudence Bird Ward] and Aunty send a great deal of love to you all and Mr’s John and Henry desire their respects. Mrs. Thoreau does not know I am writing or she would send love too.

  I shall certainly be with you Saturday unless there is a violent storm, which I trust will not be the case. They are all very urgent for me to remain another week, but I of course say decidedly no.

(transcript in The Thoreau Society Archives at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, Lincoln, Mass.; MS, private owner)
31 July 1844. New York, N.Y.

Isaac Thomas Hecker writes to Thoreau:

Henry Thoreau

  It was not altogether the circumstance of our immediate physical nearness, tho this may [have] been the consequence of a higher affinity, that inspired us to commune with each other. This I am fully sensible since our seperation [sic]. Oftentimes we observe ourselves to be passive or cooperative agents of profounder principles than we at the time ever dream of.

  I have been stimulated to write to you at this present moment on account of a certain project which I have formed in which your influence has no slight share I imagine in forming. It is to work our passage to Europe, and to walk, work, and beg, if needs be, as far when there as we are inclined to do. We wish to see how it looks. And to court difficulties, for we feel an unknown depth of untried virgin strength which we know of no better way at the present time to call into activity and so dispose of. We desire to go without purse or staff, depending upon the all embracing love of God, Humanity, and the spark of courage imprisoned in us. Have we the will we have the strong arms, and hands, to work with, and sound feet to stand upon, and walk with. The heavens shall be our vaulted roof, and the green Earth beneath our bed, and for all other furniture purposes. These are free and may be so used. What can hinder us from going but our bodies, and shall they do it. We can as well deposit them there as here. Let us take a walk over the fairest portions of the planet Earth and make it ours by seeing them. Let us see what the genius and stupidity of our honored fore fathers have heaped up. We wish to kneel at their shrines and embrace their spirits and kiss the ground which they have hallowed with their presence. We shall prove the dollar is not almighty and the impossible moonshine. The wide world is before us beckoning us to come let us accept and embrace it. Reality shall be our antagonist and our lives if sold not at a good bargain for a certainty.

  How does the idea strike you? I prefer at least to go this way before going farther in the woods. The past let us take with us. We reverence; we love it, but forget not that our eyes are in our face set to the beautiful unimagined future. Let us be Janus faced with a beard and beardless face. Will you accept this invitation? Let me know what your impressions are. As soon as it is your pleasure.

  Remember me to your kind family. Tomorrow I take the first step towards becoming a visible member of the Roman Catholic Church.

  If you and your good family do not become greater sinners I shall claim you all as good catholics, for she claims all baptized infants; all innocent children of every religious denomination; and all grown up Christians who have preserved their baptismal innocence, though they make no outward profession of the Catholic faith; are yet claimed as her children by the Roman Catholic Church.

Yours Very Truly
Isaac Hecker

“A good deal had happened to Hecker since the last correspondence in December when Charles Lane mentioned him to Thoreau. Hecker had come to Concord in April in order to study Latin and Greek under a schoolmaster friend of his and Emerson’s, George Patridge Bradford. He had roomed at the Thoreau house at a cost of seventy-five cents a week. Hecker went back to New York in June, his religious problems settled in his mind, to join the Catholic Church.”

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 154-155)

Thoreau replies 14 August.

Hecker also writes in his journal:

  This afternoon we sent a letter to Henry Thoreau respecting a journey to Europe (Isaac T. Hecker: The Diary, 233).
31 July 1849. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes to Ellen Emerson:

Dear Ellen,

  I think that we are pretty well acquainted, though we never had any very long talks. We have had a good many short talks, at any rate. Dont you remember how we used to despatch our breakfast two winters ago, as soon as Eddy could get on his feeding tire, which was not always remembered, before the rest of the household had come down? Dont you remember our wise criticisms on the pictures in the portfolio and the Turkish book with Eddy and Edith looking on,—how almost any pictures answered our purpose, and we went through the Penny Magazine, first from beginning to end, and then from end to beginning, and Eddy stared just as much the second time as the first, and Edith thought that we turned over too soon, and that there were some things which she had not seen—? . . .

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 245-256)
Lidian Jackson Emerson includes a note to Ellen:

  I send my letter unfinished in the envelope with Mr Thoreau’s. I have not time to write more—but will in a day or two. Kindest love to all. Address your letter to Mr Thoreau just as you please. He will understand you if you use ever so plain or so few words—and will like to be told any thing that you have to say.

  Your own Mother

  I trust you will really answer it, just as if he had spoken what it contains, to your face. Address him “Mr Thoreau” or any thing you like better. Papa and I both read his letter (with his leave, of course,) and liked it much. I hope it gave you pleasure too.

(The Selected Letters of Lidian Jackson Emerson, 166)
31 July 1850. Boston, Mass.

Charles Sumner replies to Thoreau’s letter of 29 July:

My dear Sir,

  I desire to thank you for your kindness in writing me with regard to the remains of a human body found on the beach last Saturday. From what you write & from what I hear from others, it seems impossible to identify them. If the body of my brother could be found, it would be a great satisfaction to us to bury him with those of his family who have gone before him.

  Believe me, clear Sir, faithfully & gratefully Yours,

  Charles Sumner

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 264)

The Boston Transcript relays information from the New-York Tribune notice of 30 July (Thoreau Society Bulletin, no. 182 (Winter 1988):4).

31 July 1851. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Went off early this morning with Uncle Ned to catch bass with the small fish I had found on the sand the night before. Two of his neighbor Albert Watson’s boys were there,—not James, the oldest, but Edward, the sailor, and Mortimer (or Mort),—in their boat. They killed some striped bass (Labrax lineatus) with paddles in a shallow creek in the sand, and caught some lobsters. I remarked that the seashore was singularly clean, for, notwithstanding the spattering of the water and mud and squirting of the clams and wading to and fro the boat, my best black pants retained no stains nor dirt, as they would acquire from walking in the country. I caught a bass with a young—haik? (perchance), trailing thirty feet behind while Uncle Ned paddled . . . At 11 am set sail for Plymouth. We went somewhat out of a direct course, to take advantage of the tide, which was coming in. Saw the site of the first house, which was burned, on Leyden Street. Walked up the same, parallel with the Town Brook. Hill from which Billington Sea was discovered hardly a mile from the shore, on Watson’s grounds. Watson’s Hill, where treaty was made across brook south of Burying Hill . . . Mr. Thomas Russell, who cannot be seventy, at whose house on Leyden Street I took tea and spent the evening, told me that he remembered to have seen Ebenezer Cobb, a native of Plymouth, who died in Kingston in 1801, aged one hundred and seven, who remembered to have had personal knowledge of Peregrine White, saw him an old man riding on horseback (he lived to be eighty-three) . . . Russell told me that he once bought some primitive woodland in Plymouth which was sold at auction—the biggest pitch pines two feet diameter—for eight shillings an acre . . . William S. Russell, the registrar at the court-house, showed the oldest town records, for all are preserved . . . Pilgrim Hall.
(Journal, 2:362-366)
31 July 1852. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—To Assabet over Nawshawtuct.

  There is more shadow under the edges of woods and copses now. The foliage appears to have increased so that the shadows are heavier, and perhaps it is this that makes it cooler, especially morning and evening, though it may be as warm as ever at noon . . .

(Journal, 4:269-270)
31 July 1853. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—To Walden . . .

  The anychia, or forked chickweed, grows larger, with spreading red stems, on the south side of Heywood Peak . . . Goodyera repens well out at Corallorhiza Hillside . . .

  I calculate that less than forty species of flowers known to me remain to blossom this year.

(Journal, 5:349-351)

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