ELIAS HICKS, HENRY THOREAU, AND ALEXANDER SELKIRK

AS SURVEYORS1

And yet — in fact you need only draw a single thread at any point you choose out of the fabric of life and the run will make a pathway across the whole, and down that wider pathway each of the other threads will become successively visible, one by one. — Heimito von Doderer, DIE DÂIMONEN

Supposed to be written by the Editor of the ——— Newspaper, during his solitary Abode in ——— Prison.2 (COWPER) I AM tenant of nine feet by four, My title no lawyer denies, From the ceiling quite down to the floor I am lord of the spider and flies.…

On an internet discussion list, a champion of private property commented about “Thoreau’s famous rejection of private property,” in the context of his proposition that “secure ownership of property is an integral part of being free.” I responded to this by commenting that although I’ve been studying the complete writings of Thoreau for many years, I needed to confess that I had no grasp of what this “Thoreau’s famous rejection of private property” might consist of. So far as I knew, I wrote in response, the only remarks about the institution of private property that Henry Thoreau ever made were quite commonsense remarks with which we could all agree, such as that property ownership involved obligations as well as privileges, and that there were aspects of life to which the concept of ownership simply does not apply. For instance, I pointed out, theoretically anyone who owns a 1. The redline map outlines of the surveys have been provided by Allan H. Schmidt , who is presently considering accepting author and originator responsibility for this file on Thoreau’s surveying activities. 2. By Horace Twiss, “Verses” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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square of land in fee simple owns that land underground all the way down to a pinpoint on the earth’s core, and owns an expanding wedge above his or her head all the way out into the starry universe. That is, theoretically — but we all do understand that this wedge ownership does not permit one to stand out in one’s back yard and discharge one’s telescopic .50-caliber sniper rifle at airplanes overhead, even when one is discharging this shoulder weapon absolutely straight upward into the air. Theoretically — but we all do understand that this ownership does not permit one to install tripwires and explosives in one’s hedge to blow the feet off hat newsboy who has been taking a shortcut. Theoretically — but we all do understand that one of the great privileges of the property owner is being entitled to make regular property tax payments to his or her municipality. Etc. Of course, these extreme examples are surrounded by all sorts of gray areas, such as whether it is permissible or impermissible, if one owns a stretch of the creek bank behind one’s house, for someone else to amble alongside that creek. Presumably, I wrote, Thoreau would have qualified as one of the sort of people who would be very liberal, in allowing people to walk along backyard creeks even when this involved their going across houselots, as long as they, in so doing, carried out their own litter. I simply do not see such attitudes as constituting any serious attack, or even any attack at all, upon the institution of private property. It is simply the exploration of a gray area of the law in which we are all expected to make use of 1.) good common sense and 2.) neighborly good naturedness. I proceeded to mention that there were attacks upon the freedom of private property in Thoreau’s day, and Thoreau was one of the people who were making such attacks. He was an abolitionist, which is to say, he wanted to utterly abolish and forbid people’s freedom to have property in other people. By way of radical contrast, this, this was indeed a serious attack, and was considered at the time to be a serious attack, upon the institution of private property. There were people during his era who were going absolutely apeshit about their absolute freedom to have property in as many other human beings as they could afford. Some of these people lived right there in Concord, Massachusetts. (The apeshit arguments that were in the 19th Century being deployed by these slaveowning Americans have been pirated and copied, without the courtesy of attribution, by a bunch of Americans arguing even today, even in this enlightened 20th Century, such as for one fine example that posse-comitatus cowboy Clive Bundy who is letting his cattle graze free on the public land, while he protects himself behind a line of Aryan Nation goons with telescopic rifles, and while he spouts his racist claptrap about black Americans being obviously, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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inherently inferior to white Americans.)

On another discussion list, a scholarly moderated one, I proceeded to mention, there had been a recent discussion of the uses of the terms “freedom” and “liberty” during the 19th Century. The question approached has been, were these terms then being used as synonymous with each other, or not? You may have seen this discussion even being reported upon in an article in the New York Times. The general consensus we reached on that list was that during the 19th Century these words “freedom” and “liberty” were being used more or less interchangeably, or as mere synonyms. My suggestion in that discussion had been that since they were then being used as synonyms, we should now exercise our creativity, by formulating a new real distinction between the two terms. My proposal would be that we now should begin to restrict the term “liberty” to 19th-Century usages such as the slavemaster Patrick Henry’s famous shout in the Virginia House of Burgesses, “Give me Liberty or give me Death!” (What Mr. Henry-The-Freedom-Fighter, Esq. meant was “either I get to own other human beings, or, I’ll kill any SOB who gets in my way.”) We should now restrict the term “liberty” to that sort of usage, and reserve the word “freedom” for a more modern world in which we all understand that unless and until everyone is free, no-one is free. Yes indeed, I wrote, it is correct that “secure ownership of property is an integral part of being free.” However, I added, this happens not to be the only integral part of being free. There are in fact other integral parts of being free, and these other integral parts of being free are also things which we cannot and should not do without. Thoreau, I opinioned, was one HDT WHAT? INDEX

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who chose to place his focus upon these other integral parts of being free. However, placing one’s focus upon these other integral parts of being free, as he did, suggesting as he did that perhaps these other integral parts to being free might be of even greater importance to us than absolutely secure ownership of any and all property in any and in every way, does not, repeat, does not in any sense, I emphasized, constitute any sort of confrontation with the general “duh” proposition that secure ownership of property is also integral to being free. “It just doesn’t,” I orated. To summarize, I pointed out that Robert Frost wrote a poem in which a dubious claim is made that it is good fences that make good neighbors. Such a claim could be better supported if it were a claim that it is good surveying that makes the good fences that make good neighbors. Thoreau was a surveyor, which is to say, his Right Livelihood involved the creation of good neighbors. “A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread” — What kind of work is there that spares innocence, then? Note that the kind of work that Thoreau chose, surveying, involves a kind of community peacekeeping function. Many Quakers of the period, such as Friend Elias Hicks for one fine example, chose surveying as a trade, and they did To be a Christian is to be Christ- like.

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not make such a choice in a vacuum. It is effectively a form of mediation. As a point of information, 19th-Century surveying really was not, from a technical standpoint, all that complex. Thoreau, for instance, made his own equipment with the exception of his compass (does anybody know what the poet Emma Lazarus eventually did with this piece of equipment, where it is now?). The stock in trade of the 19th-Century surveyor was not technical expertise but probity. The key thing that one expected HDT WHAT? INDEX

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from the local surveyors was that they not play favorites, not favor their cronies or their allies — any technical expertise that a surveyor developed was a plus to the job, but the personal rep of probity was its basis. Everybody knew what a good job of surveying was — a good job of surveying was one that kept neighbors out of each other’s hair. A surveyor was a peacekeeper. By paying attention to this particular choice that Thoreau made, we can learn more about what he meant when he discussed Right Livelihood in the abstract.

Over and above all this, there is the issue of the popular impression of Thoreau as being someone who led a lackadaisical, self-absorbed, selfish existence at the expense of others. “Thoreau fascinates even as he fails. Emerson was close to the mark in calling him a modern-day Pan: we readily see Thoreau’s allure, and we may indeed admire him, but in the end he is not to be trusted. He enraptures by imploring us to follow our dreams, to proclaim the primacy of our own interests and pursuits. It’s an enchanting message. However, his exploits may also be variously regarded as cavalier or winsome — and hopelessly selfish. His example is even menacing to those concerned with building community-based values and commitments.” This impression is furthered by an examination of Thoreau’s survey documents as stored at the Concord Free Public Library. This preciously small group of documents is everything a professional surveyor was able to contribute, in a lifetime of work? Well, no! –The fact of the matter is that this collection provides only a decidedly partial glimpse at Thoreau’s work product. In this collection, most of the product of his years of surveying work has gone virtually unmentioned. Viewers of these online documents can say to themselves “Well, that’s all it was?” But no, that’s not all it was. Actually, Thoreau worked hard for a number of years as a surveyor, both in town and out of town, earning his dollar here, his dollar there, by the sweat of his brow.

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

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120 CE

circa 120 CE:In about this year, Hyginus wrote on SURVEYING. “Among those who made use of mathematics in the work of surveying, Hyginus (circa 120), known as Gromaticus (the surveyor), is one of the most prominent. The gromatici were those who used the groma (or gruma), an instrument employed in measuring and laying out the land, and Hyginus was well known as a writer on the subject, although the fragments of his work extant show no mathematical contributions to the science. There was an earlier Hyginus (Gaius Julius Hyginus, a friend of Ovid, and therefore living in the 1st Century BCE), who wrote a work of no merit on astronomy, and who is sometimes confused with his more prominent namesake, the surveyor.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

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1620

An English mathematician, Edmund Gunter,3 developed a 66-foot chain made up of 100 links which would remain the standard surveying instrument until the beginning of the 20th Century, when it would be replaced by a steel tape. (Even today you will see property descriptions given in these 66-foot units.) Each link was fashioned of a piece of wire with loops at the ends and was 7.92 inches in length. The chain had brass handles at the ends. A rod was 25 links, also referred to as a “perch.” A statute mile was 80 of Gunter’s chains; an acre was 10 square chains.4

Also in 1620, logarithmic tables were first published which made it possible to use portable instruments called

3. This is the Gunter who invented the sector, and who introduced the terms cosine and cotangent. 4. Something you have to bear in mind about the practice of surveying is that it is not “high-tech,” but is of necessity a “good- character” occupation. The most desirable trait in a surveyor has always been honesty, and accuracy –although a close second– is definitely secondary to this indifference to the money outcome of a measurement. The purpose of a survey is not to enable a man to make use of a fraction of an inch strip of property that truly belongs to him, but to deter neighbors from murdering one another, and since it is good fences that make good neighbors, for purposes of keeping people away from each other the primary skills the surveyor must employ are frequently those involved in mediation rather than any mere sharpness of eye or brain. An inaccurate survey that two parties accept is inherently far superior to an accurate survey that only one party accepts. Thus the most basic equipment is often quite as good as the most elaborate. In the 19th Century a local surveyor needed a good reputation, perhaps a plane table for ease in calculation of angles, and a decimal chain. From time to time an instrument known as a “circumferentor” would also come in handy: such a circumferentor performed the function of a simple theodolite, and consisted of nothing more than a magnetic compass with arms holding slits for accuracy in sighting along the needle. A surveyor who really felt the need to be fancy could invest in the most rudimentary of theodolites, in order to posture before his customers peering intently into the eyepiece and taking mysterious notes. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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theodolites for the accurate measurement of angles (the instruments in use for angle measurement in astronomy had always been simply too delicate and too cumbersome for use in the field). These topographical instruments had pivoted arms for sighting and could measure vertical angles as well as horizontal angles. Some of them would begin to be constructed with built-in magnetic compasses.

Meanwhile, in a news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: • William Oughtred, another English mathematician, was developing the 1st slide rule.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

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1631

Development of the vernier, a surveying instrument permitting the more accurate reading of angles. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1638

Development of the micrometer microscope, useful in surveying. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1669

Development of telescopic sights, useful in surveying. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1700

At about this time spirit levels were being added to the surveying theodolite.

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

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1720

By about this time the vernier, the micrometer microscope, the telescopic sight, and the spirit level had all been added to the theodolite surveying instrument. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1755

Jonathan Carver joined the colonial militia at the start of the French and Indian War. During the conflict in America he would study surveying and cartographic techniques. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1761

By this point John Jack, the former slave of Benjamin Barron in Concord, having purchased his freedom out of his deceased master’s estate, had also purchased out of this estate “four acres of plow land in the great or common field so-called.” Adjacent to this he also purchased two acres of another party, and eventually he 1 would possess a total of 8 /2 acres. His home was near Merriam’s Corner on a path close to the ridge.

Meanwhile, during this year and the next, a mammoth 3-story, 15-room Georgian Colonial house was being erected at what is now 168 Derby in Salem, the street which also would have in 1819 the Salem Custom House in which Nathaniel Hawthorne eventually would become the supervising Surveyor. This mansion was being erected by Richard Derby for his son Elias Hasket Derby and bride Elizabeth Crowninshield (it is now the oldest surviving brick house in Salem). This Richard Derby who could afford such a wedding present had begun as a captain for the “codfish aristocrats.” It would be Richard’s son John Derby who would carry the first news to England of the fighting at Lexington and Concord between the army and the militia, aboard the Quero which would sail from Salem Harbor on April 26, 1775. This Elias Hasket Derby, who kept his eye on the shipping in the port and had one blue eye and one brown one, would come to be characterized both as King Derby and as the “father of American commerce with India.” The most expensive mansions in America, circa the turn of the 19th Century, would be the mansion of Peter Stuyvesant overlooking the Hudson River, and this codfish mansion in Salem, Massachusetts. These homes would each be listed on the special housing-taxation census of that time at over $30,000.00. Derby had built a large wharf and was trading not only with India but also with China and Russia. By Hawthorne’s day, this merchant would have been succeeded by others –Simon Forrester was the richest– but Salem trade would have for various reasons very much dwindled: there had been disputes with the British navy, the harbor had had silting problems not shared with Boston or New-York, and of course there was a dearth of bulk commodity-transport connections with the interior. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE SCARLET LETTER: In my native town of Salem, at the head of what, half a century ago, in the days of old King Derby, was a bustling wharf – but which is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps, a bark or brig, half-way down its melancholy length, discharging hides; or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia schooner, pitching out her cargo of firewood – at the head, I say, of this dilapidated wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which, at the base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the track of many languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass – here, with a view from its front windows adown this not very enlivening prospect, and thence across the harbour, stands a spacious edifice of brick. From the loftiest point of its roof, during precisely three and a half hours of each forenoon, floats or droops, in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic; but with the thirteen stripes turned vertically, instead of horizontally, and thus indicating that a civil, and not a military, post of Uncle Sam’s government, is here established. Its front is ornamented with a portico of half-a-dozen wooden pillars, supporting a balcony, beneath which a flight of wide granite steps descends towards the street. Over the entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens careful of their safety against intruding on the premises which she overshadows with her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as she looks, many people are seeking at this very moment to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an eiderdown pillow. But she has no great tenderness even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later – oftener soon than late – is apt to fling off her nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed arrows.

What was the big difference between these two New England homeowners, John Jack and King Derby? Well, as a first approximation — one was poor and the other white. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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James Watt became a surveyor. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1771

Stadia hair calibrations, useful in accurately and conveniently determining the distance from the theodolite to the surveying staff, were applied to the surveying telescope by James Watt:

old sight, with 1771, with crosshairs added stadia hairs

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

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1775

At about this period the circle-dividing engine came into general use in surveying, making it possible to calculate degrees with portable instruments with far greater accuracy than had previously been obtained. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1786

April 15, Saturday: In Newport, Rhode Island, Walter Channing was born to William Channing and Lucy Ellery Channing. His father, a Princetonian, was a federal district attorney. His maternal grandfather William Ellery, a Harvard man, had signed our Declaration of Independence. His older brother, the Reverend William Ellery Channing, would be the minister of the Federal Street Church in Boston from 1803 to 1842. His younger brother, Edward Tyrell Channing, would become the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard College, succeeding John Quincy Adams as that young man left academia for his career in diplomacy and politics. In 1804 Walter Channing would enter Harvard College and among his classmates would be a 1st cousin, Richard Henry Dana, who after a hiatus for a few years before the mast, would also be at Harvard at the same time as Henry David Thoreau. In 1807 students at the College would go on a rampage, and in 1808 Walter’s bachelor’s degree would be withheld as punishment (he would receive the degree — but not until 1867). In 1809 Walter would obtain the M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, and after that he would study for three years in Europe to return to Boston in 1812 to take up a practice in obstetrics. Even without the bachelor’s diploma, Doctor Walter Channing would become professor of Obstetrics and Medical Jurisprudence at Harvard Medical School.

Friend Elias Hicks surveyed the land laid out to Richard Willits east of highway leading from Jericho, New York to the plains.

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

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1789

March 27, Friday: Survey of the woodland belonging to David Seaman and Friend Elias Hicks. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1793

March: Survey of land of Friend Elias Hicks on the highway from Jericho to Jerusalem. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1795

April 27, Monday: Friend Elias Hicks surveyed the land of Thomas Titus and land he was selling to Samuel Titus. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1796

May 4, Wednesday: Friend Elias Hicks surveyed the land of Thomas Titus and John Titus.

Horace Mann, Sr. was born.5

June 10, Friday/11, Saturday: Friend Elias Hicks surveyed the land of William Simonson.

5. (You’re supposed to understand that he wasn’t called “Sr.” when he was born.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1800

Here is a box containing a compass and magnet used for surveying, in Worthington, Ohio during this period:

(This is what we may fancy that Thoreau’s surveying compass may have looked like, the one that Waldo Emerson would later present to the visiting poet Emma Lazarus and that has not since been located.)

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

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1804

6th month 5th, 3d day (Tuesday): Friend Elias Hicks surveyed Thomas Pearsall’s land.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3 day afternoon 5 of 6 M 1804 / The business of the day nearly concluded, & feeling my mind at this time drawn to insert a few lines, that when the Years of Age & pain shall come upon me, I may know, or be enabled to remember, how my youthful days have been spent. I think it safe to say that my mind is at present preserved under a good degree of thankfulness for the many favors which I daily receive from the bountiful hand of an allwise & Merciful God. & may my conduct tho’ the slippery paths of youth be such as to insure peace when time shall draw me to a close in this life, for this my spirit is often fervantly engaged in mental prayer. & that I may be preserved in patience if trials ever so sharp should be permitted to attend me & not give way to a distrust of that Arm which hath hither to helped me & kept me from the grocer [sic] evils & temptations which Surround Youthful Minds.— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1805

June 17, Monday: Friend Elias Hicks surveyed the land of Daniel Parish in Oyster Bay. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1813

President James Monroe appointed surveyor Andrew Ellicott as professor of mathematics at West Point Military Academy.

The “Walton War,” a boundary dispute over a piece of the Cherokee territory referred to as the “Orphan Strip” and unwanted by South Carolina, had been fought between residents of Georgia and North Carolina. In anger, a constable had been murdered. The North Carolina militia had won two battles, and there had been casualties. Then there had been mediation, and an actual independent survey of this real estate — and Georgia lost again.

Now they’ve inscribed a boulder, in hope that this sort of foofaraw won’t happen again.

In the southwest part of Lincoln, Massachusetts, in this same year, a pine stump on the side of a hill was being designated as a landmark in the construction of a deed. Almost half a century later, on April 5, 1859 while surveying a woodlot, Henry Thoreau would be able to base his lot lines on what still remained, of that old pine stump:

April 5, 1859: In running a line through a wood-lot in the southwest part of Lincoln to-day, I started from an old pine stump, now mostly crumbled away, though a part of the wood was still hard above ground, which was described in his deed of 1813 (forty-six years ago) as a pine stump. It was on the side of a hill above Deacon Farrar’s meadow. As I stood on a hill just cut off, I saw, half a dozen rods below, the bright-yellow catkins of a tall willow just opened on the edge of the swamp, against the dark-brown twigs and the withered leaves. This early blossom looks bright and rare amid the withered leaves and the generally brown and dry surface, like the early butterflies. This is the most conspicuous of the March flowers (i.e. if it chances to be so early as March). It suggests unthought-of warmth and sunniness. It takes but little color and tender growth to make miles of dry brown HDT WHAT? INDEX

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woodland and swamp look habitable and home-like, as if a man could dwell there. Mr. Haines, who travelled over the lots with us this very cold and blustering day, was over eighty. “What raw, blustering weather!” said I to my employer to-day. “Yes,” answered he. “Did you see those two sun- dogs on Saturday?” They are a pretty sure sign of cold and windy weather. SUDBURY “HEAVY” HAYNES HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1819

January 5, Tuesday: A contract with Johann Nepomuk Hummel, appointing him as kapellmeister to the Grand Duke Carl August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, was submitted to the duke for his approval.

Cyrus Hubbard of Concord surveyed a plot in the northern part of Lincoln. The Hubbard survey borders on Flint’s or Sandy Pond and shows adjoining owners Joshua Reed, Timothy Brooks, and the Widow Calvin Wright:

(In a number of cases Henry Thoreau’s surveying work began with one of these previous surveys by one or another previous Concord surveyor — Hubbard would be described in Thoreau’s Journal for December 1, 1856: “I see the old pale-faced farmer out again on his sled now for the five-thousandth time, --Cyrus Hubbard, a man of a certain New England probity and worth, immortal and natural, like a natural product, like the sweetness of a nut, like the toughness of hickory.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1829

Rufus Hosmer of Stow became a Director of the Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance Company, replacing Joshua Page of Bedford. The Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance Company was incorporated March 3, and organized March 29, 1826. The Hon. Abiel Heywood was chosen President, and the Hon. Nathan Brooks, Secretary and Treasurer, who, with John Keyes, Daniel Shattuck, Elias Phinney of Lexington, and Daniel Richardson of Tyngsborough, have since been Directors. The other directors have been Samuel Burr, 1826 to 1830; Josiah Davis, from 1830; Micah M. Rutter of East Sudbury, 1826 to 1828; Joshua Page of Bedford, 1826 to 1829; Rufus Hosmer of Stow, from 1829; and Charles Merriam of Weston, from 1830. The first policy was issued May 17, 1826; and the following table will show the amount of business in this excellent institution since that time.6

Year Policies Insured Premium Notes Losses

1827 440 $801,247 $41,276.41 $650.00

1828 226 $387,871 $22,177.47 $100.00

1829 406 $645,673 $37,774.13 $857.74

1830 590 $857,700 $53,173.80 $2,924.50

1831 499 $646,279 $39,954.01 $1,452.53

1832 508 $708,064 $45,184.85 $3,150.75

The boundary-lines of Concord were surveyed, and marker stones placed at each of the many angles in this boundary.

THE Court-House in Concord lies, north 58¼° west, distant 15 miles 285 rods in a straight line from the City Hall in Boston, 16m. 40r. by the turnpike, 17m. 212r. through Lexington and 20m. 188r. through Waltham. Bedford bears from Concord north 62° east, distant 3m. 276r. in a straight line, and 5m. 32r. by the road; Lexington, south 78° east, 5m. 296r., and by the road 6m. 163r.; Lincoln, 4m. 77r. by the road; East Sudbury, south 12-1/ 2° west, 6m. 201r., and by the road 8m. 201r.; Harvard College, 6. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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south 56¾° east, 12m. 207r., and East-Cambridge court-house, 14m. 250r [Hale’s SURVEY OF BOSTON AND ITS VICINITY. pp. 69-71]. Concord lies 13 miles from Lowell, 18 from Groton and 30 from Worcester. Concord is bounded on the southwest by Sudbury, by a line running from “bound rock,” near Concord River, north 55° west, 1178r. to Acton corner, near Joseph Hayward’s; thence westerly on Acton by a straight line, running 35° east, 1656r. to Carlisle corner, near Paul Dudley’s; thence northerly on Carlisle by a line having 28 angles. Southerly it is bounded on Lincoln, by a line beginning at bound rock before mentioned and running with the river to the mouth of Well Meadow Brook, and thence by a line having fourteen angles to Bedford line; thence on Bedford by a line having thirteen angles to Concord River and by Concord River to Carlisle bounds. These lines, giving to the town an exceedingly irregular shape, were surveyed in 1829, and stone bounds put up at all the angles.7

January 15, Thursday: David Lee Child was found guilty before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts of the charge that had been brought against him by State Senator John Keyes of Concord, that while the senator was running for reelection and while he was the editor of the Massachusetts Journal he had falsely, scandalously, and maliciously libeled this senator by accusing him of having participated in his previous term in the illegal award of an state contract for printing services. The criminal journalist, Child, was sentenced to prison, and appealed.

Giacomo Meyerbeer met with Alexander von Humboldt in Paris. The composer wanted Humboldt to bring a message to King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia when he traveled to Berlin. His message was to apologize that Robert le diable had not yet been produced in Berlin because it had taken two years to get it produced in Paris. Meyerbeer promised it to the king as the 1st production after Paris.

The topographical duties to which 1st Lieutenant, Corps of Artillery James Duncan Graham had been assigned were coming at this point to be recognized as an occupational specialty. He was brevetted as a captain to become a staff-assistant to the topographical engineer, so that he might enter the US Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers and participate in government surveys in Vermont.

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1831

During this year and the following one 1st Lieutenant, Corps of Artillery James Duncan Graham would be engaged in railroad surveys in Virginia.

In its unrelenting quest for excellence the West Point Foundry created a two-headed locomotive named the South Carolina which looked like a monster and was a monster, and which clung to its repair shed as to a mother’s breast. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1834

May: Loammi Baldwin II prepared his second map of the Concord and Sudbury Rivers, on behalf of the Middlesex Canal Corporation, from East Sudbury to Billerica.8

8. The map was actually drawn by B.F. Perham. This was the map which would be checked by Thoreau in July 1859 and then used in January 1860 in the preparation of the River Meadow Association’s lawsuit against the Middlesex Canal Corporation before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, for elevating the waters of the river system above the dams which fed water into the canal in such manner as to damage the river meadows. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1836

During this year and the following one 1st Lieutenant, Corps of Artillery James Duncan Graham would be engaged in railroad surveys in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. HISTORY OF RR HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1839

Major James Duncan Graham of the US Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers was sent on a tour of inspection of harbor improvements on Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain. Then, during this year and into the following one, he would be serving as astronomer for a surveying party that, in behalf of the United States, was taxed to establish a boundary-line between the United States of America and the new Republic of Texas.

Benjamin Lundy, who had been defeated in all his plans to establish colonies for manumitted US slaves in Mexico, died.9

John Niles, in his HISTORY OF SOUTH AMERICA AND MEXICO (Hartford CT: H. Huntington), characterized the abolition of slavery by Mexico a decade earlier as having been a “hazardous experiment.” US Senator Niles argued that Spanish methods of colonization, in particular the practice of amalgamation with indigenous peoples, produced a deterioration in innate intelligence levels and in the ability to practice democracy. He predicted that if this racially degenerative trend were to continue no Mexican republic could possibly succeed. To be right you gotta be white.

9. A.M. Shotwell. BENJAMIN LUNDY. (Lansing MI: Robert Smith Printing Company, 1897), page 9. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1840

Major James Duncan Graham of the US Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers was appointed commissioner for the survey and exploration of the northeast boundary of the United States, to serve along the Maine and New York frontiers (this would occupy him until 1843).

Salma Hale would serve as the secretary to the commission appointed under the Treaty of Ghent for determining the northeastern boundary line of the United States.

William Chapman Hewitson moved from Newcastle to Bristol, where he would be employed as a surveyor10 under George Stephenson on the railway between Bristol and Exeter (he would soon relocate to Haaverstock Hill in Hampstead, and finally he would come to reside at Oatlands in Surrey).

The first public schools opened in North Carolina, based on a plan that had been drafted in 1817.The new State Capitol was completed. This was a railroad train, in Wilmington:

10. This railway surveying was precarious since, due to extreme opposition by local landed proprietors, much of it needed to be done at night by torchlight. Stevenson employed men to frequent the local taverns and report when the local land guards were off duty, and much of the levelling work for the railroad right of way would be being performed surreptitiously while these guards were in their cups. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1843

In this year and the following one, Canada’s 1st precise traverse was being run by Captain W.F.W. Owen on the frozen Saint John River. From this year into 1845, a survey of the boundary between Québec and the USA would be being made. CARTOGRAPHY

Major James Duncan Graham of the US Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers was ordered to duty as “Head of the Scientific Corps and Principal Astronomer” to, under the terms of the Treaty of Washington, represent the United States of America in the joint demarcation of the boundary between the United States and the British provinces (this would keep him well out of harm’s way during the entire War on Mexico).

Publication of a book that would be consulted by Henry Thoreau and resourced for his “A YANKEE IN CANADA” and his CAPE COD, VOYAGES DE DÉCOUVERTE AU CANADA, ENTRE LES ANNÉES 1534 ET 1542, PAR JACQUES QUARTIER, LE SIEUR DE ROBERVAL, JEAN ALPHONSE DE XANCTOIGNE, ETC. SUIVIS DE LA DESCRIPTION DE QUÉBEC ET DE SES ENVIRONS EN 1608, ET DE DIVERS EXTRAITS RELATIVEMENT AU LIEU DE L’HIVERNEMENT DE JACQUES QUARTIER EN 1535-36 (Quebec: Société littéraire et historique de Québec, imprimé chez W. Cowan et fils).11 READ THIS VOLUME

In this year Charles Whitney surveyed the City of Roxbury by order of its town authorities and created a 34 inch by 25 inch engraving on a scale of eighty rods (1,320 feet) to the inch. This engraving includes views of the city hall and of 15 of the city meeting-houses.

11. The person we now call “Jacques Cartier” (1491-1557) was being referred to at that time as “Quartier.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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CAPE COD: Even as late as 1633 we find Winthrop, the first Governor of the Massachusetts Colony, who was not the most likely to be misinformed, who, moreover, has the fame, at least, of having discovered Wachusett Mountain (discerned it forty miles inland), talking about the “Great Lake” and the “hideous swamps about it,” near which the Connecticut and the “Potomack” took their rise; and among the memorable events of the year 1642 he chronicles Darby Field, an Irishman’s expedition to the “White hill,” from whose top he saw eastward what he “judged to be the Gulf of Canada,” and westward what he “judged to be the great lake which Canada River comes out of,” and where he found much “Muscovy glass,” and “could rive out pieces of forty feet long and seven or eight broad.” While the very inhabitants of New England were thus fabling about the country a hundred miles inland, which was a terra incognita to them, —or rather many years before the earliest date referred to,— Champlain, the first Governor of CHAMPLAIN Canada, not to mention the inland discoveries of Cartier, Roberval, and others, of the preceding century, and his own earlier voyage, had already gone to war against the Iroquois in their forest forts, and penetrated to the Great Lakes and wintered there, before a Pilgrim had heard of New England. In Champlain’s “Voyages,” printed in 1613, there is a plate representing a fight in which he aided the Canada Indians against the Iroquois, near the south end of Lake Champlain, in July, 1609, eleven years before the settlement of Plymouth. Bancroft says he joined the Algonquins in an expedition against the Iroquois, or Five Nations, in the northwest of New York. This is that “Great Lake,” which the English, hearing some rumor of from the French, long after, locate in an “Imaginary Province called Laconia, and spent several years about 1630 in the vain attempt to discover.” (Sir GORGES Ferdinand Gorges, in Maine Hist. Coll., Vol. II. p. 68.) Thomas Morton has a chapter on this “Great Lake.” In the edition of Champlain’s map dated 1632, the Falls of Niagara appear; and in a great lake northwest of Mer Douce (Lake Huron) there is an island represented, over which is written, “Isle ou il y une mine de cuivre,” - “Island where there is a mine of copper.” This will do for an offset to our Governor’s “Muscovy Glass.” Of all these adventures and discoveries we have a minute and faithful account, giving facts and dates as well as charts and soundings, all scientific and Frenchman-like, with scarcely one fable or traveller’s story. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1844

Late September: Late in the month Waldo Emerson paid $8.10 per acre for Thomas Wyman’s farmed-out pasture of “eleven acres more or less” behind the poorfarm on the road to Walden Pond. The pasture, which had been logged over but had not been farmed for sixteen years, was overgrown but was more or less level.12 There wasn’t, of course, a whole lot of shade — the area was relatively open. According to a letter written by Waldo to his brother William on October 4th, he had paid $8.10 an acre for this 11-acre plot near Walden Pond when he had met some men walking in the woods (I suppose the similarity between the name “Waldo” and the name “Walden” cannot have been overlooked by Waldo, however little he knew about the history of religious dissent on the European subcontinent). The next day he had gone back, he told his brother, with some “well beloved gossips” and they persuaded him to pay $125.00 for about 3 more acres of pine grove from Heartwell Bigelow to protect his investment by preventing these nearby trees from being logged. This became, of course, the land on which Henry Thoreau built his shanty when he made his agreement to clear the pasture of brambles and turn it into a beanfield, but at the time its owner had other plans for it:13

... so am landlord and waterlord of 14 acres, more or less, on the shore of Walden, & can raise my own blackberries.... I may build me a cabin or a turret there high as the treetops and spend my nights as well as my days in the midst of a beauty which never fades for me.

THE BEANFIELD TIMELINE OF WALDEN Brad Dean indicated that “Sometime later that month Thoreau apparently negotiated with Emerson for the right to squat on the Wyman lot and there conduct his ‘experiment of living.’ Emerson’s permission was apparently attended with two provisos: that the small house Thoreau planned to build would become Emerson’s after Thoreau’s tenancy, and that Thoreau would clear and plant the cultivatable portion of the lot.”

12. This land is now near the intersection of Route 2 and Route 126. 13. Later, when Emerson wrote a will, he had willed this woodlot to Thoreau, but since Thoreau was already twenty years dead by the time Emerson died, the property was retained in the family. Eventually, in 1922, the family would sign the lot on the pond over to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1845

December 18: Thoreau surveyed a woodlot and made a farm plan for the Misses Hosmer.

The Hosmer Home

We do not have this survey. All we have is the signed receipt from the Misses Hosmer. View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys beginning with his survey of Walden Pond through the ice in 1846, and continuing with the Field Notes book that he began in 1849 when he did a survey for Isaac Watts, courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

Waldo Emerson lectured in Boston. This was the 2d lecture of the 7-lecture series “Representative Man”: Plato, or the Philosopher. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1846

Waldo Emerson asked Henry Thoreau to add a chimney to the Emerson barn, as part of creating a schoolroom and sleeping chamber for Sophia Foord while she was tutoring the Emerson and Alcott children.

Thoreau surveyed Walden Pond, indicating Bare Peak, Wooded Peak, Sandbar, and the site of his shanty. The area of the pond is listed as 61 acres and 3 rods, its circumference as 1.7 miles, its greatest length as 175½ rods, and its greatest depth as 102 feet. The Concord Free Public Library now has three copies of this. It is the plot which he would have tipped into his bound volume of his lyceum lectures, WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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WOODS, between pages 285 and 287 (per the current Princeton numbering).

TIMELINE OF WALDEN

There’s an interesting little factoid about this survey being tipped into the WALDEN volume. It wasn’t all that usual, in this time period, for books to be illustrated in such a manner! Such an inclusion, in the period, amounted to “multimedia high tech”! –Take a moment and think about that!14 Most of the works published by Ticknor and Fields during the 1840s and 1850s were not illustrated in any way, but illustrations did play an important role in some. Two groups of publications from the 1850s are especially notable for their illustrations — juvenile works and literary works by the firm’s most respected authors. The more lavishly illustrated were juvenile works, which might contain as many as twelve relief wood engravings, while many literary works were regularly issued with an expensive intaglio steel-engraved frontispiece portrait. The illustrations in juveniles were usually based on the text and made the work more vivid and appealing to a young audience, whereas the portrait frontispieces in the second group 14. Winship, Michael. AMERICAN LITERARY PUBLISHING IN THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY: THE BUSINESS OF TICKNOR AND FIELDS. Cambridge, England; NY: Cambridge UP, 1995. (Take a moment and reflect, however, that in 1789 the Reverend Gilbert White had used a pond survey as an illustration in his THE NATURAL HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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served to dignify and assert the literary merit of the works they produced. Other works published by the firm during these decades were also illustrated or decorated in some way. These included textbooks: the two primary school readers by Josiah F. Bumstead each had an inserted woodcut frontispiece; and the first part of Thomas H. Palmer’s THE MORAL INSTRUCTOR had small vignettes and type ornaments printed throughout the text. Several scientific and medical works —such as Wendell Phillips’s AN ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON MINERALOGY and J. Mason Warren’s edition of Walter H. Walshe’s THE ANATOMY, PHYSIOLOGY, PATHOLOGY, AND TREATMENT OF CANCER— depended on the illustrations to transmit information. In addition, a number of the firm’s literary works, especially poetry, were pleasantly decorated with small vignettes or type ornaments. Longfellow’s THE GOLDEN LEGEND had a single small vignette of a cross, designed by Hammatt Billings, on the title page; Oliver W. Holmes’s POEMS and Richard H. Stoddard’s SONGS OF SUMMER have numerous decorative vignettes and ornamental head- or tailpieces throughout the text. The illustrations and decorations in the publications of Ticknor and Fields were reproduced by three methods. The most common used blocks produced in relief. Small vignettes and ornaments produced by this method were printed with the text, as occasionally were full-page illustrations, but more commonly relief wood engravings were printed on separate leaves and inserted during binding. The portrait frontispieces in the firm’s literary works were produced by a second method, using intaglio metal plates. Intaglio printing is done on a rolling press, separately from the text, and these frontispieces were always printed on inserted leaves. Illustrations reproduced by a third method, lithography, appeared only rarely in works published by Ticknor and Fields before 1860. In the 1840s lithography was used for the technical illustrations in a few medical and scientific works published by the firm, and in the 1850s only the engraved map in Henry D. Thoreau’s WALDEN and the illuminated paper wrapper used on some copies of William H.C. Hosmer’s THE MONTHS —a commission work— were lithographed. Again, lithographic illustrations were printed separately from the text on a special press and inserted during binding. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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That is worth repeating. In the 1850s only the engraved map in WALDEN and the illuminated paper wrapper used on some copies of one other book were lithographed! Such lithography was at that point the very high-tech cutting edge of publication technology. It was, in that period, everything that multimedia amounted to. We might miss such a fact nowadays, if it were not forcefully brought to our attention, but what a novel thing that survey map of Walden Pond tipped into the volume actually was! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/133a.htm

WALDEN: One afternoon I amused myself by watching a barred owl (Strix nebulosa) sitting on one of the lower dead limbs of a white- pine, close to the trunk, in broad daylight, I standing within a rod of him. He could hear me when I moved and cronched the snow with my feet, but could not plainly see me. When I made most noise he would stretch out his neck, and erect his neck feathers, and open his eyes wide; but their lids soon fell again, and he began to nod. I too felt a slumberous influence after watching him half an hour, as he sat thus with his eyes half open, like a cat, winged brother of the cat. There was only a narrow slit left between CAT their lids, by which he preserved a peninsular relation to me; thus, with half-shut eyes, looking out from the land of dreams, and endeavoring to realize me, vague object or mote that interrupted his visions. At length, on some louder noise or my nearer approach, he would grow uneasy and sluggishly turn about on his perch, as if impatient at having his dreams disturbed; and when he launched himself off and flapped through the pines, spreading his wings to unexpected breadth, I could not hear the slightest sound from them. Thus, guided amid the pine boughs rather by a delicate sense of their neighborhood than by sight, feeling his twilight way as it were with his sensitive pinions, he found a new perch, where he might in peace await the dawning of his day. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Publication of a new collection of William Cullen Bryant’s poems, illustrated. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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(Here is an illustration of the poet, weary of trying to find another rhyme for “moon” and “June.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1847

The surveying text in Henry Thoreau’s library was the 15th edition, revised, of Professor Charles Davies, LL.D.’s ELEMENTS OF SURVEYING, AND NAVIGATION; WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE INSTRUMENTS AND THE NECESSARY TABLES (New York: A.S. Barnes & Co., No. 51 John Street, 1847; 359 pages). This copy is presently in the rare books collection of the Concord Free Public Library. Google Books has provided electronic text of this 15th edition but in a printing dated the previous year — presumably this would have been identical except for the date on the cover page. CHARLES DAVIES, LL.D.

