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  I should not be ashamed to have a shrub oak for my coat-of-arms.

  It is bitter cold, with a cutting northwest wind. The pond is now a plain snow-field, but there are no tracks of fishers on it. It is too cold for them. The surface of the snow there is finely waved and grained, giving it a sort of slaty fracture, the appearance which hard, dry blown. snow assumes. All animate things are reduced to their lowest terms. This is the fifth day of cold, blowing weather. All tracks are concealed in an hour or two . . .

  P.M.—I see some tree sparrows feeding on the fine grass seed above the snow, near the road on the hillside below the Dutch house . . .

Dear Sir,

  Will you do me the favor of meeting me at the Probate Court in East Cambridge on Tuesday next (11th inst) at ten o’clock A.M. in order to prove my father’s will to which [page torn] sness. My mother [page torn]

  Dear Sir. We enclose herein our note for $100 @ 3 months, for last 100 lbs Plumbago

Respy

L. L. & C. H. Smith

  I thought you would like to have a few lines from me, providing they required no answer.

  I have quite recovered from my illness, and am able to walk and skate as usual. My son, Walton, and I do both nearly every day of late. The weather here—as I suppose has been the case with you at Concord—has been very cold, the thermometer as low one morn (Saturday last) as five degrees above zero.

  We propose soon to take our annual tour on skates over the Middleboro’ ponds.

  I received your sister’s letter in reply to mine inquiring after your health. I was sorry to hear of your having pleurisy, but it may prove favorable after all to your case, as a counter-irritant often does to sick people. It appears to me you will in time recover—Nature can’t spare you, and we all, your friends, can’t spare you. So you must look out for us and hold on these many years yet.

  I wish I could see you oftener. I don’t believe in your silence and absence from congenial spirits. Companionship is one of the greatest blessings to me.

  Remember me kindly to my valued friends Mr. and Mrs. Alcott.

Yours truly, in haste,
D. R.

P.S. Thank your sister for her letter.

  At any time when you wish to visit us, just send a line. You are always welcome.

  I was very glad to get your letter and papers. Tell Father that circumstantial letters make very substantial reading, at any rate. I like to know even how the sun shines and garden grows with you.

  I did not get my money in Boston and probably shall not at all. Tell Sophia that I have pressed some blossoms of the tulip tree for her. They look somewhat like white lilies. The magnolia too is in blossom here. Pray have you the Seventeen year locust in Concord? The air here is filled with their din. They come out of the ground at first in an imperfect state, and crawling up the shrubs and plants, the perfect insect burst[s] out through the bark. They are doing great damage to the fruit and forest trees. The latter are covered with dead twigs, which in the distance looks like the blossoms of the chestnut. They bore every twig of last year’s growth in order to deposit their eggs in it. In a few weeks the eggs will be hatched, and the worms fall to the ground and enter it—and in 1860 make their appearance again. I conversed about their coming this season before they arrived. They do no injury to the leaves, but beside boring the twigs—suck their sap for sustenance. Their din is heard by those who sail along the shore—from the distant woods. Phar-r-r-a oh—Pha-r-r-aoh. They are departing now. Dogs, cats and chickens subsist mainly upon them in some places.

  I have not been to N.Y. for more than three weeks.—I have had an interesting letter from Mr Lane, describing their new prospects.—My pupil and I are getting on apace. He is remarkably well advanced in Latin and is well advancing.

  Your letter has just arrived. I was not aware that it was so long since I wrote home; I only knew that I had sent five or six letters to the town. It is very refreshing to hear from you—though it is not all good news—But I trust that Stearns Wheeler is not dead. I should be slow to believe it. He was made to work very well in this world. There need be no tragedy in his death.

  The demon which is said to haunt the Jones family—hovering over their eyelids with wings steeped in juice of poppies—has commenced another campaign against me. I am “clear Jones” in this respect at least. But he finds little encouragement in my atmosphere I assure you—for I do not once fairly lose myself—except in those hours of truce allotted to rest by immemorial custom. However, this skirmishing interferes sadly with my literary projects—and I am apt to think it a good day’s work if I maintain a soldier’s eye till nightfall. Very well it does not matter much in what wars we serve—whether in the Highlands or the Lowlands—Everywhere we get soldiers’ pay still.

  Give my love to Aunt Louisa—whose benignant face I sometimes see right in the wall—as naturally and necessarily shining on my path as some star—of unaccountably greater age and higher orbit than myself. Let it be inquired by her of George Minott—as from me—for she sees him—If he has seen any pigeons yet—and tell him there are plenty of Jacksnipes here.—As for William P. the “worthy young man”—as I live, my eyes have not fallen on him yet. I have not had the influenza—though here are its head-quarters—unless my first week’s cold was it. Tell Helen I shall write to her soon. I have heard Lucretia Mott—This is badly written—but the worse the writing the sooner you get it this time—from yr affectionate son H. D. T.