Log Search Results

5 November 1835. Cambridge, Mass.

Thoreau checks out Ancient history of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes & Persians, Macedonians, and Grecians, volumes 4-8 by Charles Rollin from Harvard College Library (Companion to Thoreau’s Correspondence, 287).

5 November 1837. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Truth strikes us from behind, and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight (Journal, 1:8).
5 November 1839. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  All the past is here present to be tried; let it approve itself if it can. (Journal, 1:93-94).
5 November 1849. Cambridge, Mass.

Thoreau checks out A comprehensive history, ecclesiastical and civil, of Eastham, Wellfleet and Orleans, county of Barnstable, Mass., from 1644 to 1844 by Enoch Pratt, Antiquités américaines d’aprèss les monuments historiques des Islandais et des anciens Scandinaves by Carl Christian Rafn, and an item recorded as Massachusetts Historical Society: Collections from Harvard College Library.

(Companion to Thoreau’s Correspondence, 289; Thoreau’s Reading, 102-103, 254, 256)
5 November 1851.

Boston, Mass. A. Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:

  Henry Thoreau comes and passes the afternoon and evening; also sleeps under my roof. Avery welcome guest, this countryman. I meet nobody whose thoughts are so invigorating as his, and who comes so scented of mountain breezes and springs, so like a luxuriant clod from under forest leaves, moist and mossy with earth-spirits. His company is tonic, never insipid, like ice-water in the dog days to the parched citizen spent in chambers and under brazen ceilings. Welcome then as the gurgle of brooks and drippings of pitchers! Then drink and be cool! Without this admirable glacier how would we stand the summer heats, how find shade under torrid climes? Our milk and meats would sour and taint, our butter melt, and our friendships dissolve into jellies. The world would get valetudinarian and consumptive. But here is a gelid man and valid, sane and salt, and will keep forever – a friend who comes never too often nor stays too long – comes, it may be, a little unwillingly too, and uncommuningly, as streams descend into the urbane vallies below, yet sighing as they descend, leaving their mountain sources behind.
(The Journals of Bronson Alcott, 257-258)

Cambridge, Mass. Thoreau checks out The Life of Sir Charles Linnaeus by Dietrich Johann Heinrich Stöver, Histoire et description générale de la Nouvelle France by Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix, volumes 1, 2, and 3, and A general view of the writings of Linnaeus by Richard Pulteney from Harvard College Library.

(Companion to Thoreau’s Correspondence, 290; Thoreau’s Reading)

Boston, Mass. Thoreau checks out Encyclopedia of plants by John Claudius Loudon from the Boston Society of Natural History (Emerson Society Quarterly, no. 24 (March 1952):24; Thoreau’s Reading).

5 November 1853. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—To Hubbard Bathing-Place for shrubs . . .

  Most of the muskrat-cabins were lately covered by the flood, but now that it has gone down in a great measure, leaving the cranberries stranded amid the wreck of rushes, reeds, grass, etc., I notice that they have not been washed away or much injured . . .

(Journal, 5:479)
5 November 1854. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  To White Pond with Charles Wheeler passing the mouth of John Hosmer’s hollow near the river, was hailed by him and Anthony Wright, sitting there, to come and see where they had dug for money . . . (Journal, 7:69-70)

5 November 1855. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—To foot of Fair Haven Hill via Hubbard’s Grove . . . Walked through Potter’s Swamp . . . (Journal, 8:7-12).
5 November 1857. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass of mankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excited you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you. The important fact is its effect on me. He thinks that I have no business to see anything else but just what he defines the rainbow to be, but I care not whether my vision of truth is a waking thought or dream remembered, whether it is seen in the light or in the dark. It is the subject of the visions, the truth alone, that concerns me. The philosopher for whom rainbows, etc., can be explained away never them. With regard to such objects, I find that it is not the themselves (with which the men of science deal) that concern me; the point of interest is somewhere between me and them (i.e. the objects) . . .
(Journal, 10:163-166)
5 November 1858. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Humphrey Buttrick says that he finds old and young of both kinds of small rails, and that they breed here, though he never saw their nests . . .

  The large shallow cups of the red oak acorns look like some buttons I have seen which had lost their core . . .

(Journal, 11:287-289)

A. Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:

  Again to the village and back. Thoreau comes home with me and stays to supper. Good company always and present in Nature, and the best of her. An out-of-doors man, and with doors opening on all sides of him, slides in slides, to admit her to his intelligence. His senses seem doubled and give him access to secrets not read easily by other men. His observation is wonderful, his sagacity like a bee and beaver, the dog and the deer—the most gifted in this way of any mind I have known, and the peer of the backwoodsman and Indian.

  He stays and discusses matters and men for an hour or two, and admirably. I suspect he deals better with matters, somewhat, than with men, but masterly with either, and anything he meddles with or takes seriously in hand. I am proud of him. I should say he inspired love, if indeed the sentiment he awakens did not seem to partake of something yet purer, if that were possible, and as yet nameless from its rarity and excellency. Certainly he is better poised and more nearly self-sufficient than other men.

(The Journals of Bronson Alcott, 309)

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