Accession No. 10439: Signature of Henry D. Thoreau on t.p. Extensive pencil annotations on back lining leaf. Presented by Sophia E. Thoreau, 1874. Bound in calf; black spine label.

This was one of the most widely used books on surveying during the middle of the 19th century and Thoreau annotated his copy with notes from William Galbraith’s MATHEMATICAL AND ASTRONOMICAL TABLES on particular mathematical problems. In his journal entry of June 9, 1850 he would list nine books recommended by Galbraith in regard to magnetic variation in compass needles. Thoreau’s awareness of the importance of magnetic variation is clear from his advertising broadside, on which he indicates that he notes the variation of the compass in order that his survey can be verified by others. During the early 1850s he makes references in his journal and field notebooks to books and articles on this subject, and to observations he was making of compass needle variations in the vicinity of Concord.15

15. For a listing of the various surveying books used in the 19th Century in America, refer to: THE UZES LIST OF BOOKS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1848

Lewis Cass resigned from the Senate in order to run as the Democratic candidate for President of the United States. His running mate would be the Kentucky slavemaster William Orlando Butler (a “balanced” ticket, in those years, for the Democratic Party, was constituted of one southern slavemaster and one northern slavery- sympathizer). As a self-described “northern man with southern principles,” he would become a leading proponent of a Doctrine of Popular Sovereignty which left it up to the voters of a territory to determine whether or not human enslavement would be there permitted. He would support the annexation of Texas. This Democratic ticket would cause the desertion of many antislavery Democrats, and the election would be lost to the popular slaveholding general Zachary Taylor.

Disgusted by the Whig nomination of a slaveholding Mexican-War general for President of the United States, Squire Samuel Hoar and his oldest son Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar bolted the party and joined the new movement termed the “Free Soil” party. Rockwood coined the phrase “Conscience Whig.” This Free Soil Party, which had come to be composed of radical Whigs, Liberty Party men, and Van Buren Democrats, decided to support Martin Van Buren of New York for President. The outcome of the election would be that HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Van Buren would come in second to the Whig candidate, with the Democrat candidate a distant third. This was the year, according to Arnold Toynbee, in which “history failed to turn.” Obviously this megahistorian (macromegalomaniac?) wasn’t looking in the right place for, in Concord, Henry Thoreau took his initial surveying job, to help his family recover from a financial crisis caused by an industrial fire.

Breveted Lieutenant-Colonel James Duncan Graham of the US Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers was assigned to renew some maps of the Boundary Survey that had been destroyed by fire (this would occupy him into 1850, and then between 1852 and 1853).

Waldo Emerson wrote, in his Journal,

Henry Thoreau is like the woodgod who solicits the wandering poet & draws him into antres vast & desarts idle, & bereaves him of his memory, & leaves him naked, plaiting vines & with twigs in his hand. Very seductive are the first steps from the town to the woods, but the End is want & madness.

A New Hampshire man, John Parker Hale, got elected to the US Senate because he was an abolitionist — definitely a first in American politics.

A southern actor named John Wilkes Booth would later take a fancy to his daughter Bessie Lambert Hale, probably while studying out ways to get close enough to the family to kidnap or execute this New Hampshire

abolitionist senator and Free Soil Party presidential candidate. When Booth would be trapped in a burning tobacco barn outside Washington DC and killed after having assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theater, he would be found to have been still carrying in his pocket this daughter’s picture. –But we are getting ahead of our story, for at this point, in 1848, this “Wilkes,” as he liked to be called, was still but a lad of ten HDT WHAT? INDEX

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years of age. In this year he is reported to have been musing as follows: Of the Seven Wonders of the World, can you imagine how famous a man might be who could pull down the Colossus of Rhodes?16

December 16, day: Cyrus Hubbard surveyed Waldo Emerson’s 13 acre 80 rod woodlot near Walden Pond (Henry Thoreau would re-survey this lot for Emerson in December 1857).

On the following screens, for your interest, is depicted one of the records of this Concord surveyor’s local work (in a number of cases Thoreau’s surveying work began with one of these previous surveys by a previous Concord surveyor):

16. In real life, the Colossus statue erected in 275 BCE at the entrance to the harbor of Rhodes had been toppled by a mundane earthquake in 224 BCE. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1849

The Union Turnpike Company was established to build and maintain a road from Washington to Brookeville (today’s Georgia Avenue); Subscription library formed at Brookeville; Pannings along stream on Brooke Meadow farm triggered Sandy Spring’s largest gold strike and gave name to road.

The 1st legislation to govern the profession of land surveying in the Province of Canada was enacted. It changed the status of land surveyors from direct servants of the Crown, in the capacity of deputies of the surveyor general, to independent professionals responsible for their own actions. Hereafter surveyors in the Province of Canada would be identified as “provincial land surveyors” and would be entitled to add “PLS” after their names. In due course the other provinces would pass similar acts.

During this year and the following one Breveted Lieutenant-Colonel James Duncan Graham of the US Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers labored on a re-survey of the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland, that had originally been established by Mason and Dixon. CARTOGRAPHY

1 The 9 inch by 6 /4 inch “New and Accurate Plan of the Town of Boston in New England” first prepared in 1784 was re-engraved in this year for an edition of the narrative of the Boston Massacre. In this year, also, Charles Whitney revised his survey of the City of Roxbury and modified his 34 inch by 25 inch engraving plan of that municipality. In this year, also, Frothingham’s SIEGE OF BOSTON reprinted an 18 inch by 12 inch drawing which had been made of the 1775 military entrenchments of Boston by a Lieutenant Page of the English Corps of Engineers, first printed in London in 1777.

MAPS OF BOSTON

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

Surveying “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 23, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed a sawmill woodlot in Lincoln near Sandy Pond Road leading to Flint’s Pond. Thoreau enticed Waldo Emerson to buy this land by taking him to a water-fall and rare flowers. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Fall: Henry Thoreau noticed, in TOPOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD, AUGUST 20, 1792. PRESENTED BY WILLIAM JONES, STUDENT OF HARVARD COLLEGE, a story about a curiously situated landmark:

CONCORD’S TOPOGRAPHY

This may have had something to do with the life detail that it was in this timeframe that Thoreau was beginning to keep a separate notebook for surveying (or, maybe not). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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He would use this in WALDEN:

WALDEN: Since the woodcutters, and the railroad, and I myself have PEOPLE OF profaned Walden, perhaps the most attractive, if not the most beautiful, of all our lakes, the gem of the woods, is White Pond; –a poor name from WALDEN its commonness, whether derived from the remarkable purity of its waters or the color of its sands. In these as in other respects, however, it is a lesser twin of Walden. They are so much alike that you would say they must be connected under ground. It has the same stony shore, and its waters are of the same hue. As at Walden, in sultry dog-day weather, looking down through the woods on some of its bays which are not so deep but that the reflection from the bottom tinges them, its waters are of a misty bluish-green or glaucous color. Many years since I used to go there to collect the sand by cart-loads, to make sand-paper with, and I have continued to visit it ever since. One who frequents it proposes to call it Virid Lake. Perhaps it might be called Yellow-Pine Lake, from the following circumstance. About fifteen years ago you could see the top of a pitch-pine, of the kind called yellow-pine hereabouts, though it is not a distinct species, projecting above the surface in deep water, many rods from the shore. It was even supposed by some that the pond had sunk, and this was one of the primitive forest that had formerly stood there. I find that even so long ago as 1792, in a “Topographical Description of the Town of Concord,” by one of its citizens, in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the author, after speaking of Walden and White Ponds, adds: “In the middle of the latter may be seen, when the water is very low, a tree which appears as if it grew in the place where it now stands, although the roots are fifty feet below the surface of the water; the top of this tree is broken off, and at that place measures fourteen inches in diameter.” In the spring of ’49 I talked with the man who lives nearest the pond in Sudbury, who told me that it was he who got out this tree ten or fifteen years before. As near as he could remember, it stood twelve or fifteen rods from the shore, where the water was thirty or forty feet deep. It was in the winter, and he had been getting out ice in the forenoon, and had resolved that in the afternoon, with the aid of his neighbors, he would take out the old yellow-pine. He sawed a channel in the ice toward the shore, and hauled it over and along and out on to the ice with oxen; but, before he had gone far in his work, he was surprised to find that it was wrong end upward, with the stumps of the branches pointing down, and the small end firmly fastened in the sandy bottom. It was about a foot in diameter at the big end, and he had expected to get a good saw-log, but it was so rotten as to be fit only for fuel, if for that. He had some of it in his shed then. There were marks of an axe and of woodpeckers on the but. He thought that it might have been a dead tree on the shore, but was finally blown over into the pond, and after the top had become waterlogged, while the but-end was still dry and light, had drifted out and sunk wrong end up. His father, eighty years old, could not remember when it was not there.

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November: Thomas Carlyle began writing a tract “Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question,” which would eventually find publication in Fraser’s Magazine.

THOMAS CARLYLE

(The title the magazine would use, “The Negro Question,” would be less outrageous, but the idea itself was outrageous from the get-go: Blacks, who are inherently inferior, are to be forced to labor and must be prepared accept whatever recompense their white and comely overlords see fit to provide.)

Betsey, Frederick Douglass’s grandmother, died.

Henry Thoreau surveyed a farm on Lexington Road belonging to Isaac Watts.17 The farm stretched from Lexington Road across the field to Cambridge Turnpike and then to the Mill Brook and Thoreau divided the woods on the hill behind and northeast of the house into 52 woodlots. Marcia Moss believed this was the first survey Thoreau recorded in his Field Notes book. It shows the location of land belonging to Sexton, George Heywood, C.B. Davis, Cyrus Warren, Shannon, Richard Messer, John B. Moore, and the surroundings. Thoreau’s journal for October 4, 1857 indicates that he seriously injured himself one day while building a woodshed on this land.

“I think that it was the woods back of the old Kettell place on Lexington Road. It was divided into 52 lots and cut in 1849-50.”

17. This was not the Isaac Watts who authored hymns. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Winter: Henry Thoreau was hard at work renovating the Yellow House the Thoreaus had purchased at 73 Main Street inside Concord (at this point, also, he was studying Hinduism).

Thoreau surveyed some woodlots bought by Waldo Emerson from Abel Moore and John Hosmer on November 29, 1845. He had divided the 41 acre plot into 35 woodlots, and sold an acre to the new Fitchburg Railroad, that wanted to buy more but Emerson quoted them a price of $100 an acre according to his Manuscript Journal fragment Trees, page 33.

Thoreau also surveyed some woodlots owned by John Hosmer and Abel Moore. Field Notes say: “On or near the railroad in Walden Woods. Three lots, notes lost.” “Some of these notes have been found. I believe these lots were adjacent to the 41 acres which R. E. Emerson bought from Moore and Hosmer in 1845, the site of the House at Walden Pond.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1850

Breveted Lieutenant-Colonel James Duncan Graham of the US Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers was engaged by Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware to resolve some disputes regarding the intersection of their common boundary line. He would thoroughly re-survey the Mason/Dixon Line and issue a voluminous report. CARTOGRAPHY

1 George W. Boynton engraved an 11 inch by 9 /2 inch plan of the city of Boston for the BOSTON ALMANAC. Also, in this year, a 36 inch by 28 inch map of Dorchester was printed by Tappan & Bradford, Lithographers on the basis of surveys made by Elbridge Whiting for S. Dwight Eaton (this lithograph contains views of 9 Dorchester meeting houses and of the Mattapan Bank building).

MAPS OF BOSTON

March: Henry Thoreau surveyed in “Samuel Heywood’s pasture” south of Walden Pond in Lincoln to adjust the line between Waldo Emerson and Charles Bartlett who owned land east of his.18 View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey is now at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/33.htm

18. Brad Dean has determined, based upon his reading of the income/job lists at the back of Thoreau’s SURVEYING NOTEBOOK in the Special Collections of the Concord Free Public Library (facsimile in Volume 2, pages 413-549 of the three volumes of Kenneth Walter Cameron’s TRANSCENDENTAL CLIMATE, Hartford CT: Transcendental Books, 1963), that throughout the 1850s Thoreau was billing himself out as a surveyor at $4 per day, and in addition charging his clients $2 a day for each adult surveying assistant or $1 a day for an adolescent (his “pole” helpers, who, Brad observes, were usually either local ne’er-do-wells or Irish males or both). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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He would need to resurvey this lot south of Walden Pond in Lincoln to police the line between Emerson and Bartlett, on December 14, 1857 and January 25, 1858.

Thoreau also surveyed Cyrus Stow’s woodlot on Sawmill Brook next to the line between Concord and Lincoln.

March 11, Monday: Henry Thoreau was provided by Waldo Emerson with a “power of attorney” letter of instructions on things to do as his surveyor while he was absent lecturing in New York. The legal conflict with Charles Bartlett over the Walden woodlot, which Emerson eventually would lose, was pending. Concord, 11 March 1850 Mr Henry D. Thoreau, My dear Sir, I leave town tomorrow & must beg you, if any question arises be- tween Mr Bartlett & me, in regard to boundary lines, to act as my attorney, & I will be bound by any Agreement you shall make. Will you also, if you have opportunity, warn Mr Bartlett, on my part, against burning his woodlot, without having there present a suffi- cient number of hands to prevent the fire from spreading into my wood, — which, I think, will be greatly endangered, unless much care is used. Show him too, if you can, where his cutting & his postholes trench on our line, by plan.– and, so doing, oblige as ever, Yours faithfully, R. W. Emerson. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 15, Friday: Henry Thoreau again surveyed, for Waldo Emerson, the sawmill woodlot in Lincoln near Sandy Pond Road leading to Flint’s Pond that he had surveyed on May 23, 1849[??] and enticed Emerson to buy by taking him to a water-fall and rare flowers.

Senator William Henry Seward spoke on the floor of the United States Senate in opposition to Henry Clay’s Compromise of 1850, allowing that the moral law established by the Creator was a higher law and was working everywhere in the civilized world toward the extirpation rather than the extension of slavery. Such a compromise is “essentially vicious,” there being “a higher law than the Constitution.” Senator Daniel Webster would mock such an appeal to “higher law.”

“HUCKLEBERRIES”: In this country a political speech, whether by Mr. Seward or Caleb Cushing, is a great thing, a ray of light a little thing. It would be felt to be a greater national calamity if you should take six inches from the corporeal bulk of one or two gentlemen in Congress, than if you should take a yard from their wisdom and manhood.

WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD CALEB CUSHING HIGHER LAW SLAVERY

Mr. SEWARD: I mean to say that Congress can hereafter decide HDT WHAT? INDEX

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whether any states, slave or free, can be framed out of Texas. If they should never be framed out of Texas, they never could be admitted. Another objection arises out of the principle on which the demand for compromise rests. That principle assumes a classification of the states as northern and southern states, as it is expressed by the honorable senator from South Carolina, [Mr. CALHOUN] but into slave states and free states, as more directly expressed by the honorable senator from Georgia [Mr. BERRIEN.] The argument is, that the states are severally equal, and that these two classes were equal at the first, and that the Constitution was founded on that equilibrium; that the states being equal, and the classes of the states being equal in rights, they are to be regarded as constituting an association in which each state, and each of these classes of states, respectively, contribute in due proportions; that the new territories are a common acquisition, and the people of these several states and classes of states, have an equal right to participate in them, respectively; that the right of the people of the slave states to emigrate to the territories with their slaves as property is necessary to afford such a participation on their part, inasmuch as the people of the free states emigrate into the same territories with their property. And the argument deduces from this right the principle that, if Congress exclude slavery from any part of this new domain, it would be only just to set off a portion of the domain — some say south 36° 30', others south of 34° — which should be regarded at least as free to slavery, and to be organized into slave states. Argument ingenious and subtle, declamation earnest and bold, and persuasion as gentle and winning as the voice of the turtle dove when it is heard in the land, all alike and all together have failed to convince me of the soundness of this principle of the proposed compromise, or of any one of the propositions on which it is attempted to be established. How is the original equality of the states proved? It rests on a syllogism of Vattel, as follows: All men are equal by the law of nature and of nations. But states are only lawful aggregations of individual men, who severally are equal. Therefore, states are equal in natural rights. All this is just and sound. But assuming the same premises, to wit, that all men are equal by the law of nature and of nations, the right of property in slaves falls to the ground; for one who is equal to another cannot be the owner or property of that other. But you answer, that the Constitution recognizes property in slaves. It would be sufficient, then, to reply, that this constitutional recognition must be void, because it is repugnant to the law of nature and of nations. But I deny that the Constitution recognizes property in man. I submit, on the other hand, most respectfully, that the Constitution not merely does not affirm that principle, but, on the contrary, altogether excludes it. The Constitution does not expressly affirm anything on the subject; all that it contains is two incidental allusions to HDT WHAT? INDEX

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slaves. These are, first, in the provision establishing a ratio of representation and taxation; and secondly, in the provision relating to fugitives from labor. In both cases, the Constitution designedly mentions slaves, not at slaves, much less as chattels, but as persons. That this recognition of them as persons was designed is historically known, and I think was never denied. I give only two of the manifold proofs. First, JOHN JAY, in the Federalist says: “Let the case of the slaves be considered, as it is in truth, a peculiar one. Let the compromising expedient of the Constitution be mutually adopted which regards them as inhabitants, but as debased below the level of free inhabitants, which regards the slave as divested of two-fifths of the man.” Yes, sir, of two-fifths, but only of two-fifths; leaving still three-fifths; leaving the slave still an inhabitant, a person, a living, breathing, moving, reasoning, immortal man. The other proof is from the debates in the convention. It is brief, and I think instructive: AUGUST 28, 1787. “Mr. BUTLER and Mr. PINCKNEY moved to require fugitive slaves and servants to be delivered up like convicts. “Mr. WILSON. This would oblige the executive of the state to do it at public expense. “Mr. SHERMAN saw no more propriety in the public seizing and surrendering a slave or a servant than a horse. “Mr. BUTLER withdrew his proposition, in order that some particular provision might be made, apart from this article.” AUGUST 29, 1787. “Mr. BUTLER moved to insert after Article 15: 'If any person bound to service or labor in any of the United States shall escape into another state, he or she shall not be discharged from such service or labor in consequence of any regulation subsisting in the state to which they escape, but shall be delivered up to the person justly claiming their service or labor.'” “After the engrossment, September 15, page 550, article 4, section 2, the third paragraph, the term 'legally' was struck out, and the words 'under the laws thereof' inserted after the word 'state,' in compliance with the wishes of some who thought the term 'legal' equivocal, and favoring the idea that slavery was legal in a moral view.” — Madison Debates, pages 487, 492.

I deem it established, then, that the Constitution does not recognize property in man, but leaves that question, as between the states, to the law of nature and of nations. That law, as expounded by Vattel, is founded on the reason of things. When God had created the earth, with its wonderful adaptations, He gave dominion over it to man, absolute human dominion. The title HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of that dominion, thus bestowed, would have been incomplete, if the lord of all terrestrial things could himself have been the property of his fellow- man. The right to have a slave implies the right in some one to make the slave; that right must be equal and mutual, and this would resolve society into a state of perpetual war. But if we grant the original equality of the states, and grant also the constitutional recognition as slaves as property, still the argument we are considering fails. Because the states are not parties to the Constitution as states; it is the Constitution of the people of the United States. But even if the states continue under the constitution as states, they nevertheless surrendered their equality as states, and submitted themselves to the sway of the numerical majority, with qualifications or checks; first, of the representation of three-fifths of slaves in the ratio of representation and taxation; and, secondly, of the equal representation of states in the Senate. The proposition of an established classification of states as slave states and free states, as insisted on by some, and into northern and southern, as maintained by others, seems to me purely imaginary, and of course the supposed equilibrium of those classes a mere conceit. This must be so, because, when the Constitution was adopted, twelve of the thirteen states were slave states, and so there was no equilibrium. And so as to the classification of states as northern states and southern states. It is the maintenance of slavery by law in a state, not parallels of latitude, that makes its a southern state; and the absence of this, that makes it a northern state. And so all the states, save one, were southern states, and there was no equilibrium. But the Constitution was made not only for southern and northern states, but for states neither northern nor southern, namely, the western states, their coming in being foreseen and provided for. It needs no argument to show that the idea of a joint stock association, or a copartnership, as applicable even by its analogies to the United States, is erroneous, with all the consequences fancifully deduced from it. The United States are a political state, or organized society, whose end is government, for the security, welfare, and happiness of all who live under its protection. The theory I am combating reduces the objects of government to the mere spoils of conquest. Contrary to a theory so debasing, the preamble of the Constitution not only asserts the sovereignty to be, not in the states, but in the people, but also promulgates the objects of the Constitution: “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the GENERAL WELFARE, and secure the blessings of liberty, do ordain and establish this Constitution.” Objects sublime and benevolent! They exclude the very idea of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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conquests, to be either divided among states or even enjoyed by them, for the purpose of securing, not the blessings of liberty, but the evils of slavery. There is a novelty in the principle of the proposed compromise which condemns it. Simultaneously with the establishment of the Constitution, Virginia ceded to the United States her domain, which then extended to the Mississippi, and was even claimed to extend to the Pacific Ocean. Congress accepted it, and unanimously devoted the domain to freedom, in the language from which the ordinance now so severely condemned was borrowed. Five states have already been organized on this domain, from all of which, in pursuance of that ordinance, slavery is excluded. How did it happen that this theory of the equality of states, of the classification of states, of the equilibrium of states, of the title of the states, to common enjoyment of the domain, or to an equitable and just partition between them, was never promulgated, nor even dreamed of, by the slave states, when they unanimously consented to that ordinance? There is another aspect of the principle of compromise which deserves consideration. It assumes that slavery, if not the only institution in a slave state, is at least a ruling institution, and that this characteristic is recognized by the Constitution. But slavery is only one of many institutions there. Freedom is equally an institution there. Slavery is only a temporary, accidental, partial, and incongruous one. Freedom on the contrary, is a perpetual, organic, universal one, in harmony with the Constitution of the United States. The slaveholder himself stands under the protection of the latter, in common with all the free citizens of the state. But it is, moreover, and indispensable institution. You may separate slavery from South Carolina, and the state will still remain; but if you subvert freedom there, the state will cease to exist. But the principle of this compromise gives complete ascendancy in the slave states, and in the Constitution of the United States, to the subordinate, accidental, and incongruous institution, over its paramount antagonist. To reduce this claim of slavery to an absurdity, it is only necessary to add that there are only two states in which slaves are a majority, and not one in which the slaveholders are not a very disproportionate minority. But there is yet another aspect in which this principle must be examined. It regards the domain only as a possession, to be enjoyed either in common or by partition by the citizens of the old states. It is true, indeed, that the national domain is ours. It is true it was acquired by the valor and with the wealth of the whole nation. But we hold, nevertheless, no arbitrary power over it. We hold no arbitrary authority over anything, whether acquired lawfully or seized by usurpation. The Congress regulates our stewardship; the Constitution devotes the domain to union, to justice, to defence, to welfare, and to liberty. But there is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes. The territory is a part, no inconsiderable part, of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the common heritage of mankind, bestowed upon them by the Creator if the universe. We are his stewards, and must so discharge our trust as to secure in the highest attainable degree their happiness. How momentous that trust is, we may learn from the instructions of the founder of modern philosophy: “No man,” says Bacon, “can by care-taking, as the Scripture saith, add a cubit to his stature in this little model of a man's body; but, in the great frame of kingdoms and commonwealths, it is in the power of princes or estates to add amplitude and greatness to their kingdoms. For, by introducing such ordinances, constitutions, and customs, as are wise, they may sow greatness to their posterity and successors. But these things are commonly not observed, but left to take their chance.” This is a state, and we are deliberating for it, just as our fathers deliberated in establishing the institutions we enjoy. Whatever superiority there is in our condition and hopes of those over any other “kingdom” or “estate,” is due to the fortunate circumstance that our ancestors did not leave things to “take their chance,” but that they “added amplitude and greatness” to our commonwealth “by introducing such ordinances, constitutions, and customs, as were wise.” We in our term have succeeded to the same responsibilities, and we cannot approach the duty before us wisely or justly, except we raise ourselves to the great consideration of how we can most certainly “sow greatness to our posterity and successors.” And now the simple, bold, and even awful question which presents itself to us is this: Shall we, who are founding institutions, social and political, for countless millions; shall we, who know by experience the wise and the just, and are free to choose them, and to reject the erroneous and the unjust; shall we establish human bondage, or permit it by our sufferance to be established? Sir, our forefathers would not have hesitated an hour. They found slavery existing here, and they left it only because they could not remove it. There is not only no free state which would now establish it, but there is no slave state, which, if it had had the free alternative as we now have, would have founded slavery. Indeed, our revolutionary predecessors had precisely the same question before them in establishing an organic law under which the states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin, have since come into the Union, and they solemnly repudiated and excluded slavery from those states forever. I confess that the most alarming evidence of our degeneracy which has yet been given is found in the fact that we even debate such a question. Sir, there is no Christian nation, thus free to choose as we are, which would establish slavery. I speak on due consideration because Britain, France, and Mexico, have abolished slavery, and all other European states are preparing to abolish it as speedily as they can. We cannot establish slavery, because there are certain elements of the security, welfare, and greatness of nations, which we all admit, or ought to admit, and recognize HDT WHAT? INDEX

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as essential; and these are the security of natural rights, the diffusion of knowledge, and the freedom of industry. Slavery is incompatible with all of these; and, just in proportion to the extent that it prevails and controls in any republican state, just to that extent it subverts the principle of democracy, and converts the state into an aristocracy or a despotism. I will not offend sensibilities by drawing my proofs from the slave states existing among ourselves; but I will draw them from the greatest of the European slave states.

The population of Russia in Europe, in 1844, was 54,251,000 Of these were serfs 53,500,000 The residue nobles, clergy, and merchants, &c. 751,000

The Imperial government abandons the control over the fifty- three and a half millions to their owners; and these owners, included in the 751,000, are thus a privileged class, or aristocracy. If ever the government interferes at all with the serfs, who are the only laboring population, it is by edicts designed to abridge their opportunities of education, and thus continue their debasement. What was the origin of this system? Conquest, in which the captivity of the conquered was made perpetual and hereditary. This, it seems to me, is identical with American slavery, only at one and the same time exaggerated by the greater disproportion between the privileged classes and their slaves in their respective numbers, and yet relieved of the unhappiest feature of American slavery, the distinction of castes. What but this renders Russia at once the most arbitrary despotism and the most barbarous state in Europe? And what is its effect, but industry comparatively profitless, and sedition, not occasional and partial, but chronic and pervading the empire. I speak of slavery not in the language of fancy, but in the language of philosophy. Montesquieu remarked upon the proposition to introduce slavery into France, that the demand for slavery was the demand for luxury and corruption, and not the demand of patriotism. Of all slavery, African slavery is the worst, for it combines practically the features of what is distinguished as real slavery or serfdom with the personal slavery known in the oriental world. Its domestic features lead to vice, while its political features render it injurious and dangerous to the state. I cannot stop to debate long with those who maintain that slavery itself is practically economical and humane. I might be content with saying that there are some axioms in political science that a statesman or a founder of states may adopt, especially in the Congress of the United States, and that among those axioms are these: That all men are created equal, and have inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the choice of pursuits of happiness; that knowledge promotes virtue, and righteousness HDT WHAT? INDEX

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exalteth a nation; that freedom is preferable to slavery, and that democratic governments, where they can be maintained by acquiescence, without force, are preferable to institutions exercising arbitrary and irresponsible power. It remains only to remark that our own experience has proved the dangerous influence and tendency of slavery. All our apprehensions of dangers, present and future, begin and end with slavery. If slavery, limited as it yet is, now threatens to subvert the Constitution, how can we as wise and prudent statesmen, enlarge its boundaries and increase its influence, and thus increase already impending dangers? Whether, then, I regard merely the welfare of the future inhabitants of the new territories, or the security and welfare of the whole people of the United States, or the welfare of the whole family of mankind, I cannot consent to introduce slavery into any part of this continent which is now exempt from what seems to me so great an evil. These are my reasons for declining to compromise the question relating to slavery as a condition of the admission of California. In acting upon an occasion so grave as this, a respectful consideration is due to the arguments, founded on extraneous consideration, of senators who commend a course different from that which I have preferred. The first of these arguments is, that Congress has no power to legislate on the subject of slavery within the territories. Sir, Congress may admit new states; and since Congress may admit, it follows that Congress may reject new states. The discretion of Congress in admitting is absolute, except that, when admitted, the state must be a republican state, and must be a STATE: that is, it shall have the constitutional form and powers of a state. But the greater includes the less, and therefore Congress may impose conditions of admission not inconsistent with those fundamental powers and forms. Boundaries are such. The reservation of the public domain is such. The ordinance excluding slavery is such a condition. The organization of a territory is ancillary or preliminary; it is the inchoate, the initiative act of admission, and is performed under the clause granting the powers necessary to execute the express powers of the Constitution. This power comes from the treaty-making power also, and I think it well traced to the power to make needful rules and regulations concerning the public domain. But this question is not a material one now; the power is here to be exercised. The question now is, How is it to be exercised? not whether we shall exercise it at all, however derived. And the right to regulate property, to administer justice in regard to property, is assumed in every territorial charter. If we have the power to legislate concerning property, we have the power to legislate concerning personal rights. Freedom is a personal right; and Congress, being the supreme legislature, has the same right in regard to property and personal rights in territories that the states would have if organized. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The next of this class of arguments is, that the inhibition of slavery in the new territories is unnecessary; and when I come to this question, I encounter the loss of many who lead in favor of admitting California. I had hoped, some time ago, that upon the vastly important question of inhibiting slavery in the new territories, we should have had the aid especially of the distinguished senator from Missouri, [Mr. BENTON,] and when he announced his opposition to that measure I was induced to exclaim — Cur in theatrum, Cato severe, venisti? An ideo, tantum, veneras ut exires? But, sir, I have no right to complain. The senator is crowning a life of eminent public service by a heroic and magnanimous act in bringing California into the Union. Grateful to him for this, I leave it to himself to determine how far considerations of human freedom shall govern the course which he thinks proper to pursue. The argument is, that the Proviso is unnecessary. I answer, then there can be no error in insisting upon it. But why is it unnecessary? It is said, first, by reason of climate. I answer, if this be so, why do not the representatives of the slave states concede the Proviso? They deny that the climate prevents the introduction of slavery. Then I will leave nothing to a contingency. But, in truth, I think the weight of the argument is against the proposition. Is there any climate where slavery has not existed? It has prevailed all over Europe, from sunny Italy to bleak England, and is existing now, stronger than in any other land, in ice-bound Russia. But it will be replied, that this is not African slavery. I rejoin, that only makes the case stronger. If this vigorous Saxon race of ours was reduced to slavery while it retained the courage of semi-barbarism in its own high northern latitude, what security does climate afford against the transplantation of the more gentle, more docile, and already enslaved and debased African to the genial climate of New Mexico and Eastern California? Sir, there is no climate uncongenial to slavery. It is true it is less productive than free labor in many northern countries. But so it is less productive than free white labor in even tropical climates. Labor is in quick demand in all new countries. Slave labor is cheaper than free labor, and it would go first into new regions; and wherever it goes it brings labor into dishonor, and therefore free white labor avoids competition with it. Sir, I might rely on climate if I had not been born in a land where slavery existed — and this land was all of it north of the fortieth parallel of latitude; and if I did not know the struggle it has cost, and which is yet going on, to get complete relief from the institution and its baleful consequences. I desire to propound this question to those who are now in favor of dispensing with the Wilmot Proviso: Was the ordinance of 1787 necessary or not? Necessary, we all agree. It has received too many elaborate eulogiums to be now decried as an idle and superfluous thing. And yet that ordinance extended the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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inhibition of slavery from the thirty-seventh to the fortieth parallel of north latitude. And now we are told that the inhibition named is unnecessary anywhere north of 36° 30'! We are told that we may rely upon the laws of God, which prohibit slave labor north of that line, and that it is absurd to re- enact the laws of God. Sir, there is no human enactment which is just that is not a re-enactment of the law of God. The Constitution of the United States and the constitutions of all the states are full of such re-enactments. Wherever I find a law of God or a law of nature disregarded, or in danger of being disregarded, there I shall vote to re- affirm it, with all the sanction of the civil authority. But I find no authority for the position that climate prevents slavery anywhere. It is the indolence of mankind in any climate, and not any natural necessity, that introduces slavery in any climate. I shall dwell only very briefly on the argument derived from the Mexican laws. The proposition, that those laws must remain in force until altered by laws of our own, is satisfactory; and so is the proposition that those laws abolished and continue to prohibit slavery. And still I deem an enactment by ourselves wise, and even necessary. Both of the propositions I have stated are denied with just as much confidence by southern statesmen and jurists as they are affirmed by those of the free states. The population of the new territories is rapidly becoming an American one, to whom the Mexican code will seem a foreign one, entitled to little deference or obedience. Slavery has never obtained anywhere by express legislative authority, but always by trampling down laws higher than any mere municipal laws — the laws of nature and of nations. There can be no oppression in superadding the sanction of Congress to the authority which is so weak and so vehemently questioned. And there is some possibility, if not probability, that the institution may obtain a foothold surreptitiously, if it shall not be absolutely forbidden by our own authority. What is insisted upon, therefore, is not a mere abstraction or a mere sentiment, as is contended by those who waive the proviso. And what is conclusive on the subject is, that it is conceded on all hands that the effect of insisting on it is to prevent the intrusion of slavery into the region to which it is proposed to apply it. It is insisted that the diffusion of slavery will not increase its evils. The argument seems to me merely specious, and quite unsound. I desire to propose one or two questions in reply to it. Is slavery stronger or weaker in these United States, from its diffusion into Missouri? Is slavery weaker or stronger in these United States, from the exclusion of it from the northwest territory? The answers to these questions will settle the whole controversy. And this brings me to the great and all-absorbing argument that the Union is in danger of being dissolved, and that it can only be saved by compromise. I do not know what I would not do to save the Union; and therefore I shall bestow upon this subject HDT WHAT? INDEX

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a very deliberate consideration. I do not overlook the fact that the entire delegation from the slave states, although they differ in regard to the details of the compromise proposed, and perhaps in regard to the exact circumstances of the crisis, seem to concur in this momentous warning. Nor do I doubt at all the patriotic devotion to the Union which is expressed by those from whom this warning proceeds. And yet, sir, although such warnings have been uttered with impassioned solemnity in my hearing every day for near three months, my confidence in the Union remains unshaken. I think they are to be received with no inconsiderable distrust, because they are uttered under the influence of a controlling interest to be secured, a paramount object to be gained; and that is an equilibrium of power in the republic. I think they are to be received with even more distrust, because, with the most profound respect, they are uttered under an obviously high excitement. Nor is that excitement an unnatural one. It is a law of our nature that the passions disturb the reason and judgment just in proportion to the importance of the occasion, and the consequent necessity for calmness and candor. I think they are to be distrusted, because there is a diversity of opinion in regard to the nature and operation of this excitement. The senators in some states say that it has brought all parties in their own region into unanimity. The honorable senator from Kentucky [Mr. CLAY] says that the danger lies in violence of party spirit, and refers us for proof to the difficulties which attended the organization of the house of representatives. Sir, in my humble judgment, it is not the fierce conflict of parties that we are seeing and hearing; but, on the contrary, it is the agony of distracted parties — a convulsion resulting from the too narrow foundations of both the great parties, and of all parties — foundations laid in compromises of natural justice and of human liberty. A question, a moral question, transcending the too narrow creeds of parties, has arisen; the public conscience expands with it, and the green withes of party associations give way and break, and fall off from it. No, sir; it is not the state that is dying of the fever of party spirit. It is merely a paralysis of parties, premonitory however of their restoration, with new elements of health and vigor to be imbibed from that spirit of the age which is so justly called Progress. Nor is the evil that of unlicensed, irregular, and turbulent faction. We are told that twenty legislatures are in session, burning like furnaces, heating and inflaming the popular passions. But these twenty legislatures are constitutional furnaces. They are performing their customary functions, imparting healthful heat and vitality while within their constitutional jurisdiction. If they rage beyond its limits, the popular passions of this country are not at all, I think, in danger of being inflamed to excess. No, sir; let none of these fires be extinguished. Forever let them burn and blaze. They are neither ominous meteors nor baleful comets, but planets; and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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bright and intense as their heat may be, it is their native temperature, and they must still obey the law which, by attraction to this solar centre, holds them in their spheres. I see nothing of that conflict between the southern and northern states, or between their representative bodies, which seems to be on all sides of me assumed. Not a word of menace, not a word of anger, not an intemperate word, has been uttered in the northern legislatures. They firmly but calmly assert their convictions; but at the same time they assert their unqualified consent to submit to the common arbiter, and for weal or wo abide the fortunes of the Union. What if there be less of moderation in the legislatures of the south? It only indicates on which side the balance is inclining, and that the decision of the momentous question is near at hand. I agree with those who say there can be no peaceful dissolution — no dissolution of the Union by the secession of states; but that disunion, dissolution, happen when it may, will and must be revolution. I discover no omens of revolution. The predictions of the political astrologers do not agree as to the time or manner in which it is to occur. According to the authority of the honorable senator from Alabama, [Mr. CLEMENS,] the event has already happened, and the Union is now in ruins. According to the honorable and distinguished senator from South Carolina, [Mr. CALHOUN,] it is not to be immediate, but to be developed by time. What are the omens to which our attention is directed? I see nothing but a broad difference of opinion here, and the excitement consequent upon it. I have observed that revolutions which begin in the palace seldom go beyond the palace walls, and they affect only the dynasty which reigns there. This revolution, if I understand it, began in this Senate chamber a year ago, when the representatives from the southern states assembled here and addressed their constituents on what were called the aggressions of the northern states. No revolution was designed at that time, and all that has happened since is the return to Congress of legislative resolutions, which seem to me to be only conventional responses to the address which emanated from the capitol. Sir, in any condition of society there can be no revolution without a cause, an adequate cause. What cause exists here? We are admitting a new state; but there is nothing new in that: we have already admitted seventeen before. But it is said that the slave states are in danger of losing political power by the admission of the new state. Well, sir, is there anything new in that? The slave states have always been losing political power, and they always will be while they have any to lose. At first, twelve of the thirteen states were slave states; now only fifteen out of thirty are slaves states. Moreover, the change is constitutionally made, and the government was constructed so as to permit changes of the balance of power, in obedience to changes of the forces of the body politic. Danton used to say, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“It's all well while the people cry Danton and Robespierre; but wo for me if ever the people learn to say, Robespierre and Danton!” That is all of it, sir. The people have been accustomed to say, “the South and the North;” they are only beginning now to say, “the North and the South.” Sir, those who would alarm us with the terrors of revolution have not well considered the structure of this government, and the organization of its forces. It is a democracy of property and persons, with a fair approximation towards universal education, and operating by means of universal suffrage. The constituent members of this democracy are the only persons who could subvert it; and they are not the citizens of a metropolis like Paris, or of a region subjected to the influences of a metropolis like France; but they are husbandmen, dispersed over this broad land, on the mountain and on the plain, and on the prairie, from the ocean to the Rocky Mountains, and from the great lakes to the gulf; and this people are now, while we are discussing their imaginary danger, at peace and in their happy homes, as unconcerned and uninformed of their peril as they are of events occurring in the moon. Nor have the alarmists made due allowance in their calculations for the influence of conservative reaction, strong in any government, and irresistible in a rural republic, operating by universal suffrage. That principle of reaction is due to the force of the habits of acquiescence and loyalty among the people. No man better understood this principle than MACHIAVELLI, who has told us, in regard to factions, that “no safe reliance can be placed in the force of nature and the bravery of words, except it be corroborated by custom.” Do the alarmists remember that this government has stood sixty years already without exacting one drop of blood? — that this government has stood sixty years, and yet treason is an obsolete crime? That day, I trust, is far off when the fountains of popular contentment shall be broken up; but whenever it shall come, it will bring forth a higher illustration than has ever yet been given of the excellence of the democratic system; for then it will be seen how calmly, how firmly, how nobly, a great people can act in preserving their Constitution; whom “love of country moveth, example teacheth, company comforteth, emulation quickeneth, and glory exalteth.” When the founders of the new republic of the south come to draw over the face of this empire, along or between its parallels of latitude or longitude, their ominous lines of dismemberment, soon to be broadly and deeply shaded with fraternal blood, they may come to the discovery then, if not before, that the natural and even political connections of the region embraced forbid such a partition; that its possible divisions are not northern and southern at all, but eastern and western, Atlantic and Pacific; and that nature and commerce have allied indissolubly for weal and wo the seceders and those from whom they are to be separated; that while they would rush into a Civil War to restore and imaginary equilibrium between the northern states and the southern states, a new equilibrium has taken its place, in which HDT WHAT? INDEX

