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  Old Mr. Joe Hosmer chopping wood at his door. He is full of meat. Had a crack with him. I told him I was studying lichens, pointing to his wood. He thought I meant the wood itself. Well, he supposed he’d had more to do with wood than I had. “Now,” said he, “there are two kinds of white oak. Most people wouldn’t notice it. When I’ve been chopping, say along in March, after the sap begins to start, I’ll sometimes come to an oak that will color my axe steel-blue like a sword-blade. Well, that oak is fine-grained and heavier than the common, and I call it blue white oak, for no other blues my axe so. Then there are two kinds of black oak, or yellow-bark. One is the mean black oak, or bastard. Then there’s a kind of red oak smells like urine three or four days old” . . .

  [The rest of the page (a half) cut out.]

  been the track of an otter near the Clamshell Hill, for it looks too large for a mink . . .

  Found three or four parmelias (caperata) in fruit on a white oak on the high river-bank between Tarbell’s and Harrington’s.

  P. M.—To Lee’s Hill.

  Stedman Buttrick calls the ducks which we see in winter, widgeons and wood sheldrakes.

  According to G. Emerson, maple sap sometimes begins to flow in the middle of February, but usually in the second week of March, especially in a clear, bright day with a westerly wind, after a frosty night . . . I saw trout glance in the Mill Brook this afternoon, though near its sources, in Hubbard’s close, it is still covered with dark, icy snow, and the river into which it empties has not broken up . . .

  I presume your first letter containing the $2 was robbed by our general mail robber of New Haven, who has just been sent to the State’s Prison. Your second letter has probably failed to receive attention owing to a press of business. But I will make all right. You ought to have the Semi-weekly, and I shall order it sent to you one year on trail; if you choose to write me a letter or so some time, very well; if not, we will be even without that.

  Thoreau, I want you to do something on my urgency. I want you to collect and arrange your “Miscellanies” and send them to me. Put in “Ktaadn,” “Carlyle,” “A Winter Walk,” “Canada,” etc., and I will try to find a publisher who will bring them out at his own risk, and (I hope) to your ultimate profit. If you have anything new to put with them, very well; but let me have about a 12mo volume whenever you can get it ready, and see if there is not something to your credit in the bank of Fortune.

  Yours,

  Horace Greeley.

  Still stronger wind, shaking the house, and rather cool. This is the third day of wind.

  Our woods are now so reduced that the chopping of this winter has been a cutting to the quick. At least we walkers feel it as such. There is hardly a woodlot of any consequence left but the chopper’s axe has been heard in it this season. They have even infringed fatally on White Pond, on the south of Fair Haven Pond . . .

  The snow is softening. Methinks the lichens are a little greener for it. A thaw comes, and then the birches, which were gray on their white ground before, appear prettily clothed in green. I see various kinds of insects out on the snow now. On the rock this side the Leaning Hemlocks, is the, track of an otter . . .

  The river is frozen more solidly than during the past winter, and for the first time for a year I could cross it in most places . . .

  This fine spring morning with its cheering influences brings you to my mind; for I always associate you with the most genial aspects of our beloved Nature, with the woods, the fields, lakes and rivers, with the birds and flowers. As I write, the meadow lark is piping sweetly in the meadows near by, and lo! at this instant, the very first I have heard this season, a bluebird has warbled on a tree near the Shanty. What salutation could be more welcome or more in unison with my subject? Yesterday, my son Walton saw and heard the red-winged Blackbird, and this morning robins are flying about. The song-sparrow (F. melodia) now singing, has also been in time since the 23d of February. Truly may we say, “Spring is come!”

  At my present writing, the thermometer at my north window indicates 44 degrees and is rising; yesterday p.m. 50 degrees, wind W. S. W. It seems to me quite time to stop the abuse of our climate. In my boyhood and even until after my marriage (1834), I do not remember it ever occurred to me but that our climate was a very good one. And had I never heard it complained of by others, should hardly have ever suspected it otherwise. A climate that has sustained such men as R.W.E., [Ralph Waldo Emerson] A.B.A., [A. Bronson Alcott] H.D.T., and other kindred natures, can’t be a very bad one, and may be the very best.

