Apple Blossoms Wild Apple Tree THE WRITINGS OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU EXCURSIONS AND POEMS BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY MDCCCCVI COPYRIGHT 1865 AND 1866 BY TICKNOR AND FIELDS COPYRIGHT 1893 AND 1906 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. All rights reserved INTRODUCTORY NOTE THE "Excursions" of the present volume follow the arrangement of the volume bearing that title in the Riverside Edition, which differed somewhat as to contents from the "Excursions" collected by Thoreau's sister after his death, and published in 1863 by Messrs. Ticknor & Fields. The Biographical Sketch by Emerson which prefaced the latter appears in the first volume of the present edition. "A Yankee in Canada," which here, as in the Riverside Edition, is made the first of the series of Excursions, was formerly published in a volume with "Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers." Thoreau made this excursion to Canada with his friend Ellery Channing, and sent his narrative to Mr. Greeley, who wrote him regarding it, March 18, 1852: "I shall get you some money for the articles you sent me, though not immediately. As to your long account of a Canadian tour, I don't know. It looks unmanageable. Can't you cut it into three or four, and omit all that relates to time? The cities are described to death, but I know you are at home with Nature, and that she rarely and slowly changes. Break this up, if you can, and I will try to have it swallowed and digested." Thoreau appears to have taken Greeley's advice, and the narrative was divided into chapters. But after it had been begun in Putnam's in January, 1853, where it was entitled "Excursion to Canada," the xiiauthor and the editor, who appears from the following letter to have been Mr. G. W. Curtis, disagreed regarding the expediency of including certain passages, and Thoreau withdrew all after the third chapter. The letter is as follows:— NEW YORK, January 2, 1853. FRIEND THOREAU.... I am sorry you and C. cannot agree so as to have your whole MS. printed. It will be worth nothing elsewhere after having partly appeared in Putnam's. I think it is a mistake to conceal the authorship of the several articles, making them all (so to speak) editorial; but if that is done, don't you see that the elimination of very flagrant heresies (like your defiant Pantheism) becomes a necessity? If you had withdrawn your MS. on account of the abominable misprints in the first number, your ground would have been far more tenable. However, do what you will. Yours, HORACE GREELEY. "Natural History of Massachusetts" was contributed to The Dial, July, 1842, nominally as a review of some recent State reports. "A Walk to Wachusett" was printed in The Boston Miscellany, 1843. Mr. Sanborn, in his volume on Thoreau, prints a very interesting letter written by Margaret Fuller in 1841, in criticism of the verses which stand near the beginning of the paper, offered at that time for publication in The Dial. "The Landlord" was printed in The Democratic Review for October, 1843. "A Winter Walk" appeared in The Dial in the same month and year. Emerson in a letter to Thoreau, September 8, 1843, says: "I mean to send the xiii'Winter's Walk' to the printer to-morrow for The Dial. I had some hesitation about it, notwithstanding its faithful observation and its fine sketches of the pickerel-fisher and of the woodchopper, on account of mannerism, an old charge of mine,—as if, by attention, one could get the trick of the rhetoric; for example, to call a cold place sultry, a solitude public, a wilderness domestic (a favorite word), and in the woods to insult over cities, armies, etc. By pretty free omissions, however, I have removed my principal objections." The address "The Succession of Forest Trees" was printed first in The New York Tribune, October 6, 1860, and was perhaps the latest of his writings which Thoreau saw in print. After his death the interest which had already been growing was quickened by the successive publication in The Atlantic Monthly of "Autumnal Tints" and "Wild Apples" in October and November, 1862, and "Night and Moonlight" November, 1863. The last named appeared just before the publication of the volume "Excursions," which collected the several papers. "May Days" and "Days and Nights in Concord," which were printed in the Riverside Edition, are now omitted as consisting merely of extracts from Thoreau's Journal and therefore superseded by the publication of the latter in its complete form. A few of Thoreau's poems, taken from the "Week" and elsewhere, were added