Log Search Results

  I got your letters, one yesterday and the other to-day, and they have made me quite happy. As a packet is to go in the morning, I will give you a hasty account of the Dial. I called on Mr. [Charles] Lane this afternoon, and brought away, together with an abundance of good will, first, a bulky catalogue of books without commentary,—some eight hundred, I think he told me, with an introduction filling one sheet,—ten or a dozen pages, say, though I have only glanced at them; second, a review—twenty-five or thirty printed pages—of Conversations on the Gospels, Record of a School, and Spiritual Culture, with rather copious extracts. However, it is a good subject, and Lane says it gives him satisfaction. I will give it a faithful reading directly. And now I come to the little end of the horn; for himself, I have brought along the Minor Greek Poets, and will mine there for a scrap or two, at least. As for Etzler, I don’t know any “rude and snappish speech” that you made, and if you did it must have been longer than anything I had written; however, here is the book still, and I will try. Perhaps I have some few scraps in my journal which you may choose to print. The translation of the Æschylus I should like very well to continue anon, if it should be worth the while. As for poetry, I have not remembered to write any for some time; it has quite slipped my mind; but sometimes I think I hear the mutterings of the thunder. Don’t you remember that last summer we heard a low, tremulous sound in the woods and over the hills, and thought it was partridges or rocks, and it proved to be thunder gone down the river? But sometimes it was over Wayland way, and at last burst over our heads. So we’ll not despair by reason of the drought. You see, it takes a good many words to supply the place of one deed; a hundred lines to a cobweb, and but one cable to a man-of-war. The Dial case needs to be reformed in many particulars. There is no news from [Charles Stearns] Wheeler, none from [Robert] Bartlett.

  They all look well and happy in this house, where it gives me much pleasure to dwell.

Yours in haste,
Henry

  I have not forgotten your note which I received sometime since. Though I live in the woods I am not so attentive an observer of birds as I was once, but am satisfied if I get an occasional night of sound from them. My pursuits at present are such that I am not very likely to meet with any specimens which you will not have obtained. Moreover, I confess to a little squeamishness on the score of robbing their nests, though I could easily go to the length of abstracting an egg or two gently, now and then, and if the advancement of science obviously demanded it might be carried even to the extreme of deliberate murder.I have no doubt that you will observe a greater number of species in or near the College yard than I can here. I have noticed that in an open country where there are but few trees, there are more attractions for many species of birds than in a wooded one. They not only find food there in greater abundance, but protection against birds of prey; and even if they are no more numerous than elsewhere, the few trees are necessarily more crowded with nests. Many of my classmates were quite successful in collecting birds nests and eggs and they did not have to go far from the college-yard to find them—I remember a pigeon-woodpecker’s nest in the grove on the east side of the year, which annually yielded a number of eggs to collectors, while the bird steadily supplied the loss like a hen, until my chum demolished the whole with a hatchet. I found another in the next field chipped nearly two feet into a solid stump. And in one of the fields near the yard I used to visit daily in the winter the dwelling of an ermine-weasel in a hollow apple tree. But of course one must be a greater traveller than this if he would make anything like a complete collection.

  There are many whipporwills & owls about my house, and perhaps with a little pains one might find their nests. I hope you have more nimble and inquisitive eyes to serve you than mine now are—However, if I should chance to stumble on any rarer nest I will not forget your request. If you come to Concord again, as I understand you sometimes do, I shall be glad to see you at my hut—.

  Trusting that you will feather your own nest comfortably without stripping those of the birds quite bare—I amYrs

Henry D. Thoreau

  Our meetings go on finely—Rev. Sam. Johnson, Mr Alcott, Ed. Quincy so far. People were delighted at Mr A. and listened with great enthusiasm. Young Johnson is magnificent, and you may safely go a hundred miles to hear. I hope nothing will prevent one of you from coming, & let me know as early in the wk. as you can. Can’t you [read to] us from your Life in the woods, with Mr Alcott pronounces just eh thing for us—I will meet you at the cars.

  I looked into Shattuck’s History and found that, according to him, “Henry Woodhouse, or Woodis, as his name was sometimes written, came to Concord from London, about 1650, freeman 1656 . . .

When I returned from Worcester yesterday morning, I found that the Lee house, of which six weeks ago I made an accurate plan, had been completely burned up the evening before, i.e. the 13th, while I was lecturing in Worcester . . . There was nothing of the house left but the chimneys and cellar walls. The eastern chimney had fallen in the night . . .

  This morning (the 15th), it having rained in the night, and thinking the fire would be mostly out, I made haste to the ruins of the Lee house to read that inscription. By laying down boards on the bricks and cinders, which were quite too hot to tread on and covered a smothered fire, I was able to reach the chimney. The inscription was on the cast side of the east chimney (which had fallen) . . .

  I thought, by the peculiar moaning sound of the wind about the dining-room at noon, that we should have a rain-storm . . .

  Against Bittern Cliff I feel the first drop strike the right slope of my nose and run down the ravine there. Such is the origin of rivers. Not till half a mile further my doubting companion feels another on his nose also, and I get one [in] my eye, and soon after I see the countless dimples in the puddles on the ice. So measured and deliberate is Nature always . . .