Log Search Results | The Walden Woods Project

Thoreau writes in his journal:

There are many small spruce thereabouts, with small twigs and leaves, an abnormal growth, reminding one of strange species of evergreen from California, China, etc. I brought some home and had a cup of tea made, which, in spite of a slight piny or turpentine flavor, I thought unexpectedly good . . .

(Journal, 10:273-274)

A. Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:

Evening. Thoreau here, and talks much on his favorite themes of wild life, on Emerson, and Blake [H. G. O. Blake] of Worcester particularly . . . (The Journals of Bronson Alcott, 305).

4 February 1861. Concord, Mass.

A. Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:

Call on Thoreau and take tea. He is busied about his MSS. and hopes to be out again soon. Has been classifying and arranging his papers by subjects, as if he had a new book in mind. I wish him to compile his Atlas of Concord, for which he has rich material, and the genius; but he must work in his own ways and times, sure to give us something worth waiting for, and surprising, when he shall print a book. With eyes abroad like his Emerson’s, and Hawthorne’s, Concord life and landscapes should yield their contributions to the literature of our times and keep its good fame fresh in the memory, and fair as ever.

(The Journals of Bronson Alcott, 334)

4 January 1851.

Concord, Mass. Thoreau writes in his journal:

The longest silence is the most pertinent question most pertinently put. Emphatically silent. The most important question, whose answers concern us more than any, are never put in any other way. It is difficult for two strangers, mutually well disposed, so truly to bear themselves toward each other that a feeling of falseness and hollowness shall not soon spring up between them. The least anxiety to behave truly vitiates the relation. I think of those to whom I am at the moment truly related, with a joy never expressed and never to be expressed, before I fall asleep at night, though I am hardly on speaking terms with them these years. When I think of it, I am truly related to them.

(Journal, 2:137)

Clinton, Mass. The Clinton Saturday Courant reviews Thoreau’s lecture of 1 January:

The lecture on Wednesday evening last by Mr. Thoreau, was one of those intellectual efforts which serve to wile away an hour very pleasantly, but which leave little or nothing impressed upon the memory of real value. The subject was “Cape Cod.” A description of a walk upon the sea shore, with reflections upon shipwrecks and their effects upon the inhabitants in a certain case, with anecdotes, and a few historical reminiscences, made up the burthen of his story.

(“An Excursion to Cape Cod“)

4 January 1852. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

To Fair Haven on the ice partially covered with snow . . . (Journal, 3:175).

4 January 1853. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

To what I will call Yellow Birch Swamp, E. [Ebenezer] Hubbard’s, in north part of town . . . At Pratt’s, the stupendous, boughy, branching elm, like vast thunderbolts stereotyped upon the sky.

(Journal, 4:447-449)

Cohasset, Mass. Ellen Sewall writes to her aunt Prudence Ward:

What is Henry’s hobby now? There are no Lyceum Lectures here this winter (transcript in The Thoreau Society Archives at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods; MS, private owner).

4 January 1854. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

It thaws all day; the eaves drip as in a rain; the road begins to be soft and a little sloshy (Journal, 6:49).

4 January 1855.

Worcester, Mass. Thoreau writes in his journal:

To Worcester to lecture. Visited the antiquarian Library of twenty-two or twenty-three thousand volumes. It is richer in pamphlets and newspaper than Harvard . . . Saw after my lecture a young negro who introduced himself as a native of Africa, Leo L. Lloyd, who lectures on “Young Africa!!” . . . Higginson told me of a simple strong-minded man named Dexter Broad, who was at my lecture, who I should see.

(Journal, 7:99-100)

New Bedford, Mass. Daniel Ricketson writes to Thoreau:

Dear Walden,—

We should be glad to hear of your safe arrival home from your “perils by land and by flood,” and as we are not likely to know of this unless you receive a strong hint, I just drop a line for that end.

Your visit, short as it was, gave us all at Brooklawn much satisfaction.

I should be glad to have you come again next summer and cruise around with me.

I regret I was unusually unwell when you were here, as you undoubtedly perceived by my complaints.

I am just starting for a walk, and as I expect to pass our village post-office, thought it a good time to write you.

I trust you and your comrade [Ellery] Channing will have many good times this winter.

I may possibly drop in on you for a few hours at the end of this month, when I expect to be in Boston.

Excuse haste.

Yours very truly
Daniel Ricketson

P.S. Mrs. R and children sent kind regards

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 361)

Thoreau replies 6 January.

4 January 1856.

Concord, Mass. Thoreau writes in his journal:

P.M.—To Walden to examine the ice . . . It is snapping cold this night (10 P.M.) . . . (Journal, 8:83-84).

New York, N.Y. John F. Trow writes to Thoreau:

Mr. Thoreau

Dear Sir

Inclosed please find $10, for which please to send me 5 lbs of blacklead for electrotyping purposes:—such as Mr. Filmore has sent for occasionally.

Respectfully yours

John F. Trow

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 406; MS, Abernethy collection of American Literature. Middlebury College Special Collections, Middlebury, Vt.)

4 January 1857. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

It did not freeze together, or crust, as you might have expected. You would not suppose it had been moist when it fell. About eight inches have fallen, yet there is very little on the river. It blows off, unless where water has oozed out at the sides . . . Deep and drifted as the snow is, I found, when I returned from my walk, some dry burs of the burdock adhering to the lining of my coat. Even in the middle of winter, aye, in middle of the Great Snow, Nature does not forget these her vegetable economies . . .

After spending four or five days surveying and drawing a plan incessantly, I especially feel the necessity of putting myself in communication with nature again . . . I wish again to participate in the serenity of nature, to share the happiness of the river and the woods. I thus from time to time break off my connection with eternal truths and go with the shallow stream of human affairs, grinding at the mill of the Philistines; but when my task is done, with never failing confidence I devote myself to the infinite again. It would be sweet to deal with men more, I can imagine, but where dwell they? Not in the fields which I traverse.

(Journal, 9:203-204)

4 January 1858. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

P.M.—The weather still remarkably warm; the ice too soft for skating. I go through by the Andromeda Ponds and down river from Fair Haven . . . When I get down near to Cardinal Shore, the sun near setting, its light is wonderfully reflected from a narrow edging of yellowish stubble at the edge of the meadow ice and foot of the hill, an edging only two or three feet wide, and the stubble but a few inches high . . .

(Journal, 10:235-237)

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