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all those states are on one side, and the boundless west is on the other. Sir, when the founders of the republic of the south come to draw those fearful lines, they will indicate what portions of the continent are to be broken off with their connection from the Atlantic, through the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, the Delaware, the Potomac, and the Mississippi; what portion of this people are to be denied the use of the lakes, the railroads, and the canals, now constituting common and customary avenues of travel, trade, and social intercourse; what families and kindred are to be separated, and converted into enemies; and what states are to be the scenes of perpetual border warfare, aggravated by interminable horrors of servile insurrection? When those portentous lines shall be drawn, they will disclose what portion of this people is to retain the army and the navy, and the flag of so many victories; and on the other hand, what portion of the people is to be subjected to new and onerous imposts, direct taxes, and forced loans, and conscriptions, to maintain an opposing army, an opposing navy, and the new and hateful banner of sedition. Then the projectors of the new republic of the south will meet the question — and they may well prepare now to answer it — What is all this for? What intolerable wrong, what unfraternal injustice, have rendered these calamities unavoidable? What gain will this unnatural revolution bring to us? The answer will be: All this is done to secure the institution of African slavery. And then, if not before, the question will be discussed, What is this institution of slavery, that it should cause these unparalleled sacrifices and these disastrous afflictions? And this will be the answer: When the Spaniards, few in number, discovered the western Indies and adjacent continental America, they needed labor to draw forth from its virgin stores some speedy return to the cupidity of the court and the bankers of Madrid. They enslaved the indolent, inoffensive, and confiding natives, who perished by thousands, and even by millions, under that new and unnatural bondage. A humane ecclesiastic advised the substitution of Africans reduced to captivity in their native wars, and a pious princess adopted the suggestion, with a dispensation from the head of the church, granted on the ground of the prescriptive right of the christian to enslave the heathen, to effect his conversion. The colonists of North America, innocent in their unconsciousness of wrong, encouraged the slave traffic, and thus the labor of subduing their territory devolved chiefly upon the African race. A happy conjuncture brought on an awakening of the conscience of mankind to the injustice of slavery, simultaneously with the independence of the colonies. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, welcomed and embraced the spirit of universal emancipation. Renouncing luxury, they secured influence and empire. But the states of the south, misled by a new and profitable culture, elected to maintain and perpetuate slavery; HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and thus, choosing luxury, they lost power and empire. When this answer shall be given, it will appear that the question of dissolving the Union is a complex question; that it embraces the fearful issue whether the Union shall stand, and slavery, under the steady, peaceful action of moral, social, and political causes, be removed by gradual voluntary effort, and with compensation, or whether the Union shall be dissolved, and civil wars ensue, bringing on violent but complete and immediate emancipation. We are now arrived at that stage of our national progress when that crisis can be foreseen, when we must foresee it. It is directly before us. Its shadow is upon us. It darkens the legislative halls, the temples of worship, and the home and the hearth. Every question, political, civil, or ecclesiastical, however foreign to the subject of slavery, brings up slavery as an incident, and the incident supplants the principle question. We hear of nothing but slavery, and we can talk of nothing but slavery. And now, it seems to me that all our difficulties, embarrassments, and dangers, arise, not out of unlawful perversions of the question of slavery, as some suppose, but from the want of moral courage to meet this question of emancipation as we ought. Consequently, we hear on one side demands —absurd, indeed, but yet unceasing— for an immediate and unconditional abolition of slavery — as if any power, except the people of the slave states, could abolish it, and as if they could be moved to abolish it by merely sounding the trumpet loudly and proclaiming emancipation, while the institution is interwoven with all their social and political interests, constitutions, and customs. On the other hand, our statesmen say that “slavery has always existed, and, for aught they know or can do, it always must exist. God permitted it, and he alone can indicate the way to remove it.” As if the Supreme Creator, after giving us the instructions of his providence and revelation for the illumination of our minds and consciences, did not leave us in all human transactions, with due invocations of his Holy Spirit, to seek out his will and execute it for ourselves. Here, then, is the point of my separation from both of these parties. I feel assured that slavery must give way, and will give way, to the salutary instructions of economy, and to the ripening influences of humanity; that emancipation is inevitable, and is near; that it may be hastened or hindered; and that whether it shall be peaceful or violent, depends upon the question whether it be hastened or hindered; that all measures which fortify slavery or extend it, tend to be the consummation of violence; all that check its extension and abate its strength, tend to its peaceful extirpation. But I will adopt none but lawful, constitutional, and peaceful means, to secure even that end; and none such can I or will I forego. Nor do I know any important or responsible political body that proposes to do more than this. No free state claims to extend its legislation into a slave state. None claims that Congress shall usurp power to abolish slavery in the slave states. None claims HDT WHAT? INDEX

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that any violent, unconstitutional, or unlawful measure shall be embraced. And, on the other hand, if we offer no scheme or plan for the adoption of the slave states, with the assent and co- operation of Congress, it is only because the slave states are unwilling as yet to receive such suggestions, or even to entertain the question of emancipation in any form. But, sir, I will take this occasion to say that, while I cannot agree with the honorable senator from Massachusetts in proposing to devote eighty millions of dollars to remove the free colored population from the slave states, and thus, as it appears to me, fortify slavery, there is no reasonable limit to which I am not willing to go in applying the national treasures to effect the peaceful, voluntary removal of slavery itself. I have thus endeavored to show that there is not now, and there is not likely to occur any adequate cause for revolution in regard to slavery. But you reply that, nevertheless, you must have guaranties; and the first one is for the surrender of fugitives from labor. That guaranty you cannot have, as I have already shown, because you cannot roll back the tide of social progress. You must be content with what you have. If you wage war against us, you can, at most, only conquer us, and then all you can get will be a treaty, and that you have already. But you insist on a guaranty against the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, or war. Well, when you shall have declared war against us, what shall hinder us from immediately decreeing that slavery shall cease within the national capital? You say that you will not submit to the exclusion of slaves from the new territories. What will you gain by resistance? Liberty follows the sword, although her sway is one of peace and beneficence. Can you propagate slavery then by the sword? You insist that you cannot submit to the freedom with which slavery is discussed in the free states. Will war — a war for slavery — arrest or even moderate that discussion? No, sir; that discussion will not cease; war will only inflame it in to a greater height. It is part of the eternal conflict between truth and error — between mind and physical force — the conflict of man against the obstacles which oppose his way to an ultimate and glorious destiny. It will go on until you shall terminate it in the only way in which any state or nation has ever terminated it — by yielding to it — yielding in your own time, and in your own manner, indeed, but nevertheless yielding to the progress of emancipation. You will do this, sooner or later, whatever may be your opinion now; because nations which were prudent and humane, and wise as you are, have done so already. Sir, the slave states have no reason to fear that this inevitable change will go too far or too fast for their safety or welfare. It cannot well go too fast or too far, if the only alternative is a war of races. But it cannot go too fast. Slavery has a reliable and accommodating ally in a party in the free states, which, though it claims to be, and doubtless is in many respects, a party of progress, finds its sole security for its political power in the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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support and aid of slavery in the slave states. Of course, I do not include in that party those who are now co-operating in maintaining the cause of freedom against slavery. I am not of that party of progress which in the north thus lends its support to slavery. But it is only just and candid that I should bear witness to its fidelity to the interests of slavery. Slavery has, moreover, a more natural alliance with the aristocracy of the north and with the aristocracy of Europe. So long as slavery shall possess the cotton-fields, the sugar- fields, and the rice-fields of the world, so long will commerce and capital yield it toleration and sympathy. Emancipation is a democratic revolution. It is capital that arrests all democratic revolutions. It was capital that, so recently, in single year, rolled back the tide of revolution from the base of the Carpathian mountains, across the Danube and the Rhine, into the streets of Paris. It is capital that is rapidly rolling back the throne of Napoleon into the chambers of the Tuilleries. Slavery has a guaranty still stronger than these in the prejudices of caste and color, which induce even large majorities in all the free states to regard sympathy with the slave as an act of unmanly humiliation and self-abasement, although philosophy meekly expresses her distrust of the asserted natural superiority of the white race, and confidently denies that such a superiority, if justly claimed, could give a title to oppression. There remains one more guaranty — one that has seldom failed you, and will seldom fail you hereafter. New states cling in closer alliance than older ones to the federal power. The concentration of the slave power enables you for long periods to control the federal government with the aid of new states. I do not know the sentiments of the representatives of California; but, my word for it, if they should be admitted on this floor to-day, against your most obstinate opposition, they would, on all questions really affecting your interests, be found at your side. With these alliances to break the force of emancipation, there will be no disunion and no secession. I do not say that there may not be disturbance, though I do not apprehend even that. Absolute regularity and order in administration have not yet been established in any government, and unbroken popular tranquillity has not yet been attained in even the most advanced condition of human society. The machinery of our system is necessarily complex. A pivot may drop out here, a lever may be displaced there, a wheel may fall out of gearing elsewhere, but the machinery will soon recover its regularity, and move on just as before, with even better adaptation and adjustment to overcome new obstructions. There are many well-disposed persons who are alarmed at the occurrence of any such disturbance. The failure of a legislative body to organize is to their apprehension a fearful omen, and an extra-constitutional assemblage to consult upon public affairs is with them cause for desperation. Even senators speak HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of the Union as if it existed only by consent, and, as it seems to be implied, by the assent of the legislatures of the states. On the contrary, the union was not founded in voluntary choice, nor does it exist by voluntary consent. A union was proposed to the colonies by Franklin and others, in 1754; but such was their aversion to an abridgment of their own importance, respectively, that it was rejected even under the pressure of a disastrous invasion by France. A union of choice was proposed to the colonies in 1775; but so strong was their opposition, that they went through the war of independence without having established more than a mere council of consultation. But with independence came enlarged interests of agriculture — absolutely new interests of manufactures — interests of commerce, of fisheries, of navigation, of a common domain, of common debts, of common revenues and taxation, of the administration of justice, of public defence, of public honor; in short, interests of common nationality and sovereignty- - interests which at last compelled the adoption of a more perfect union — a National Government. The genius, talents, and learning of Hamilton, of Jay, and of Madison, surpassing perhaps the intellectual power ever exerted before for the establishment of a government, combined with the serene but mighty influence of Washington, were only sufficient to secure the reluctant adoption of the Constitution that is now the object of all our affections and of the hopes of mankind. No wonder that the conflicts in which that Constitution was born, and the almost desponding solemnity of Washington, in his farewell address, impressed his countrymen and mankind with a profound distrust of its perpetuity! No wonder that while the murmurs of that day are yet ringing in our ears, we cherish that distrust, with pious reverence, as a national and patriotic sentiment! But it is time to prevent the abuses of that sentiment. It is time to shake off that fear, for fear is always weakness. It is time to remember that government, even when it arises by chance or accident, and is administered capriciously or oppressively, is ever the strongest of all human institutions, surviving many social and ecclesiastical changes and convulsions; and that this Constitution of ours has all the inherent strength common to governments in general, and added to them has also the solidity and firmness derived from broader and deeper foundations in national justice, and a better civil adaptation to promote the welfare and happiness of mankind. The Union, the creature of necessities, physical, moral, social, and political, endures by virtue of the same necessities; and these necessities are stronger than when it was produced — stronger by the greater amplitude of territory now covered by it — stronger by the sixfold increase of the society living under its beneficent protection — stronger by the augmentation ten thousand times of the fields, the workshops, the mines, and the ships, of that society; of its productions of the sea, of the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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plow, of the loom, and of the anvil, in their constant circle of internal and international exchange — stronger in the long rivers penetrating regions before unknown — stronger in all the artificial roads, canals, and other channels and avenues essential not only to trade but to defence — stronger in steam navigation, in steam locomotion on the land, and in telegraph communications, unknown when the Constitution was adopted — stronger in the freedom and in the growing empire of the seas — stronger in the element of national honor in all lands, and stronger than all in the now habits of veneration and affection for institutions so stupendous and so useful. The Union, then, is, not because merely that men choose that it shall be, but because some government must exist here, and no other government than this can. If it could be dashed to atoms by the whirlwind, the lightning, or the earthquake, to-day, it would rise again in all its just and magnificent proportions to- morrow. This nation is a globe, still accumulating upon accumulation, not a dissolving sphere. I have heard somewhat here, and almost for the first time in my life, of divided allegiance — of allegiance to the south and to the Union — of allegiance to states severally and to the Union. Sir, if sympathies with state emulation and pride of achievement could be allowed to raise up another sovereign to divide the allegiance of a citizen of the United States, I might recognize the claims of the state to which, by birth and gratitude, I belong- -to the state of Hamilton and Jay, of Schuyler, of the Clintons, and of Fulton — the state which, with less than two hundred miles of natural navigation connected with the ocean, has, by her own enterprise, secured to herself the commerce of the continent, and is steadily advancing to the command the commerce of the world. But for all this I know only one country and one sovereign — the United States of America and the American People. And such as my allegiance is, is the loyalty of every other citizen of the United States. As I speak, he will speak when his time arrives. He knows no other country and no other sovereign. He has life, liberty, property, and precious affections, and hopes for himself and for his posterity, treasured up in the ark of the Union. He knows as well and feels as strongly as I do, that this government is his own government; that he is a part of it; that it was established for him; and that it was maintained by him; that it is the only truly wise, just, free, and equal government, that has ever existed; that no other government could be so wise, just, free and equal; and that it is safer and more beneficent than any which time or change could bring into its place. You may tell me, sir, that although all this may be true, yet the trial of faction has not yet been made. Sir, if the trial of faction has not been made, it has not been because faction has not always existed, and has not always menaced a trial, but because faction could find no fulcrum on which to place the lever to subvert the Union, as it can find no fulcrum now; and in this is my confidence. I would not rashly provoke the trial; but I HDT WHAT? INDEX

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will not suffer a fear, which I have not, to make me compromise one sentiment, one principle of truth or justice, to avert a danger that all experience teaches me is purely chimerical. Let, then, those who distrust the Union make compromises to save it. I shall not impeach their wisdom, as I certainly cannot their patriotism; but, indulging no such apprehensions myself, I shall vote for the admission of California directly, without conditions, without qualifications, and without compromise. For the vindication of that vote, I look not to the verdict of the passing hour, disturbed as the public mind now is by conflicting interests and passions, but to that period, happily not far distant, when the vast regions over which we are now legislating shall have received their destined inhabitants. While looking forward to that day, its countless generations seem to me to be rising up and passing in dim and shadowy review before us; and a voice comes forth from their serried ranks, saying: “Waste your treasures and your armies, if you will; raze your fortifications to the ground; sink your navies into the sea; transmit to us even a dishonored name, if you must; but the soil you hold in trust for us — give it to us free. You found it free, and conquered it to extend a better and surer freedom over it. Whatever choice you have made for yourselves, let us have no partial freedom; let us all be free; let the reversion of your broad domain descend to us unencumbered, and free from the calamities and from the sorrows of human bondage.”

Spring: At about this point in time Henry Thoreau was studying Alexander von Humboldt’s ASPECTS OF NATURE and KOSMOS (volumes of which had been appearing since 1845), and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s HINTS TOWARD THE FORMATION OF A MORE COMPREHENSIVE THEORY OF LIFE. COLERIDGE’S HINTS

He surveyed for Jessie Hosmer. This farm was located near Barrett’s Mill Road and the present Route 2, at the foot of Annursnack Hill, and had belonged to the Cummings family very early. It contained more than a hundred acres, and shows the road leading to G. M. Barrett’s. Thoreau said: “First piece surveyed with my compass though with a tape.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April: New-York Daily Tribune editor Horace Greeley invited the Fox sisters into the family home in Turtle Bay (like many at the time, the Greeleys were amazed and confused by the rappings). SPIRITUALISM

Beginning work that he would continue on February 10, 11, 12, 18, 19, 1853 and on May 3, 1859 and complete in April 1860, Henry Thoreau surveyed land on Lexington Road for John B. Moore, who bought and drained swampland for farming. This was the site of the Concord home of Dr. John Prescott of Revolutionary War fame. The February 1853 survey would show land sold to Ephriam Wales Bull, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott, and Charles B. Davis. The land stretched over the hill to Bedford Road and as far east as the Merriam land on the Old Bedford Road (the entire parcel would be sold at auction on May 10, 1860).

Sophia Dobson Collet (1822-1894) reviewed A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS for the People’s Journal: Sincere autobiographies are always interesting, especially when they are rich in experiences that are important to many. But there is a species of literature which may be regarded as the flower of autobiography, in which the author takes some passage of his life or studies as a text, and illustrates it with all the varied life-lore that is suggested by the incidents; breathing to the ear of his fellows, not a circumstantial narrative of his every deed, but the essence of wisdom which they bequeathed in departing. While maintaining a quiet reserve upon his own inward conflicts, the author may here give free utterance to all the deep spiritual beauty which these have developed in him, and thereby communicate to those of kindred experience, all the chiefest realities of his life, without the aid of a picture alphabet. Of this Literature of Individuality, New England has recently produced several remarkable specimens. [There follows a lengthy discourse on the merits of Waldo Emerson, John S. Dwight, Mrs. Child, J.R. Lowell, and Margaret Fuller.] Readers of Emerson’s quondam Quarterly, the Dial, will recognise in Mr. Thoreau the H.D.T. who contributed so many valuable articles to that periodical, and who is introduced by Emerson (in No. 9) as ‘a near neighbour and friend of ours, dear also to the Muses — a native and an inhabitant of the town of Concord.’ THe ‘Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,’ is the record of an excursion made by Mr. Thoreau and his brother in 1839. The writer describes the scenery of his voyage with the vividness of a painter, and the scrutiny of a naturalist. He seems quite at home among birds, beasts, fishes, and plants, whose forms and movements he follows with the eye of a friend; and he possesses the art of conveying the peculiar spirit of a landscape, which he frequently does with much grace and power — an art which a mere observer of details often lacks. But Mr. Thoreau has a gift beyond this. Every object seen is, with him, and element in a higher vision. The infinity of meaning that dwells in everything existent, is visible to him. In the forest he beholds ‘the uprightness of the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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pines and maples asserting the ancient rectitude and vigour of nature.’ The clear morning atmosphere, beautifying the landscape, suggests to him the inquiry, ‘Why should not our whole life and its scenery be thus fair and distinct?’ Ant these thoughts fall from him not as moral lessons, tacked on, fringe- like, but as the natural hints which ever arise in those souls to whom nothing is profane, but to whom the whole universe perpetually chants sublime utterances of the divinest ethics. To such souls, Life and Thought continually inter-act. Their thoughts are ever giving birth to free deeds, and their deeds are ever receiving impulse and sustainment from matured thought. To them, joy and sorrow, life and death, are equally welcome and sacred: they are, in truth, our ‘representative men,’ the elect of human kind. An additional element of interest, in t his work, is afforded by the occasional digressions, which are, in fact, essays, not unworthy to stand beside those of Emerson himself. Those on Eastern Literature, on Christianity, on Poetry, and especially the exquisite Essay on Friendship, would of themselves make the book valuable. Among these essays, and also among the poems scattered profusely through the volume will be found some reprints from Mr. Thoreau’s writings in the Dial. It should be mentioned that our author’s ideas on theology are ultra-heretical. The essay on Christianity is an expression of the freest Pantheism. It is very original, sarcastic, pathetic, and reverential. If any one marvel how these qualities may be combined, let him read the essay. Mr. Thoreau’s language on this and other topics is sometimes rather random, a defect unworthy of one who usually displays such keen justness of thought. This random manner is especially visible in some expressions which show our author to be tinged with that contempt of politics which Emerson describes, in his Lectures on the Times, as characterising the Transcendentalists. These persons forget that if honest men will persist in abandoning political action to knaves and fools, they may not be held wholly guiltless of the bravery and folly perpetrated in consequence. Philosophers and artists, may, doubtless, be worthily occupied to a degree which precludes them from political action; but it is not therefore necessary that they should despise such action. Indifference to that which so largely influences the fates of so many of our fellow-beings, always bears a tinge of selfishness. We are, therefore especially, pleased to see Mr. Thoreau’s Lecture on ‘Resistance to Civil Government,’ delivered in 1847, and published in Miss Peabody’s interesting volume of ‘Æsthetic Papers.’ The manly tone of this lecture rings on the ear. As it is not likely to be much known in England, we give the following extracts, premising that it ought to be read as a whole to be thoroughly appreciated. [“Resistance to Civil Government,” 67:3-31, 71.9-18, 74.32-75.24, 76.4-77.9] It should be added that Mr. Thoreau carries out his own principle in action. He says he ‘has paid no poll-tax for six years;’ and he gives a graceful and genial account (appended to this HDT WHAT? INDEX

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lecture) of the imprisonment which once followed his non- payment. Now let us follow our hero to his home, and dismiss him in the calm light of a Concord sunset. [“Friday,” 389.32-391.4] TIMELINE OF A WEEK

May 1, Wednesday: Cousin Charles Howard Dunbar of Haverhill summoned Henry Thoreau to divide a tract of land in Haverhill into house lots for the heirs of a Nehemiah Emmerson:

You probably think ere this I have forgotten to [a]nswer your [l]etter but it is [not so]. I have waited untill now that I might send some definite Word about that Job I spoke of— You will recollect I told you one of the owners [l]ived in Cincinate. He has come on [and] wishes to have the farm immediately [s]urveyed and [l]aid into house [l]ots there is some twenty acres of it so you see it is quite a Job and there will be probably some [small] Jobs. Mr Emmerson will wait untill you come which must by as soon as Thursday[.] I hope it will be so you can come as I have some Jobs to do on the [l]ots as soon as laid out & I think we both can make a good [li]ving at it[.] [L]et me [s]ee you if possible — if not drop a line that we may not be in suspence.— [A]ll well as usual[.] Give my best Respect to all and say to them we should be happy to see them at Haverhill[.]

DUNBAR FAMILY

Thoreau would be traveling to Haverhill several times during this month, to complete this survey.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/30.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 25, Saturday: An issue of Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal: CHAMBERS’ EDINBURGH JOURNAL ISSUE OF MAY 25

William Jackman and Jenett Nelson Scott Jackman’s daughter Jessie Ellen Jackman was born in Wisconsin.

On Waldo Emerson’s 47th birthday, he went to “Ancient Forest” in Warren County with a group of young men to see the Indian mounds and circular ridges there.

Henry Thoreau surveyed, for his father John Thoreau, the lot on Main Street near the corner of the present Thoreau Street that they had purchased from Daniel Shattuck, for their Yellow House. In his journal Thoreau mentioned that a mountain ash and a pitch pine were on that lot.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/129.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 12, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Daniel Shattuck, one of the Concord cottage houselots on Main Street adjacent to the lot that father John Thoreau had recently purchased.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/108.htm

June 13, Thursday: According to one account I have seen, on this day Henry Thoreau surveyed the Bedford Road for the town of Concord.

According to another account –and I do not know whether this might not be an alternative description of the same job– on this day Thoreau was making a survey of the courthouse (Town House) and adjacent lots and starting to help widen the road from Main Street to the New Hill Burying Ground (the first section of the present Sleepy Hollow Cemetery), and from Monument Street to that same spot.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: HDT WHAT? INDEX

SURVEYING SURVEYING

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/7d.htm

This Sleepy Hollow had begun as “Deacon [Reuben] Brown’s pretty pasture, circled with a ridge of oaks and pines ... reached only by a lane.” It had been Concord’s hanging grounds, back when Concord was the main court center for Middlesex County: for instance, it was where Concord had hanged the burglar Samuel Smith at the turn of the century. It had also been used for group picnics, such as the one in 1840 while “Hard Cider Clubs” were keeping the big political ball a-rolling through Concord streets with cries of “Tippecanoe and Tyler too!” According to George Bradford Bartlett’s 1880 CONCORD GUIDE BOOK, it had been awarded this name due to the presence there of a natural “amphitheatre,” the deeper of two Dunge Holes there, that had long been so known.

June 19, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed Daniel Shattuck’s cottage on Main Street, next door to the Thoreau home.

June 20, Thursday: Henry Thoreau surveyed in Acton, Massachusetts, for J. Hapgood, a road from his house to Acton Center north of the present Route 2. (Thoreau would return a year later to compare the level of Hapgood’s cellar-bottom to his garden, which was being flooded because Robbins and Wetherbee were holding back the water of Nashoba Brook that flowed into Loring’s or Warner’s Pond.)

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/48.htm

June 20th I can see from my window 3 or 4 cows in a pasture on the side of Fair Haven Hill–nearly 1 1 /2 miles distant. There is but one tree in the pasture & they are all collected & now reposing in its shade which as it is early though sultry is extended a good way along the ground. It makes a pretty landscape– That must HDT WHAT? INDEX

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have been an epoch in the history of the cow when they invented to stand in the shadow of a tree. I wonder if they are wise enough to recline on the north side of it that they may not be disturbed so soon. It shows the importance of leaving trees for shade in the pastures as well as for beauty. There is a long black streak & in it the cows are collected. How much more they will need this shelter at noon! It is a pleasant life they lead in the summer–roaming in well-watered pastures, grazing, & chewing the cud in the shade–quite a philosophic life & favorable for contemplation–not like their pent up winter life in close & foul barns.– If only they could say as on the prairies–“Tomorrow to fresh woods & pastures new.” Cattle & horses however retain many of their wild habits or instincts wonderfully. The seeds of instinct are preserved under their thick hides–like seeds in the bowels of the earth–an indefinite period. I have heard of a horse which his master could not catch in his pasture when the first snow flakes were falling– who persisted in wintering out–. as he persisted in keeping out of his reach his master finally left him When the snow had covered the ground 3 or four inches deep the horse pawed it away to come at the grass–just as the wild ponies of michigan do–who are turned lose by their Indian masters–& so he picked up a scanty subsistence By the next day he had had enough of free life & pined for his stable & so suffered himself to be caught. A blacksmith my neighbor heard a great clattering noise the other day behind his shop & in going out found that his mare & his neighbor’s the pumpmaker–were fighting They would run at one another then turn round suddenly & let their heels fly– The rattling of their hoofs one against the other was the noise he heard– They repeated this several times with intervals of grazing–until one prevailed– The next day they bore the marks of some bruises–some places where the skin was rucked up & some swellings. And then for my afternoon walks I have a garden–larger than any artificial garden that I have read of–and far more attractive to me, mile after mile of imbowered walks, with animals running free & wild therein as from the first–varied with land & water prospect–and above all so retired that it is extremely rare that you meet a single wanderer in its maze– No gardener is seen therein no gates nor You may wander away to solitary bowers & brooks & hills {MS torn} from all human {MS torn}{One-eighth page missing} The ripple marks on the sandy bottom of Flints Pond where the rushes grow–feel hard to the feet of the wader– –though the sand is really soft. Made firm perchance by the weight of the water The rushes over the water are white with the exuviae the skeletons of insects, like blossoms–which have deposited their eggs on their tops. The skeletons looked like those of shad flies Though some living insects were not. I have seen crimson colored eggs painting the leaves of the black birch quite beautifully And now the ascending sun has contracted the shadow of the solitary tree–& they are compelled to seek the neighboring wood for shelter. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 17, Sunday: Henry Thoreau surveyed land near Concord’s railroad depot for Francis Monroe and others.

At this time, Thoreau was busy trying to lay out a road from the west end of the Mill Dam to the Railroad Station. This proposal is the present Middle Street from Academy Lane to Thoreau Street. The old Concord Academy Building stood on the spot so it had to be moved to the south side of the new street. Land owners here were William Wheildon, Hartwell Bigelow, William Monroe, and Henry Wheeler. The Concord Free Public Library preserves a copy of the official Railroad notice of the acceptance of the new street, dated March 1851.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/92a.htm

The 1st installment of Herman Melville’s anonymous analysis “Hawthorne and His Mosses” appeared in The Literary World.

An issue of Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal: CHAMBERS’ EDINBURGH JOURNAL ISSUE OF AUGUST 17

August 30, Saturday morning: In the morning John White Webster was hanged in public at #5 Leverett Street on Leverett Square in Boston for the murder of George Parkman. It took about four minutes. In deference to the social standing of the culprit, there had not been a prior public announcement of the date or the place of the execution. The Reverend George Putnam, D.D. immediately departed for Cambridge to inform the family. That evening a lady and her two children visiting from New-York would come to the family home in Cambridge in the hope that she would be able to see the corpse of the murderer, but fortunately these ghoulish tourists would be intercepted by the maid and the widow and the daughters did not come to know of it. To fool the crowds which were assembling, and in addition to prevent the body from being exhumed, it would be interred in secret that night at the lowbrow cemetery on Copp’s Hill — rather than in the expected venue at toney Mount Auburn Cemetery.19 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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On this day Henry Thoreau was also concerned with cemeteries, for at the request of John Shepard Keyes, he was surveying two sides of the Concord West Burying Ground by running the lines of the old Hurd place, the so-called Block House now on Lowell Road, and the line of the river bank further east on Main Street.20 The purpose of this activity, probably, was to determine where to position the iron fence from the old courthouse around the burial ground. According to the Town Report, Thoreau received $1.00 for this on March 1, 1851.

View Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/Thoreau_surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

Aug 31st Tall Ambrosia Among the signs of Autumn I perceive The Roman Wormwood (called by learned men Ambrosia elatior, food for gods,– For to impartial science the humblest weed Is as immortal as the proudest flower–) Sprinkles its yellow dust over my shoes As I cross the now neglected garden We trample under foot the food of Gods & spill their nectar in each drop of dew– My honest shoes thus powdered country-fide Fast friends that never stray far from my coach Bearing many a mile the marks of their adventure At the post-house disgrace the Gallic gloss Of those well dressed ones who no morning dew Nor Roman wormwood ever have been through Who never walk but are transported rather For what old crime of theirs I do not gather The grey blueberry bushes venerable as oaks why is not their fruit poisonous? Bilberry called Vaccinium corymbosum some say amoenum & or Blue Bilberry & Vaccinium disomorphum MX–Black Bilberry. Its fruit hangs on into September but loses its wild & sprightly taste.

’Tis very fit the ambrosia of the gods Should be a weed on earth. their nectar The morning dew with which we wet our shoes For the gods are simple folks and we should pine upon their humble fare The purple flowers of the humble Trichostema mingled with the worm wood. smelling like it And the spring-scented–dandelion scented primrose Yellow primrose The swamp pink Azalea viscosa–its now withered pistils standing out. The odoriferous sassafras with its delicate green stem its three-lobed leaf–tempting the traveller to bruise it it sheds so rare a perfume on him equal to all the spices of the east. Then its rare tasting root bark–like nothing else which I used to dig– The first navigators freighted their ships with it and deemed it worth its weight in gold. The alder-leaved Clethra (Clethra alnifolia sweet smelling queen of the swamp–its long white racemes.

19. Due to this unpleasantness, Harvard College has created a special endowment for the relief of desperate professors. The widow Harriet Frederica Hickling Webster, who would only live for a few additional years, would take the four daughters back to the Azores. There, one of the four, Sarah Hickling Webster, would marry Samuel Wyllys Dabney (1826-1893), who would from 1872 to 1892 be the US consul to the Azores. 20. We can gather that it was sometime prior to this date, that this former Concord Academy classmate had become an selectman of Concord. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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We are most apt to remember & cherish the flowers which appear earliest in the spring– I look with equal affection on those which are the latest to bloom in the fall The choke Berry Pyrus arbutifolia The beautiful white waxen berries of the cornel–either cornus alba or Paniculata white berried or Panicled– beautiful both when full of fruit & when its cymes are naked delicate red cymes or stems of berries. spreading its little fairy fingers to the skies its little palms. Fairy palms they might be called. One of the Viburnums Lentago–or pyrifolium or–Nudum–with its poisonous looking fruit in cymes first– greenish white then red then purple or all at once. The imp eyed red velvety looking berry of the swamps The spotted Polygonum Polygonum Persicaria seen in low lands amid the potatoes now wild Princes feather? Slight flower that does not forget to grace the Autumn The Late Whortleberry (Dangle-berry) that ripens now that other huckleberries and blueberries are shrivelled and spoiling

September: Henry Thoreau surveyed for a proposed new street near the Railroad Depot. Length 30" x Width 21". In 1844 when the railroad had been opened in Concord, he had been asked to suggest the route of a new street from the corner of Main and Sudbury Road to the Depot, and in fact he had drawn up several alternatives. The one chosen is the present Middle Street and required the moving of the Concord Academy Building from the spot where Academy Lane and Middle Street meet. This proposal is the present Middle Street from Academy Lane to Thoreau Lane. The old Concord Academy stood on the spot so it had to be moved to the south side of the new street. (The Academy building in which the Thoreau brothers had taught was made over into a double house for Ellery Channing. The Concord Free Public Library has several preserved sketches for this area. One shows the land of Wetherbee on Belknap Street which became the property on which the old Davis Store from Main Street came to rest, and was occupied by William Barrett from 1859 to 1898.)

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/24b.htm

Channing wrote in a letter complaining about Waldo Emerson: “a terrible man to deal with — one has to be armed at all points. He threshes you out very soon; is admirably skillful, able to go anywhere and do anything. Those nearest to him feel him hard and cold; no one knows even what he is doing or studying.... Nobody knows what his real philosophy is; his books do not tell it. I have known him for years intimately and have not found it out. Women do not like him: he cannot establish a personal relation with anyone, yet he can get on agreeably with everyone.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At some point during the month Thoreau made an entry in his journal that he was later to copy into his early lecture “WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT” as:21

[Paragraph 52] A commerce that whitens every sea in quest of nuts and raisins, and makes slaves of its sailors for this purpose! I saw, the other day, a vessel which had been wrecked, and many lives lost, and her cargo of rags, juniper-berries, and bitter almonds were strewn along the shore. It seemed hardly worth the while to tempt the dangers of the sea between Leghorn and New York for the sake of a cargo of juniper-berries and bitter almonds. America sending to the Old World for her bitters! Is not the sea-brine, is not shipwreck, bitter enough to make the cup of life go down here? Yet such, to a great extent, is our boasted commerce; and there are those who style themselves statesmen and philosophers who are so blind as to think that progress and civilization depend on precisely this kind of interchange and activity,—the activity of flies about a molasses-hogshead. Very well, observes one, if men were oysters. And very well, answer I, if men were mosquitoes.

In Godey’s Lady’s Book, Henry T. Tuckerman characterized Alexander von Humboldt as “the Napoleon of science.” This title, although apparently innocuous, would soon be combined with our iniquitous lust for the conquest of nature, so that Humboldt would soon be being worshipped, and eventually would find himself condemned, as something he had simply not been: an exploiter. Professor Laura Dassow Walls points out that during Humboldt’s old age while “his voice was aging and distant,” his legacy would be seized upon by positivists such as Louis Agassiz even though he “could and did protest with every means at this disposal.” His name became synonymous with empire and with the exploitation of nature, while native American

21. Thoreau was referring to his experience at Fire Island in late July 1850. The American bark Elizabeth, with Margaret Fuller Ossoli, her husband, and their son aboard, had sailed from Italy on May 17, 1850, bound for New-York, but wrecked on the coast of Fire Island on July 19th. Thoreau was dispatched to the scene of the wreck to recover the bodies of the Ossolis and their belongings, and when he arrived he found the beach strewn with the unsalvageable portion of the cargo—heaps of rags, juniper- berries, and bitter almonds (see Kenneth Walter Cameron, “Thoreau’s Notes on the Shipwreck at Fire Island,” Emerson Society Quarterly 52 [3d Quarter 1968]: 97-99; and Paula Blanchard, MARGARET FULLER: FROM TRANSCENDENTALISM TO REVOLUTION [NY: Delacorte Press, 1978], pages 329-37). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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populations were being removed and ecological communities disrupted in the name of our Manifest Destiny. How ironic it is today that current approaches to science, which stress the role our own knowledge plays as part of the world we seek to understand, have lost sight of Humboldt’s work. Today, Humboldtian concepts like plant communities, isotherms, and magnetic storms are routine, the “ecology of ideas” is an exciting new concept — and Alexander von Humboldt’s once-glorious name has long since b id d i t th di ft l f th f t t ( 107)

November 14, Thursday: Henry Thoreau was written to by Franklin Forbes of the Bigelow Mechanics’ Institute in Clinton, Massachusetts, to ask him to deliver his “Cape Cod” lecture on any Wednesday evening in January. Clinton Nov 14, 1850 Henry D. Thoreau Esq

Dear Sir As one of the Com- mittee on Lectures of the Bigelow Mechanic Institute of this town, I wish to ascertain if you will deliver your lec- ture on “Cap Cod” before the I[n]stitute on either Wed- nesday Evening of the month of January— [ ] An early answer will much oblige Yrs respectfully Franklin Forbes.

