Log Search Results

  I see a painted tortoise swimming under water, and to my surprise another afterward out on a willow trunk this dark day . . .

  I find it good to be out this still, dark, mizzling afternoon; my walk or voyage is more suggestive and profitable than in bright weather. The view is contracted by the misty rain, the water and the stillness is favorable to reflection. I am more open to impressions, more sensitive (not calloused or indurated by sun and wind), as if in a chamber still. My thoughts are concentrated; I am all compact. The solitude is real, too, for the weather keeps other men at home. This mist is like a roof and walls over and around, and I walk with a domestic feeling . . .

  [George] Minott adorns whatever part of nature he touches; whichever way he walks he transfigures the earth for me.  If a common man speaks of Walden Pond to me, I see only a shallow, dull-colored body of water without reflections or peculiar color, but if [George] Minott speaks of it, I see the green water and reflected hills at once, for he has been there . . .

  What struck me was a certain emptiness beyond, between the hemlocks and the hill, in the cool, washed air, as if I appreciated even here the absence of insects from it. It suggested agreeably to me a mere space in which to walk briskly. The fields are bleak, and they are, as it were, vacated. The very earth is like a house shut up for the winter, and I go knocking about it in vain . . .

  Rounding the Island just after sunset, I see not only the houses nearest the river but our own reflected in the river by the Island . . .

  A few days since, by a lucky accident I met with a copy of a work of yours—“A week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.”—I read to with much interest,—and if I tell you plainly that I am delighted with the book, it is because I cannot help telling you so;—therefore you should pardon whatever is amiss in the expression.—I should like to ask you many questions touching your allusions to persons; such, for instance, is “What were the names of the “aged shepherd” and “youthful pastor”, p. 21?—what that of the “Concord poet” quoted on p. 49?—of the Justice of the Peace and Deacon, p. 68? what the name of “one who was born on its head waters; quoted on p. 90?—and many more of a similar nature; but I fear that such an act on the part of a stranger, would be but little short of impertinence, though it might be kindly considered by you; so I must not use that method of making myself “wise above what is written.”

  Next to confessing to you my admiration of your book, my object in writing you, is to make an enquiry for “Walden; or Life in the Woods,”—announced at the close of the “Week,” as shortly to be published. I have enquired for it in Boston, but no one can tell me anything about it. Will you please inform me if it has been published, and, if so, where it may be found?—Truly & Respectfully Yours,

  Geo. A. Bailey