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8 August 1859. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—Up Assabet . . .

  Rice has had a little experience once in pushing a canal-boat up Concord river. Says this was the way they used to get the boat off a rock when by chance it had got on to one. If it had run quite on, so that the rock was partly under the main bottom of the boat, they let the boat swing round to one side and placed a stout stake underneath, a little aslant, with one end on the bottom of the river and the other ready to catch the bows of the boat . . .

(Journal, 12:279-281)
8 August 1860. Mt. Monadnock, N.H.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  8.30 A. M. Walk round the west side of the summit . . .

  Return to camp at noon. Toward night, walk to east edge of the plateau (Journal, 14:25).

8 December 1836. Cambridge, Mass.

Thoreau checks out Terrible tractoration, and other poems by Thomas Green Fessenden and The history of the progress of the Roman republic by Adam Ferguson from the library of the Institute of 1770 (The Transcendentalists and Minerva, 1:86).

8 December 1837. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  He [Goethe] is generally satisfied with giving an exact description of objects as they appear to him, and his genius is exhibited in the points he seizes upon and illustrates. His description of Venice and her environs as seen from the Marcusthurm is that of an unconcerned spectator, whose object is faithfully to describe what he sees, and that, too ,for the most part, in the order in which he saw it. It is this trait which is chiefly to be prized in the book; even there flections of the author do not interfere with his descriptions. It would thus be possible for inferior minds to produce invaluable books.
(Journal, 1:15)

8 December 1838. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Nothing in nature is sneaking or chapfallen, as somewhat maltreated and slighted, but each is satisfied with its being, and so is as lavender and balm. If skunk-cabbage is offensive to the nostrils of men, still has it not drooped in consequence, but trustfully unfolded its leaf of two hands’ breadth. What was it to Lord Byron whether England owned or disowned him, whether he smelled sour and was slunk-cabbage to the English nostril or violet.—like, the pride of the land and ornament of every lady’s boudoir? Let not the oyster grieve that he has lost the race; he has gained as an oyster.
(Journal, 1:62)
8 December 1841. Cambridge, Mass.

Thoreau checks out The paradise of dainty devices, reprinted from a transcript of the first edition by Richard Edwards, Popular ballads and songs, from tradition, manuscripts and scarce editions by Robert Jamieson, volumes 1 and 2, A selection from the poetical works of Thomas Carew, and The works of James I, King of Scotland from Harvard College Library.

(Companion to Thoreau’s Correspondence, 289)
8 December 1842. Concord, Mass.

Prudence Ward writes to her brother, George Ward:

  We find the Englishmen [Charles Lane and Henry Wright] very agreeable; they are at Mr. [A. Bronson] Alcott’s. We took tea with them at Mrs. Brook’s, and they passed one evening here, and at Mrs. [Cynthia Dunbar] Thoreau’s.
(Bronson Alcott at the Alcott House, England, and Fruitlands, New England (1842-1844), 29)
8 December 1850. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  It snowed in the night of the 6th, and the ground is now covered,—our first snow, two inches deep… From Fair Haven I see the hills and fields, aye, and the icy woods in the corner shine, gleam with with the dear old wintry sheen . . . This evening for the first time the new moon is reflected from the frozen snow-crust.
(Journal, 2:122-123)
8 December 1852. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Another Indian-summer day. Saw some puffballs in the woods, wonderfully full of sulphur-like dust, which yellowed my shoes, greenish-yellow. The recent water-line at Walden is quite distinct . . .
(Journal, 4:426)
8 December 1853. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  7 A.M.—How can we spare to be abroad in the morning red, to see the forms of the leafless eastern trees against the dun sky and hear the cocks crow, when a thin low mist hangs over the ice and frost in meadows? I have come along the riverside in Merrick’s pasture to collect for kindling the fat pine roots and knots which the spearers dropped last spring, and which the floods have washed up. Get a heaping bushel-basketful . . .

  At midday (3 P.M.) saw an owl fly from toward the river and alight on Mrs. Richardson’s front-yard fence. Got quite near it, and followed it to a rock on the heap of dirt at Collier’s cellar . . .

  Walden at sunset.

  The twilights, morn and eve, are very clear and light, very glorious and pure, or stained with red, and prolonged, these days. But, now the sun is set, Walden (I am on the east side) is more light than the sky,—a whiteness as of silver plating . . .

  I was amused by R.W.E.’s telling me that he drove his own calf out of the yard, as it was coming in with the cow, not knowing it to be his own, a drove going by at the time.

(Journal, 6:14)

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