P.S. If you prefer any other lect[ure] of yours to the above mentioned, please name a day on which you can deliver it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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On this day, also, Thoreau divided a woods belonging to Cyrus Stow near the Ministerial Swamp into 28 lots so it could be cut in 1850-1851.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/120.htm

CHARCOAL November 14: Saw today while surveying in the 2nd Division woods a singular round mound in a valley made perhaps 60 or 70 years ago. Cyrus Stow thought it was a pigeon bed –but I soon discovered the coal & that it was an old coal-bed. I once mistook one in the Maine woods for an Indian Mound. The indestructible charcoal told the tale– I had noticed singular holes & trenches in the former wood, as if a fox had been dug out. The sun has probably been let in here many times & this has been a cultivated field– And now it is clothed in a savage dress again. The wild rank luxuriant place is where mosses & lichens abound.– We find no heroes cairns except those of heroic colliers who once sweated here begrimmed & dingy –who lodged here tending their fires, who lay on a beetle here perchance to keep awake HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 27, Wednesday: Stuck near San Mateo in the Gulf of Tehuantepec, various members of the abandoned foraging party, including Eugene Ring, became sick with cholera. Within days one of them would die.

Giuseppe Garibaldi, down on his luck for the moment, was working in a friend’s candle factory on Staten Island. Moses Hicks Grinnell, president of the New-York Chamber of Commerce, wrote to his friend Secretary of State Daniel Webster, requesting that government employment be found for this Italian patriot.

Henry Thoreau surveyed a portion of a road between Acton Center and North Acton and made a plan of this for Cyrus Hubbard.

November 30, Saturday: An issue of Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal: CHAMBERS’ EDINBURGH JOURNAL ISSUE OF NOVEMBER 30

Henry Thoreau surveyed for James Barrett Wood. In the Field Notes book of surveys, Thoreau wrote: “Surveyed a wood-lot for ... near the copper mines in the South part of Carlisle, November 30, 1850, he having purchased the wood of Thomas Hale and (?) Bingham of Carlisle. The distance can be relied on. The last two bearings are useless being taken after dark. 10 Acres.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 16, day: Henry Thoreau surveyed for David Loring. He drew up plans for a cow barn to be built in Northboro, Massachusetts, including stanchions for the cows.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/80a.htm

Dec 16th Walden is open still– The river is probably open again. There are wild men living along the shores of the Frozen Ocean. Who shall say that there is not as great an interval between the civilized man & the savage as great as between the savage & the brute? The undiscovered polar regions are the home of men. I am struck with the difference between my feet and my hands– My feet are much nearer to foreign or inanimate matter or nature than my hands, they are more brute, they are more like the earth they tread on –they are more clod-like & lumpish & –I scarcely animate them Last Sunday, or the 14th, I walked on Lorings pond to 3 or 4 islands there which I have never visited, not having a boat in the summer. On one containing an acre or two I found a low branching shrub frozen into the edge of the ice, with a fine spicy scent some-what like sweet-fern & a handsome imbricate bud– When I rubbed the dry looking fruit in my hands it felt greasy & stained them a permanent yellow which I could not wash out, it lasted several days –& my fingers smelled medicinal. I conclude that it is sweet-gale –& we named the island Myrica island– On these unfrequented islands, too I noticed the red osier or willow –that common hard berried plant with small red buds–apparently two kinds of swamp pink buds some yellow some reddish –A brittle rough yellowish bush with handsome pinkish shoots –in one place in the meadow the greatest quantity of wild rose-hips of various forms that I ever saw –now slightly withered –they were as thick as winter berries I noticed a bush covered with cocoons which were artfully concealed by two leaves wrapped round them –one still hanging by its stem, so that they looked like a few withered leaves left dangling. The worm having first encased itself in another leaf for greater protection folded more loosely around itself one of the leaves of the plant taking care however to encase the leaf stalk & the twig with a thick & strong web of silk, so far from depending on the strength of the stalk which is now quite brittle –the strongest fingers can not break it & the cocoon can only be got off by slipping it up & off the twig. There they hang themselves secure for the winter – proof against cold & the birds –ready to become butterflies when new leaves push forth. The snow everywhere was covered with snow-fleas like pepper– When you hold a mass in your hand, they skip & are gone before you know it. They are so small that they go through & through the new snow. Sometimes HDT WHAT? INDEX

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when collected they look like some powder which the hunter has spilled in the path. I noticed when the snow first came that the days were very sensibly lengthened by the light being reflected from the snow. Any work which required light could be pursued about half an hour longer. So that we may well pray that the ground may not be laid bare by a thaw in these short winter days.

December 31: Henry Thoreau continued measuring the foundation and cellar wall stonework for the new Concord Court House.

Dec 31st I observe that in the cut by Walden Pond the sand and stones fall from the overhanging bank and rest on the snow below– And thus perchance the stratum deposited by the side of the road in the winter can permanently be distinguished from the summer one by some faint seam to be referred to the peculiar conditions under which it was deposited. The Pond has been frozen over since I was there last. Certain meadows, as Heywoods, contain warmer water than others and are slow to freeze. I do not remember to have crossed this with impunity in all places. The brook that issues from it is still open completely though the thermometer was down to 8 below zero this morning. The blue-jays [Blue Jay Cyanocitta cristata] evidently notify each other of the presence of an intruder, and will sometimes make a great chattering about it, & so communicate the alarm to other birds –& to beasts. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1851

In this year Emily Dickinson turned 21. She wrote her brother Austin Dickinson, who was teaching at the Endicott School in Boston’s North End:

I like to get such facts to set down in my journal, also anything else that’s startling which you may chance to know — I don’t think deaths or murders can ever come amiss in a young woman’s journal.

In this year Henry Thoreau turned 26. He surveyed the lots adjacent to the site on which Concord was building a new courthouse, which was the location at which his father had worked in the “Yellow Store.” He also laid out the new courthouse’s cellar and, according to Adams and Ross, became a Romantic.

In 1993, Thoreau’s journal for this year would be separately published by Penguin:

There was a break between Jesse Hutchinson, Judson Hutchinson, and Asa Hutchinson. Various members of the family would form groups of their own. John W. Hutchinson would be the last of the brothers to form a regular company of his own, and much of his energy would be put into singing for temperance. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 5, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for John Hosmer, a woodlot that been part of the Charles Miles land near the Hollowell Farm (Gleason 64/H5) on the Sudbury River.

February 7, Friday: In his FIELD NOTES, Henry Thoreau would explain how he had arrived on this day at the “true meridian” which he would continually employ to cope with the occasional straying of his compass needle: “Found the direction of the pole star at its western elongation (1, 58½) at 9h 26m PM. N coincides with a [sight] line drawn from the SE course of the stone post on the E side of our western small front gate, to the S side of the first door on the W side of the depot.”

For a detailed explanation, please refer to Chapter 6 of Patrick Chura’s THOREAU THE LAND SURVEYOR: THE LAND SURVEYOR

February 17, day: Henry Thoreau made an outline map of White Pond, which he considered a very beautiful spot and far less crowded than Walden Pond.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/148.htm

Three buried blocks of residual glacial ice, gradually melted: White Pond, Fair Haven Bay, Walden Pond

February 20, Thursday: Waldo Emerson was scheduled to deliver his lecture on “Wealth” before the Portland Lyceum on the following evening. Although no reviews or other responses have been located, it was likely Henry Thoreau who was the intended target of a disparaging reference to the “most zealous imitators and Followers” of the sage of Concord in this day’s issue of the Portland Morning Herald.

Beginning on this day and continuing until the 27th, Thoreau would be surveying, for Cyrus Stow, some 21 acres of swampland in Bedford swampland, for which Thoreau would consult a deed dating to 1748, and the records of a previous survey, one done by Thaddeus Davis in 1799.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/121a.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 27, Thursday (to March 3, Monday): Henry Thoreau would be surveying, during this period, for Cyrus Stow, a Pine Hill woodlot in the east part of Concord, in the rear of Joseph Merriam’s house off Old Bedford Road (beginning at the southwest corner).

(The invoice for this work has been preserved in the Thoreau Collection at Middlebury College.)

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/121a.htm

February 27, Thursday: Saw today on Pine Hill behind Mr. Joseph Merriam’s House a Norway pine. The first I have seen in Concord– Mr Gleason pointed it out to me as a singular pine which he did not know the name of. It was a very handsome tree about 25 feet high. E Wood thinks that he has lost the surface of 2 acres of his meadow by the ice.– Got 15 cartloads out of a hummock left on another meadow Blue joint was introduced into the first meadow where it did not grow before. Of two men, one of whom knows nothing about a subject, and what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing –and the other really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all– What great advantage has the latter over the former? Which is the best to deal with? I do not know that knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel & grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we had called knowledge before. An indefinite sence of the grandeur & glory of the Universe. It is the lighting up of the mist by the sun But man cannot be said to know in any higher sense, than he can look serenely & with impunity in the face of ASTRONOMY the sun. A culture which imports much muck from the meadows & deepens the soil –not that which trusts to heating manures & improved agricultural implements only. How when a man purchases a thing he is determined to get & get hold of it using how many expletives & how long a string of synonomous or similiar terms signifying possession –in the legal process– What’s mine’s my own. An old Deed of a small piece of swamp land which I have lately surveyed at the risk of being mired past recovery says “that the said Spaulding his Heirs & Assigns, shall and may from time, & at all times forever hereafter, by force & virtue of these presents, lawfully, peaceably and quietly have, hold, use, occupy, possess and enjoy the said swamp &c” Magnetic iron being anciently found in Magnesia hence –magnes or magnet employed by Pliny & others– Chinese appear to have discovered the magnet very early A D 121 & before? used by them to steer ships in 419 –mentioned by an Icelander 1068 –in a French poem 1181 In Torfaeus Hist of Norway 1266 –used by PLINY DeGama in 1427 leading stone hence load stone The peroxide of hydrogen or ozone at first thought to be a chemical curiosity merely is found to be very generally diffussed through nature. The following bears on the floating ice which has risen from the bottom of the meadows– Robert Hunt says “Water conducts heat downward but very slowly; a mass of ice will remain undissolved but a few inches under water, on the surface of which, ether, or any other inflammable body, is burning. If ice swam beneath the surface, the summer sun would scarcely have power to thaw it; and thus our lakes & seas would be gradually converted into solid masses”22 The figures of serpents of griffins flying dragons and other embellishments of heraldry –the eastern idea of the world on an elephant that on a tortoise & that on a serpent again &c usually regarded as mythological in the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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com. sense of that word –are thought by Hunt? to “indicate a faint & shadowy knowledge of a previous state of organic existence” –such as geology partly reveals. The fossil tortoise has been found in Asia large enough to support an elephant. Ammonites, snake-stones, or petrified snakes have been found from of old –often decapitated. In the N part of Grt Britain the fossil remains of encrinites are called “St. Cuthbert’s beads.” –“fiction dependant on truth.” Westward is Heaven or rather heavenward is the west. The way to heaven is from east to west around the ASTRONOMY earth The sun leads & shows it The stars too light it. Nature & man Some prefer the one others the other; but that is all dè gustibus– It makes no odds at what well you drink, provided it be a well-head. Walking in the woods it may be some afternoon the shadow of the wings of a thought flits across the landscape of my mind And I am reminded how little eventful is our lives What have been all these wars & survivors of wars and modern discoveries & improvements so called a mere irritation in the skin. But this shadow which is so soon past & whose substance is not detected suggests that there are events of importance whose interval is to us a true historic period. The lecturer is wont to describe the 19th century –the American the last generation in an offhand & triumphant strain –wafting him to Paradise spreading his fame by steam & telegraph –recounting the number of wooden stopples he has whittled But who does not perceive that this is not a sincere or pertinent account of any man’s or nation’s life. It is the hip hip hurrah & mutual admiration society style. Cars go by & we know their substance as well as their shadow. They stop & we get into them. But those sublime thoughts passing on high do not stop & we never get into them. Their conductor is not like one of us. I feel that the man who in his conversation with me about the life of man in New England lays much stress on rail-roads telegraphs & such enterprises does not go below the surface of things– He treats the shallow & transitory as if it were profound & enduring in one of the minds avatars in the intervals between sleeping & waking –aye even in one of the interstices of a Hindoo dynasty perchance such things as the 19th century with all its improvements may come & go again. Nothing makes a deep & lasting impression but what is weighty Obey the law which reveals and not the law revealed. I wish my neighbors were wilder. A wildness whose glance no civilization could endure. He who lives according to the highest law –is in one sense lawless That is an unfortunate discovery certainlly that of a law which binds us where we did not know that we were bound. Live free –child of the mist. He who for whom the law is made who does not obey the law but whom the law obeys –reclines on pillows of down and is wafted at will whither he pleases –for man is superior to all laws both of heaven & earth. (when he takes his liberty.) Wild as if we lived on the marrow of antelopes devourd raw There would seem to be men in whose lives there have been no events of importance more than in the beetles which crawls in our path. ARTIST OF KOUROO

One of the things we can become aware of from the above is that Thoreau was still processing the information in the materials he checked out last December from Stacy’s Circulating Library in Concord, Roualeyn George Gordon-Cumming’s account of FIVE YEARS OF A HUNTER’S LIFE IN THE FAR INTERIOR OF SOUTH AFRICA. WITH NOTICES OF THE NATIVE TRIBES, AND ANECDOTES OF THE CHASE OF THE LION, ELEPHANT, HIPPOPOTAMUS, GIRAFFE, RHINOCEROS, &C. (New York: Harper & brothers). FIVE YEARS IN AFRICA, I FIVE YEARS IN AFRICA, II

22. Wouldn’t Henry have been fascinated to learn that Walden Pond originated as a mass of buried, slowly melting ice left behind by glaciation? OUR MOST RECENT GLACIATION HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March: During this month and the following one, Henry Thoreau would be surveying for James McCafferty, whose house lot and farm land was on Virginia Road east of where Thoreau had been born.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/85.htm

During this month and the following one, Waldo Emerson would be delivering “The Conduct of Life.”

March 3, Monday: The federal congress authorized a small silver coin, the 3-cent piece.

Henry Thoreau continued surveying the woodlot belonging to Cyrus Stow on Pine Hill in the east part of Concord, in the rear of Joseph Merriam’s house off Old Bedford Road, that he had begun to survey on February 27th.

In this case “off Old Bedford Road” clearly means “on Virginia Road,” Virginia Road being, actually, itself, off Old Bedford Road! To confirm this, Allan H. Schmidt points out, you can take a look at:

http://allanhschmidt.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/gleason190611.jpg

(You will notice on the right margin a list of property owners including J. Meriam with a row column index for its location on the map.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/121a.htm

March 6, Thursday: Henry Thoreau began to work with the heirs of Timothy Brooks in describing their house and fields (this evaluation would continue on the 13th, 14th, 15th, 21st, 22d, and 25th). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 12, Saturday: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Thomas Lord, 29 acres of Factory Village land between Factory Road and Boxboro Road,

while the Reverend Daniel Foster, temporary minister at the Trinitarian Church in Concord, prayed on Long Wharf, while the young Thomas Simms (Sims) was being marched under very heavy guard to the dock for transport aboard the brig Acorn back to a slaveholder in Savannah GA.23

As the brig pulled away Simms cried out to the docks: “And is this Massachusetts liberty?” The sordid affair began to add materials to Thoreau’s journal (J 2:173-85, continuing into May) which eventually would find their way into the lecture “Slavery in Massachusetts.” View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/78.htm

circa April 1, 1851: When I read the account of the carrying back of the fugitive into slavery, which was read last sunday evening –and read also what was not read here that the man who made the prayer on the wharf was Daniel Foster of Concord I could not help feeling a slight degree of pride because of all the towns in the Commonwealth Concord was the only one distinctly named as being represented in that tea-party –and as she had a place in the first so would have a place in this the last & perhaps next most important chapter of the Hist of Mass. But my second feeling, –when I reflected how short a time that gentleman has resided in this town, –was one of doubt & shame –because the men of Concord in recent times have done nothing to entitle them to the honor of having their town named in such a connexion.

23. Daniel’s wife Dora Foster was for a number of years Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau’s best friend. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS”: The Liberator and the Commonwealth were the only papers in Boston, as far as I know, which made themselves heard in condemnation of the cowardice and meanness of the authorities of that city, as exhibited in '51. The other journals, almost without exception, by their manner of referring to and speaking of the Fugitive Slave Law, and the carrying back of the slave Simms, insulted the common sense of the country, at least. And, for the most part, they did this, one would say, because they thought so to secure the approbation of their patrons, not being aware that a sounder sentiment prevailed to any extent in the heart of the Commonwealth. I am told that some of them have improved of late; but they are still eminently time- serving. Such is the character they have won. But, thank fortune, this preacher can be even more easily reached by the weapons of the reformer than could the recreant priest. The free men of New England have only to refrain from purchasing and reading these sheets, have only to withhold their cents, to kill a score of them at once. One whom I respect told me that he purchased Mitchell’s Citizen in the cars, and then threw it out the window. But would not his contempt have been more fatally expressed, if he had not bought it? Are they Americans? are they New Englanders? are they inhabitants of Lexington, and Concord, and Framingham, who read and support the Boston Post, Mail, Journal, Advertiser, Courier, and Times? Are these the Flags of our Union? I am not a newspaper reader, and may omit to name the worst. Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime? I do not know whether the Boston Herald is still in existence, but I remember to have seen it about the streets when Simms was carried off. Did it not act its part well — serve its master faithfully? How could it have gone lower on its belly? How can a man stoop lower than he is low? do more than put his extremities in the place of the head he has? than make his head his lower extremity? When I have taken up this paper with my cuffs turned up, I have heard the gurgling of the sewer through every column. I have felt that I was handling a paper picked out of the public gutters, a leaf from the gospel of the gambling-house, the groggery and the brothel, harmonizing with the gospel of the Merchants’ Exchange.

April 18/19: Henry Thoreau surveyed for Cyrus Stow the Sudbury Road (Back Road) Stow Street in which he laid out the new street (Stow) and divided the land into new houselots up to the present Hubbard Street: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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• Sudbury Road (Back Road) and Stow Street in which Thoreau lays out the new street (Stow) and divided the land into new houselots up to present Hubbard Street (the invoice for this is now at Middlebury College).

April 29, Tuesday: Opposite the courthouse grounds, Henry Thoreau helped the County Commissioners plan a series of monuments and burying-ground tracts.

Thoreau wrote to Dr. Thaddeus William Harris24 at the Harvard Library: Concord Ap. 29th 1851 Dear Sir, I return, herewith, Young’s Chronicles of the Pilgrims — Hawkins’s Quebec — & Silliman’s Tour of Quebec. Will you please send me by the bearer — the 2nd & 3d vols of the Forest Trees of North America, by F. Andrew Michaux, — of which I have already had the 1st vol — also BIGELOW Bigelow’s Medical Botany. Yrs respectfully Henry D. Thoreau.

April 29: Every man perhaps is inclined to think his own situation singular in relation to Friendship. Our thoughts would imply that other men have friends, though we have not. But I do not not know of two whom I can speak of as standing in this relation to one another– Each one makes a standing offer to mankind– On such & such terms I will give myself to you –but it is only by a miracle that his terms are ever accepted. We have to defend ourselves even against those who are nearest to friendship with us. What a difference it is! –to perform the pilgrimage of life in the society of a mate –and not to have an 24. Franklin Benjamin Sanborn reported that “one of Harvard College’s natural historians” (we may presume this to have been Dr. Harris, Thoreau’s teacher in natural science in his senior year) had remarked to Bronson Alcott that “if Emerson had not spoiled him, Thoreau would have made a good entomologist.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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acquaintance among all the tribes of men! What signifies the census –this periodical numbering of men– to one who has no friend? I distinguish between my actual and my real communication with individuals. I really communicate with my friends, and congratulate myself & them on our relation –and rejoice in their presence & society –oftenest when they are personally absent. I remember that not long ago as I laid my head on my pillow for the night I was visited by an inexpressible joy that I was permitted to know & be related to such mortals as I was then related to — & yet no special event {One leaf missing} that I could think of had occurred to remind me of any with whom I was connected –and by the next noon perchance those essences that had caused me joy would have receded somewhat. I experienced a remarkable gladness in the thought that they existed– Their existence was then blessed to me. Yet such has never been my actual relation to any. Every one experiences that while his relation to another actually may be one of distrust & disappointment he may still have relations to him ideally & so really — in spite of both He is faintly conscious of a confidence & satisfaction somewhere. & all further intercourse is based on this experience of success, The very dogs & cats incline to affection in their relation to man. It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being. What bond is it relates us to any animal we keep in the house but the bond of affection. In a degree we grow to love one another.

May 3, Saturday: For the 7th time in its four years of existence, San Francisco, California, was almost entirely destroyed by fire.

Henry Thoreau laid out a road for Luther Hosmer, from his house near the road to Sudbury through land owned by James P. Brown to Marlboro Road at Thomas Wheeler’s,

while meanwhile, on Boston Common, William Lloyd Garrison spoke against slavery.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/65.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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That night Waldo Emerson delivered “The Fugitive Slave Law” in Concord. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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On April 11th, Wendell Phillips had addressed a previous assembly on the Common, about the Thomas Simms (Sims) case. This image of that previous meeting was appearing in this day’s first issue of a new Boston magazine created by publisher Frederick Gleason and editor Maturin Murray Ballou, Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion.25 Since the important detail that would not have been missed by any of the 19th- Century viewers of this image is that the assembly being depicted was amalgamated, which is to say, multi- racial, the fact that the orator depicted is Phillips rather than Garrison is not by way of comparison of any great

25. Gleason was the publisher of the Boston story paper, The Flag of Our Union. Ballou would purchase the Pictorial in 1855 and substitute his own name for Gleason’s in the title. In 1859 Ballou would finish and Gleason would return with a 16-page story-paper, Gleason’s Literary Companion, which would continue until 1670. In about 1857 Henry Thoreau would copy from the initial offerings of the Pictorial into his Indian Notebook #10. CONSULT THE WIKIPEDIA HDT WHAT? INDEX

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moment:

May 24, Saturday: Henry Thoreau did some sort of surveying work at the West Center schoolhouse in Concord. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts began to slightly encourage the formation of town public libraries. Thoreau would report:

WALDEN: We boast that we belong to the nineteenth century and are making the PEOPLE OF most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little this village does WALDEN for its own culture. I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that will not advance either of us. We need to be provoked, – goaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot. We have a comparatively decent system of common schools, schools for infants only; but excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter, and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the state, no school for ourselves. We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment. It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisure – if they are indeed so well off-to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives. Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever? Cannot students be boarded here and get a liberal education under the skies of Concord? Can we not hire some Abélard to lecture to us? Alas! what with foddering the cattle and tending the store, we are kept from school too long, and our education is sadly neglected. In this country, the village should in some respects take the place of the nobleman of Europe. It should be the patron of the fine arts. It is rich enough. It wants only the magnanimity and refinement. It can spend money enough on such things as farmers and traders value, but it is thought Utopian to propose spending money for things which more intelligent men know to be of far more worth. This town has spent seventeen thousand dollars on a town-house, thank fortune or politics, but probably it will not spend so much on living wit, the true meat to put into that shell, in a hundred years. The one hundred and twenty-five dollars annually subscribed for a Lyceum in the winter is better spent than any other equal sum raised in the town. If we live in the nineteenth century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the nineteenth century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial? If we will read newspapers, why not skip the gossip of Boston and take the best newspaper in the world at once? –not be sucking the pap of “neutral family” papers, or browsing “Olive-Branches” here in New England. Let the reports of all the learned societies come to us, and we will see if they know any thing. Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading? As the nobleman of cultivated taste surrounds himself with whatever conduces to his culture, –genius –learning –wit –books –paintings –statuary –music – philosophical instruments, and the like; so let the village do, –not stop short at a pedagogue, a parson, a sexton, a parish library, and three selectmen, because our pilgrim forefathers got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock with these. To act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions; and I am confident that, as our circumstances are more flourishing, our means are greater than the nobleman’s. New England can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her, and board them round the while, and not be provincial at all. That is the uncommon school we want. Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.

PETER ABÉLARD HDT WHAT? INDEX

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During this year, Concord would in fact create its 1st public library (this Town Library would never have a building of its own, but would occupy space in the Court House and in the new Town House on Monument Square).

May 24, Saturday: Our most glorious experiences are a kind of regret. Our regret is so sublime that we may mistake it for triumph. It is the painful plaintively sad surprise of our Genius remembering our past lives and contemplating what is possible. It is remarkable that men commonly never refer to, never hint at, any crowning experiences –where the common laws of their being were unsettled –and the divine & eternal laws prevailed in them. Their lives are not revolutionary –they never recognize any other than the local and temporal authorities It is a regret so divine & inspiring so genuine –based on so true & distinct a contrast –that it surpasses our proudest boasts and the fairest expectations. My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awaking in the morning –I frequently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my unremembered dreams had been divine –as if my spirit had journeyed to its native place, and in the act of reentering its native body had diffused an elysian fragrance around The Genius says “Oh! That is what you were! That is what you may yet be!” It is glorious for us to be able to regret even such an existence. A sane & growing man revolutionizes every day. What institutions of man can survive a morning experience A single nights sleep –if we have indeed slumbered & grown in our sleep –puts them behind us like the river Lethe. It is no unusual thing for him to see the kingdoms of this world pass away. It is an interesting inquiry to seek for the medicines which will cure our ails in the plants which grow around us. At first we are not disposed to believe that man & plants are so intimately related. Very few plants have been medically examined– And yet this is the extent of most mens botany and it is more extensive than would at first be supposed. The botanist is startled by some countryman’s familiarity with an obscure plant to him rare & strange. He who has been an observer for some years knows not what it is, but the unobserving countryman, who sees nothing but what is thrust upon him or the old woman who rarely goes out of the house shows an easy familiarity with it –& can call it by name. I am struck by the fact that though any important individual experience is rare –though it is so rare that the individual is conscious of a relation to his maker transcending time & space & earth –though any knowledge of or communication from “Providence” is the rarest thing in the world– Yet men very easily, –regarding themselves in the gross speak of carrying out the designs of Providence as nations. How often the Saxon man talks of carrying out the designs of Providence –as if he had some knowledge of Providence & his designs. Men allow themselves to associate Providence & design of Providence with their dull prosaic every day thoughts of things That language is usurped by the stalest and deadest prose which can only report the most choice poetic experience This “Providence” is the stalest jest in the universe. The office-boy sweeps out his office “by the leave of Providence.”

June 2, Monday: Henry Thoreau found a boundary line “near ground tangent” for Mrs. Barber.

Thoreau went to Boston and conversed with John Downes, who was connected with the Coast Survey and was printing tables for Astronomical Geodesic & other uses. Downes would have been visiting Boston at the time, not living there. “He tells me that he once saw the common sucker in numbers piling up stones as big as his fist. (like the piles which I have seen) taking them up or moving them with their mouths.”

On his way, Thoreau stopped by Cambridge to check out, from Harvard Library, François André Michaux’s VOYAGE À L’OUEST DES MONTS ALLÉGHANYS DANS LES ÉTATS DE L’OHIO, DU KENTUCKY ET DU TENNESSÉE, ET RETOUR A CHARLESTON (1804). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away” — Emily Dickinson HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 17, Tuesday, 18, Wednesday, 21, Saturday: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Edmund Hosmer, a farm on Sandy Pond Road. Several copies of this survey are at the Concord Free Public Library. These help to locate James Wright’s land, Mrs. Heartwell Bigelow’s, Cyrus Stow’s, F.S. Gourgas’s, Abiel Heywood’s, Augustus Tuttle’s, and the edge of the Ministerial Lot. Hosmer had bought of the early Prescott family, sold to George Everett, then to William H. Devens, Asa Calef, and the Roots. Hosmer bought the old Hunt property on Lowell Road near the bridge, and sold some farmland to Waldo Emerson, June 6, 1855, in the western part of Concord.

July 12, Saturday: Henry Thoreau surveyed near Charles Gordon’s property. He went out walking again as on the previous night, this time alone rather than with the uncomprehending Ellery Channing, and found himself bidding “farewell to those who will talk of nature unnaturally.” Note that Thoreau had admitted to himself, after his excursion into the wilds of Maine, that “man could no longer accuse institutions and society, but must front the true source of evil.”

July 12, Saturday: 8 PM Now at least the moon is full –and I walk alone –which is best by night, if not by day always. Your companion must sympathize with the present mood. The conversation must be located where the walkers are & vary exactly with the scene & events & the contour of the ground. Farewell to those who will talk of nature unnaturally –whose presence are an interuption. I know but one with whom I can walk. I might as well be sitting in a bar room with them as walk and talk with most– We are never side by side in our thoughts –& we cannot bear each other’s silence– Indeed we cannot be silent– We are forever breaking silence, that is all, and mending nothing. How can they keep together who are going different ways! I start a sparrow from her 3 eggs in the grass where she had settled for the night. The earliest corn is beginning to show its tassels now & I scent it as I walk –its peculiar dry scent. (This afternoon I gathered ripe blackberies & felt as if the autumn had commenced) Now perchance many sounds & sights only remind me that they once said something to me, and are so by association interesting. I go forth to be reminded of a previous HDT WHAT? INDEX

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state of existence, if perchance any memento of it is to be met with hereabouts. I have no doubt that nature

DIFFERENT DRUMMER

preserves her integrity. Nature is in as rude health as when Homer sang. We may at least by our sympathies be well. I see a skunk on bare garden hill stealing noiselessly away from me, while the moon shines over the pitch pines which send long shadows down the hill– Now looking back I see it shining on the S side of farm houses & barns with a weird light –for I pass here half an hour later than last night. I smell the huckleberry bushes. I hear a human voice some laborer singing after his days toil –which I do not often hear –loud it must be for it is far away –methinks I should know it for a white man’s voice –some strains have the melody of an instrument. Now I hear the sound of a bugle in the “Corner” reminding me of Poetic Wars, a few flourishes & the bugler has gone to rest. At the foot of the Cliff hill I hear the sound of the clock striking nine as distinctly as within a quarter of a mile usually though there is no wind. The moonlight is more perfect than last night –hardly a cloud in the sky –only a few fleecy ones –there is more serenity & more light– I hear that sort of throttled or chuckling note as of a bird flying high –now from this side then from that. Methinks when I turn my head I see Wachusett from the side of the hill. I smell the butter & eggs as I walk. I am startled by the rapid transit of some wild animal across my path a rabbit or a fox –or you hardly know if it be not a bird. Looking down from the cliffs –the leaves of the tree tops shine more than ever by day –hear & there a lightning bug shows his greenish light over the tops of the trees–26 As I return through the orchard a foolish robin [American Robin Turdus migratorius] bursts away from his perch unnaturally –with the habits of man. The air is remarkably still and unobjectionable on the hill top –& the whole world below is covered as with a gossamer blanket of moonlight– It is just about as yellow as a blanket. It is a great dimly burnished shield with darker blotches on its surface. You have lost some light, it is true, but you have got this simple & magnificent stillness, brooding like genius.

July 13, Sunday: Henry Thoreau again surveyed near Charles Gordon’s property.

July 13, Sunday: Observed yesterday while surveying near Gordon’s a bittern [American 26. William M. White’s version is:

The moonlight is more perfect than last night; Hardly a cloud in the sky,— Only a few fleecy ones. There is more serenity and more light.

I hear that sort of throttled or chuckling note As of a bird flying high, Now from this side, Then from that.

Methinks when I turn my head I see Wachusett from the side of the hill. I smell the butter-and-eggs as I walk.

I am startled by the rapid transit of some wild animal Across my path, a rabbit or a fox,— Or you hardly know if it be not a bird.

Looking down from the cliffs, The leaves of the tree-tops shine more than ever by day. Here and there a lightning-bug shows his greenish light Over the tops of the trees. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Bittern Botaurus lentiginosus] flying over near Gordons with moderate flight and outstretched neck its breast bone sticking out sharp like the bone in the throats of some persons.– Its anatomy exposed. The evergreen is very handsome in the woods now –rising somewhat spirally in a round tower of 5 or 6 stories surmounted by a long bud. Looking across the river to Conantum from the open plains –I think how the history of the hills would read –since they have been pastured by cows –if every plowing & mowing & sowing & chopping were recorded. I hear 4 PM a pigeon wood pecker [Yellow-shafted Flicker Colaptes auratus] on a dead pine near by uttering a harsh and scolding scream, spying me –the chewink [Rufous-Sided Towhee Pipilo Erythrophthalmus] jingles on the tops of the bushes –and the rush sparrow [Field Sparrow Spizella pusilla] –the vireo –& oven bird [Seiurus Aurocapillus] at a distance –& a robin [American Robin Turdus migratorius] sings superior to all and a barking dog has started something on the opposite side of the river –and now the wood thrush [Catharus mustelina] surpasses them all– These plains are covered with shrub oaks –birches –aspens –hickories, mingled with sweet fern & brakes & huckleberry bushes & epilobium now in bloom –& much fine grass. The Hellebore by the brooksides has now fallen over though it is not broken off– The cows now repose & chew the cud under the shadow of a tree –or crop the grass in the shade along the side of the woods, and when you approach to observe them they mind you just enough. I turn up the Juniper repens & see the lighter color of its leaves on the under sides & its berries with three petal like divisions in one end. The sweet scented life everlasting is budded. This might be called the hayer’s or hay-maker’s moon, for I perceive that when the day has been oppressively warm the haymakers rest at noon & resume their mowing after sunset, sometimes quite into evening.

July 14, Monday: Henry Thoreau surveyed a road for the Middlesex County commissioners.

July 14, Monday: Passing over the Great Fields (where I have been surveying a road) this forenoon where were some early turnips –the county Commissioners pluck & pared them with their knives and ate them. I too tried hard to chew a mouthful of raw-turnip and realize the life of cows & oxen –it might be a useful habit in extremities– These events in the revolution of the seasons– These are things which travellers will do. How many men have tasted a raw turnip –! how few have eaten a whole one? Some bovine appetites. Fodder for men. For like reasons we sometimes eat sorrel & say we love it, that we may return the hospitality of nature by exhibiting a good appetite. The citizen looks sharp to see if there is any dogwood or Poison Sumac in the swamp before he enters. If I take the same walk by moonlight an hour later or earlier in the evening it is as good as a different one. I love the night for its novelty; it is less prophaned than the day. The creaking of the crickets seems at the very foundation of all sound. At last I cannot tell it from a ringing in my ears. It is a sound from within not without You cannot dispose of it by listening to it. When I am stilled I hear it. It reminds me that I am a denizen of the earth. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 15th, 16th, 18th, and 30th: Henry Thoreau and Aaron A. Kelsey inspected the boundary markers of the Town of Concord re-establishing a portion of the line between Concord and Acton, from a Pilot’s stone near the railroad right-of-way and another near the Powder Mills, etc. etc., for a total of nine stones. At the Powder Mill he needed to relocate a marker stone, and the Town of Concord would pay $1.50 for doing this. Thoreau would receive a total of $16.50 for his work.

(Although this practice of annually beating the bounds of a town was in that era universal, this was but a small portion of the perambulation of the town line either of Concord or of Acton.)

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/1.htm

September 15, Monday: Ice in the pail under the pump–& quite a frost. Commenced perambulating 1 the town-bounds. At 7 /2 AM rode in Co with A A Kelsey & Mr Tolman to the bound between Acton & Concord near Paul Dudley’s. Mr Tolman told–a story of his wife walking in the fields somewhere–& to keep the rain off throwing her gown over her head & holding it in–her mouth–and so being poisoned about her mouth–from the skirts of her dress having come in contact with poisonous plants. At Dudleys, which house is handsomely situated with 5 large elms in front, we met the Select men of Acton–Ivory Keyes & Luther Conant. Here were 5 of us. It appeared that we weighed–Tolman I think about 160–Conant 155–Keyes about 140– Kelsey 130–myself 127. Tolman described the wall about or at Forest Hill cemetery in Roxbury–as being made of stones upon which they were careful to preserve the moss, so that it cannot be distinguished from a very old wall. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Found one intermediate boundstone near the Powder mill drying-house on the Bank of the river. The workmen there wore shoes without iron tacks– He said that the Kernel house was the most dangerous–the Drying house next–the Press house next. One of the Powder-mill buildings in Concord? All the intermediate bound-stones are on the north sides of the different roads.– The potatoe vines & the beans which were still green are now blackened & flattened by the frost.

September 16, Tuesday: According to Concord town records, the boundaries committee perambulated from Sudbury to Powder Mills.

American newspapers, along with notices of the execution in Havana, Cuba of the filibustering general Narciso López, were reporting that a new government had come into existence in a new territory “Utah,” and that this new thingie was being headed by one Brigham Young:

MORMONISM

September 16, Tuesday: Met the Select men of Sudbury Moore and Haines– I trust that towns will remember that they are supposed to be fairly represented by their select men.

From the specimen which acton sent I should judge that the inhabitants of that town were made up of a mixture of quiet respectable & even gentlemanly farmer people, well to do in the world, with a rather boisterous, coarse, and a little self willed class. That the inhabitants of Sudbury are farmers almost exclusively–exceedingly rough HDT WHAT? INDEX

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& countrified & more illiterate than usual, very tenacious of their rights & dignities and difficult to deal with. That the inhabitants of Lincoln yield sooner than usual to the influence of the rising generation–and are a mixture of rather simple but clever with a well informed & trustworthy people–that the inhabitants of Bedford are mechanics who aspire to keep up with the age–with some of the polish of society–mingled with substantial and rather intelligent farmers. Moore of Sudbury thinks the river would be still lower now if it were not for the water in the reservoir pond in Hopkinton running into it.

September 17, Wednesday: The boundaries committee perambulated the dividing line between Lincoln and Concord.

September 17, Wednesday: Perambulated the Lincoln line– Was it the small rough sunflower which I saw this morning at the brook near Lees’ bridge? Saw at James Baker a Buttonwood tree with a swarm of bees now 3 years in it–but honey & all inaccessible. John W Farrar tells of sugar Maples behind Miles’ in the Corner– Did I see privet in the swamp at the Bedford stone near Giles’ house? Swamp all dry now, could not wash my hands.

