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  You now see and hear no red-wings along the river as in spring. See the blue herons opposite Fair Haven Hill, as if they had bred here. This and the last day or two very hot. Now at last, methinks, the most melting season of this year, though I think it is hardly last. year’s bathing time, because the water is higher. There is very little air over the water, and when I dip my head in it for coolness, I do not feel any coolness . . .

  I have just finished reading “Walden” and hasten to thank you for the great degree of satisfaction it has afforded me. Having always been a lover of Nature, in man, as well as in the material universe, I hail with pleasure every original production in literature which bears the stamp of a genuine and earnest love for the true philosophy of human life.—Such I assure you I esteem your book to be. To many, and to most, it will appear to be the wild musings of an eccentric and strange mind, though all must recognize your affectionate regard for the gentle denizens of the woods and pond as well as the great love you have shown for what are familiarly called the beauties of Nature. But to me the book appears to evince a mind most thoroughly self possessed, highly cultivated with a strong vein of common sense. The whole book is a prose poem (pardon the solecism) and at the same time as simple as a running brook.

  I have always loved ponds of pure translucent water, and some of my happiest most memorable days have been passed on and around the beautiful Middleboro’s Pond, particularly the largest, Assawampset—here King Philip frequently came, and a beautiful round hill near by is still known as “king Phillip’s look-out.” I have often felt an inclination when tired of the noise and strife of society, to retire to the shores of this noble pond, or rather lake, for it is some 5 or 6 miles in length and 2 bread. But I have a wife and four children, & besides have got a little too far along, being in my forty-second year, to undertake a new mode of life. I strive however, and have stiven during the whole of my life, to live as free from the restraint of mere forms & ceremonies as I possibly can. I love quiet, peaceful rural retirement; but it was not my fate to realize this until a little past thirty years of age—since then I have been a sort of rustic, genteel perhaps, rustic. Not so very genteel you might reply, if you saw the place where I am writing. It is a rough board shanty 12×14 three miles from New Bedford in a quiet & secluded spot—here for the present I eat, & sleep, read, write, receive visitors &c. My house is now undergoing repairs &c and my family are in town. A short time since a whip-poor-will serenaded me, and later at night I hear the cuckoos near my window. It has long been my delight to observe the feathered tribes, and early Spring is to me a still a delightful circumstance. But more particularly soothing to me is the insect hum so multitudinous at this season,—Now as I write the crickets & other little little companions are sweetly & soothingly singing around my dwellings, & occasionally in my room. I am quite at home with partridges, quails, rabbits skunks & woodchucks. But Winter is my best time, then I am a great tramper through the woods. O how I love the woods. I have walked thousands of miles in the woods hereabouts. I recognize many of my own experiences in your “Walden.” Still I am not altogether given up to these matters—they are my pastimes. I have a farm to attend to, fruit trees & a garden & a little business occasionally in town to look after, but my leisure nevertheless In fact I am the only man of leisure I know of, every body here as well as elsewhere is upon the stir. I love quiet, thus you know friend Thoreau dont necessarily imply that the body should be still all the time. I am often quietest, aren’t you, when walking among the still haunts of Nature or hoeing perhaps beans as I have oftentimes done as well as corn & potatoes &c &c.

  Poetry has been to me a great consolation amid the jarring elements of this life. The English poets, some of them at least, and one Latin, our good old Virgil, have been like household gods to me.—Cowper’s Task, my greatest favorite no lies before me in which I had been reading & alternately looking at the western sky just after sunset before I commenced this letter. Cowper was a true lover of the country. How often have I felt the force of these lines upon the country in my own experience

“I never framed a wish or formed a plan,
That flattered me with hopes of earthly bliss
But there I said the scene”

  All through my boyhood, the country haunted my thoughts. Though blessed with a good home, books & teachers, the latter however with one exception were not blessings, I would have exchanged all for the life of rustic. I envied as I then thought the freedom of the farmer boy. But I have long thought that the life of a farmer, that is most farmers, possessed but little of the poetry of labour. How we accumulate cares around us. The very repairs I am now making upon my house will to some considerable extent increase my cares. A rough board shanty, rye & indian bread, water from the spring, or as in your case, from the pond, and other things in keeping, do not burden the body & mind. It is fine houses, fine furniture, sumptuous fare, fine clothes and many in number, horses & carriages, servants &c &c &c, there are the harpies, so that so disturb our real happiness.