  March is to me the month of hope. I always look forward to its coming with pleasure, and welcome its arrival. Others may speak of it in terms of reproach, but to me it has much to recommend itself. The backbone of winter, according to the homely adage, is now broken. Every day brings us nearer to the vernal influences, to the return of the birds and the appearance of wild flowers. Mingled with storms are many warm sunny days. I am no longer in haste for finer weather, so near at hand. Each day has something to interest me, and even in a severe snow or rainstorm, accompanied with cold weather, I know that the glorious sun, when once he shines again, will dispel all gloom and soften the temperature. Although it is my custom to walk in the woods, field, and by-places at all seasons of the year and in all weathers, the spring (and in this I include March as fairly belonging) is my most favorite time. Nature, ever attractive to me, is at this season particularly inviting, the kind solace and hope of my days. Although I am but an indifferent versifier, yet I fancy but few poets have experienced richer or happier emotions than myself from her benign spirit.

  I am most happy to record at this time, that I have, I trust, recovered my good spirits, such as blessed me in my earlier years of manhood. I shall endeavor by a life of purity and retirement to keep them as the choicest of blessings. My desires, I believe, are moderate, and not beyond my reach. So far as the false luxuries of life are concerned, I have but little taste for them, and I would willingly dispense with almost every unnecessary article in the economy of living, for the sake of being the master of my own time and the leisure to pursue the simple occupations and enjoyments of rural life. I do not covet wealth, I certainly do not wish it. With the intelligent and worthy poor, I feel far greater sympathy and affinity, than with the large portion of the rich and falsely great. I would give more for one day with the poet-peasant, Robert Burns, or Shakespeare, than for unnumbered years of entertainment at the tables of proud and rich men.

“Behind the plough Burns sang his wood-notes wild,
And richest Shakespeare was a poor man’s child.”

  So sung Ebenezor Elliot, the Corn-law rhymer, himself a true poet and friend of the “virtuous and struggling poor.”

  I copy the foregoing, suggested by the season from my daily Journal, on the entrance of March. You may therefore, read it as a soliloquy, by which it may savor less of egotism and bombast, to which objection it might otherwise be open.

  During my walk, yesterday p.m., in a sunny spot, I found the “pussy willows” (S. eriocephala) and enclose one of the “catkins” or “woolly aments” in testimony thereof. I also enclose a pansy from the south side of the Shanty. How should I rejoice to have you as the companion of my walks!

  I suppose you have some time since returned from your literary exploit into Worcester, and trust that you had a good time with your disciples, Blake, [H.G.O. Blake] and Brown. [Theophilus Brown] They must be thoreauly brown by this time. “Arcades ambo” under your pupilage-though, I think, the classic term applies better to you and R. W. E. or W. E. C. [William Ellery Channing] May I not also claim as a birthright to rank in your fraternity, as a disciple, at least? Please not reject me. Failing in you I shall be bankrupt, indeed. Shall echo respond, to my complaint, “Is there none for me in the wide world, no kindred spirit?” “None”?

  Don’t be alarmed, “Amicus Mihi,” you shall be as free as air for aught me.

  During the past winter I have been reviewing somewhat my law studied, and what will not surprise you, have received and accepted a commission as justice of the peace. I have collected the relic of my law library, and raged them in formidable array upon a shelf in the Shanty. I find myself much better able to grasp and cope with these legal worthies than when a young man.

  I don’t suppose I shall do much in the way of my profession, but may assist occasionally the injured in the recovery of their rights. I have not done this hastily, as you may suppose. I intend to me free from all trammels, and believing, as I do, that la, or rather government, was made for the weal of all concerned, and particularly for the protection of the weak against the strong and that, according to Blackstone, “What is not reason is not law,” I shall act accordingly if I act at all.

  I may make use of the elective franchise, but of this am as yet undetermined. It seems to me as though a crisis was approaching in the affairs of our government, when the use of every means that “God and nature affords” will be required to oppose tyranny. I trust that I shall have your sympathy in this matter.

  I shall seek no opportunity for the exercise of my opposition, but “bide my time.”

  A visit from you would be very welcome. With kind regards to your household and my Concord friends, one and all, I remain,

  Yours truly,
  D. R.

Yours of 12th Feb. came duly to hand.

  Going by Messer’s, I hear the well-known note and see a flock of F. hyemalis flitting in a lively manner about trees, weeds, walls, and ground, by the roadside, showing their two white tail-feathers . . .

  Mr. Stacy tells me that the flies buzzed about him as he was splitting wood in his yard to-day.

  I can scarcely see a heel of a snow-drift window.

  Jonas Melvin says he saw hundreds of ‘speckled’ turtles out on the banks to-day in a voyage to Billerica for musquash . . .