From this day through Saturday, in Boston and in Montréal there would be a three-day celebration going on, a celebration of the fact that the cities had been linked by the Grand Junction Railroad.

September 18, Thursday: The New-York Times went on sale, at 2 cents a copy.

The negrero Illinois brought 7 boys who had been kidnapped in the islands of the West Indies into the port of Norfolk, Virginia (HOUSE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 34th Congress, 1st session XII, Number 105, pages 12-14). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

The St. Louis Western Watchman reprinted a racist editorial that had appeared in the Toronto Colonist, about the condition of the American slaves who had been escaping to freedom in Canada: Already we have a far greater number of negroes in the province than the good of the country requires, and we would suggest the propriety of levying a poll tax on all who may come to us for the future.... We abhor slavery, but patriotism induces us to exclaim against having our country overrun by blacks, many of whom are woefully depraved by their previous mode of life. UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

The Concord boundaries committee perambulated the dividing line between the town and adjoining Bedford.

September 18, Thursday: Perambulated Bedford line

September 19, Friday: The boundaries committee perambulated the dividing line between Carlisle and Concord.

September 19, Friday: Perambulated Carlisle line Large flowered bidens or Beggar ticks or Burr-Marygold now abundant by river side. Found the bound-stones on Carlisle by the river–all or mostly tipped over by the ice & water like the pitch pines about Walden pond. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Grapes very abundant along that line. The soap-wort Gentian now– In an old pasture now grown up to birches & other trees–followed the cow paths to the old apple trees. Mr Isaiah Green of Carlisle who lives nearest to the Kibbe Place–can remember when there were 3 or 4 houses around him (he is nearly 80 years old & has always lived there & was born there) now he is quite retired–& the nearest road is scarcely used at all. He spoke of one old field, now grown up– which were going through, as the “hog-pasture”, formerly. We found the meadows so dry that it was thought to be a good time to burn out the moss.

September 30, Tuesday: John William Cunningham died. His parishioners would follow his funeral procession “like one great family mourning for a father.” A lychgate would be erected, to his memory.

Henry Thoreau surveyed the Acton/Concord boundary in the northwest part of Concord. This survey showed Damon’s Factory, farms of John Brown, John Hosmer, Joseph Derby, Harrington, Samuel Lees, as well as Fort Pond Brook, and roads to Stow, South Acton, and Main Street in the western part of Concord. According to the Concord Town Report for 1850-51, for perambulating the town line and erecting stones at Acton and Bedford lines he was paid a total of $18.00. Thoreau had already perambulated part of this area while checking Concord boundary markers on September 15th.

September 30, Tuesday: To Powder mills & set an intermediate boundstone on the new road there. Saw them making hoops for powder casks of alder & the sprouts of the white-birch which are red with whitish spots. How interesting it is to observe a particular use discovered in any material. I am pleased to find that the artizan has good reason for preferring one material to another for a particular purpose. I am pleased to learn that a man has detected any use in wood or stone or any material–or in other words its relation to man. The white ash has got its autumnal mulberry hue– What is the autumnal tint of the black ash– The former contrasts strongly with the other shade trees on the village streeet–the elms & buttonwoods–at this season– looking almost black at the first glance– The diffirent characters of the trees appear at this season when their leaves so to speak are ripe than at any other–than in the winter for instance when they are little remarkable– HDT WHAT? INDEX

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& almost uniformly grey or brown or in the spring & and summer when they are undistinguishably green. Now a red maple–an ash–a white birch–a populus grandidentata &c is distinguished almost as far as they are visible. It is with leaves as with fruits & woods–& animals & men–when they are mature their different characters appear. The sun has been obscured much of the day by passing clouds–but now at 5 Pm the sun comes out & by the very clear & brilliant light though the shadows begin to fall long from the trees, it is proved how remarkably clear or pure the atmosphere is– According to all accounts an hour of such a light would be something quite memorable in England. As the wood of an old Cremona its very fibre perchance harmoniously transposed & educated to resound melody has brought a great price–so methinks these telegraph posts should bear a great price with musical instrument makers– It is prepared to be the material of harps for ages to come, as it were put a soak in & seasoning in music. Saw a hornets nest on a tree over the road near the Powder Mills 30 or 40 feet high. Even the pearl–like the beautiful galls on the oaks–is said to be the production of diseaseas or rather obstruction–the fish covering as with a tear some rough obstruction that has got into his shell.

October 16, Thursday-18, Saturday: Henry Thoreau surveyed in Concord for David Loring. His Field Notes book says that he did not use the chain at all, and that he found the bounds of and lotted off the area near Dr. Abiel Heywood, and near Wright’s long lot. In his Journal for these days, he recorded that he saw the “Indian Ditch,” so called, and referred to a survey of the area made by Stephen Hosmer for Thomas Jones in 1766. He billed for $15.00 but received $10.00.

October 16, Thursday: The new moon seen by day reminds me of a poet’s cheese. Surveying for Loring today. Saw the Indian ditch, so called. A plant newly leaving out–a shrub look somewhat like shad blossom.– To night the spearers are out again.

October 17, Friday: Henry Thoreau did more surveying in Concord.

October 17, Friday: Surveying for Loring. A severe frost this morn. which puts one remove further from summer.

October 18, Saturday: Henry Thoreau did more surveying in Concord. He made no entry in his journal.

October 19, Sunday: Henry Thoreau did more surveying in Concord.

1 October 19, Sunday: The Indian? Ditch crosses the road beyond Lorings, running S 7 /2 W or within 1 about 2 /2of the true meridian. Accord. to Stephen Hosmer’s plan of Thomas Jones’ woodland made in 1766 the ditch where Derby & Loring bound on it–must be about 84 rods from old town-line To the northern voyager who does not see the sun for 3 months–night is expanded into winter, & day into summer. Observed today on the edge of a woodlot of Loring’s where his shrub oaks bounded on a neighbors small pitch pines, which grew very close together, that the line of separation was remarkably straight & distinct neither a shruboak nor a pine passing its limit–the ground where the pines grew having apparently been cultivated so far, and its edges defined by the plow. A surveyor must be curious in studying the wounds of trees–to distinguish a natural disease or scar from the “blazing” of an axe HDT WHAT? INDEX

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?Has the aspen? poplar any more of a red heart than the other? The powder man does not want the red hearted. Even this poor wood has its use Observed an oak–a red or black–at a pigeon place [American Passenger Pigeons Ectopistes migratorius] –whose top limbs were cut off perhaps a month ago; the leaves had dried a sort of snuff-yellow & rather glossy. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 20, Monday: Henry Thoreau made no entry in his journal. From this day through October 22 Thoreau would be surveying on Fair Haven Hill in Concord for Reuben Brown, a property which had been known as the “Springwoods” of Dr. Abiel Heywood — Magnetic Variation 9¾º at 8AM. Scale 10 rods to an inch. Size of paper 14 x 20. This is thought to be the land near the shores of Fair Haven and Well Meadow Brook which was partly burned over by Henry’s famous fire in 1844. (Reuben also owned land on Bedford Road which was known as Sleepy Hollow and would become part HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of the present Cemetery.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Between this day and the end of January of the following year, Waldo Emerson would be lecturing all of 35 times in Massachusetts — plus once in Maine, at Augusta.

October 21, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau made no entry in his journal.

October 22, Wednesday: On this day and the following one Henry Thoreau would be surveying part of a woodlot on Fairhaven Hill for Reuben Brown (the spring roads bought from Abel Heywood; beginning 205 chains westerly of westernmost angle).

October 22, Wednesday: The pines, both white & pitch, have now shed their leaves. And the ground in the pine woods is strewn with the newly fallen needles. The fragrant life everlasting is still fresh –& the Canada Snap Dragon still blooms bluely by the roadside.– The rain & dampness have given birth to a new crop of mushrooms. The small willow like shrub (sage willow? salix longirostris Mx) is shedding its small leaves which turn black in drying and cover the path.

October 23, Thursday: Henry Thoreau completed the previous day’s surveying activities.

October 23, Thursday: It is never too late to learn. I observed to-day the Irishman who helped me survey twisting the branch of a birch for a withe –& before he cut it off, also wishing to stick a tall smooth pole HDT WHAT? INDEX

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in the ground –cut a notch in the side of it by which to drive it with a hatchet

October 24, Friday: Henry Thoreau made no entry in his journal.

October 27, Monday: Father Isaac Hecker, CSSR wrote to Orestes Augustus Brownson, Esq.

Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal about how hard it was to believe that the present is as rich as other times, and his phraseology, the matter-of-fact manner in which he uses this superficial talk, about the richness or poverty of the present, is so utterly un-Thoreauvian as to almost pre-empt this terminology from use in the manner in which Henry Thoreau needs to deploy these terms. This is the sort of thing which leads me to believe that Emerson was never able to grasp what Thoreau was about, that Thoreau’s mysticism was utterly opaque to him:

It would be hard to recall the rambles of last night’s talk with H.T. But we stated over again, to sadness, almost, the Eternal loneliness.... how insular & pathetically solitary, are all the people we know! Nor dare we tell what we think of each other, when we bow in the street. ’Tis mighty fine for us to taunt men of the world with superficial & treacherous courtesies. I saw yesterday, Sunday, whilst at dinner my neighbor Hosmer creeping EDMUND HOSMER into my barn. At once it occurred, “Well, men are lonely, to be sure, & here is this able, social, intellectual farmer under this grim day, as grimly, sidling into my barn, in the hope of some talk with me, showing me how to husband my cornstalks. Forlorn enough!” It is hard to believe that all times are alike & that the present is also rich. When this annual project of a Journal returns, & I cast about to think who are to be contributors, I am struck with a feeling of great poverty; my bareness! my bareness! seems America to say.

October 27, Monday: This morning I wake and find it snowing & the ground covered with snow– quite unexpectedly–for last night it was rainy but not cold. The obstacles which the heart meets with are like granite blocks which one alone can not move. She who was VENUS as the morning light to me, is now neither the morning star nor the evening star. We meet but to find each other further asunder, and the oftener we meet the more rapid our divergence. So a star of the first magnitude pales in the heavens, not from any fault in the observers eye nor from any fault in it self perchance, but because its progress in its own system has put a greater distance between The night is oracular– What have been the intimations of the night? I ask. How have you passed the night? Good night! My friend will be bold to conjecture, he will guess bravely at the significance of my words. The cold numbs my fingers this morning. The strong northwest wind blows the damp snow along almost horizontally. The birds fly about as if seeking shelter Perhaps it was the young of the purple finch that I saw sliding down the grass stems some weeks ago–or was it the white-throated finch? Winter with its inwardness is upon us. A man is constrained to sit down, and to think. The ardea minor still with us– Saw a woodcock feeding probing the mud with its long bill under the RR bridge within 2 feet of me for a long time could not scare it far away– What a disproportionate length of bill.– It is a HDT WHAT? INDEX

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sort of badge they wear as a punishment for greedines in a former state. The highest arch of the stone bridge is 6 feet 8 inches above the present surface of the water which I should think was more than a foot higher than it has been this summer–and is 4 inches below the long stone in the east abutment.

October 28, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau made no entry in his journal. He was surveying some property on the Old Marlboro Road near the Ministerial Swamp being purchased by Jabez Reynolds,

who was in the butchering business and lived in the house on the corner of Walden Street and Everett Street. The back room of his house had been owned by the Cyrus Stows for many years, had been moved from Lexington Road, and was used by the Thoreaus in their pencil business at one time.

Thoreau also surveyed an estate on Walden Street.27 There are three extant fragments at the Concord Free Public Library, showing a detailed sketch of the yard, the grounds around the house, and a fence that Thoreau designed and probably built. The detailed sketch shows the house on the corner of Everett Street that was built on the site of the old Heywood Tavern and occupied by William Buttrick, George Everett, and Grace Tuttle. Thoreau’s Field Notes book says he also divided the land of Cyrus Stow from that of Nathan Stow.

27. This plot is the present-day Home for the Aged. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 14, Friday-25, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau was beginning to survey the “Ministerial Swamp” lot in the southwest part of Concord near Harrington Avenue. The woods to the south of this property, belonging to Cyrus Wheeler, were cut in 1857-1858, and the woods to its northeast and to its south were cut in 1858-1859.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/89.htm (Allen H. Schmidt points out that Survey #89 as recorded at the Concord Free Public Library is the same location referred to by Thoreau in his Field Notes of Survey on page 83 on December 6th.)

http://allanhschmidt01742.wordpress.com/page/11/

November 14, Friday: Surveying the Ministerial lot in the S W part of the town. Unexpectedly find Heywoods pond frozen over thinly it being shallow & coldly placed. In the evening went to a party. It is a bad place to go to.– 30 or 40 persons mostly young women in a small room–warm & noisy. Was introduced to two young women– The first one was as lively & loquacious as a chic- a-dee–had been accustomed to the society of watering places, and therefore could get no refreshment out of such a dry fellow as I. The other was said to be pretty looking, but I rarely look people in their faces, and moreover I could not hear what she said there was such a clacking–could only see the motion of her lips when I looked that way. I could imagine better places for conversation–where there should be a certain degree of silence surrounding you & less than 40 talking at once. Why this afternoon even I did better. There was old Mr Joseph Hosmer & I ate our luncheon of cracker & cheese together in the woods. I heard all he said, though it was not much to be sure & he could hear me. & then he talked out of such a glorious repose–taking a leisurely bite at the cracker & cheese between his words–& so some of him was communicated to me & some of me to him. These parties I think are a part of the machinery of modern society–that young people may be brought together to form marriage connections. What is the use of going to see people whom yet you never see–& who never see you? I begin to suspect that it is not necessary that we should see one another. Some of my friends make singular blunders. They go out of their way to talk with certain young women of whom they think or have heard that they are pretty–and take pains to introduce me to them. That may be HDT WHAT? INDEX

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a reason why they should look at them, but it is not a reason why they should talk with them. I confess that I am lacking a sense perchance in this respect–& I derive no pleasure from talking with a young woman half an hour– simply because she has regular features. The society of young women is the most unprofitably I have ever tried. They are so light & flighty that you can never be sure whether they are there or not there. I prefer to talk with the more staid & settled–settled for life, in every sense. I met a man yesterday afternoon in the road who behaved as if he was deaf, and I talked with him in the cold in a loud tone for 15 minutes–but that uncertainty about his ears & the necessity I felt to talk loudly–took off the fine edge of what I had to say–and prevented my saying anything satisfactory. It is bad enough when your neighbor does not understand you–but if there is any uncertainty as to whether he hears you–so that you are obliged to become your own auditor–you are so much the poorer speaker–and so there is a double failure.

November 19, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau was assisted in his surveying in the “Ministerial Swamp” by old Mr. Joseph Hosmer.

November 19, Wednesday: Old Mr. Joseph Hosmer who helped me to-day–said that he used to know all about the lots–but since they’ve chopped off so much & the woods have grown up–he finds himself lost. 30 or 40 years ago when he went to meeting he knew every face in the meeting house–even the boys & girls looked so much like their parents–but after 10 or 12 years they would have outgrown his knowledge entirely (they would have altered so–but he knew the old folks still–because they held their own & did’nt alter. Just so he could tell the boundaries of the old wood which had’nt been cut down, but the young wood altered so much in a few years, that he could’nt tell anything about it. When I asked him why the old road which went by this swamp was so round about, he said he would answer me as Mr – – – did him in a similar case once Why if they had made it straight they would’nt have left any room for improvement. Standing by Harrington’s pond-hole in the swamp–which had skimmed over–we saw that there were many holes through the thin black ice–of various sizes from a few inches to more than a foot in diameter all of which were perfectly circular. Mr H. asked me if I could account for it. As we stood considering we jarred the boggy ground and made a dimple in the water–& this accident we thought betrayed the cause of it–i.e. the circular wavelets so wore off the edges of the ice when once a hole was made. The ice was very thin. & the holes were perfect disks. But what jarred the ground & shook the water? Perhaps the wind which shook the spruce & pine trees which stood in the quaking ground–as well as the little life in the water itself. & the wind on the ice & water itself. There was a more permanent form created by the dimple but not yet a shell-fish.

December 2, Tuesday: On the 47th anniversary of the coronation of Napoléon I as the Emperor of France and the 46th anniversary of the Battle of Austerlitz, French President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte staged his coup d’état against the 2d French Republic. The National Assembly was dissolved, with nearly all political leaders of the Republic taken into custody. There was but sporadic resistance.

An Englishman named Bainbridge was visiting the Niagara Falls in the off season and, while on the icy catwalk to the Terrapin Tower, slipped under the railing. He was able to hang onto a rock for a half an hour in the torrent until someone noticed him down there and summoned two tour guides, J. Davy and H. Brewster. By tying together their horse reins they were able to make a lifeline long enough to reach Bainbridge on his rock — and he got pulled to safety.

Miss Mary Moody Emerson was such a rigid defender of the sanctity of the Sabbath day that often she would spend the day in solitude, refusing to profane it by church and sermon: Pulpits & all the wonders dark & light of nature are but means — not the end of existing — that is for God! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Note that this sort of ultra-pious attitude, rather than distancing her from such non-observers of the Sabbath as Margaret Fuller and Henry Thoreau, actually served to bring her closer to them.

On this day Thoreau made no entry in his journal, clearly because he was too busy beginning the survey of a line between Carlisle and Concord that would continue to occupy him on the 3d, 4th, 5th, 10th, and 13th (there had been a lot of controversy about this line for years; the Town Report for 1851/1852 says that Henry was paid $42.00 for setting this line; Henry’s measurements would not resolve the issue), and lotting off a 40-acre “Ministerial lot” in the southeast part of Concord between Cambridge Turnpike and Walden Streets so the lots could be sold to John McKeen, Nathan Brooks, Aaron A. Kelsey, Daniel Shattuck, Reuben Brown, Richard Barrett, Charles B. Davis, Moses Prichard, the Reverend Addison Grant Fay, Patrick MacManners, Dr. Josiah Bartlett, Colonel Charles Holbrook, R.A. Messer, and Jonathan Farwell. (He would continue on this project during the following month.) View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/89.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 6, Saturday: The group of about 100 armed white men under the leadership of Lieutenant Thomas Sweeny, who had been besieged in their Camp Independence since November 12th, at this point made their move out of the native American controlled territory and back to the white settlements.

In Concord, Henry Thoreau was surveying a 6-acre woodlot near Annursnack Hill for Samuel Barrett and did not make an entry in his journal. This woodlot had belonged to the Lorings and was being sold to George Brooks. The bill for the survey was $3.00. Neighbors mentioned on the survey papers are Prescott, Barrett, Billings,28 and Easterbrook.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/5.htm

28. I imagine this is not Boston’s illustrator and architect Hammatt Billings, but perhaps the home of Nathaniel and John Billings on Old Concord Road? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Meanwhile, in New-York, Walt Whitman was witnessing the landing of Lajos Kossuth, with cannon salutes, a grand parade down Broadway, a banquet for 400 at the Irving House, and a torchlit procession. This great white advocate of liberty was here in our great whitman land of liberty at last! Whitman wished courage “To a Foil’d European Revolutionaire.”

Incidentally, note the “Kossuth hat.” Although it doesn’t show in this particular illustration, such a hat sported an ostrich plume. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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This is what Broadway Avenue would look like, nine years later:

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, a ceremony of an entirely different order was being transacted. William Parker’s three white neighbors, as well as all black men that armed posses could hunt “like partridges upon the mountain” (as one person described the event), that is, culprits who had been singled out merely by their availability and the color of their pelt regardless of whether they were anywhere near that home on that night in September, were being arraigned for treason against the United States of America, on the allegation that refusal to assist Gorsuch and his marshall, equally with resisting the marshall, amounted to making war. It seems that the no-nos the nation derived from this incident were not “what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world” but “something has gone seriously awry when white men refuse to side with their own race,” and not “resist not evil” but “we can’t let niggers know how to use guns.” Friend Lucretia Mott and her associates were in the courtroom “knitting furiously.” Each man wore a red, white, and blue knitted scarf around his neck.

This charge of conspiring to make war could of course not be sustained, but Judge John Kane made a remark about “itinerant female agitators” that indicated he would have found the defendants guilty if there had been HDT WHAT? INDEX

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any way to do so. This case became central in the ongoing debate within the antislavery movement over resort to violence in the face of injustice. Friend Lucretia Mott summed up her position with the thought that we all know, of course, that good is of God, and therefore we must be mistaken if we ever suppose it can come from our doing evil. I am bringing this incident to your attention because it bears on the issue of whether Thoreau was a nonviolenter. Mott holds unimpeached credentials as a nonviolenter, and Thoreau’s credentials as a nonviolenter have been attacked by his biographer Richardson on the basis of his reaction to the Harper’s Ferry raid of 1859, and yet it is clear that had the black activist William Parker been captured and put on trial for the murder of this white master, Mott would have reacted in exactly the same way Thoreau reacted to John Brown’s conduct. In fact Mott’s deportment and words in the case of this charge of treason in the “Christiana riot” in 1851 exactly parallel Thoreau’s deportment and words in the case of John Brown. We note especially the words that Thoreau would have read about John Brown as a moral hero in the presence of the widow Brown, over the grave at North Elba on July 4, 1860: John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history. If any person, in a lecture or conversation at that time, cited any ancient example of heroism, such as Cato or Tell or Winkelried, passing over the recent deeds and words of Brown, it was felt by any intelligent audience of Northern men to be tame and inexcusably far-fetched. For my own part, I commonly attend more to nature than to man, but any affecting human event may blind our eyes to natural objects. I was so absorbed in him as to be surprised whenever I detected the routine of the natural world surviving still, or met persons going about their affairs indifferent. It appeared strange to me that the “little dipper” should be still diving quietly in the river, as of yore; and it suggested that this bird might continue to dive here when Concord should be no more. I felt that he, a prisoner in the midst of his enemies and under sentence of death, if consulted as to his next step or resource, could answer more wisely than all his countrymen beside. He best understood his position; he contemplated it most calmly. Comparatively, all other men, North and South, were beside themselves. Our thoughts could not revert to any greater or wiser or better man with whom to contrast him, for he, then and there, was above them all. The man this country was about to hang appeared the greatest and best in it. Years were not required for a revolution of public opinion; days, nay hours, produced marked changes in this case. Fifty who were ready to say, on going into our meeting in honor of him in Concord, that he ought to be hung, would not say it when they came out. They heard his words read; they saw the earnest faces of the congregation; and perhaps they joined at last in singing the hymn in his praise. The order of instructors was reversed. I heard that one preacher, who at first was shocked and stood aloof, felt obliged at last, after he was hung, to make him the subject of a sermon, in which, to some extent, he eulogized the man, but said that HDT WHAT? INDEX

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his act was a failure. An influential class-teacher thought it necessary, after the services, to tell his grown-up pupils that at first he thought as the preacher did then, but now he thought that John Brown was right. But it was understood that his pupils were as much ahead of the teacher as he was ahead of the priest; and I know for a certainty that very little boys at home had already asked their parents, in a tone of surprise, why God did not interfere to save him. In each case, the constituted teachers were only half conscious that they were not leading, but being dragged, with some loss of time and power. The more conscientious preachers, the Bible men, they who talk about principle, and doing to others as you would that they should do unto you — how could they fail to recognize him, by far the greatest preacher of them all, with the Bible in his life and in his acts, the embodiment of principle, who actually carried out the golden rule? All whose moral sense had been aroused, who had a calling from on high to preach, sided with him. What confessions he extracted from the cold and conservative! It is remarkable, but on the whole it is well, that it did not prove the occasion for a new sect of Brownites being formed in our midst. They, whether within the Church or out of it, who adhere to the spirit and let go the letter, and are accordingly called infidel, were as usual foremost to recognize him. Men have been hung in the South before for attempting to rescue slaves, and the North was not much stirred by it. Whence, then, this wonderful difference? We were not so sure of their devotion to principle. We made a subtle distinction, forgot human laws, and did homage to an idea. The North, I mean the living North, was suddenly all transcendental. It went behind the human law, it went behind the apparent failure, and recognized eternal justice and glory. Commonly, men live according to a formula, and are satisfied if the order of law is observed, but in this instance they, to some extent, returned to original perceptions, and there was a slight revival of old religion. They saw that what was called order was confusion, what was called justice, injustice, and that the best was deemed the worst. This attitude suggested a more intelligent and generous spirit than that which actuated our forefathers, and the possibility, in the course of ages, of a revolution in behalf of another and an oppressed people. Most Northern men, and a few Southern ones, were wonderfully stirred by Brown’s behavior and words. They saw and felt that they were heroic and noble, and that there had been nothing quite equal to them in their kind in this country, or in the recent history of the world. But the minority were unmoved by them. They were only surprised and provoked by the attitude of their neighbors. They saw that Brown was brave, and that he believed that he had done right, but they did not detect any further peculiarity in him. Not being accustomed to make fine distinctions, or to appreciate magnanimity, they read his HDT WHAT? INDEX

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letters and speeches as if they read them not. They were not aware when they approached a heroic statement, — they did not know when they burned. They did not feel that he spoke with authority, and hence they only remembered that the law must be executed. They remembered the old formula, but did not hear the new revelation. The man who does not recognize in Brown’s words a wisdom and nobleness, and therefore an authority, superior to our laws, is a modern Democrat. This is the test by which to discover him. He is not willfully but constitutionally blind on this side, and he is consistent with himself. Such has been his past life; no doubt of it. In like manner he has read history and his Bible, and he accepts, or seems to accept, the last only as an established formula, and not because he has been convicted by it. You will not find kindred sentiments in his commonplace book, if he has one. When a noble deed is done, who is likely to appreciate it? They who are noble themselves. I was not surprised that certain of my neighbors spoke of John Brown as an ordinary felon, for who are they? They have either much flesh, or much office, or much coarseness of some kind. They are not ethereal natures in any sense. The dark qualities predominate in them. Several of them are decidedly pachydermatous. I say it in sorrow, not in anger. How can a man behold the light who has no answering inward light? They are true to their right, but when they look this way they see nothing, they are blind. For the children of the light to contend with them is as if there should be a contest between eagles and owls. Show me a man who feels bitterly toward John Brown, and let me hear what noble verse he can repeat. He’ll be as dumb as if his lips were stone. It is not every man who can be a Christian, even in a very moderate sense, whatever education you give him. It is a matter of constitution and temperament, after all. He may have to be born again many times. I have known many a man who pretended to be a Christian, in whom it was ridiculous, for he had no genius for it. It is not every man who can be a freeman, even. Editors persevered for a good while in saying that Brown was crazy; but at last they said only that it was “a crazy scheme,” and the only evidence brought to prove it was that it cost him his life. I have no doubt that if he had gone with five thousand men, liberated a thousand slaves, killed a hundred or two slaveholders, and had as many more killed on his own side, but not lost his own life, these same editors would have called it by a more respectable name. Yet he has been far more successful than that. He has liberated many thousands of slaves, both North and-South. They seem to have known nothing about living or dying for a principle. They all called him crazy then; who calls him crazy now? All through the excitement occasioned by his remarkable attempt and subsequent behavior the Massachusetts Legislature, not taking any steps for the defense of her citizens who were likely HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to be carried to Virginia as witnesses and exposed to the violence of a slaveholding mob, was wholly absorbed in a liquor- agency question, and indulging in poor jokes on the word “extension.” Bad spirits occupied their thoughts. I am sure that no statesman up to the occasion could have attended to that question at all at that time — a very vulgar question to attend to at any time! When I looked into a liturgy of the Church of England, printed near the end of the last century, in order to find a service applicable to the case of Brown, I found that the only martyr recognized and provided for by it was King Charles the First, an eminent scamp. Of all the inhabitants of England and of the world, he was the only one, according to this authority, whom that church had made a martyr and saint of; and for more than a century it had celebrated his martyrdom, so called, by an annual service. What a satire on the Church is that! Look not to legislatures and churches for your guidance, nor to any soulless incorporated bodies, but to inspirited or inspired ones. What avail all your scholarly accomplishments and learning, compared with wisdom and manhood? To omit his other behavior, see what a work this comparatively unread and unlettered man wrote within six weeks. Where is our professor of belles- lettres, or of logic and rhetoric, who can write so well? He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history. What a variety of themes he touched on in that short space! There are words in that letter to his wife, respecting the education of his daughters, which deserve to be framed and hung over every mantelpiece in the land. Compare this earnest wisdom with that of Poor Richard. The death of [Washington] Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors. Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are egregiously mistaken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them. This unlettered man’s speaking and writing are standard English. Some words and phrases deemed vulgarisms and Americanisms before, he has made standard American; such as “It will pay.” It suggests that the one great rule of composition –and if I were a professor of rhetoric I should insist on this– is, to speak the truth. This first, this second, this third; pebbles in your mouth or not. This demands earnestness and manhood chiefly. We seem to have forgotten that the expression, a liberal HDT WHAT? INDEX

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education, originally meant among the Romans one worthy of free men; while the learning of trades and professions by which to get your livelihood merely was considered worthy of slaves only. But taking a hint from the word, I would go a step further, and say that it is not the man of wealth and leisure simply, though devoted to art, or science, or literature, who, in a true sense, is liberally educated, but only the earnest and free man. In a slaveholding country like this, there can be no such thing as a liberal education tolerated by the State; and those scholars of Austria and France who, however learned they may be, are contented under their tyrannies have received only a servile education. Nothing could his enemies do but it redounded to his infinite advantage — that is, to the advantage of his cause. They did not hang him at once, but reserved him to preach to them. And then there was another great blunder. They did not hang his four followers with him; that scene was still postponed; and so his victory was prolonged and completed. No theatrical manager could have arranged things so wisely to give effect to his behavior and words. And who, think you, was the manager? Who placed the slave-woman and her child, whom he stooped to kiss for a symbol, between his prison and the gallows? We soon saw, as he saw, that he was not to be pardoned or rescued by men. That would have been to disarm him, to restore to him a material weapon, a Sharps’ rifle, when he had taken up the sword of the spirit — the sword with which he has really won his greatest and most memorable victories. Now he has not laid aside the sword of the spirit, for he is pure spirit himself, and his sword is pure spirit also. “He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene, Nor called the gods with vulgar spite, To vindicate his helpless right; But bowed his comely head Down as upon a bed.” What a transit was that of his horizontal body alone, but just cut down from the gallows-tree! We read, that at such a time it passed through Philadelphia, and by Saturday night had reached New York. Thus like a meteor it shot through the Union from the Southern regions toward the North! No such freight had the cars borne since they carried him Southward alive. On the day of his translation, I heard, to be sure, that he was hung, but I did not know what that meant; I felt no sorrow on that account; but not for a day or two did I even hear that he was dead, and not after any number of days shall I believe it. Of all the men who were said to be my contemporaries, it seemed to me that John Brown was the only one who had not died. I never hear of a man named Brown now –and I hear of them pretty often– I never hear of any particularly brave and earnest man, but my first thought is of John Brown, and what relation he may be to him. I meet him at every turn. He is more alive than ever he HDT WHAT? INDEX

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was. He has earned immortality. He is not confined to North Elba nor to Kansas. He is no longer working in secret. He works in public, and in the clearest light that shines on this land.

And it is also worthy of note that on October 25-26, 1860 (published November 3) Friend Lucretia Mott, the foremost spokesperson for nonviolence in the abolitionist movement in America, brought forward the position she had originally taken in regard to the “Christiana riot” near Philadelphia in 1851 by declaring

It is not John Brown the soldier we praise, it is John Brown the moral hero.

We might be tempted to declare that Thoreau was the most belligerent nonresistor of evil the world had yet seen, but in fact that description had already been awarded to someone. It was awarded by Robert Purvis to Friend Lucretia, and (despite what was said in the heat of the Civil War by Horace Greeley’s newspaper in New-York, in mockery of her) there is no shadow of a doubt that Friend Lucretia was for the totality of her life a convinced disbeliever in all violence. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 9, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau made no entry in his journal (he was still busy surveying the Ministerial lots SE).

After this 40-acre plot between Cambridge Turnpike and Walden Streets was lotted off, the wood would be sold to: John McKeen, Nathan Brooks, Aaron A. Kelsey, George Brooks, Col. Daniel Shattuck, Reuben Brown, Richard Barrett, Charles B. Davis, Moses Prichard, the Reverend Addison Grant Fay, Patrick MacManners, Dr. Josiah Bartlett, Col. Charles Holbrook, R.A. Messer, and Jonathan Farwell.

In France, a coup d’etat orchestrated by President Louis Napoleon Bonaparte and Count Morny (his half- brother) had brought an end to the “Second Republic” — in 1852 Louis Napoleon would begin his reign as Napoleon III and proclaim a 2d French Empire. Therefore on this day Hector Berlioz wrote of Louis- Napoléon Bonaparte “this coup d’etat was the work of a master; indeed, it was a veritable masterpiece.” Lord Palmerston would also congratulate Louis Napoleon on his coup d’etat. This would upset Lord John Russell and other radical members of the Whig party, and this time he would accept the advice of Queen Victoria and sack Palmerston (six weeks later Palmerston would take revenge by helping bring down Russell’s government). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1852

April 5, Monday: In South China, the Chinese Christian forces of the Tai-p’ing T’ien-kuo or “Central Kingdom of Great Peace,” 40,000 strong, broke out of the city of Yongan in which they had been encircled by the Confucian Buddhist army of the Beijing-based Ch’ing emperor and marched on Guilin, the capital of Guangxi province, laying land mines and boobytraps behind them to delay their pursuers.

Thoreau made no entry in his journal. According to the records of the Concord Town Board for this date, he was busy making re-surveys of White Pond and Walden Pond for the 1852 map of Concord by engineer H.F. Walling. $1.00 payment was authorized to Henry D. Thoreau for “expenses for new school,” and $4.00 for surveying “lot 9 for the present Town Hall.”

April 23, Friday-24, Saturday: On this Friday evening Waldo Emerson spoke at the annual banquet of St. George’s Society.

Henry Thoreau was surveying for Jacob Baker, whose Lincoln farm, called “Pleasant Meadow” or “Pleasant Acres,” contained 8 acres of chestnut woodlot (Castanea dentata or American chestnut) located near Flint’s Pond, plus the home of Nathaniel and John Billings on Old Concord Road. This woodlot would be cut later in 1852.

BAKER FARM

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/3.htm

1 1 April 23, Friday: The water has risen 1 /2 inches at 6 this morn since last night. It is now then 8 /2 inches above the Iron Truss ie. the horizontal part of it. There is absolutely no passing in carriages or otherwise over Hubbard’s & the Red Bridge roads and over none of the bridges for foot travellers. Throughout this part of the country most people do not remember so great a flood. But judging from some accounts it was probably as high here 35 yrs ago. The willow catkins have made but little progress for a week. They have suffered from the cold rain & wind & are partly blasted. It is a pleasant sight–among the pleasantest, at this season, to see the at first reddish anthers of the sterile catkins of our earliest willow bursting forth on their upper sides like rays of sunshine from amidst the downy fog–turning a more & more lively yellow as the pollen appears.– like a flash of sulpher. It is like the sun bursting out of a downy cloud. or mists. I hear this morning in the pine woods above the rail-road bridge for the first time that delicious cool sounding wetter-wetter wetter wetter wet. from that small bird (Pine warbler?) in the tops of the pines. I associate it with the cool moist evergreen spring woods The wood Pewee [Eastern Phoebe Sayornis phoebe] on an elm sings now Peer-r-weet peer-r-weet. peer- wée. It is not the simple Peer-r-wet peer-r-wée that I heard at first.– Will it not change next to that more tender strain? Vegetation starts when the earth’s axis is sufficiently inclined–i.e. it follows the sun. Insects & all the smaller animals (as well as many larger) follow vegetation– The fishes the small fry start probably–for this reason– Thoreau as worms come out of the trees–buffaloes finally seek new pastures–water-bugs appear on the water &c &c.– Next the large fish & fish hawks [Osprey Pandion haliaetus] &c follow the small-fry–fly catchers [Olive- Ornithologist sided Flycatcher Contopus borealis] follow the insects & worms (The graniverous birds–who can depend on the supplies of dry seeds of last year–are to some extent independent of the seasons & can remain through the winter or come early in the spring–& they furnish food for a few birds of prey at that season) Indians follow the buffaloes–trout–suckers &c follow the water bugs–&c reptiles follow vegetation insects & worms–birds of prey the fly catchers &c Man follows all & all follow the Sun. The greater or less abundance of food determines migrations. If the buds are deceived & suffer from frost–then are the birds. The great necessary of life for the brute creation is food–next perhaps shelter–i.e a suitable climate. 3dly perhaps security from foes. The storm may be said to have fairly ended last night. I observed yesterday that it was drier in most fields pastures & even meadows that were not reached by the flood, immediately after this remarkable fall of water than at the beginning– The condition of the fields has been steadily improving for walkers– I think one reason is that there was some frost in the ground which the rain melted so that the ground soaked up the water– But no doubt it goes to prove the dryness of our sandy soil & absence of springs. 1 At 6 P M the water has fallen 1 /2 inches Heard the pigeon woodpecker [Yellow-shafted Flicker Colaptes auratus] today. that long continued unmusical note some what like a robins–heard afar– Yet pleasant to hear because associated with a more advanced stage of the season. Saw the Fringilla hiemalis today–lingering still.