  My next move in life I hope will be into a much more simple mode of living. I should like to live in a small house, with my family, uncarpeted white washed walls, simple old fashioned furniture & plain wholesome old fashioned fare. Though I have always been inclined to be a vegetarian in diet & once lived in capital health two years on the Graham system.

  Well this will do for myself. Now for you friend Thoreau. Why return to the world again? A life such as you spent at Walden was too true & beautiful to be abandoned for any slight reason.

  The ponds I allude to are much more secluded than Walden, and really delightful places—Should you ever incline again to try your “philosophy of living” I would introduce you into haunts, that your very soul would leap to behold. Well I thought I would just write you a few lines to thank you for the pleasure I have received from the reading of your “Walden,” but I have found myself running on till now. I feel that you are a kindred spirit and so fear not. I was pleased to find a kind of word or two in your book for the poor down trodden slave. Wilberforce, Clarkson and John Woolman & Anthony Benezet were household words in my father’s house.—I early became acquainted with the subject of slavery for my parents were Quakers, & Quakers were then all Abolitionists. My love of Nature, absolute, undefiled Nature makes me an abolitionist. How could I listen to the woodlandsongs—or gaze upon the outstretched landscape, or look at the great clouds & the starry heavens and be aught but a friend of the poor and oppressed coloured race of our land. But why do I write—it is in vain to portray these things—they can only be felt and lived, and to you of all others I would refrain from being prolix.

  I have outlined, or nearly so, all ambition for notoriety. I wish only to be a simple, good man & so live that when I come to surrender up my spirit to the Great Father, I may depart in peace.

  I wrote the above last evening. It is now Sunday afternoon, and alone in my Shanty I sit down at my desk to add a little more. A great white cloud which I have been watching for the past half hour is now majestically moving off to the north east before the fine S. W. breeze which sets in here nearly every summer afternoon from the ocean. We have the best climate in New England—Sheltered in the north & east by dense pine woods from the cold winds which so cut up the healths of eastern folks, or rather are suffered to—but I think if the habits of our people were right the north easters would do but little harm. I never heard that the Indians were troubled by them—but they were nature’s philosophers and lived in the woods. I love to go by my instincts, inspiration rather. O how much we lose by civilization! In the eyes of the world you & I are demi savages—But I rather think we could stand our hand at the dinner table or in the drawing room with most of folks. I would risk you anywhere, and as for myself I have about done with the follies of “society.” I never was trump’s yet.

  I have lived out all the experiences of idle youth—some gentle, & some savage experiments but my heart was not made of the stuff for a sportsman or angler—early in life I rangled the woods, fields & shores with my gun, or rod, but I found that all I sought could be obtained much better without the death of dealing implements. So now my rustic staff is all the companion I usually take, unless my old dog joins me—taking no tracks as he often does, and bounding upon me in some distant thicket. My favorite books are—Cowper’s task, Thomas’s Seasons Milton, Shakespeare, &c &c—Goldsmith Gray’s Elegy—Beattie’s Minstrel (parts) Howitt, Gil. White, (Selbourne) Berwich (wood—engraver) moderns—Wordsworth Ch. Lamb De Quincy, Macaulay, Kit. Noth, &c &c

  These and others are more my companions than men. I like talented women & wear lustily by May Wolstoncroft, &c &c—Roland, Joan d-arc & somewhat by dear Margaret Fuller.

The smaller fry, let go by-

  Again permit me to thank you for the pleasure & strength I have found in reading “Walden.”

  Dear Mr Walden good bye for the present.

Yours most respectfully
Daniel Rickertson

Boston, Mass. Walden is reviewed in Dwight’s Journal of Music.

Boston, Mass. Walden is reviewed in the Boston Commonwealth.

Boston, Mass. Walden is reviewed in the Olive Branch.

New Bedford, Mass. Walden is reviewed in the New Bedford Mercury.

The National Anti-Slavery Standard prints an abbreviated version of “Slavery in Massachusetts” in an article entitled “Words That Burn.”

  The Hypericum nautilum is well out at this hour. The river, is now at a standstill, some three feet above its usual level . . .

  An arrowhead in Peter’s Path. How many times I have found an arrowhead by that path, as if that had been an Indian trail! Perchance it was, for some of the paths we travel are much older than we think . . .

  P.M.—To the Miles blueberry swamp and White Pond . . .

  Please send us ten pound of Plumbago for Electrotyping purposes, such as we got last from you—as it is some risk to send the money by mail, we would prefer paying the Express agent on delivery of the box—I suppose this arrangement will be satisfactory to you but if not please let us know at once as we have but a very little on hand.

Respectfully Yours &c
Tho. H. Mumford