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4 January 1859. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  A northeast snow-storm, or rather a north snow-storm, very hard to face. P.M. to Walden in it. It snows very hard, driving along almost horizontally, falling but a foot or two in a rod. Nobody is in the street, or thinks of going out far except on important business. Most roads are trackless. The snow may be now fifteen to eighteen inches deep. As I go along the causeway, I find it is one thing to go south, or from the wind, another to face it . I can see through the storm a house or large tree only a quarter of a mile . . .
(Journal, 11:387-391)
4 January 1860. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—To second stone bridge and down river . . .

  See that long meandering track where a deer mouse hopped over the soft snow last night, scarcely making any impression. What if you could witness with owls’ eyes the revelry of the wood mice some night, frisking about the wood like so many little kangaroos? Here is a palpable evidence that the woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen,-such populousness as commonly only the imagination dreams of . . .

(Journal, 13:72-76)
4 July 1837. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau probably attends the dedication of the monument commemorating the battle of 19 April 1775 (The Days of Henry Thoreau, 48). John Shepard Keyes recalls the day:

. . . it was a very hot sunny July day, after the noon salute and bell ringing the village became as quiet as of a Sunday. About three oclock the procession escorted by the military companies, but a straggling advance, consisting mainly of the townspeople men women and children came slowly along the common and passed up the road to the Old North Bridge, there were assembled about the monument two or three hundred seated on the grass, who listened to a prayer by Mr [Barzillai] Frost an oration by Samuel Hoar and then Mr. [Ralph Waldo] Emerson’s hymn was sung by all who could join, in full chorus. This hymn was printed on slips of paper about 6 inches square and plentifully supplied to the audience . . . Rev. John Wilder prayed and Dr [Ezra] Ripley gave a very solemn benediction, for was not his life’s work and effort accomplished in this monument erected and dedicated on the spot he had selected.
(MS, “The Autobiography of John Shepard Keyes,” John Shepard Keyes papers (Series I). Special Collections, Concord (Mass) Free Public Library.)
4 July 1839. Concord, Mass.
Thoreau writes his poem “The Book of Gems” in his journal:

. . .
Where ever and anon I slaked my thirst
Like a tired traveller at some poet’s well,
Which from the teeming ground did bubbling burst,
And tinkling thence adown the page it fell.
Still through the leaves its music you might hear,
Till other springs fell faintly on the ear.
(Journal, 1:82-83)
4 July 1840. Concord, Mass.

Concord, Mass. Thoreau writes in his journal:

  4 o’clock, A.M. The Townsend Infantry encamped last night in my neighbor’s inclosure. The night still breathes slumberously over field and wood, when a few soldiers gather about one tent in the twilight, and their band plays an old Scotch air, with bugle and drum and fife attempered to the season. It seems like the morning hymn of creation. The first sounds of the awakening camp, mingled with the chastened strains which so sweetly salute the dawn, impress me as the morning prayer of an army. And now the morning gun fires. The soldier awakening to creation and awakening it . . . When to-day I saw the “Great Ball” rolled majestically along, it seemed a shame that man could not move like it. All dignity and grandeur has something of the undulatoriness of the sphere.
(Journal, 1:160-161)

Boston, Mass. Thoreau’s poem “Sympathy” from the Dial is reprinted in the Boston Morning Post.

4 July 1845. Walden Pond.

Thoreau goes to live at Walden Pond.

4 July 1852. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Sunday. 3 A.M.—To Conantum, to see the lilies open.

  I hear an occasional crowing of cocks in distant barns, as has been their habit for how many thousand years. It was so when I was young; and it will be so when I am old. I hear the croak of a tree-toad as I am crossing the yard. I am surprised to find the dawn so far advanced. There is a yellowish segment of light in the east, paling a star and adding sensibly to the light of the waning and now declining moon . . .

  The light is more and more general, and some low bars begin to look bluish as well as reddish. (Elsewhere the sky wholly clear of clouds.) The dawn is at this stage far lighter than the brightest moonlight. I write by it. Yet the sun will not rise for some time. Those bars are reddening more above one spot. They grow purplish, or lilac rather . . .

  Sunrise. I see it gilding the top of the hill behind me, but the sun itself is concealed by the hills and woods on the east shore. A very slight fog begins to rise now in one place on the river. There is something serenely glorious and memorable to me in the sight of the first cool sunlight now gilding the eastern extremity of the bushy island in Pair Haven, that wild lake . . .

(Journal, 4:179-185)
4 July 1853. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  The cotton-grass at Beck Stove’s. Is it different from the early one? High blueberries begin. The oval-leaved drosera in bloom . . . At Lee’s Cliff, under the slippery elm, Parietaria Pennsylvanica, American pellitory, in flower, and near by Anychia dichotoma, forked chickweed (Queria [sic]) also in flower.
(Journal, 5:311-312)
4 July 1854.

Concord, Mass. Thoreau writes in his journal:

  A sultry night the last; bear no covering; all windows open.

  8 A.M.—To Framingham.

  Great orange-yellow lily, some clays, wild yellow, lily, drooping, well out . . . (Journal, 6:384).

Framingham, Mass. Thoreau lectures on “Slavery in Massachusetts” at Harmony Grove for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (“Slavery in Massachusetts”).

The Liberator mentions in its 7 July issue, with a summary of the events of the meeting: “Henry Thoreau, of Concord, read portions of a racy and ably written address, the whole of which will be published in the Liberator.”

Moncure Daniel Conway later recalls the events of the meeting:

  Thoreau had come all the way from Concord for this meeting. It was a rare thing for him to attend any meeting outside of Concord, and though he sometimes lectured in the Lyceum there, he had probably never spoken on a platform. He was now clamoured for and made a brief and quaint speech. He began with the simple words, “You have my sympathy; it is all I have to give you, but you may find it important to you.” It was impossible to associate egotism with Thoreau; we all felt that the time and trouble he had taken at that crisis to proclaim his sympathy with the “Disunionists” was indeed important. He was there a representative of Concord, of science and letters, which could not quietly pursue their tasks while slavery was trampling down the rights of mankind. Alluding to the Boston commissioner who had surrendered Anthony Burns, Edward G. Loring, Thoreau said, “The fugitive’s case was already decided by God,—not Edward G. God, but simple God.” This was said with such serene unconsciousness of anything shocking in it that we were but mildly started.
(Autobiography, Memories, and Experiences of Moncure Daniel Conway, 1:184-185)
4 July 1855. Boston, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  To Boston on way to Cape Cod with C. [William Ellery Channing].

  The schooner Melrose was advertised to make her first trip to Provincetown this morning at eight. We reached City Wharf at 8.30. “Well, Captain Crocker, how soon do you start?” “To-morrow morning at 9 o’clock.” “But you advertised to leave at 8 this morning.” “I know it but we are going to lay over till to-morrow.” ! ! ! So we spend the day in Boston,—at Athenaeum gallery, Alcott’s, [A. Bronson Alcott] and at the regatta. Lodged at Alcott’s, who is about moving to Walpole.

(Journal, 7:431-432)

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