1 April 24, Saturday: 6 Am. water has fallen 1 /2 inches since last night–which is at a regular rate. I know 2 species of men. The vast majority are men of society. They live on the surface, they are interested in the transient & fleeting–they are like drift wood on the flood– They ask forever & only the news–the froth & scum of the eternal sea. They use policy–they make up for want of matter with manner. Wealth & the approbation of men is to them success. The enterprises of society are something final & sufficing for them. The world advises them & they listen to its advice. They live wholly an evanescent life–creatures of circumstance.– It is of prime importance to them who is the president of the day. They have no knowledge of truth, but by an exceedingly dim & rare instinct. which stereotypes the church & some other institutions. They dwell they are even right in my face & eyes like gnats they are like motes so near the eyes that looking beyond they appear like blurrs–they have their being between my eyes & the end of my nose. The terra firma of my existence lies far beyond behind them & their improvements. If they write the best of them deal in "elegant literature". Society–Man–has no prize to offer me that can tempt me–not one.29 That which interests a town or city or any large number of men–is always something trivial.– as politics. They have many letters to write. It is impossible for me to be interested in what interest men generally. Their pursuits & interests seem to me frivolous. When I am most myself & see the clearest men are least to be seen–they are like muscae volitantes. & that they are seen at all is the proof of imperfect vision.– These affairs of men are so narrow as to afford no vista–no distance–it is a shallow foreground only– no large extended views to be taken. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Men put to me frivolous questions–When did I come, when am I going? That was a more pertinent question– “What I lectured for”?30 which one auditor put once–to another.– What an ordeal it were to make men pass through to consider how many ever put to you a vital question! Their knowledge of something better gets no further than what is called religion & spiritual knockings– Now that the sun shines & the sky is blue–the water is a dark blue which in the storm was light or whitish– It follows the sky, though the sky is a lighter blue. The lilac-buds have looked as forward as any for many weeks.– 2 Pm to Carlisle Bridge Via Flints Bridge–bank of river–rear of Joel Barrets–returning by Bridle Road. The elms are now fairly in blossom. It is one of those clear washing days though the air is cold–such as succeed a storm, when the air is clear–& flowing–& the cultivated ground & the roads shine. Passed Flints road on the wall. Sorrel is well under weigh & cinquefoil. White oaks still hold their leaves. The pitch pine is a cheerful tree at this season, with its lively yellow green in the sunshine while the landscape is still russet & dead grass colored. Sitting by the road beyond N Barrett’s– The colors of the world are–overhead a very light blue sky– darkest in the zenith–lightest in the horizon–with scattered white clouds seeming thickest in the horizon– all around the undulating earth a very light tawny color–from the dead grass–with the reddish & grey of forests mingled with evergreen–& in the lap of earth very dark blue rippled water–answering to the light blue above– the shadows of clouds flitting over all below–the spires of woods fringing the horizon on every side–& nearer single trees here & there seen with dark branches against the sky. This tawny ground divided by walls, & houses white, light slate & red sprinkled here & there. Balls Hill & the rest are deep sunk in the flood. The level water line appears to best advantage when it appears thus to cut the trees & hills. It looks as if the water was just poured into its basin & simply stood so high. No permanent shore gives you this pleasure. Saw the honey bees on the staminate flowers of the willow catkins by the road side (such as I described Ap. 23d) with little bottles of the yellow pollen apparently as big as pin heads on their thighs. With these flowers then come bees. Is there honey in staminate flowers? The innocent odor of Spring flowers–flavorless as a breakfast– They will be more spiced by & by. Went over the cladonia hills toward Tarbel’s. A small tree, an oak for instance looks large on a bare hill top. The farmers whom the storm has delayed are busily plowing & overhauling their manure. Observed the ants at work on a large antheap– – They plainly begin as soon as the snow is off–& the ground thawed. Gold thread an ever green–still bright in the swamps. The rattlesnake plantain has fresh leaves A wall running over the top of a rocky hill–with the light seen through its chinks–has a pretty effect. The sparrows frogs rabbits &c are made to resemble the ground for their protection–but so is the hawk that prey’s on them–but he is of a lighter color beneath that creeping things over which he hovers may confound him with the sky. The marsh hawk is not easily distinguished from the meadow or the stems of the maples The water is still over the causeway on both sides of Carlisle Bridge for a long distance. It is a straight flood now for about 4 miles. Fortunately for the bridge the wind has not been very high since the flood was at its height. The leaves of the hard hack–curled up show their white under sides. On the Bridle Road observed the interesting light crimson starlike flowers of the hazel.– The catkins being now more yellowish. This is a singular & interesting 29. Thoreau would make this into “The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man” in his early lecture “WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT” as part of paragraph 37:

The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man. You may raise money enough to tunnel a mountain,1 but you cannot raise money enough to hire a Brad Dean’s man who is minding his own business. An efficient and valuable man does Commentary what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed.

1.Thoreau’s auditors would have recognized this to be an allusion to the infamous Hoosac Tunnel Project. An unprecedented two-million-dollar contract was awarded to a construction firm in 1848 to drill the tunnel through a mountain in northeastern Massachusetts. The tunnel was not completed until 1869, sixteen years after the scheduled completion date, and at an estimated cost of fourteen million dollars and 195 lives (see Don Murray, MAN AGAINST EARTH: THE STORY OF TUNNELS AND TUNNEL BUILDERS [New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1961], pages 53-61, for an account of the project). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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part of concord.– extensive & rather flat rocky pastures without houses or cultivated fields on any but this unused Bridle Road–from which I hear the frogs. peep. These are Channing’s moors. He went in on this road to chop–& this is the scene of his Woodman– Heard again (in the village) that vetter-vetter vetter vetter vét. or tchi tchi tchi tchi tchi tchi tchí very rapidly repeated which I heard Ap. 23d & perhaps the same that I saw Ap 17 (described Ap 18th) I am pretty sure it is the Pine Warbler yellow beneath with faint olivaceous marks on the sides– Olivaceous above–tail forked about the size of a yellow-bird. I have not seen the fox-colored sparrow [Fox Sparrow Passerella iliaca] for some weeks. Thought I saw a loon on Walden yesterday.

April 26, Monday: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Ellery Channing, his Concord houselot on Main Street that had formerly been owned by John Shepard Keyes, adjacent to MacKay’s lot.31

April 26, Monday: Chickweed (Stellaria media) naturalized – shows its humble star-like white flowers now on rather dirty weather worn branches in low damp gardens now– Also the smaller white flowers of the shepherd’s purse which is already 6 or 8 inches high in the same places i.e. Cheney’s Garden. Both according to Dewey introduced & naturalized. DEWEY What they call April weather – threatening rain notwithstanding the late long continued rains–

P.M. — Rambled amid the shrub oak hills beyond Haden’s. Lay on the dead grass in a cup-like hollow sprinkled with half dead low shrub oaks– As I lie flat looking close in among the roots of the grass I perceive that its endless ribbon has pushed up about one inch & is green to that extent – such is the length to which the spring has gone here – though when you stand up the green is not perceptible. It is a dull rain dropping & threatening afternoon.– inclining to drowsiness– I feel as if I could go

30. Thoreau would use this in his early lecture “WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT” as part of paragraph 70:

The great majority are strictly men of society. They live on the surface and are interested chiefly in the transient. They are like drift wood on the flood. They ask forever and only the news—the froth and scum of the eternal sea. They Brad Dean’s use policy and make up for want of matter with manner. Wealth and the Commentary approbation of man are to them success. The enterprises of society are something final and sufficing to them. The world advises them and they listen to its advice. It is of prime importance to them who is the president of the day. They have no knowledge of truth but by an exceedingly dim and rare instinct, which has stereotyped the church and some other institutions. Their knowledge of something better gets no further than a religious revival or spiritual knockings.1 [Paragraph 70] They put to me frivolous questions—when did I come—when am I going. That was a more pertinent question which one of my auditors put to another once: “What does he lecture for?”2 I confess that it made me quake in my shoes!

1. Spiritual knockings were believed to be messages from spirits. In a letter to his sister Sophia on 13 July 1852, Thoreau refers to “idiots inspired by the cracking of a restless board—humbly asking ‘Please spirit, if you cannot answer by knocks, answer by tips of the table’!!!!!!” (CORRESPONDENCE 284). 2.This originated about three weeks after a disastrous lecture in Boston. The Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson had arranged the lecture for 6 April, and a snowstorm caused a low turnout. The lecture was moved to a mechanic’s reading room, but few of the young men there were interested in what Thoreau had to say (see Harding, DAYS OF HENRY THOREAU, pages 287-88). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to sleep under a hedge– The landscape wears a subdued tone – quite soothing to the feelings – no glaring colors. I begin now to leave off my great coat. The frogs at a distance are now so numerous – that instead of the distinct shrill peeps – it is one dreamy sound It is not easy to tell where or how far off they are – when you have reached their pool they seem to recede as you advance As you squat by the side of the pool you still see no motion in the water – though your ears ring with the sound – seemingly & probably within 3 feet– I sat for 10 minutes on the watch waving my hand over the water that they might betray themselves – a tortoise with his head out a few feet off watching me all the while – till at last I caught sight of a frog under a leaf – & caught & pocketed him – but when I looked afterward he had escaped. The moment the dog stepped into the water they stopped. They are very shy. Hundreds filled the air with their shrill peep. Yet 2 or 3 could be distinguished by some peculiarity or variation in their note. Are these different? The viola ovata budded. Saw pollywogs 2 or 3 inches long.

May 15, Saturday: On this day and on the 18th, Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Silas Hosmer, houselots on Bedford Street next to Mary Rice and bounded on the east by land of C.B. Davis. In his journal, Thoreau noted that in 1668 the Town had a herd of 50 cattle pastured there.

31. The house was moved up Main Street and across the street near Love Lane. It was occupied for many years by the Misses Rood, and is now owned by the Roberts family. These survey papers are at the Thoreau Lyceum. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The front page of Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, Volume II, No. 20, page 305, issued in Boston, carried an illustration of the squadron of the Perry expedition titled “View of the Vessels Composing the Japanese Squadron,” depicting the ships as if somehow assembled close to one another under full sail, very similar to one that would be made in the following year in New-York by J.W. Orr from a drawing by Wade. CONSULT THE WIKIPEDIA

Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry is somewhat implausibly standing in a long boat headed toward his flagship. The engraving lists the USS Mississippi (Perry’s flagship), the USS Saratoga, the USS St. Marys, the USS Susquehanna, the USS Plymouth, the USS Princeton, and the USS Supply. The handcoloring was presumably done subsequent to publication and sale. A similar illustration would appear in the February 12, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1853 issue of the magazine.

May 15: The first cricket’s chirrup which I have chanced to hear now falls on my ear and makes me forget all else; all else is a thin and moveable crust down to that depth where he resides eternally. He already foretells autumn. Deep under the dry border of some rock in this hillside he sits, and makes the finest singing of birds outward and insignificant, his own song is so much deeper and more significant. His voice has set me thinking, philosophizing, moralizing at once. It is not so wildly melodious, but it is wiser and more mature than that of the wood thrush. With this elixir I see clear through the summer now to autumn, and any summer works seems frivolous. I am disposed to ask this humblebee that hurries humming past so busily if he knows what he is about. At one leap I go from the just opened buttercup to the life-everlasting. This singer has antedated autumn. His strain is superior (inferior?) to seasons. It annihilates time and space; the summer is for time- servers. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 25, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for J. Bernard McKay (T. Bernard MacKay?), a plot on Main Street in Concord between the property of William Ellery Channing II and the property of Frances Monroe.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/86.htm

Waldo Emerson’s 49th birthday.

Charles Theodore Russell’s AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE BOSTON YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION, ON THE OCCASION OF THEIR FIRST ANNIVERSARY, IN PARK STREET CHURCH, BOSTON, TUESDAY EVENING, MAY 25, 1852 (George C. Rand, Printer, No. 3 Cornhill, Boston, 1852) MAY 25, 1852 AT THE YMCA HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 26, Wednesday, 28, Friday, 29, Saturday, 31, Monday: Henry Thoreau surveyed for Noah and Joshua Brooks. This Lincoln farm of 175 acres was on the north and south sides of Great Road or the present 2A near the Concord line. This plan shows the location of part of the land of Emilius J. Leffelman, on Virginia Road, Asa White, Aaron Brooks, Levi Brooks, and William Rice which was bought by Samuel Hartwell.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/11.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 21, Monday: Friedrich Froebel, educator and developer of the idea of the kindergarten, died.

That evening Lajos Kossuth lectured at the Broadway Tabernacle in New-York, on “The future of nations: in what consists its security.”

David Loring was helping Henry Thoreau survey the land of Henry Wheeler near the railroad tracks in Concord, and his map shows Love Lane, Texas Street, Back Road (Sudbury Road), and the land of William Monroe.

June 21: The perception of beauty is a moral test.

July 3, Saturday: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Cyrus Stow, a Fair Haven Hill woodlot near the deep cut on the railroad line.

July 3: The yellow lily –Lilium Canadense is out rising above the meadow grass sometimes one sometimes 2. (From Deep Cut over Fair Haven back by Potters path 5 Pm.–) Young woodchucks sitting in their holes allow me to come quite near– Clover is mostly dried up. The chimaphila umbellata winter-green –must have been in blossom some time. The back side of its petals “cream colored tinged with purple” which is turned toward the beholder while the face is toward the earth –is the handsomest It is a very pretty little chandelier of a flower fit to adorn the forest floor. Its buds are nearly as handsome. (They appear long in unfolding) Polygonum persicaria just beginning. The pickers have quite thinned the crop of early blue berries where Stow cut off winter before last. When the woods on some hill side are cut off the vaccinium Pennsylvanicum springs up –or grows more luxuriantly being exposed to light & air –& by the 2nd year its stems are weighed to the ground with clusters of blue berries covered with bloom & much larger than they commonly grow –also with a livelier taste than usual as if remembering some primitive Mt side given up to them anciently. Such places HDT WHAT? INDEX

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supply the villagers with the earliest berries for two or three years or until the rising wood overgrows them and they withdraw into the bosom of nature again. They flourish during the few years between one forest’s fall and another’s rise. Before you had prepared your mind or made up your mouth for berries –thinking only of crude green ones –earlier by 10 days than you had expected some child of the woods is at your door with ripe blue berries –for didnt you know that Mr. Stow cut off his woodlot winter before last? It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good –& thus it happens that when the owner lays bare & deforms a hill side and alone appears to reap any advantage from it by a crop of wood –all the villagers and the inhabitants of distant cities obtain some compensation in the crop of berries that it yields– They glean after the wood chopper –not faggots but full baskets of blue-berries– I am surprised to see how suddenly when the sun & air & rain are let in these bushes which in the shade of the forest scarcely yielded the walker a berry –will suddenly be weighed down with fruit. Let alone your garden –cease your cultivation –& in how short a time will blue berries & huckleberries grow there! I have not noticed a violet for some time Bathed beneath Fair Haven. How much food the muskrats have at hand– They may well be numerous. At this place the bottom in shallow water at a little distance from the shore is thickly covered with clams –half buried and on their ends –generally a little aslant –sometimes there are a dozen or more side by side within a square foot –and that over a space 20 rods long and 1 wide– (I know not how much farther they reach into the river) they would average 3 to a square foot. which would give 16,335 clams to 20 rods of shore– (on one side of the river) and I suspect that there are many more. No wonder that muskrats multiply –& that the shores are covered with their shells left by the muskrats– In bathing here I can hardly step without treading on them –some times half a dozen at once –and often I cut my feet pretty severely on their shells– They are partly covered with mud & the short weeds at the bottom –& they are of the same color themselves –but stooping down over them when the roil has subsided I can see them now (at 5 1/2 Pm) with their mouths? open –an inch long & a quarter of an inch wide –with a waving fringe about it –& another smaller opening close to it without any fringe –through both of which I see distinctly into the white interior of the fish. When I touch one he instantly closes his shell & if taken out quickly spurts water like a saltwater clam. Evidently taking in their food & straining it with that waving motion of the ciliae– There they lie both under the pads and in the sun. Ceanothus Americanus New Jersey tea The last month has been very breezy & on the whole a cold one– I remember rippling leaves – showing their light undersides. Rubus strigosus Wild red Raspberry– I can hardly find a geranium now –The common carrot by the roadside Daucus carota –is in some respects an interesting plant –for its umbel as Big. says is shaped like a birds nest –& its large pinnatifid involucre –interlacing by its fine segments resembles a fanciful ladies-work-basket. Asclepias purpurascens. I find a Potamogeton to day over the clams which appears to correspond to the P. pulcher– I am not sure that it is what I have called the natans –but this cannot be the natans fore the leaves are not all long petioled –but the lower ones waved & quite pellucid. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 17, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed a woodlot near Flint’s Pond in Lincoln for Daniel Weston. (He did not lecture,32 as has been supposed, in Framingham, Massachusetts on this date in this year.)

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/136.htm

August 17: 20 ms’ before 5 Am to Cliffs & Walden Dawn. No breathing of chip birds nor singing of robins as in spring–but still the cock crows lustily– The creak of the crickets sounds louder. As I go along the Back Road hear 2 or 3 song sparrows. This mornings red, there being a misty cloud there–is equal to an evening red. The woods are very still– I hear only a faint peep or twitter from one bird–then the never failing wood-thrush–it being about sunrise and after on the Cliff–the phoebe note of a chicadee–a night warbler–a creeper? and a pewee?–and later still the huckle-berry bird & red eye–but all few & faint. Cannot distinguish the steam of the engine toward waltham from one of the morning fogs over hollows in woods Lespedeza violacea var ap. angustifolia (?) sessiliora of Big. Also another L. violacea or at least violet perhaps dif. from what I saw some time since. Gerardia pedicularia–bushy G. almost ready. The white cornel berries are dropping off before they are fairly white Is not the hibiscus a very bright pink or even flesh color–it is so delicate and peculiar– I do not think of any

32. Per Bradley P. Dean’s and Ronald Wesley Hoag’s “THOREAU’S LECTURES BEFORE WALDEN: An Annotated Calendar”: James J. Buckley, a school superintendent and correspondent for the Middlesex News, wrote an article for the News on 30 July 1988 entitled “Framingham’s ‘August Firsts,’ Statewide Abolitionist Festivals,” in which he asserted that “Concord’s Henry Thoreau was the main speaker during the oratorical segment of the [1 August 1852] festivities” at Harmony Grove in Framingham. Buckley’s attribution is clearly an error, for we learn from Thoreau’s journal that on the afternoon of the preceding day, 31 July 1852, he walked “To Assabet over Nawshawtuct” in Concord and that on the following afternoon he walked “To Conantum” (JOURNAL, 4:269, 271). He would not have had sufficient time the morning of 1 August 1852 to travel to Framingham, deliver a speech, and return to Concord. Buckley had no doubt confused the 1852 anti-slavery celebration of the anniversary of Emancipation in the British West Indies with the 1854 anti-slavery Fourth of July celebration at Harmony Grove, where Thoreau delivered “Slavery in Massachusetts” (see lecture 43 in the reference above). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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flower just like it–it reminds me of some of the wild geraniums most. It is a singular large delicate high colored flower with a tree-like leaf Gaylussacia frondosa–blue-tangle dangle berry–ripe perhaps a week– Weston of Lincoln thought there were more grapes, both cultivated & wild, than usual this year–because the rosebugs had not done so much harm

September 15, Wednesday and September 18, Saturday: Henry Thoreau made a blueprint for a “pistern”33 lead pipe manufacturing machine for George Loring, of the Loring family that made lead pipe in Concord.

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/84/84-a.jpg

October 1, Friday: In Syracuse NY, the 1st annual “Jerry Celebration” honoring the freeing of Jerry McHenry from the federal marshals seeking to “return” him to his “owner” on October 1, 1851. Although the assembly was denied the use of all public facilities, some 5,000 people were able to hear orations by Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Friend Lucretia Mott, Gerrit Smith, and Lucy Stone in the engine rotunda of the Syracuse Railroad, 150 feet from side to side, made available by John Wilkinson.34

The Reverend Samuel Joseph May’s annual “Jerry Celebrations” would continue undaunted until, finally, civil war would break out in America.

The old, slow cargo vessel that had rescued Alfred Russel Wallace from off the face of the waters had finally docked in England –after a passage of some eighty days and after several times nearly foundering in a series of storms– and so he made his way back to London without his specimens. From this point until March 1854, he would work primarily out of the metropolis.

Henry Thoreau surveyed, for James F. Chafrin, a couple of pieces of Lincoln woodlot being sold for taxes to Frances Westhall (the 1st piece belonged to the heirs of K. Rice of Lincoln, the 2d, of 2 acres, to Charles Bartlett).

33. I don’t know what a “pistern” is and, anyway, my eyesight makes out the inscription on Thoreau’s drawing as “piston” rather than “pistern.” My imagination is that this may have been part of an apparatus that took in a flat strip of lead and by the application of brute extrusion force produced a pipe shape, by bending the left edge and the right edge of this strip upward and around — until the two edges met at the top and could be joined with pressure or a solder. 34. Not the same John Wilkinson who was buried in a cast-iron coffin of his own design. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 19, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed for John Raynolds some land between the homes of Abel Brooks and Deacon David Wheeler on Sudbury Road that Raynolds had bought from Cyrus Stow.

When he saw Gentiana crinita he made reference to a poem “To the Fringed Gentian” by William Cullen Bryant:

Oct. 19. I see the dandelion blossoms in the path. The buds of the skunk-cabbage already show themselves in the meadow, the pointed involucres (?). At 5 P.M. I found the fringed gentian now somewhat stale and touched by frost, being in the meadow toward Peter’s. (Gentiana crinita in September, Bigelow and Gray.) Probably on high, moist ground it is fresher. It may have been in bloom a month. It has been cut off by the mower, and apparently has put out in consequence a mass of short branches full of flowers. This may make it later. I doubt if I can find one naturally grown. At this hour the blossoms are tightly rolled and twisted, and I see that the bees have gnawed round holes in their sides to come at the nectar. They have found them, though I had not. “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen” by man. An hour ago I doubted if fringed gentians were in Concord now, but, having found these, they as it were surrender, and I hear of them at the bottom of N. Barrett’s orchard toward the river, and by Tuttle’s (?). They are now, at 8 P.M., opening a little in a pitcher. It is too remarkable a flower not to be sought out and admired each year, however rare. It is one of the errands of the walker, as well as of the bees, for it yields him a more celestial nectar still. It is a very singular and agreeable surprise come upon this conspicuous and handsome and withal blue flower at this season, when flowers have passed out of our minds and memories; the latest of all to begin to bloom, unless it be the witch-hazel, when, excepting the latter, flowers are reduced to that small Spartan cohort, hardy, but for the most part unobserved, which linger till the snow buries them, and those interesting reappearing flowers which, though fair and fresh and tender, hardly delude us with the prospect of a new spring, and which we pass by indifferent, as if they only bloomed to die. Vide Bryant’s verses on the Fringed Gentian. There are a few bulrushes, lances of the pigmies or the cranes, still green in the brooks. I brought home one big as my finger and almost six feet high. Most are now yellowed and dry. It is remarkable how tightly the gentians roll and twist up at night, as if that were their constant state. Probably those bees were working late that found it necessary to perforate the flower. To the Fringed Gentian Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, And colored with the heaven’s own blue, That openest when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night,

Thou comest not when violets lean O’er wandering brooks and springs unseen, Or columbines, in purple dressed, Nod o’er the ground-bird’s hidden nest. Thou waitest late and com’st alone, When woods are bare and birds are flown, And frost and shortening days portend The aged year is near his end. Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky, Blue—blue—as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see The hour of death draw near to me, Hope, blossoming within my heart, May look to heaven as I depart. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 28, Thursday: Robert Schumann missed the initial concert of his 3d year in Düsseldorf due to a “nervous disorder” (his place was filled by his young deputy, Julius Tausch).

William M. White’s version of a portion of Henry Thoreau’s journal entry is:

How incredible to be described are these bright points Which appear in the blue sky as the darkness increases, Said to be other worlds, Like the berries on the hills when the summer is ripe!

Even the ocean of birds, Even the regions of the ether, Are studded with isles.

Far in this ethereal sea lie the Hesperian isles, Unseen by day, But when the darkness comes Their fires are seen from this shore, As Columbus saw the fires of San Salvador.

Thoreau surveyed for Mrs. (W.P.L.?) Badger. The Concord Free Public Library owns no survey, but a note in the Field Notes book indicates that he surveyed land around the Chapin cottage for her. She lived on the south side of Main Street opposite where Elm Street leaves Main.

The SS George Law, a 3-masted 272-foot sidewheel steamboat, was repurposed as the SS Central America for the United States Mail Steamship Company. This vessel would be transporting an estimated 1/3d of the entire California gold rush output, that amount of the metal being valued at the time at approximately $150,000,000. It would achieve 43 round trips between New-York and Panama before sinking in 1857 in a hurricane (to sail between these two ports at this level of technology involved being under way at sea for between 19 and 24 days). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 3, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed for John Reynolds a house lot on the Lowell Road.

WALDEN: I also heard the whooping of ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.

Nov. 3. Shepherd’s-purse abundant still in gardens. 3 P.M. — To Cliffs and Andromeda Ponds. In the Heywood Brooks, many young pollywogs two inches long and more; also snails on the bottom. I find these water-bugs, large and small, not on the surface, but apparently sheltered amid the weeds, going into winter quarters. While collecting caddis-worms, of which there are many, whose cases are made of little pieces of weeds piled about them like well-stones, I disturbed a good-sized fish, either a pout or a sucker, near the path. It swam rapidly down this shallow stream, creating a wave which reached from side to side and betrayed it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I followed it down till it concealed itself under some frog-spittle, and when I had dislodged it thence, it went down further, till, coming to where the stream was dammed, it buried itself in the mud above the dam in an instant, and I could not dig it out. The landscape from Fair Haven Hill looks Novembery, bare gray limbs and twigs in the swamps; and where many young (or shrub) oaks have lost their leaves, you hear the rustling of oak and walnut leaves in the air. There is a ripple on the river from the cool northerly wind. The plants are sere. It is the month of withered oak leaves. The shrub oak plain is all withered. Only one or two butter-and-eggs left. At Andromeda Pond, started nine black (?) ducks just at sunset, as usual they circling far round to look at me. The andromeda is a dull brown like the shrub oak leaves now. Or I was startled by the cracking of the ground in the coldest nights, which sounded as if it were my house that cracked, and in the morning I would find a crack in the earth a quarter of an inch wide and a quarter of a mile long. The sunsets begin to be interestingly warm.

December 9, Thursday: Ellen Fuller Channing received a notification from George M. Brooks, a Concord attorney, threatening legal action unless she return custody of the Ellery Channing children to their father within one week.35

Thoreau wrote in his journal about a coffee-table book that was forthcoming from a New-York trade press, George William Curtis’s HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS:

December 9: To C. Smith’s Hill. Those little ruby-crowned wrens (?) [Common Redpoll Carduelis flammea] still about. They suddenly dash away from this side to that in flocks, with a tumultuous note, half jingle, half rattle, like nuts shaken in a bag, or a bushel of nutshells, soon returning to the tree they had forsaken on some alarm. They are oftenest seen

35. At the time American judges were simplistically presuming that all children always belonged like slaves with their father (they would transit from that wickedness into the equally simplistic but opposite wicked presumption that all children always belong with their mother). The reason why we have thus transited from a wicked simplicitude into an opposite wicked simplicitude is clear: our judges truly don’t have the slightest concern for what happens to other people’s children, and thus settle upon one or another simplifying presumptiveness — in order to be spared the frustration and annoyance of trying to figure anything out in the mysterious realm of “what’s in the best interests of the child” (there is a nasty reason why we aver such great concern for our children: it is that this avowal is a necessary mask obscuring our persistent and very real refusal to allow this to be an actual priority in our lives). Thoreau put the nastiness of our attitude most succinctly in his journal entry for this day: “Very nice; as the old lady said when she had got a gravestone for her husband.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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on the white birch, apparently feeding on its seeds, scattering the scales about.

A fresh dandelion. The chestnuts are almost as plenty as ever, both in the fallen burs and out of them. There are more this year than the squirrels can consume. I picked three pints this afternoon, and though some bought at a store the other day were more than half mouldy, I did not find one mouldy one among these which I picked from under the wet and mouldy leaves, where they have been snowed on once. Probably they do not heat, though wet. These are also still plump and tender. I love to gather them, if only for the sense of the bountifulness of nature they give me. A few petals of the witch-hazel still hold on. In the “Homes of American Authors” it is said of most that at one time they wrote for the North American Review. It is one of my qualifications that I have not written an article for the North American Review. A man tells me he saw a violet to-day. Very nice; as the old lady said when she had got a gravestone for her husband.

December 13, Monday: After breaking her hip in a fall, Fanny Wright died in Cincinnati, Ohio. The West was hospitable to every new creed or social experiment, while its practical necessities furnished the severest test of values. One after another the pilgrims had come, — French colonists of the Scioto and the Miami when the nation was founded; George Rapp, the shoemaker of Würtemberg, with his company of “Harmonists”; Robert Owen and his New Harmonists in 1823; and Fanny Wright (1825), who colonized free negroes on two thousand acres in Tennessee to prove them capable of civilization. The only experiment that failed through persecution was that of Fanny Wright to help the victim race. The others failed by reason of the actual conditions of the West. But remnants of all of them had found some nest in Cincinnati.... I there read for the first time Fanny Wright’s book, A FEW DAYS IN A THENS, and some of the addresses which charmed large audiences in Cincinnati. Many a time have I joined in the pilgrimage to HDT WHAT? INDEX

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her tomb in the cemetery near Cincinnati. AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II

Henry Thoreau completed a survey alongside Flint’s Pond for Daniel Weston, that he had begun on the 10th.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/137.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 16, Thursday: Brigham Young “got married with” Mary Oldfield, his 2d bride for the year.

Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Virgil Fuller, the farm of Henry L. Shattuck in the north part of Concord on Monument Street near Liberty Street, showing N. Munroe’s and Minot Pratt’s land. Perez Blood had previously surveyed this land and Thoreau noted that he should have followed Blood’s marks as they were correct. General Joshua Buttrick once lived on this land.

February 16, Monday: Laing says that “The Heimskringla has been hardly used by the learned men of the period in which it was first published. It appeared first in the literary world in 1697, frozen into the Latin of the Swedish antiquary Peringskiold.” Snorro Sturleson says “from Thor’s name comes Thorer, also Thorarinn Again “Earl Rognvald was King Harald’s dearest friend, and the king had the greatest regard for him. He was married to Hilda, a daughter of Rolf Naefia, and their sons were Rolf and Thorer. * * Rolf became a great viking, and was of so stout a growth that no horse could carry him, and wheresoever he went he must go on foot; and therefore he was called Gange-Rolf” [Laing says in a note what Sturleson also tells in the text Gange-Rolf, Rolf Ganger, Rolf the Walker, was the conqueror of Normandy] “Gange Rolfe’s son was William, father to Richard, and grandfather to another Richard, who was the father of Richard Longspear, and grandfather of William the Bastard, from whom all the following English kings are descended.” King Harald “set Earl Rognvald’s son Thorer over Möre, and gave him his daughter Alof in marriage. Thorer, called the Silent, got the same territory his father Rognvald had possessed.” His brother Einar going into battle to take vengeance on his father’s murderers–sang a kind of reproach against his brothers Rollang & Rolf for their slowness and concludes

“And silent Thorer sits and dreams At home, beside the mead-bowl’s streams”. Of himself it is related that he cut a spread eagle on the back of his enemy Halfdan. So it seems that from one branch of the family were descended the kings of England, and from the other myself. Down Turnpike It is interesting to meet an ox with handsomely spreading horns. There is a great variety of sizes and forms though one horn commonly matches the other. I am willing to turn out for those that spread their branches wide. Large and spreading horns methinks indicate a certain vegetable force & naturalization in the wearer–it softens & eases off the distinction between the animal & vegetable– The unhorned animals and the trees– I should say that the horned animals approached nearer to the vegetable– The deer that run in the woods as the moose for instance carry perfect trees on their heads– The French call them bois. No wonder there are fables of centaurs & the like. No wonder there is a story of a hunter who when his bullets failed fired cherry stones into the heads of his game & so trees sprouted out of them–& the hunter refreshed himself with the cherries. It is a perfect piece of Mythology. which belongs to these days. Oxen which are de-animalized to some extent approach nearer to the vegetable perchance than bulls & cows–& hence their bulky bodies & large & spreading horns. Nothing more natural than that the deer should appear with a tree growing out of his head. Thus is the animal allied to the vegetable kingdom & passes into it by insensible degrees. These appendages are indispensable to the beauty of the animal as appears from the great calf look of a cow without horns or a “bunter” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Man’s relation to oxen is the same that it was in primitive ages– It is equally primitive. He has got no nearer to them. If his ox breaks through the ice he know no better how to get him out than if it had never happened. The helpless unwieldliness of the ox is remarkable– I was told yesterday that when a man had got his ox out of Bateman’s pond, the latter gave a spring and coming down his hind legs slipped & spread apart on the ice, & he was split up so that he had to be killed. This afternoon there is a clear bright air–which though cold & windy I love to inhale– I see mother o’pearl tints and I am not sure but this will be such a sunset as we had a month ago. The sky is a much fairer & undimmed blue than usual. The surface of the snow which fell last night is coarse like bran with shining flakes– I see the steam-like snow dust curling up & careering along over the fields–as I walk the bleak Walden road, it blows up over the highest drifts in the west–lit by the westering sun like the spray on a beach–before the N W wind. This drifting snow dust has formed long flattish drifts a few feet wide by some rods with a rounded swelling surface where it has lodged the intermediate spaces a rod or two wide being swept clean & left uneven & naked–over these rollers it sweeps on to fill the road. By the artificial system we learn the names of plants–by the natural their relations to one another–but still it remains to learn their relation to man– The poet does more for us in this department. Linnaeus says elementa are simple, naturalia composed by divine art. (and these two embrace all things on earth) Physics treats of the properties of elementa, Natural science of naturalia. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 21, 23, 24: Henry Thoreau surveyed Humphrey Hunt’s woodlot and pasture near Easterbrook Woods for Barzillai Hudson and others, who paid him $14.25. Abner Buttrick had 8 acres and Jonas Melvin 11 acres nearby. The survey identifies the yellow birch cellar hole that was begun by old Henry Flint but abandoned before the house was finished, the Old Carlisle Road (called the New One), the Bridle Road (called the Old One), Brooks Clark’s birch pasture near the lime kiln (Gleason 79/C6), and the mill site that may have been part of the Thoreau family’s pencil business. The Hunt survey document does not indicate that Thoreau’s Walden Pond shanty, which that family had relocated, was standing at the time just 300 yards off the lower left edge of the paper. However, If you take a look at the original survey paper, now on file at the Concord Free Public Library (below), you can see that the bottom left edge bears a Thoreau penciling which had apparently nothing to do with the survey: “Upernavik, the most northerly inhabited spot upon the globe.”

Perhaps this was a temporary jotting which Thoreau later forgot to erase. ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA, a source which we know Thoreau consulted, listed that “Upernamick [is] the most northern settlement.” It was after leaving Upernavik in 1845 that the expedition of Sir John Franklin had sailed west across Baffin Bay in search of the Northwest Passage and disappeared up Lancaster Sound, becoming the occasion for no fewer HDT WHAT? INDEX

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than 40 rescue expeditions.

Upernavik

Easterbrook HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1853

January 11, Tuesday: In West Newton, Mrs. Elizabeth Peabody, mother of the Peabody sisters, died.

On this day and the following one, Henry Thoreau would be surveying an Acton woodlot, on Westford Road, then called the Road to Groton, that Elijah Davis was selling to John LeGrosse. Three plots were made of the two farms and woodlot near the Acton line. D.H. Wetherbee lived nearby:36

January 11th & 12: Surveying for John Le Grosse. He says that he saw blackbirds about a week ago. He says that the most snow we have had this winter–(it has not been more than 1 inch deep) has been only a “robin snow” as it is called. i.e. a snow which does not drive off the robins. By a bound of his woodlot in Carlisle observed a peculiar oak–very smooth & light colored bark– which his brother who knows them in Wayland calls a chestnut oak– I am not quite sure I did not see a chest. oak leaf at any rate– V. again. Says they will split like chestnut & are easy to cut. J. Says they have both red & white huckleberries near his house. Described an “Old Fort” about the size & shape of a cellar which he saw in 1816 perhaps across the river near Heywood’s sawmill. This man is continually drinking cider–thinks it corrects some mistake in him–wishes he had a barrel of it in the woods–if he had known he was to be out so long would have brought a jug-full–will done Capt. Hutchinson for a drink on his way home. This or rum runs in his head if not in his throat all the time. Is interested in Juniper berries–gooseberries currants &c–whether they will make wine–has recipes for this–eats the juniper berries raw as he walks. Tobacco is another staff of life with him. Thinks with others that he has metals on his farm which the divining rod might find but is convertible on this point.

January 18, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau was surveying Turner Bryant’s woodlot in Stow, Massachusetts and made no entry in his journal. He made this survey for a Mr. Hale, whose family owned land on the Concord-Carlisle Road in 1852 according to the survey of Humphrey Hunt’s land. (In his journal for August 26, 1856, Thoreau would mention that Ai Hale of Carlisle had the right kind of dog for keeping pigs.)

February 10, Thursday: Beginning on this day and continuing on the 11th, the 12th, the 18th, and the 19th, Henry Thoreau was surveying for John B. Moore. A survey shows land on Lexington Road that had been surveyed and divided by Thoreau in April 1850 and February 1853 for John B. Moore (who made a business of buying and draining swampland for farming), which had previously been the home of Willoughby Prescott (who was storing musket balls and cartridges, etc. for the militia on April 19, 1775), was resold to Ephriam Wales Bull, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott, and Charles Davis. The land stretched over the hill to Bedford Road and as far east as the Merriam land on the Old Bedford Road. At the end of the month Thoreau noted that, the ground having been bare of snow and he having a need to pay off his debt of $275 for self-publication of AWEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS, he had earned one dollar per day, surveying, for the past 76 days.

36. I wonder who this “Captain Hutchinson” was, who could be dunned for a drink. Would he have been the Peter Hutchinson whom Thoreau would mention on February 2d and on July 7th, 1859 in his journal, or would Peter have been the Captain’s son? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/94a.htm

(This survey plot paper is now at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts.)

As part of Draft E of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, in addition to his surveying, Thoreau had added the troublingly unprecedented challenge “Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome. What avails it that you are Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious?”, publishing the news that he had become more than a simple nature-worshiper, and probing the wisdom of the old idea that although our way is through nature, the pole star we follow is in the heavens. This passage has always worried a certain class of interpreter, who has been hung up on Waldo Emerson’s advice that we are to “do our thing,” and thus unprepared to follow Thoreau’s development past the potential Pan-theism of remarks like his September 8, 1841 remark “in proportion as our love of Nature is deep and pure we are independent upon her.” Although Thoreau recognizes that the “new Adam” is going to fall, after Thoreau’s fall he is going to rise and “reach the skies” (February 9, 1851). He had definitely left behind the unreflective “Egyptian slime of health” in which he had been merely fatuous “nature looking into nature with such easy sympathy as the blue-eyed grass in the meadow looks in the face of the sky” (July 21, 1841), and had definitely as of the beginning of 1853 moved into a more complex and more reflective, doubled period of mature life. TIMELINE OF WALDEN (In fact Thoreau had begun to be troubled on this point before 1851, for in an undated journal entry from 1850 he commented: “What is peculiar in the life of a man consists not in his obedience, but his opposition, to his instincts. In one direction or another he strives to live a supernatural life.” But the fullness of this conversion can not have come until sometime after this February 1843 period in his life, for we have a record by Lidian Emerson of a formal conversational debate at the Emersons in February 1843, with Charles Lane and Bronson Alcott, in which he forthrightly, pushingly, almost rudely maintained quite the contrary – as if he were intent on preventing his self-doubts about nature from coming forward in his mind.) Therefore a warning: If your morality consists of an impression that people ought to “live naturally,” be aware that after 1853 Thoreau would never more be of your ilk. After that point, the reason Thoreau wanted to be natural was so he could then rise above this as above a baseline.

