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4 December 1858. Concord, Mass.

Ellen Emerson writes to her brother Edward Emerson:

  This morning we all proceeded to Goose Pond . . . Father [Ralph Waldo Emerson] went to dine with Mr Cholmondeley [Thomas Cholmondeley] and Mr Thoreau (The Letters of Ellen Tucker Emerson, 1:154).
4 December 1859. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Awake to winter, and snow two or three inches deep, the first of any consequence (Journal, 13:4).
4 December 1860. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau surveys land on Monument Street for William Monroe, Jr. (A Catalog of Thoreau’s Surveys in the Concord Free Public Library, 11; Henry David Thoreau papers. Special Collections, Concord (Mass.) Free Public Library).

Thoreau also writes in his journal:

  The first snow, four or five inches, this evening (Journal, 14:292).
4 February 1841. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  When you are once comfortably seated at a public meeting, there is something unmanly in the sitting on tiptoe and qui vive attitude,—the involuntarily rising into your throat, as if gravity had ceased to operate,—when a lady approaches, with quite godlike presumption, to elicit the miracle of a seat where none is. Music will make the most nervous chord vibrate healthily.
(Journal, 1:192-195)
4 February 1846. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau lectures on “The Writings and Style of Thomas Carlyle” at the Unitarian Church for the Concord Lyceum (Studies in the American Renaissance 1995, 147-148), later published as “Thomas Carlyle and His Works“.

4 February 1852. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  11 P.M.—Coming home through the village by this full moonlight, it seems one of the most glorious nights I ever beheld . . .

  Heard Professor Blasius lecture on the tornado this evening. He said that nine vessels were wrecked daily in the world on an average; that Professor Dove of Berlin was the best meteorologist in his opinion, but had not studied the effects of wind in the fields so much as some here . . .

  The audience are never tired of hearing how far the wind carried some man, woman, or child, or family Bible, but they are immediately tired if you undertake to give them a scientific account of it.

(Journal, 3:276-278)

Concord, Mass. Lidian Jackson Emerson writes to her husband Ralph Waldo on 6 February:

  Prof Blasins lectured well as Henry says—and I think also—H. came home with him and talked with him to their great mutual edification till half past ten (The Selected Letters of Lidian Jackson Emerson, 175-6).

[Blasius lectured on “Tornado” for the Concord Lyceum [?] on 4 February]

4 February 1854. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  F. Brown showed me this afternoon his game killed day before yesterday, – a gray hare, a gray squirrel, and a red squirrel. The red squirrel was peeping out of his nest in a tree. The gray was a fine large fellow in good condition; weighed one pound and a quarter, more than half as heavy as the hare, and his tail still perfectly and beautifully curved over his back. It recovered its place when you stroked it . . .

  John Moore and Company got about fifty weight of fish at Flint’s Pond the same day. Two pickerel weighed nine pounds.

  I went over to the Hemlocks on the Assabet this morning. Saw the tracks, I think of a mink, in the shallow snow along the edge of the river, looking for a hole in the ice. A clear, cold morning. The smokes from the village chimneys are quickly purified and dissipated . . .

(Journal, 6:93-94)
4 February 1855. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Saw this afternoon a very distinct otter-track by the Rock, at the junction of the two rivers. The separate foot-tracks were quite round, more than two inches in diameter, showing the five toes distinctly in the snow, which was about half an inch deep. In one place, I notice my old skate-tracks . . .
(Journal, 7:169-171)
4 February 1856. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—Walden.

  I go to walk at 3 P.M., thermometer 18°. It has been about this (and 22°) at this hour for a week or two. All the light snow, some five inches above thc crust, is adrift these days and driving over the fields like steam, or like the foam-streaks on a flooded meadow . . .

(Journal, 8:165-166)
4 February 1857. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Met Theodore Parker in the cars, who told me that he had recently found in Lake Michigan a single ball, five inches in diameter, like those I presented to the Natural History Society, though he did not observe the eriocaulon. It was late in the season . . .  Sometimes when, in conversation or a lecture, I have been grasping at, or even standing and reclining upon, the serene and everlasting truths that underlie and support our vacillating life, I have seen my auditors standing on their terra firma, the quaking earth, crowded together on their Lisbon Quay, and compassionately or timidly watching my motions as if they were he antics of a rope-dance or mounteback pretending to walk on air: or here and there on creeping out upon an overhanging but cracking bough, unwilling to drop to the adamantine floor beneath, or perchance even venturing out a step or two, as if it were a dangerous kittly-bender, timorously sounding as he goes . . .

  So, when I have been resting and quenching my thirst on the eternal plains of truth, where rests the base of those beautiful columns that sustain the heavens, I have been amused to see a traveller who had long confined himself to the quaking shore, which was all covered with the traces of the deluge, come timidly tiptoeing toward me, trembling in every limb.

(Journal, 9:238-239)

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