by Mr. Emerson to the volume entitled "Letters to Various Persons" which he brought out in 1865, but it was not till the volume of "Miscellanies" was issued in the Riverside Edition that xivthe otherwise unpublished verse of his that had appeared in The Dial was gathered into a single volume. Besides the Dial contributions, the Riverside "Miscellanies" contained a few poems that first found publication in Mr. Sanborn's Life of Thoreau. But the collection was not intended to be complete. Many of Thoreau's poems, including his translations from the Anacreontics, are imbedded in the "Week," "Walden," and "Excursions," and it seemed best not to reproduce them in another volume. In 1895, shortly after the publication of the Riverside Thoreau, Mr. Henry S. Salt and Mr. Frank B. Sanborn brought out a book entitled "Poems of Nature by Henry David Thoreau," in which were collected "perhaps two thirds of [the poems] which Thoreau preserved." "Many of them," says the Introduction to that volume, "were printed by him, in whole or in part, among his early contributions to Emerson's Dial, or in his own two volumes, the Week and Walden.... Others were given to Mr. Sanborn for publication, by Sophia Thoreau, the year after her brother's death (several appeared in the Boston Commonwealth in 1863); or have been furnished from time to time by Mr. Blake, his literary executor." This volume contained a number of poems which had not before appeared in any of Thoreau's published books. Such poems are now added to those of the Riverside Edition. The present collection, however, no more than its predecessors pretends to completeness. It includes only those of Thoreau's poems which have been previously published and which are not contained in other volumes of this series. A list of xvthe poems and scattered bits of verse printed in the other volumes will be found in an Appendix. The Journal also contains, especially in the early part, a number of heretofore unpublished poems which it seems best to retain in their original setting.1 EXCURSIONS 2 A YANKEE IN CANADA New England is by some affirmed to be an island, bounded on the north with the River Canada (so called from Monsieur Cane).—JOSSELYN'S RARITIES. And still older, in Thomas Morton's "New English Canaan," published in 1632, it is said, on page 97, "From this Lake [Erocoise] Northwards is derived the famous River of Canada, so named, of Monsier de Cane, a French Lord, who first planted a colony of French in America."3 A YANKEE IN CANADA CHAPTER I CONCORD TO MONTREAL I FEAR that I have not got much to say about Canada, not having seen much; what I got by going to Canada was a cold. I left Concord, Massachusetts, Wednesday morning, September 25th, 1850, for Quebec. Fare, seven dollars there and back; distance from Boston, five hundred and ten miles; being obliged to leave Montreal on the return as soon as Friday, October 4th, or within ten days. I will not stop to tell the reader the names of my fellow-travelers; there were said to be fifteen hundred of them. I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an afternoon. The country was new to me beyond Fitchburg. In Ashburnham and afterward, as we were whirled rapidly along, I noticed the woodbine (Ampelopsis quinquefolia), its leaves now changed, for the most part on dead trees, draping them like a red scarf. It was a little exciting, suggesting bloodshed, or at least a military life, like an epaulet or sash, as if it were dyed with the blood of the trees whose wounds it was inadequate to stanch. For now the bloody autumn was come, and an Indian warfare was waged through the forest. These military trees appeared very numerous, for our rapid progress connected 4those that were even some miles apart. Does the woodbine prefer the elm? The first view of Monadnock was obtained five or six miles this side of Fitzwilliam, but nearest and best at Troy and beyond. Then there were the Troy cuts and embankments. Keene Street strikes the traveler favorably, it is so wide, level, straight, and long. I have heard one of my relatives, who was born and bred there, say that you could see a chicken run across it a mile off. I have also been told that when this town was settled they laid out a street four rods wide, but at a subsequent meeting of the proprietors one rose and remarked, "We have plenty of land, why not make the street eight rods wide?" and so they voted that it should be eight rods wide, and the town is known far and near for its handsome street. It was a cheap way of securing comfort, as well as fame, and I wish that all new towns would take pattern from this.