February 21, Monday: To improve the short cold, the ice-men at Loring’s Pond worked until midnight. This event would come to Henry Thoreau’s attention and be recorded.

Thoreau measured the planting of all crops near the house of Cyrus Benjamin in Lincoln. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 31, Thursday: Did Henry Thoreau on this day survey a strip of land in Lincoln, for the building of a barn fence? Was there a “Loring D.” auction?

April 11, Monday: Henry Thoreau went to Haverhill to do extended surveying for James H. Duncan.

Thoreau began to access materials relating to spiders prepared by Nicholas Marcellus Hentz for the Boston Journal of Natural History:

April 11: I hear the clear, loud whistle — of a purple finch — somewhat like & nearly as loud as the robin from the elm by Whitings. The maple, which I think is a red one, just this side of Wheildons is just out this morning. 9 Am to Haverhill via Cambridge & Boston. Dr Harris says that that early blackwinged-buffedged butterfly is the Vanessa Antiopa — & is introduced from Europe — & is sometimes found in this state alive in winter. The orange brown one with scolloped wings & smaller somewhat is vanessa-progne. The early pestle shaped bug or beetle is a cicindela — of which there are 3 species one of them named from a semicolon-like mark on it. V. Hassley on spiders in Bost Journal of Nat Hist. At Nat Hist Rooms — saw the Female Red-wing striped white & ash Female Cow-bird ashy brown. 1st The Swamp-sparrow is ferruginous brown (spotted with black) & ash above about neck; brownish-white beneath; undivided chestnut crown. 2nd The Grass-bird [Vesper Sparrow Pooecetes gramineus] — grayish brown-mingled with ashy whitish above; light pencilled with dark brown beneath — no marked crown outer tail-feathers whitish, — perhaps a faint bar on wing. 3rd Field sparrow, smaller than either — marked like first, with less black, & less distinct ash on neck, & less ferruginous & no distinct crown. 4th Savannah Sparrow much like second; with more black, but not noticeable white in tail, and a little more brown — no crown marked. Emberiza Rniliaria (What is it in Nuttal?) Gmel. appears to be my young of purple Finch. One Maryland Yellow Throat — probably female. has no black on side head, & is like a summer yellow bird — except that the last has ends of the wings & tail black. The yellow swmp warbler (what is it in Nuttal?) is bluish gray with 2 white bars on wings — a bright yellow crown — side breasts & rump— Female less distinct. Black burnian — is orange-throated. American red-start, male, is black — forward — coppery orange beneath & stripe on wings & near base of tail. Female dark ashy fainter marks. J.E. Cabot thought my small hawk might be Cooper’s “ Says that Gould an Englishman is the best authority on birds. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 12, Tuesday: The Emperor Napoléon III named Gioachino Rossini as a commander of the Legion of Honor.

Henry Thoreau surveyed, for James H. Duncan in Haverhill, what was called the “Little River” lot. On the 12th, the 14th, the 18th, the 22nd, the 25th, the 26th, and the 28th of the month, boarding in Haverhill (that’s pronounced HAY-verll), and on May 3rd and 5th, he would evidently be too busy and too preoccupied to make any journal entries. He was simply trying to make some money to pay off debts, doing seventeen full days of surveying for Elizabeth Howe and in addition surveying the “Kimball Lot” for Charles White. According to a manuscript letter from Henrietta M. Daniels to Alfred W. Hosmer which is now in the Alfred Hosmer Collection at the Concord Free Public Library, during this period Thoreau boarded at a Mrs. Webster’s and went for walks with another boarder there, Samuel A. Chase — whom we notice that he suitably impressed. Here is what has been retained of that, secondhand and as of March 11, 1899: Thoreau was surveying; he was embarrassed through the publication of his book, and trying to earn money. They [Thoreau and Samuel A. Chase] used to walk together often. ...if a bird appeared he showed how Thoreau’s hand would go out to stop him from another step.... He said he did not believe he (Thoreau) ever in all his life did one wrong thing. He was “all purity and goodness personified.” He said the moisture would come to his eyes whenever he spoke of his mother; he was a loving man. And I think what I was most glad to hear was that Thoreau said— “Fifty years from now the majority of people will believe as I do now.” Aren’t you glad that he knew it? It would take the keen edge from his loneliness.... He said the lady with whom they boarded was a stiff old fashioned Methodist who tried her best to “convert” Thoreau; but he said “he was too hard a nut for her to crack.”

In St. Louis, the Daily Morning Herald was on the qui vive for daring ladies, not only in home port but also abroad, and conveyed the news that: A Bloomer was seen in Cleveland the other day. Her skirts were unusually short. Hmmm. Was this daring lady “just asking for it”? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“Everything in life is unusual until you get accustomed to it.” — The Scarecrow, in THE MARVELOUS LAND OF OZ (L. Frank Baum, 1904)

April 30, Saturday: Samuel A. Jackman was born in Madison, Wisconsin.

Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Frances R. Gourgas, some land conveyed by E.R. [Elizabeth Rockwood?] Hoar probably from the Agricultural Society land on Bedford Street between New Hill Burying Ground and Reuben Brown’s.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/44.htm

Thoreau surveyed for the Mill Dam Company, showing their land with buildings, additions, and elevations. He showed the Mill Brook as Bound-In Brook under the present Anderson’s Store on the Mill Dam. This work continued into October-November 1855.

View this particular survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/88a.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 30. Concord . — Cultivated cherry in bloom. Moses Emerson, the kind and gentlemanly man who assisted and looked after me in Haverhill, said that a good horse was worth $75, and all above was fancy, and that when he saw a man driving a fast horse he expected he would fail soon.

The Reverend Samuel Ringgold Ward sighted the coast of Ireland: On Saturday, the last day of April, we saw land on the coast of Ireland. We then moved gracefully along the coast of Wales, telegraphed our approach at Holyhead, took a pilot early on Sunday morning, and, at eleven o’clock precisely, anchored in the Mersey, after a passage of ten days, fifteen hours, and fifteen minutes, mean time. I was in England — the England of my former reading, and my ardent admiration. I was at Liverpool — that Liverpool whose merchants, but sixty years before, had mobbed Clarkson for prying into and exposing the secret inhumanities of their slave trade. I was in a land of freedom, of true equality. I did not feel as some blacks say they felt, upon landing — that I was, for the first time in my life, a man. No, I always felt that; however wronged, maltreated, outraged — still, a man. Indeed, the very bitterness of what I had suffered at home consisted chiefly in the consciousness I always carried with me of being an equal man to any of those who trampled upon me. My first experience of English dealing was in being charged treble fare by a Liverpool cabman, a race with which I have had much to do since. Acting upon the advice given me by John Laidlaw, Esq., I went to Clayton Square, where I found good quarters at Mr. Brown’s very genteel Temperance Hotel. The Rev. Dr. Willis had very kindly given me a note of introduction to the master of the Grecian Hotel; but I found no reason to desire a change, and therefore remained, while in Liverpool, where I first lodged. Several things arrested my attention upon the first day of my being in England. One was, the comfort and cleanliness, not to say the elegance of appearance, presented by the working classes. I had always, in the United States, heard and read of the English working classes as being ground down to the very earth — as being far worse in their condition than the American slaves. Their circumstances, in the rural and the factory districts, I had always heard described as the most destitute. That they wrought for sixpence a day I had been informed by I know not how many Americans, who had visited England. How many times have I heard from the lips of American protectionists, and seen in the columns of their journals, statements such as this — “If we do not maintain a protection tariff, English manufacturers, who pay their operatives but sixpence a day, will flood our markets with their products, and the factory operative in America will, in consequence, be compelled to work for sixpence a day, as the English operative now does”! When I was an American protectionist, how I used to “take up that parable,” and, believing it, repeat it! How others with me believed the same too often told falsehood! Here was before me, in Lancashire HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and her noble port — Lancashire, the head quarters of British, if not European, factory interest — almost a manufacturing kingdom in itself — a most abundant refutation of what, on this subject, I had nearly a thousand times heard, read, believed, and repeated. But this was Sunday. The next day, having occasion to cross the Mersey, I saw nearly as many well-dressed working men, with their wives and sweethearts, enjoying the holiday of that Monday, as I had seen the day before. This led me, as I travelled further into the factory district, to make definite inquiries into the condition of the operatives; and, as I may not again recur to it, I will put down here, in few words, a sort of summary of the information I obtained. I learned — indeed, saw with my own eyes — that throughout Lancashire the young women in the factories dress as well as the young women I had seen at Lowell, Dover NH, Manchester, Nashua, and other manufacturing towns in New England. I had been in those towns but a year and a half before; and now, at Manchester, Bolton, Preston, Wigan, &c., had a fair opportunity of comparing them. I learned as well, that the wages of the different grades of operatives varied from highest to lowest, each respectively being about the same as in New England. The hours of labour were not greater; and upon visiting several factories (among them that of Sir Elkanah Armitage, at Pendleton, Manchester), I found the work as easy, and the health and cheerfulness of the operatives as good, as I had seen in the same class on the other side of the Atlantic. What was true, comparing the English with the American female operative, is equally true of the male. I was agreeably surprised to learn that the condition of these people, as I had heard of it at home, was a misrepresentation of the condition in which I found them. Formerly, the operatives had suffered much from the want of care exercised by themselves, and more from the want of humanity on the part of their employers; like some persons of other business, of whom we have been speaking, humanity was made to succumb to business: but, by the perseverance of Lord Shaftesbury (then Lord Ashley) and others, Government exerted an influence between the employer and the employed, and led to the adoption of many very important improvements. Here were two truths which the pro-slavery portion of the Americans did not at all like to tell, and therefore cleverly and conveniently forgot them: 1, That the improvements referred to do exist. 2, That the British Parliament shows an interest in behalf of these people, who “are worse off than our slaves.” It better suits their purpose to state matters as they were, than as they are; and to state the truth, that the Government of Great Britain, through its legislature, looks after these people, would rather spoil the parallel between the British free labourer and the American slave! It is a clever thing to forget just what one chooses not to recollect! Another thing that attracted my attention was, the beautiful twilight of this latitude. Forgetting that I was eleven degrees HDT WHAT? INDEX

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further north than ever before, I wondered why at eight o’clock it was so light. I then learned how to join Englishmen in the enjoyment of that most delightful part of the day. But when I went to Scotland, subsequently, I was still more charmed, especially at midsummer, in the far north, with this pleasing feature of a northern residence. I wondered, also, that I could not realize the vast distance I had come, and the mighty space between me and those loved ones I had left behind. I seemed to be simply in a neighbouring town, when in Liverpool. I could see in this town, and in the appearance of many of its inhabitants, some resemblance to Boston and the Bostonians. Nothing wore, to my view, the strange aspect which I had expected. This, I think, was owing partly to my having travelled so much before, constantly visiting strange places and constantly seeing new faces; partly to the strong resemblance of the New England people to those of Liverpool; but, more than either, to the fact that in Canada, especially in Toronto, we are English in habits, manners, &c. I beg to add, too, that I could not have anticipated how much my faith would be strengthened, by trusting in God amid the exposures of a voyage. Faith grew stronger by its own exercise. For nine consecutive nights I had lain my head upon my pillow at sea. In the midst of the vast deep, where our great vessel and all it contained might, like the “President,” go to the bottom in an hour, leaving none to tell the story of our fate, and no traces of even the whereabouts of our destruction —to trust God in these circumstances —to hear the rolling heaving ocean, at deep dark midnight, and still to trust him —to listen to the hurried commands, and the rattling of ropes and sails, and the hundred and one accompaniments of a storm, and still to trust him —give faith a strength peculiar only to its trial amid dangers. I could not help writing to Mrs. Ward, that, having long before learned to trust our Heavenly Father as the God of the land, I had now learned to rely upon him as the God of the ocean. I know not how far this accords with the experience of other voyagers, and have now no means of knowing whether the same feeling will continue with myself; but I do know that it at present is far from being one of the least striking or the least pleasing incidents of my first voyage. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 17, Tuesday: California dealt with mental illness by providing for the involuntary confinement of persons diagnosed with mental illness and by providing state funding for the care of indigents. California’s 1st such facility would be an Insane Asylum of California opened in Stockton in 1853, later to be known as Stockton State Hospital.37 PSYCHOLOGY

Henry Thoreau surveyed some land belonging to John Raynolds (Reynolds) in the southwest part of Concord near John Potter and E.J. Hayden, probably on Fair Haven Road near Sudbury Road.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/99a.htm

In a sheaf of Thoreau’s notes titled “The Moon” extracts from which had been utilized by someone as the basis for the short article “Night and Moonlight” ascribed to Thoreau in The Atlantic Monthly in November 1863, and afterward republished in the EXCURSIONS volume (a sheaf that was delivered to Houghton, Mifflin & Co. along with the 39 ms volumes of Thoreau’s journal) we find some notes from this date, informing us that “Large insects begin to fly at night. Dumping of frogs at eve begun, telling the weather is warm. First nighthawk seen May 17th, ’53.”

May 17: He who cuts down woods beyond a certain limit exterminates birds.

May 17. The west slope of Fair Haven orchard an hour before sunset. With the stillness of the air comes the stillness of the water. The sweetest singers among the birds are heard more distinctly now, as the reflections are seen more distinctly in the water, –the veery [Veery Catharus fuscescens] constantly now.

May 17. The river reflects the golden light of the sun just before his setting. The sough of the wind in the pines is more noticeable, as if the air were otherwise more still and hollow. The wood thrush [Wood Thrush Catharus mustelina] has sung for some time. He touches a depth in me which no other bird’s song does. He has learned to sing, and no thrumming of the strings or tuning disturbs you. Other birds may whistle pretty well, but he is a master of a finer-toned instrument. His song is musical, not from association merely, not SHAKESPEARE from variety, but the character of its tone. It is all divine, –a Shakespeare among birds, and a Homer too.

June 28, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed some land and buildings for John B. Moore.

37. Street, W.R. A CHRONOLOGY OF NOTEWORTHY EVENTS IN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY. Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 1994 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July: Henry Thoreau surveyed for Silas Holden a houselot on Bedford Road near Mary Rice and the Meeting House which would later be turned around to become the Catholic Church on the Common.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/7c.htm

He was working on his WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS manuscript:

My townsmen have all heard the tradition, ^the oldest people tell me that they heard it in their youth, that anciently the Indians were carousing or holding a pow- wow upon a hill here, which rose as high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep into the earth, and they used much profanity, as the story goes, though this vice as I learn from the best authority, is one of which the Indians were never guilty, and while they were thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one old squaw, named Walden, escaped, and from her the pond was named. It has been conjectured that when the hill shook these stones rolled down its side and became the present shore. It is very certain, at any rate, that once there was no pond there, and now there is one; ^and this Indian fable does not in any respect conflict with the account of that ancient settler whom I have mentioned, who remembers so well when he first came here with his divining rod, saw a thin vapor rising from the sward, and the hazel pointed steadily downward, and he concluded to dig a well here. If the name was not derived from that of some English locality, ^Saffron Walden ^for instance ^perhaps I have conjectured that ^who knows but it was called, originally, Walled-in Pond.

Ah, the pickerel of Walden! when I see them lying on the ice, or in the well which the fisherman cuts in the ice, making a little hole to admit the water, I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were fabulous HDT WHAT? INDEX

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fishes.... as if they were the pearls, the animalized nuclei or crystals of the Walden water. They, of course, are Walden all over and all through; are themselves small Waldens in the animal kingdom, Waldenses..... in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, this great gold and emerald fish swims.... Easily, with a few convulsive quirks, they give up their watery ghosts, like a mortal translated before his time to the thin air of heaven. Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. Shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at the true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not?

August 3, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed Sarah Stacy’s woodlot in Framingham MA.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/117.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 25, Thursday, 26, Friday, 29, Monday: Henry Thoreau surveyed Augustus Tuttle’s 92-acre farm on Cambridge Turnpike at Hawthorne Lane. The farm was difficult to survey because it lay along the zigzag south-west bank of Mill Brook and its tributary:

James Wright was the neighbor to the east. The farm was bought by Orlando E. Patch and used as a dairy, and later Wilmot R. Jones would run the Mill Brook School there.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/131.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 25, Thursday, 26, Friday, 29, Monday: Henry Thoreau surveyed Augustus Tuttle’s 92-acre farm on Cambridge Turnpike at Hawthorne Lane. The farm was difficult to survey because it lay along the zigzag south-west bank of Mill Brook and its tributary:

James Wright was the neighbor to the east. The farm was bought by Orlando E. Patch and used as a dairy, and later Wilmot R. Jones would run the Mill Brook School there.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/131.htm

August 30, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed a woodlot in Framingham for John Stacy.

September 8, Thursday: For three days Henry Thoreau would be surveying a new Bedford Road.

September 22, Thursday: In Mobile, Alabama, a 3d child of Dr. Josiah Clark Nott and Sarah (Sally) Deas Nott, Allen Huger Nott, a year or two old, succumbed to the yellow fever.

Henry Thoreau surveyed some property J.B. Moore was transferring to Bronson Alcott. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 17, Monday: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Thomas Ford Hunt, a houselot on Monument Street near Charles W. Goodnow and Lorenzo Eaton.

October 19, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed a woodlot for Beck (Rebecca?) Stow. His “Field Notes” book says the woodlot was cut in 1854-1855. In his journal for this date, Thoreau says “thinking to step upon a leafy shore from a rail, I got into water more than a foot deep and had to wring my stockings out.” He was very fond of this swamp on Bedford Road, and locates it opposite Moore’s Swamp on one of his surveys of Bedford Street.

The first flour mill in Hawaii began operations.

November 3, Thursday: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Amos and Noah Wheeler, some property near the north part of Nut Meadow Brook on Sudbury and Old Marlborough Roads.

Nov. 3. 6.30 A.M. — To Swamp Bridge Brook by river. Considerable thin mist, high as two houses. Just as the sun is rising, many undoubtedly of the same white-in-tail sparrows [Vesper Sparrow Pooecetes gramineus] described four pages back are flying high over my head west and northwest, above the thin mist, perchance to where they see the sun on the wood-side; with that peculiar shelly note. I think it was the 27th October I saw a goldfinch. There are two or three tree sparrows flitting and hopping along amid the alders and willows, with their fine silvery tchip, unlike the dry loud chip of the song sparrow.... HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 9, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed a woodlot Charles Gordon was purchasing from Littleton Buttrick.

Perry Davis of Providence, Rhode Island was ordained to the Baptist ministry.

Since Mr. Davis was a world-class drug dealer specializing in opiates and ethanol, we may be pardoned for turning at this point to an insight about the heartlessness of capitalist society by Karl Marx:

“Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.”

— Karl Marx, CRITIQUE OF HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT (February 1844)

Excerpt from “Thoreau as Storyteller in the Journal” by Professor Sandra Harbert Petrulionis: On November 29, 1853, sandwiched in between the Journal’s discussion of a rare beetle and a local boy’s find of a Native American artifact, Thoreau records a story told to him by local farmer George Minott—a tale of a rabid dog which met its demise in Concord many years before. Francis H. Allen included this tale in his 1936 Men of Concord, a compilation of the Journal’s HDT WHAT? INDEX

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character sketches. As a way of leading in to it, Thoreau relates the fact that recently a boy in nearby Lincoln had been fatally bitten by a rabid dog. Thoreau —who calls what he’s about to write a “story”— justifies the digression as “worth telling for it shows how much trouble the passage of one mad dog through the town may produce” (Journal V 522). [5] In classic storytelling fashion, Thoreau begins by establishing the time and setting: “It was when he [Minott] was a boy and lived down below the Old Ben Prescott House—over the Cellar Hole on what is now Hawthorne’s Land.” The following excerpts summarize Minott’s description of the dog’s progress through town: When the dog got to the old Ben Prescott Place ... there were a couple of turkies—[it] drove them into a corner— bit off the head of one.... They then raised the cry of mad dog ... his [Minott’s] mother and Aunt Prescott ... coming down the road—& he shouted to them to take care of them selves—for that dog was mad— Minott next saw Harry Hooper—coming down the road after his cows ... & he shouted to him to look out for the dog was mad—but Harry ... being short the dog leaped right upon his open breast & made a pass at his throat, but missed it. (522- 523) [6] the name of Fay—dressed in small clothes” was waylaid by the dog and bitten twice because he failed to heed Minott’s warning that the oncoming dog was mad. Thoreau writes that “Fay ... well frightened, kicked the dog, “seized [it] ... held him ... fast & called lustily for somebody to come & kill him.” Unfortunately, when a man named Lewis “rushed out” to help, his axe was somewhat “dull,” and after a worthless “blow across the back,” the “dog trotted along still toward town” (523-524). [7] The dog proceeded to bite two cows, both of which later died, to grab “a goose in the wing” and “kept on through the town” (523). Finally, however, it met its demise at the hands of the story’s unlikely hero: “The next thing that was heard of him— Black Cato ... was waked up about midnight ... he took a club & went out to see what was the matter— Looking over into the pen this dog reared up at him & he knocked him back into it & jumping over—mauled him till he thought he was dead & then tossed him out” (524-525). Unfortunately, Cato discovered the next morning that the dog was in fact not dead and had disappeared. Later that day, he encountered the dog again, “but this time having heard the mad dog story he ... ran—but still the dog came on & once or twice he knocked him aside with a large stone—till at length ... he gave him a blow which killed him— & lest he should run away again he cut off his head & threw both head & body into the river—” (525). Cato succeeds where esteemed white citizens fail; his heroic act rids the town of danger. [8] From the vantage of our safe hindsight, the story’s humor is inseparable from its potential tragedy. Anyone who comes in HDT WHAT? INDEX

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contact with this dog could, of course, be killed. Nevertheless, Thoreau has a bit of fun at the expense of the townsfolk. Mr. Fay was possibly Grant Fay, a local farmer whose son Addison was a contemporary of Thoreau. As “a large and stout old gentleman ... dressed in small clothes,” twice bitten by the dog largely through his own ineptitude, Fay suffers at Thoreau’s hands. Moreover, Thoreau concludes with the information that “Fay went home ... drank some spirit ... went straight over to Dr. Heywoods ... & ... was doctored 3 weeks. cried like a baby. The Dr cut out the mangled flesh & ... Fay ... never experienced any further ill effects from the bite” (525).

November 12, Saturday: Sam Houston made a major speech in Austin, defending his Senate record and advocating the development of railroads in Texas.

“Slavery in Massachusetts” was reprinted in The National Anti-Slavery Standard.

Henry Thoreau surveyed some Lincoln and Waltham woodlots for the heirs of John Richardson. (Richardson had built a townhouse on the west side of the Concord Common, but in 1789 swapped it with Middlesex County for the hotel that was on the spot later occupied by the Middlesex House.)

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/103.htm

December 15, Thursday: Henry Thoreau surveyed Simon Hapgood’s woodlot in Acton, Massachusetts for George Brooks. The woodlot was cut in 1853-1854. Joseph Brabrook is also mentioned. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/49.htm

December 15. He [George Brooks of Concord] had ten live pigeons [American Passenger Pigeons Ectopistes migratorius] in a cage under his barn. He used them to attract others in the spring. The reflections from their necks were very beautiful. They made me think of shells cast up on a beach. He placed them in a cage on the bed and could hear them from the house.

December 17, Saturday: Henry Thoreau made a plan of land belonging to David Weston in Lincoln.

December 19, Monday: Sometime after the incident of the spading competition, Michael Flannery had quit working for Abiel H. Wheeler and become a field laborer instead for Elijah Wood. At this point he discussed this new job with Henry Thoreau and told of his continuing efforts to get his family from Ireland. That evening Thoreau wrote to H.G.O. Blake: An Irishman came to see me to-day, who is endeavoring to get his family out to this New World. He rises at half past four, milks HDT WHAT? INDEX

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twenty-eight cows (which has swollen the joints of his fingers), and eats his breakfast, without any milk in his tea or coffee, before six; and so on, day after day, for six and a half dollars a month; and thus he keeps his virtue in him, if he does not add to it; and he regards me as a gentleman able to assist him; but if I ever get to be a gentleman, it will be by working after my fashion harder than he does. THOREAU ON THE IRISH From this day into December 21st, Thoreau would be surveying a Corner Spring woodlot that James P. Brown was selling to William Wheeler, which was cut in 1853-1854. (Brown lived near Nut Meadow Brook, and according to the Concord Town Report for 1851-1852, Thoreau had laid out a town road near his house and had been paid $4.00 for this by the town.)

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/13.htm

Thoreau wrote to Spencer Fullerton Baird in regard to Louis Agassiz’s American Association for the Advancement of Science, to withdraw his name, pleading that he would be unable to attend meetings and explaining that the kind of science he was attracted to was the science of the Reverend Gilbert White’s

THE NATURAL HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE

and Alexander von Humboldt’s

ASPECTS OF NATURE

— as he understood very well that this was bound suitably to render him unattractive to them.38

In this letter Thoreau made reference to a poem that had been published anonymously in Punch, or the London Charivari, by Thomas Hood, entitled “The Song of the Shirt.”

In this letter, also, Thoreau made reference to pamphlet of 10 pages of blue paper just put out by the Smithsonian Institution that was going to become part of his personal library, Spencer Fullerton Baird’s DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING COLLECTIONS IN NATURAL HISTORY, PREPARED FOR THE USE OF THE PARTIES ENGAGED IN THE EXPLORATION OF A ROUTE FOR THE PACIFIC RAILROAD ALONG THE 49TH PARALLEL.

38. Harding and Bode, CORRESPONDENCE, pages 309-10. He gave quite a different reason for not becoming a member in his JOURNAL:“The fact is I am a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot.” Although it has been alleged many times that this reading had great influence on Henry Thoreau, quite frankly I have been unable myself to verify that Thoreau took this species of nature writing as Waldo Emerson had, with any seriousness. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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GOD IN CONCORD by Jane Langton © 1992 Penguin Books USA Inc. 38 If you are going into that line, —going to besiege the city of God, —you must not only be strong in engines, but prepared with provisions to starve out the garrison.

Viking Penguin Thoreau, Letter to Harrison Blake, December 19, 1853 Homer took his convictions about Pond View to Police Chief James Flower. ISBN 0-670-84260-5 — PS3562.A515G58

Concord Dec 19th 53 Mr Blake, My debt has accumulated so that I should have answered your last letter at once, if I had not been the subject of what is called a press of engagements, having a lecture to write for last Wednesday, and surveying more than usual besides. – It has been a kind of running fight with me – the enemy not always behind me, I trust. True, a man cannot lift himself by his own waist-bands, because he cannot get out of himself, but he can expand himself, (which is bet- ter, there being no up nor down in nature) and so split his waist- bands, being already within himself. You speak of doing & being – & the vanity real or apparent of much doing – The suckers, I think it is they, make nests in our river in the spring of more than a cart-load of small stones, amid which to de- posit their ova. The other day I opened a muskrats’ house. It was made of weeds, five feet broad at base & 3 feet high, and far and low within it was a little cavity, only a foot in diameter where the rat dwelt. It may seem trivial – this piling up of weeds, but so the race of muskrats is preserved. We must heap up a great pile of doing for a small diameter of being. – Is it not imperative on us that we do HDT WHAT? INDEX

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something – if we only work in a tread-mill? and, indeed, some sort of revolving is necessary to produce a centre & nucleus of being. What exercise is to the body – employment is to the mind & morals. Consider what an amount of drudgery must be performed – how much hum-drum & prosaic labor goes to any work of the least value. There are so many layers of mere white lime in every shell to that thin inner one so beautifully tinted. Let not the shell fish think to build his house of that alone; and pray what are its tints to him? Is it not his smooth close-fitting shirt merely? whose tints are not to him, being in the dark, but only when he is gone or dead, and his shell is heaved up to light a wreck upon the beach, do they appear. With him too it is a song of the shirt – “work – work – work” – & this work is not merely a police in the gross sense, but in the higher sense, a discipline. If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather ele- vating as a ladder – the means by which we are translated? How admirably the artist is made to accomplish his self culture by devotion to his art! The woodsawyer through his effort to do his work well, becomes not merely a better woodsawyer, but measure- ably a better man. Few are the men that can work on their navels – only some Brahmens that I have heard of. To the painter is given some paint & canvass instead. – to the Irishman a bog, – typical of himself. – In a thousand apparently humble ways men busy them- selves to make some right take the place of some wrong, – if it is only to make a better paste-blacking – and they are themselves so much the better morally for it. You say that you sit & aspire, but do not succeed much. Does it con- cern you enough that you do not? Do you work hard enough at it— Do you get the benefit of discipline out of it? If so, persevere. Is it a more serious thing than to walk a thousand miles in a thousand suc- cessive hours? Do you get any corns by it? Do you ever think of hanging yourself on account of failure? If you are going into that line – going to besiege the city of God – you must not only be strong in engines – but prepared with provi- sions to starve out the garrison. An Irishman came to see me today who is endeavoring to get his family out to this New World. He rises at half past 4 & milks 28 cows – (which has swolen the joints of his fingers) & eats his breakfast, without any milk in his tea or coffee, before 6 – & so on day after day for six & a half dollars a month – & thus he keeps his virtue in him – if he does not add to it – & he regards me as a gentleman able to assist him – but if I ever get to be a gentleman, it will be by working after my fashion harder than he does – If my joints are not swolen, it must be because I deal with the teats of celestial cows before break-fast, (and the milker in this HDT WHAT? INDEX

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case is always allowed some of the milk for his breakfast) to say nothing of the flocks & herds of Admetus afterward. It is the art of mankind to polish the world, and every one who works is scrubbing in some part. If the mark is high & far, you must not only aim aright, but draw the bow with all your might. You must qualify your self to use a bow which no humbler archer can bend. Work – work – work! Who shall know it for a bow? It is not of yew-tree. It is straighter than a ray of light – flexibility is not known for one of its qualities.

Dec 22nd So far I had got when I was called off to survey. – Pray read the Life of Haydon the painter – if you have not. It is a small revelation for these latter days – a great satisfaction to know that he has lived – though he is now dead. Have you met with the letter of a Turkish cadi at the end of Layard’s “Nineveh & Babylon” that also is re- freshing & a capital comment on the whole book which preceeds it – the oriental genius speaking through him. Those Brahmins put it through, they come off – or rather stand still, conquerors, with some withered arms or legs at least to show — & they are said to have cultivated the faculty of abstraction to a degree unknown to Europeans, – If we cannot sing of faith & triumph – we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls & there are night owls – and each is beautiful & even musical while about its business. Might you not find some positive work to do with your back to Church & State – letting your back do all the rejection of them? Can you not go upon your pilgrimage, Peter, along the winding mountain path whither you face? A step more will make those funereal church bells over your shoulder sound far and sweet as a natural sound Work – work – work! Why not make a very large mud pie & bake it in the sun! Only put no church nor state into it, nor upset any other pepper -box that way. – Dig out a wood-chuck for that has nothing to do with rotting institu- tions – Go ahead. Whether a man spends his day in an extacy or despondency – he must do some work to show for it – even as there are flesh & bones to show for him. We are superior to the joy we experience. Your last 2 letters methinks have more nerve & will in them than usual – as if you had erected yourself more – Why are not they good work – if you only had a hundred correspondents to tax you? Make your failure tragical – by the earnestness & steadfastness of your endeavor – & then it will not differ from success – Prove it to HDT WHAT? INDEX

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be the inevitable fate of mortals – of one mortal – if you can. You said that you were writing on immortality – I wish you would communicate to me what you know about that – you are sure to live while that is your theme – Thus I write on some text which a sentence of your letters may have furnished. I think of coming to see you as soon as I get a new coat – if I have money enough left – I will write to you again about it. Henry D. Thoreau BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1854

February 1, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau continued with extensive surveys of the Bedford Road begun in July 1853 which show the Middlesex Agricultural Society, Reuben Brown’s farm with its Sleepy Hollow (the region that would become Sleepy Hollow Cemetery), and all of the existing houses to the Charles Gordon and William Pedrick farms on Old Bedford Road to Bedford.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/94a.htm

March 17, Friday: On a remarkably warm morning for the season, almost like a May morning, Henry Thoreau surveyed a houselot belonging to Doctor Joseph Reynolds on Lowell Road near the present Bow Street. This may have been property that John Stacy had to sell in 1853. In the afternoon Thoreau walked to the Cliffs.

March 17. Friday. A remarkably warm day for the season; too warm while surveying without my greatcoat; almost like May heats.

4 P.M.— To Cliffs. The grass is slightly greened on south bank-sides,– on the south side of the house. It begins to be windy. Saw a small gyrinus at the brook bridge behind Hubbard’s Grove. The first tinge of green appears to be due to moisture more than to direct heat. It is not on bare dry banks, but in hollows where the snow melts last that it is most conspicuous. Fair Haven is open for half a dozen rods about the shores. If this weather holds, it will be entirely open in a day or two. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 4, Tuesday: The 2d Regiment of Dragoons under Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke defeated the Jicarilla Apaches at the canyon of Ojo Caliente. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Joseph Tussaud returned to London with a head-chopping machine that he had procured from Clément Sanson. This “guillotine” was to become a part of Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks.

HEADCHOPPING

Henry Thoreau spent all day surveying an Acton woodlot belonging to Abel Hosmer near the railroad and the road to Stow, Jessie Willis, George Wright, Joel Conant, (?) Adams, Asa Parker and the area just west of the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Damon Mill land.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/58a.htm

An article by John Russell Bartlett appeared in the New York Herald, on pages 5 and 6, entitled “The Aboriginal Semi-civilization of the Great California Basin, with a Refutation of the popular theory of the Northern Origin of the Aztecs of Mexico,” on the migration of Aztecs and the distribution of Native Americans in the Great Basin region, from which Thoreau would copy into his eighth Indian Notebook.

American and English ships began to land forces at Shanghai to protect American interests during Chinese civil strife. This would continue until June 17th. US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 5, Wednesday, evening, 1854: Waldo Emerson was delivering “France” at the Concord Lyceum. Meanwhile the disintegrating body of a man was being discovered in the river between Fair Haven Pond and Lee’s. Henry Thoreau had spent all day surveying woodlots in Concord and Carlisle, near Hitchinson’s property and near [I.??] Green’s property, for Samuel Hoar, and had made two maps.

The Poplar Hill map was for land on the hill behind the Bullet Hole House and opposite the Old Manse on Monument Street in Concord, near Great Meadows. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The other map was of the North part of the present Easterbrook Woods area.

That night,

Spring: “Who shall distinguish between the law by which a brook finds its river, the instinct a bird performs its migrations, and the knowledge by which a man steers his ship round the globe?” [VI, 148 or VI, 278 (?)]

April 11, Tuesday: In the afternoon, Henry Thoreau went off to Lincoln for a surveying assignment.

April 11.A.M. — Heard the clear, rather loud and rich warble of a purple finch and saw him on an elm. Wilson says they feed on the coverings of the blossoms. It is a distinct and peculiar note, not to be confounded with anything before it. I suspect that I heard one on the 1st of April, q.v.

P.M. — Surveying in Lincoln. Large ant-hills in the woods, but no ants. Evening on river. Fine full moon; river smooth. Hear a slight snoring of frogs on the bared meadows. Is it not the R. palustris? This the first moon to walk by.

April 12, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed 20 acres of woodlot in Lincoln for Schuyler Parks.

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/97.htm

April 12. Wednesday. Surveying for Parks in Lincoln. A white frost this morning, after the clear moonlight. Parks says he saw a buff-edged butterfly a month ago, i.e. before the 17th of March. The hazels are well out to-day, and their pollen yellows my clothes, it being a warm (off-coat) day. When I went to Mr. P.'s house at noon, he addressed me, “Now, what will you have to drink?” and soon appeared stirring a glass of gin for himself. Waited at Lincoln depot an hour and a half. Heard the telegraph harp. I perceived distinctly that man melts at HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the sound of music, just like a rock exposed to a furnace heat. They need not have fabled that Orpheus moved the rocks and trees, for there is nothing more insensible than man; he sets the fashion to the rocks, and it is as surprising to see him melted, as when. children see the lead begin to flow in a crucible. I observe that it is when I have been intently, and it may be laboriously, at work, and am sornewhat listless or abandoned after it, reposing, that the muse visits me, and I see or hear beauty. It is from out the shadow of my toil that I look into the light. The music of the spheres is but another name for the Vulcanic force. May not such a record as this be kept on one page of the Book of Life: “A man was melted to-day.”

May 20, Saturday: Henry Thoreau surveyed for David Loring (this would be rerun during May 1855). He made a rough plan of land near the Railroad Depot in Concord: “Frances Monroe and Rail Road.”

June 5, Monday: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was reading the Finnish epic KALEVALA.

Henry Thoreau surveyed land that one of the Hoars had bought from James Heywood, near Factory Quarter near Stow Road and the land of William Brown. For many years the pond on this land was known as Hoar Pond. At 6 PM Thoreau went to the Cliffs.

June 5:I see at a distance a kingbird [Eastern Kingbird Tyrannus tyrannus] or blackbird pursuing a crow lower down the hill, like a satelite [sic] revolving about a black planet.

August 31, Thursday: Ariana Sanborn, eight days the bride of Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, died of consumption.

Henry Thoreau was being written to by Richard F. Fuller in Boston, to thank him for his copy of WALDEN; OR, 39 LIFE IN THE WOODS and to say that he had enjoyed it, and hoped Thoreau’s fame would grow.

Boston 31 Aug. 1854 Dear Thoreau When I went out to rusti- cate in Wayland some weeks since, I had seen a notice of the forthcoming Walden, and regrett[ed] that I could not obtain the book for my su[m-] mer retreat. I was obliged to console myself with the expectation of reading it on my return to town. On first opening my des[k] again here what should I see but that very book and my name therein inscribed in a very esteemed hand! He should leave it to his friends to purchase his book, I thought, and then--but how pleasant to obtain it 39.At some point during the autumn Thoreau pencilled on his reading draft of “Walking, or The Wild,” just below and to the right of the title, the following shattering remark:

I regard this as a sort of introduction to all that I may write hereafter.

Bradley P. Dean infers that Thoreau wrote this a few weeks after WALDEN was published. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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in a way that gives proof of kind remembrance. So I got another copy for the town library in Wayland, and kept yours for myself. Let me congratulate you for the hit you have made in this book. I am glad the world opens a little to its appeal.

Page 2 I have read this book with great satis- faction. I had expected sincerity and truth and intimacy with nature in you: my ex- pectation is surpassed. I congratulate you on that heroic reliance and courageous trail of the leading[]of your own high in- [s]tincts which have borne such fitting fruit. I delight, too, in your affectionate nearness to the bosom of nature and your family [fe]eling for the pure objects of her fostering care. You seem to have something of that tenderness toward them which must pervade the Father's care that cherishes all. Your book is remarkable for what I will call by an old name (for I prefer old names, nothing being in substance new) namely faith--faith in the heavenly within you and the heavenly without you. I esteem a noble quality which transcends common

Page 3 laws being a law unto itself. It transcends, but (mark the distinction) it does not transgress. Your book must furnish gra- tification to those appetites which still relish nature; and I have one. It is a fruit, too, which will keep and grow more golden mellow and fragrant with the many years. Your book must do good mo- rally by reproving the growing luxury [of] the times. It has made me also sigh for my[-] self that I have yielded so much to the kingdom of man. Having said some of the things which HDT WHAT? INDEX

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your book is, I need not say what it is not. For hardly all men and ages, and not the single individual, make the man. May your fame grow and de- velope in your good fruit. Accept my con- gratulations and thanks Yours R. F. Fuller

Page 4 Postage: PAID Paid Postmark: BOSTON 31 AUG 3 cts Address: Henry D. Thoreau Concord Mass HDT WHAT? INDEX

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He surveyed a Lincoln houselot between Tower Road and Lincoln Road for Marie Green. In the afternoon he did some surveying for William Peirce, after which Peirce brought him to Concord from Lincoln in his wagon.

Thoreau had obtained, from Stacy’s Circulating Library in Concord, Benjamin Gilbert Ferris’s UTAH AND THE MORMONS: THE HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, DOCTRINES, CUSTOMS, AND PROSPECTS OF THE LATTER-DAY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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SAINTS, FROM PERSONAL OBSERVATION DURING A SIX MONTHS’ RESIDENCE AT GREAT SALT LAKE CITY.

UTAH AND THE MORMONS UTAH AND THE MORMONS

Aug. 31. Warmer this morning and considerably hazy again. Wormwood pollen yellows my clothes commonly. Ferris in his “Utah,” crossing the plains in ’52, says that, on Independence Rock near the Sweetwater, “at a rough guess, there must be 35,000 to 40,000” names of travellers. P.M. —To Lincoln. Surveying for William Peirce40. He says that several large chestnuts appear to be dying near him on account of the drought. Saw a meadow said to be still on fire after three weeks; fire had burned holes one and a half feet 40. The surveying notebook says, a houselot for Byron Peirce: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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deep; was burning along slowly at a considerable depth. P. brought me home in his wagon. Was not quite at his ease and in his element; i.e., talked with some reserve, though well behaved, unless I approached the subject of horses. Then he spoke with a will and with authority, betraying somewhat of the jockey. He said that this dry weather was “trying to wagons; it loosened the ties,” — if that was the word. He did not use blinders nor a check-rein. Said a horse’s neck must ache at night which has been reined up all day. He said that the outlet of F[lint’s] Pond had not been dry before for four years, and then only two or three days; now it was a month. Notwithstanding this unprecedented drought our river, the main stream, has not been very low. It may have been kept up by the reservoirs. Walden is unaffected by the drought, and is still very high. But for the most part silent are the watercourses, when I walk in rocky swamps where a tinkling is commonly heard. At nine this evening I distinctly and strongly smell smoke, I think of burning meadows, in the air in the village. There must be more smoke in this haze than I have supposed. Is not the haze a sort of smoke, the sun parching and burning the earth?

September 11, Monday: “Measured to-day the little Sternothaerus odoratus which came September 9 out in the garden.” Tortoise Eggs: Henry Thoreau surveyed a woodlot near Great Meadows (Gleason D8) belonging to Daniel Shattuck. His sketch shows the land of the Colonel Holbrook who lived opposite the Concord Free Public Library. Great Meadows land seems to have had numerous owners as the grasses were used to mulch crops.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/110.htm

October 9-13: Henry Thoreau went to Plymouth to lecture, and to survey for Benjamin Marston Watson, with Bronson Alcott carrying the chain (refer to L.D. Geller’s BETWEEN CONCORD AND PLYMOUTH regarding Thoreau’s Plymouth friends). Although he continued to work on the “Moonlight” lecture for a few days after he first delivered it, his attention was primarily on the “Walking, or the Wild” lecture. Presumably, the two new lectures he would generate from this earlier lecture would become the second and third in his “Intended Course of Lectures.”

View Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

November 3, Friday, and 4, Saturday: Henry Thoreau surveyed on the “Homestead” farm of the old General James Colburn. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 6, Monday: Henry Thoreau completed surveying the farm of the old General James Colburn. This farm of approximately 130 acres was near the Lee or Elwell Farm (Gleason E5) bordering on the Assabet River. Thoreau mentioned that there was a “haunted house” in this area.

Thoreau was being written to again by this Asa Fairbanks of Providence, Rhode Island in regard to the proposed lecture of a “reformatory Character”: Providence Nov. 6. 1854 Mr Henry D Thore[a]u Dear Sir I am in receipt of yours of the 4th inst. Your stating explicitly that the 6th December would suit you better than any other time, I altered other arrangements on purpose to accommodate you, and notified you as soon as I was able to accomplish them. had you named the last Wedn[e]sday in Nov. or the second Wednsday in December, I could have replied to you at once–or any time in Janu[a]ry or Feb[ruary] it would have been the same[.] I shall regret the disap- pointment very Much but must submit to it if you have Made such overtures as you can not avoid— I hope however you will be able to come at the time appointed[.] Truly A. Fairbanks

The Reverend Daniel Foster was writing Thoreau from his farm in East Princeton MA that he and friends had been reading WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS aloud “with pauses for conversation.” East Princeton Nov. 6. 1854.

Friend Thoreau, On my return from a lecturing tour in the Mystic Valley Dom informed me of your call with your English [c]ompanion on your way to a meeting on the summit of Mt. Wachusett. I am glad you called but sorry that I was not at home. I hope you will come & see us while we are here & get acquainted with our pond “old crow hill,” “redemption rock” “Uncle William” now nearly 90 [years] old, bonnie Charlie & other notables of the place justly considered worthy the notice of a philosopher. I shall not tell you that you will be welcome as long as you can stay with us for if you don't know that HDT WHAT? INDEX

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fact the usual polite phrase of in- vitation will not assure you. I have read your“Walden” slowly, aloud with constant

Page 2 pauses for conversation thereon, & with very much satisfaction & profit. I like to read aloud of evenings a book which like this one provokes discussion in the circle of [hearers] & reader. I was the more interested in your book from the personal & strong interest felt for you & for your own sake in my soul. My in- tercourse with you when I lived in Con- cord & since at times when I have been in Concord has been uncommonly useful in aiding & strengthening my own best purpose. Most thoroughly do I respect & reverence a manly self-poised mind. My own great aim in life has ever been to act in accordance with my own convictions. To be destitute of bank stock & rail road shares & the influence which wealth & position bestow through the folly of the unthinking multitude is no evil to that one who seeks truth & immortal living as the greatest & the best inheritance. In the scramble for money in which most men engage

Page 3 one may fail but whoever travels the road of patient study & self control reaches the goal & is crowned with the immortal wealth. I would not be understood in this to depreciate the value of wealth. I am working in the hope of being rich in this world's [gear] sometime through the ownership of a piece of land on which shall stand my own illuminated & happy HDT WHAT? INDEX

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home. But if I do not reach the accomplishment of this hope I will nevertheless bate no jot of my cheer- fulness joy & energy till the end. I will deserve success & thus of course I shall succeed in all my hopes some time or other. I have enjoyed the ponds the hills & the woods of this vicinity very greatly this year. We have nothing quite equal to your Walden or Concord, but aside from these our natural attractions exceed yours. I have been farming & preaching this summer, have reared

Page 3 to maturity & harvested 90 bushels of corn one bushel beans, 8 bushels potatoes, 20 bushels squashes & 20 bushels of apples. I cannot tell with the same precision how many thoughts I have called into exercise by my moral husbandry tho I hope my labor herein has not been in vain. Dom wishes to be remembered with sisterly greetings to Sophia & yourself & with filial affection to your father & mother. We enjoyed the visit your mother & sister repaid us very much indeed & only regreeted that Mr. Thoreau & yourself were not with us at the same time[.] I hope your “Walden” will get a wide circulation, as it deserves, & replenish your bank, as it ought to do. I thank you for the book & will hold myself your debtor till opportunity offers for securing a receipt in full Yours truly Daniel Foster HDT WHAT? INDEX

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By way of radical contrast, when Moncure Daniel Conway read WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, he didn’t think much of the book as a guide to life. On this day he was listing his objections for Waldo Emerson’s benefit:

1. That it hasn’t optimism enough ... 2. That one couldn’t pursue his Art of Living and get married. 3. That one hasn’t time to spend or strength to spare from what is his work to take care of such universal rebellion.

It is clear that Conway had not been reading WALDEN “with pauses for thought.” To this minister, whose ideal of Nature was frankly that it should be like a garden where everything is in its place and under control and serving a purpose, Thoreau seemed like the kind of guy who couldn’t live “unless snakes are coiling around his leg or lizzards perching on his shoulders.” (Conway all his life had a morbid fear of and a morbid fascination with snakes: during his childhood he even had a slave walking in front of him to beat the ground with a stick and scare away these snakes. Obviously, if Thoreau wasn’t afraid of snakes, there must be a whole lot of other things that were wrong with him as well!)41 AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II

November 7, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau again surveyed, for Waldo Emerson, the sawmill woodlot in Lincoln near Sandy Pond Road leading to Flint’s, or Sandy, Pond (Gleason J10) that he had surveyed on May 23, 1849 and March 15, 1850 and had enticed Emerson to purchase by taking him to a water-fall and rare flowers.

41. Conway’s criticism of Thoreau to Emerson, that Thoreau hadn’t optimism enough, sounds very strange if you bear in mind that later on in life Conway would repudiate Emerson on the grounds that Emerson was so optimistic that he was entirely unable to deal with the dark things in life! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 9, Saturday: Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade,” to become incomparably more famous as a poem than his “Charge of the Heavy Brigade,” which of course you’ve not so much as heard of.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Also, on December 9th, Henry Thoreau surveyed a 7 1/2 acre woodlot, belonging to Tilly Holden, that was part of the property near the north part of Nut Meadow Brook (Gleason H4) on Sudbury Road (Gleason H5) and Old Marlborough Road (Gleason H3) which he had surveyed for Amos and Noah Wheeler in November of 1853.

Also, Louisa May Alcott published the stories she had originally created while caring for Ellen Emerson, as FLOWER FABLES, in time for the Christmas Book gift season, and took her essay “How I Went Out to Service” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to James Thomas Fields, the Boston publisher — but was informed she could not write.42 “Pondering shadows, colors, clouds Grass-buds, and caterpillar shrouds Boughs on which the wild bees settle, Tints that spot the violet’s petal.” — Emerson’s WOOD-NOTES.

To Ellen Emerson, For whom they were fancied, These flower fables Are inscribed, By her friend, — The Author. Boston, Dec. 9, 1854.

Chapter I: The Frost King: or, The Power of Love Chapter II: Eva’s Visit to Fairy-Land Chapter III: The Flower’s Lesson Chapter IV: Lily-Bell and Thistledown Chapter V: Little Bud Chapter VI: Clover-Blossom Chapter VII: Little Annie’s Dream: or, The Fairy Flower Chapter VIII: Ripple, the Water-Spirit Chapter IX: Fairy Song THE ALCOTT FAMILY

42. That’s “could not” as in “should not,” you understand. Good thing Thoreau had been born a Henry and not a Henrietta! Good thing our Louisa was not one to be so easily turned aside!

As long as THE SPREAD EAGLE paid her a dollar a column for her ‘rubbish,’ as she called it, Jo felt herself a woman of means, and spun her little romances diligently. But great plans fermented in her busy brain and ambitious mind, and the old tin kitchen in the garret held a slowly increasing pile of blotted manuscript, which was one day to place the name of March upon the roll of fame. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1855

Major Alexander Culbertson contributed to the success of negotiations with the Blackfoot and Gros Ventres tribes, permitting a survey through their territory for a transcontinental railroad. From this year into 1861, the US War Department would be publishing an enormously elaborate and fantastically well illustrated multi- volume REPORTS OF EXPLORATIONS AND SURVEYS, TO ASCERTAIN THE MOST PRACTICABLE AND ECONOMICAL ROUTE FOR A RAILROAD FROM THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN; THESE INCLUDE ACCOUNTS OF SURVEYING EXPEDITIONS WHICH GREATLY INCREASE KNOWLEDGE AND INTEREST CONCERNING THE WESTERN LANDSCAPE, DOCUMENTED BY ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTISTS ACCOMPANYING THE EXPEDITIONS, burning away in the process a fantastically large %age of the very tiny federal budget. Due to the radical increase in the size of the federal budget, with income taxes and all that — nothing we have done since this point in time, not even fighting a war or paying Social Security and Welfare and Medicare, has come even remotely close to consuming the same large %age of the annual federal budget.

And guess what? –Few scholars now even bother to consult these volumes. It was straightforwardly a boondoggle. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Major W.H. Emory completed a survey of the new boundary that had been established by the Gadsden Purchase of 1852 between the United States of America and Mexico. Returned from some three years in the Southwest region of the United States, from this year until 1872 John Russell Bartlett would serve as Secretary of State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (this would be the longest anyone ever served in that capacity). He would be most diligent in the preservation of Providence and Rhode Island’s historical records.

Texas slaveowners were in the habit of offering rewards of $200-$600 for the recapture of slaves fleeing south toward the Mexican border. A group of bounty hunters, unprepared for the resistance they received, abandoned their mission. Much to his own surprise, Noah Smithwick, a member of this group, found himself hoping that the freedom-seekers they had been pursuing would be able to make their way into Mexico.43

By order of Texas Governor Elisha Pease, Captain James Callahan of the Texas Rangers entered Mexico and attempted to round up former slaves. Callahan meanwhile insisted that the purpose of his excursion was to pursue renegade native Americans, not recover fugitive slaves. The Rangers reduced a small village to ruins. The Mexican government, however, with the assistance of local native Americans, forced this band of Rangers to withdraw without the blacks they had captured.44

Professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Slave in the Dismal Swamp.”

A party of white surveyors working in the Great Cypress Swamp of the Everglades vandalized some of the Seminole crops, and Billy Bowlegs demanded compensation or an apology. When the native Americans would receive neither compensation nor apology for this crop loss, they would commence three years of sporadic raiding now known as the 3d Seminole War. That is, the 3d of our campaigns to flush “Seminole” native Americans out of refuges in the Everglades, and force them beyond the Mississippi River, was launched.

43. Noah Smithwick. THE EVOLUTION OF A STATE (Austin TX: Gammel Book Company, 1900), page 326. 44. Ronnie C. Tyler. “Fugitive Slaves in Mexico,” Journal of Negro History, Volume 57, Issue 1 (January 1972), pages 8-9; Frederick Law Olmsted. A JOURNEY THROUGH TEXAS. (NY: Dix, Edwards and Company, 1857), page 333. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 5, Friday: King Camp Gillette, who would invent the safety razor, was born.

Waldo Emerson told Henry Thoreau of a J.B. Hill of Bangor, Maine:

who was much interested in … “Walden,” but relished it merely as a capital satire and joke, and even thought that the survey and map of the pond were not real, but a caricature of the Coast Surveys. (JOURNAL 7:102-3)

May: Back in the United States from China, the Reverend Issachar J. Roberts proposed to publish a periodical he wanted to call The Oriental and Chinese Advocate.

Henry Thoreau was surveying for David Loring.

June 6, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson purchased some land from E. Hosmer.

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June 6. P.M. — Up Assabet by boat to survey Hosmer's field. On the Island I hear still the redstart -tsip tsip tsip tsip, tsit-i-yet, or sometimes tsip trip trip trip, ise vet. A young male. It repeats this at regular intervals for a long time, sitting pretty still now. Waxwork open and pollen one or two days. I notice a clam lying up, and two or three cleared or light-colored places, apparently” Bream-nests commenced. You see the dark eye and shade of June on the river as well as on land, and a dust-like tint on river, apparently from the young leaves and bud-scales, covering the waters, which begin to be smooth, and imparting a sense of depth. Blue-eyed grass maybe several days to some places. One thimble-berry blossom done - probably several do.Fs. “There are now those large swarms of black-winged millers (?) a half-inch long, with two long streamers ahead, fluttering three to six inches over the water; not long, methinks; also other insects. I see a yellow-spotted tortoise twenty rods from river, and a painted one four rods from it which has just made a hole for her eggs. Two catbirds' nests in the thickest part of the thicket on the edge of Wheeler's meadow near Island. One done laying (I learn after); four eggs, green, - much darker green than the robin's and more slender in proportion. This is loosely placed in the forks of a broad alternate or silky cornel bush, about five feet from the ground, and is composed of dead twigs and a little stubble, then grapevine bark, and is lined with dark root-fibres. Another, eight rods beyond, rests still more loosely on a Viburnum dentatum and birch; has some dry leaves with the twigs, and one egg, - about six feet high. The bird hops within five feet. (This egg gone on the 9th.) The white maple keys are about half fallen. It is remarkable that this happens at the time the emperor moth (cecropia) comes out. Carex crinita (?), a few days, along bank of Assabet. Whiteweed, Merrick's pasture shore, these two or three days. The Salix cordata (which apparently blossomed some (lays after the S. sericea) is very common on Prichard's shore and also Whiting's. Also at the last. place is a small shrub, -a little of it, - perhaps S. lucida, which apparently blossomed about same time [as], or a day or two after, the sericea. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 21, Thursday: Henry Thoreau surveyed a 2-acre woodlot above Flints Pond in Lincoln for Augustus Tuttle (showing location of land of Cyrus Smith, Nancy Smith, and Asa White).

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/132a.htm

June 21. Saw a white lily in Everett’s Pond. Sparrow’s nest, four eggs, deep in the moist bank beyond cherry-bird's nest (have three), of peculiar color. She deserted the nest after one was taken. Outside of stubble, scantily lined with fibrous roots. Clams abundant within three feet of shore, and bream-nests. The early grass is ripe or browned, and clover is drying. Peetweets make quite a noise calling to their young with alarm. On an apple at R.W.E.’s a small pewee’s nest, on a horizontal branch, seven feet high, almost wholly of hair, cotton without, not incurved at edge; four eggs, pale cream-color. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 31, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed for the Mill Dam Company.This work would continue for Thoreau on October 31st, and in November (24?).

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/88a.htm

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/88c.htm

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/88b.htm

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/88d.htm

The Reverend Samuel Ringgold Ward wrote to Her Grace, the Duchess of Sutherland: Madam: The frank and generous sympathy evinced by your Grace in behalf of American slaves has been recognized by all classes, and is gratefully cherished by the Negro’s heart. A kind Providence placed me for a season within the circle of your influence, and made me largely share its beneficent action, in the occasional intercourse of Nobles and Ladies of high rank, who sympathize in your sentiments. I am devoutly thankful to God, the Creator of the Negro, for this gleam of his sunshine, though it should prove but a brief token of his favour; and desire that my oppressed kindred may yet show themselves not unworthy of their cause being advocated by the noblest of all lands, and sustained and promoted by the wise and virtuous of every region. I cannot address your Grace as an equal; though the generous nobility of your heart would require that I should use no expression inconsistent with the dignity of a man, the creation of God’s infinite wisdom and goodness. I cannot give flattering titles, or employ the language of adulation: I should offend your Grace if I did so, and prove myself unworthy of that good opinion which I earnestly covet. To you, Madam, I am indebted for many instances of spontaneous kindness, and to your influence I owe frequent opportunities of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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representing the claims of my oppressed race. I should not have felt emboldened to attempt the authorship of this Volume, had it not been for a conviction, sustained by unmistakable tokens, that in all classes, from the prince to the peasant, there is a chord of sympathy which vibrates to the appeals of my suffering people. Before your Grace can see these lines, I shall be again traversing the great Atlantic. Will you, Madam, pardon this utterance of the deep-felt sentiment of a grateful heart, which can only find indulgence and relief in the humble dedication of this Volume to you, as my honoured patroness, and the generous friend of the Negro people in all lands? I am not versed in the language of courts or the etiquette of the peerage; but my heart is warm with gratitude, and my pen can but faintly express the sense of obligations I shall long cherish toward your noble House and the illustrious members of your Grace’s family, from whom I have received many undeserved kindnesses. I have the honour to be, Madam, Your Grace’s most obedient and grateful Servant, SAMUEL RINGGOLD WARD. LONDON, 31st October, 1855. He also, on this day, at Radley’s Hotel, penned a preface for his autobiograpy: The idea of writing some account of my travels was first suggested to me by a gentleman who has not a little to do with the bringing out of this work. The Rev. Dr. Campbell also encouraged the suggestion. I then thought that a series of letters in a newspaper would answer the purpose. Circumstances over which I had no control placed it beyond my power to accomplish the design in that form of publication. A few months ago I was requested to spend an evening with some ardent friends of the Negro race, by the arrangement of Mrs. Massie, at her house, Upper Clapton. Her zeal and constancy in behalf of the American Slave are well known on both sides of the Atlantic. Nor is there, I believe, a more earnest friend of my kindred race than is her husband. With him I have repeatedly taken counsel on the best modes of serving our cause. Late in August last, Dr. Massie urged on me the propriety of preparing a volume which might remain as a parting memorial of my visit to England, and serve to embody and perpetuate the opinions and arguments I had often employed to promote the work of emancipation. Peter Carstairs, Esq., of Madras, being present, cordially and frankly encouraged the project; and other friends, in whose judgment I had confidence, expressed their warmest approval. My publisher has generously given every facility for rendering the proposal practicable. To him I owe my warmest obligations for the promptitude and elegance with which the Volume has been prepared. I do not think the gentlemen who advised it were quite correct in anticipating that so much would be acceptable, in a Book from me. I should have gone about it with much better courage if I HDT WHAT? INDEX

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had not felt some fears on this point. However, amidst many apprehensions of imperfection, I place it before the reader, begging him to allow me a word by way of apology. I was obliged to write in the midst of most perplexing, most embarrassing, private business, and had not a solitary book or paper to refer to, for a fact or passage; my brain alone had to supply all I wished to compose or compile. Time, too, was very limited. Under these circumstances, that I should have committed some slight inaccuracies, will not appear very strange, though I trust they are not very great or material. I beg the reader generously to forgive the faults he detects, and to believe that my chief motive in writing is the promotion of that cause in whose service I live. I hope that this Book will not be looked upon as a specimen of what a well educated Negro could do, nor as a fair representation of what Negro talent can produce — knowing that, with better materials, more time, and in more favourable circumstances, even I could have done much better; and knowing also, that my superiors among my own people would have written far more acceptably. It will be seen that I have freely made remarks upon other things than slavery, and compared my own with those of other peoples. I did the former as a Man, the latter as a Negro. As a Negro, I live and therefore write for my people; as a Man, I freely speak my mind upon whatever concerns me and my fellow men. If any one be disappointed or offended at that, I shall regret it; all the more, as it is impossible for me to say that, in like circumstances, I should not do just the same again. The reader will not find the dry details of a journal, nor any of my speeches or sermons. I preferred to weave into the Work the themes upon which I have spoken, rather than the speeches themselves. The Work is not a literary one, for it is not written by a literary man; it is no more than its humble title indicates — the Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro. In what sense I am a fugitive, will appear on perusal of my personal and family history. S. R. W. RADLEY’S HOTEL, 31st October, 1855.

November 24, Saturday: The shipment of Oriental books from Thomas Cholmondeley arrived in Boston.

On about this day Henry Thoreau was surveying some land on Bedford Road that J.B. Moore of the Mill Dam Company was selling to an Irishman.

View Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

On about this day Henry Thoreau was being written to by the artist Frank Henry Temple Bellew. Concord. Saturday HDT WHAT? INDEX

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My Dear Sir I must in my turn beg off. I am afraid I shall not have the pleasure of exploring the river to day as I must go to Boston to make arrang- ments for the reception of Mrs Bellew & the little one the latter being quite sick & requiring change of air. Hoping you will appoint an- other day I am yours very truly F H T Bellew

Nov. 24. Geese went over on the 13th and 19th, on the 17th the first snow fell, and the 19th it began to be cold and blustering. That first slight snow has not yet gone off! and very little has been added. The last three or four days have been quite cold, the sidewalks a glare of ice and very little melting. To-day has been exceedingly blustering and disagreeable, as I found while surveying for Moore. The farmers now bring the apples they have engaged (and the cider); it is time to put them in the cellar, and the turnips. Ice has frozen pretty thick in the bottom of my boat. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1856

March 5, Wednesday: William Cooper Nell commemorated the anniversary of the Boston Massacre and the death of Crispus Attucks.

Henry Thoreau surveyed, for George F. Duren, a woodlot belonging to S. and H. Jones, relatives of Dr. Jones of Concord, that was being sold for taxes. According to Thoreau’s Field Notes book, Duren’s men chained the survey “rudely.” The sketch shows this eight-and-a-half acre lot to be near John LeGross, and J.D. and William Brown, therefore probably in the northwest part of Concord.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

Henry Thoreau wrote to Friend Daniel Ricketson in New Bedford MA.

Concord Mar. 5th ’56 Friend Ricketson, I have been out of town, else I should have acknowledge[d] your letters before. Though not in the best mood for writing I will say what I can now. You plainly have a rare, though a cheap, resource in your shanty. Perhaps the time will come when every county-seat will have one — when every country-seat will be one. I would advice you to see that shanty business out, though you go shanty mad. Work your vein till it is exhausted, or conducts you to a broader one; So that C shall stand be- fore your Shanty, & say “That is your house”. This has indeed been a grand winter for me & for all of us. I am not considering how much I have enjoyed it. What matters it how happy or unhappy we have been, if we have minded our business and advanced our affairs. I have made it a part of my HDT WHAT? INDEX

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business to wade in the snow & take the measure

Page 2 of the ice. The ice on one of our ponds was just two feet thick on the first of March. and I have to day been surveying a wood-lot where I sank about two feet at every step. It is high time that you, fanned by the warm breezes of the Gulf Stream, had begun to “lay” — for even the Concord hens have — though one wonders where they find the raw material of egg-shells here. Beware how you put off your laying to any later spring, else your cackling will not have the inspiring early Spring sound. I was surprised to hear the other day that Channing was in New Bedford., When he was here last (in Dec., I think) he said, like himself, in answer to my inquiry where he lived, that he did not know the name of the place; so it has remained in a degree of obscurity to me. As you have made it certain to me that he is in New Bedford, perhaps I can return the favor by putting you on the track to his boarding house there. Mrs Arnold told Mrs Emerson where it was — and the latter thinks, though she may be mistaken, that it was at a Mrs Lindsey’s

Page 3 I am rejoiced to hear that you are getting on so bravely with him & his verses. He and I, as you know, have been old cronies. “Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, & rill. Together both, ere the high lawns appear’d Under the opening eye-lids of the Morn, We drove afield, and both together heard &c &c &c” — — — — “But O the heavy change” now he is gone! The C. you have seen & described is the real Simon Pure. You have seen him. Many a good ramble may you have together. You will see in him still more of the same kind — to attract & to puzzle you. How to serve him most effectually has long been a problem with his friends. Perhaps it is left for you to solve it. I suspect that the most that you or any one can do for him is to appreciate his genius — to buy & read, & cause others to buy & read his poems. That is the hand which he has put forth to the world — take hold by that. Review them if you can. Perhaps take the risk of pub- lishing something

Page 4 more which he may write. Your knowledge of Cowper will help you to know C. He will accept sympathy & aid, but he will not bear questioning — unless the aspects of the sky are particularly auspicious. He will ever be “reserved & enigmatic[“,] & you must deal with him at arm’s length. I have no secrets to tell you concerning him, and do not wish to call obvious excel- lences & defects by farfetched names. I think I have already spoken to you more, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and more to the purpose, on this theme, than I am likely to write now — nor need I suggest how witty & poetic he is — and what an inexhaustible fund of good-fellow- ship you will find in him. As for visiting you in April, — though I am inclined enough to take some more ram- bles in your neighborhood, especially by the sea- side — I dare not engage myself, nor allow you to expect me. The truth is, I have my enterprises now

Page 5 as ever, at which I tug with ridiculous feebleness, but admirable perseverance — and cannot say when I shall be sufficiently fancy-free for such an excursion. You have done well to write a lecture on Cowper. In the expectation of getting you to read it here, I applied to the curators of our Lyceum. but alas our Lyceum has been a failure this winter for want of funds. It ceased some weeks since, with a debt — they tell me, to be caried over to the nex{MS torn} years’ account. Only one more lecture is to be read by a Signor somebody — an Ital- ian — paid for by private subscription — as a deed of charity to the lecturer. They are not rich enough to offer you your expenses even, though probably a month or two ago they would have been glad of the chance. However the old house has not failed yet. That offers you lodging for an indefinite time after you get in to it — and in the mean while I offer you bed & board in my father’s house — always excepting hair pillows & new-fangled

Page 6 bedding. Remember me to your family. Yrs H.D.T. Postmark: [ORD] MASS. Address: Daniel Ricketson Esq New-Bedford Mass. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 28, Monday: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Thomas Wheeler, a plot called the “Davis Piece” that consisted of 26 acres between the Old Marlboro Road Guide Post and Williams Road. Thoreau mentioned that it was bought by an Irishman named David Williams, at a rumored price of $23.00 an acre.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/143.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 30, Wednesday: Charles Wesley Slack wrote from Gloucester, Massachusetts to Eva Evelina E. Vannevar Slack, providing her with an account of his travels and describing an evening at the theater.45

Henry Thoreau surveyed the houselot of Thomas Wheeler for Samuel Staples, and Marcia E. Moss says he paid him $15.00. [For surveying a houselot? Could that be $1.50?] An interesting spot on river is pinpointed here as “Elfin Burial Ground.”

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/144.htm

Thoreau was written to by Horace Greeley in New-York. New York, Wednesday, April 30, ’56 Friend Thoreau, Immediately on the receipt of your letter, I wrote to Mrs. Greeley its substance. She was then in Dresden, but I wrote to Paris, and she did not receive my letter till the 9th inst. I have now her response, and she is heartily gratified with the prospect that you

45. Stimpert, James. A GUIDE TO THE CORRESPONDENCE IN THE CHARLES WESLEY SLACK MANUSCRIPT COLLECTION: 1848-1885. Kent State University, Library, Special Collections HDT WHAT? INDEX

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will come to us and teach our children. She says she at least thinks it may sometimes be best ^ to have instruction communicated

Page 2 by familiar oral conversa- tions while walking in [th]e fields and woods, and that it might not be well to be confined always to the same portion of each day. However, she hopes, as I do, that interest in and love for the children would soon supersede all formal stipu- lations, and that what is best for them will also be found consistent with what is most agreeable for you. Mrs. Greeley will not be home till the middle of June, so that I suppose the 1st of July will be about as soon as we should be snugly at home in our country cot-

Page 3 tage, ready for instruction and profit. Please write me your ideas with regard to the whole matter, including the amount of compensation that you consider fair and just. I prefer that you should come to us feeling at perfect liberty to leave at any time when you think best to do so; but I hope you will be reconciled to stay with us for one year at least. Of course, this would not preclude your going away to lecture or visit when you should see fit. Please write me soon and fully, and oblige HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Yours, Horace Greeley

Henry D. Thoreau, Concord, Mass.

May 5, Monday: Henry Thoreau surveyed Thomas Wheeler’s ox pasture. There are two copies of this. The Larger Ox Pasture was bought by Joseph Derby for $26.00 an acre. Some of the rest was sold to Daniel Tarbell for $13.00.

On this day Thoreau translated some Columella: In the chapter De comparandis apibus, et quemadmodum silvestria examina capiantur of buying bees & how wild swarms may be taken.--this-- Ubicunque saltus sunt idonei, mellifici, nihil antiquius, quam apes, quibus utantur, vicinos eligunt fontes: Where there are suitable woods, yielding honey, one of the first things which the bees do is to se- lect some fountains in the neighborhood for their use: eos itaque convenit plerunque ab hora secunda obsideri, specularique quae turba sit aquantium. you must therefore take your porition by these and commonly after the 2d hour of the day,--and %The numbers% observe how great is the multitude of those coming to water. Palladius gives ap. an abstract of this96 nam si paucae admodum circumvolant (nisi tamen 97their] altered from canceled "they"; "ir" written over "y" complura capita vivorum diductas faciunt rariores) intelligenda est earum penuria, propter quam locum quoque non esse are mellificum suspicabimur. for if few ^ flying about them (unless indeed many heads of running water make them thinner because dispersed) a scarcity of them is to be inferred, on which account one shall suspect the place also not to be productive of honey. At si commeant frequentes, spem quoque aucupandi examina majorem faciunt, eaque sic inveniuntur. But if they flock thither in numbers, they increase our hope of capturing swarms, & these are discovered thus. Primum quam longe sint explorandum est, praeparandumque in hanc rem, liquida [Palladius' word is {festucular}] HDT WHAT? INDEX

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rubrica, qua cum festucis ^ illitis contigeris apum terga fontem libantium, commoratus eodem loco facilius redeuntes agnoscere poteris; First it is to be explored how far off they are, and then must be prepared for this purpose some liquid ochre, (ruddle-red-{died-} vermillion) When you have touched the or dipped in backs of the bees with straws (smeared with) this, having waited in the same place you can more easily recognize them on when their97 return; ac si non tarde id faciunt, scias eas in vicino consistere: sin autem serius, pro morae tempore aestimabis distantiam loci. 98these] altered from "this"; "ese" written over "is" 99 T drew lines to transpose "through this hole" with "a little honey or defrutum". 100has] altered from "was"; "h" written over "w" and if they do this quickly, you may know that they have their abode in the neighborhood: but if later, you will estimate the distance of the place according to the time they are gone. Sed cum animadverteris celeriter redeuntes, si non aegre persequeris iter volantium, ad sedem perduceris exami- nis. But when you may have observed them returning speedily, if without much difficulty you pursue the course of them flying, you will be conducted to the abode of the swarm. In iis autem quae longius meare videbuntur, solertior adhi- bebitur cura, quae {f} talis est. But in the case of those which shall be seen to go further, more cunning pains will be used, such as these.98 Arundinis inter- nodium cum suis articulis exciditur, & terebratur ab latere talea, & per id foramen exiguo melle vel defruto instillato, ponitur juxta fontem. A length of reed is cut off with its joints & the cutting pierced in the side, & through Eng. this hole a little honey or defrutum99 (the ^ trans. says "sodden must" & elsewhere that defrutum has100 the best must reduced by boiling to one third, & various ingredients mixed with it) having been dropped into it it is placed near the fountain. deinde cum ad odorem dulcis liquoris complures apes 101But] altered from `but'; "B" written over "b" irrepserunt, tollitur talea, & apposito foramini HDT WHAT? INDEX

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pollice non emittitur, nisi una, quae cum evasit, fugam suam demonstrat observanti: atque is, dum suffecit, persequitur evolantem. afterwards when many bees, attracted by the odor of the sweet liquor have crept into it, the cutting is taken up, and the thumb being placed over the hole only one is let out, which when it escapes shows its course to the observer: and he, as long as he can,(?) pursues him flying. Cum deinde con- spicere desiit apem, tum alteram emittit: & si eandem petit caeli partem, vertigiis prioribus inhaeret: When afterward he has ceased to discover the bee, he lets out another, & if this seeks the same quarter of the heavens, he sticks to his former course: & si minus, aliam quoque atque aliam foramine adaperto patitur egredi; but if not, he lets another & another escape, the hole being opened; regionemque notet, in quam plures revolent, & eas persequatur, donec ad latebram perducatur examinis: quarter and let him observe the region toward which most of them fly back & pursue them, till he is conducted to the re- treat of the swarm: quod si est abditum specu, fumo elicitur, & cum erupit, aeris strepitu coercetur. But101 if (sic Eng. trans also) it is hidden in a cave, it is expelled by smoke 102they] written over "it"; "i" canceled and "hey" added 103settle] terminal "s" canceled 104 are] written over "is" & when it bursts forth is restrained by the sound of brass. Nam statim sono territum, vel in frutice, vel in editiore silvae fronde considet, et a vestigatore praeparato vase reconditur. For immediately, frightened by the sound, they102 settles103 either on a bush or on the higher leaves of the forest, & are104 shut up by the bee hunter in a vase prepared for the purpose. Sin autem sedem habet arboris cavae, et aut extat ramus, quem obtinent, aut sunt in ipsius arboris trunco, tunc si mediocritis patitur, acutissima serra, quo celerius id fiat, praeciditur primum superior pars, quae ab apibus vacat: de- inde inferior, quatenus videtur inhabitari. But if they have their abode in a hollow tree, and either the branch which they occupy stands out, or they are in the trunk of the tree itself, then if the moderate size HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of it allows, it is cut off with a very sharp sha saw, that it may be done the quicker, first the upper part, which is empty of bees, then the lower, as far as it seems to be inhabited. tum recisus utraque parte mundo vestimento contegitur, quoniam hoc quoque pluri- mum refert, ac si quibus rimis hiat, illinitur, & ad locum perfertur: then being cut off on each side it is covered with a clean garment, for this too 105brackets altered from parens is of the utmost importance, and if there are any chinks in it, they are smeared over, & it is brought to the place [designed for it]105: relictisque parvis (utjam dixi) foraminibus, more caeterarum alvorum collocatur. and little holes having left, (as I have already said) it is placed %(%in the same manner with%)% the rest of the hives. Sed indagatorem convenit matutina tem- pora vestigandi eligere, ut spatium diei habeat, quo exploret commeatus apum: apum: But it is well for the bee-hunter to choose morning time for hunting, that he may have ample day time in which to explore the coming & going of the bees: saepe enim si serius coepit eas denotare, etiam cum in propinquo sunt, justis operum peractis se recipiunt, nec remeant ad aquam: for often if he has begun to observe them too late, even when they are near, their ordinary task being done they go home, & do not return to this water: quo evenit ut vestigator ignoret, quam longe a fonte distet examen. Whence it happens that the hunter is ignorant how far off the swarm is from the foun- tain. Sunt qui per initia veris apiastrum, atque (ut ille vates ait) trita meli- phylla, [melisphylla in best ed. of Virgil] & cerin- thae ignobile gramen, aliasque colligant similes herbas, quibus id genus animalium cent delectatur, et ita alvos perpsicent ut 106T translates "refer~t" (in the original) correctly as the nasal "a" or "an". odor et succus vasi inhaereat: There are those who during the first part of Spring collect bee-aster [It chances that this would be a suitable Lat. name for my late aster frequented by the bees. The Eng. Trans. calls it mint(?) Ainsworth says balm-gentle or mint] HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and, (as that poet says) 'bruised balm gentle [ac to Delphine Virgil] & the ignoble honey-suckle' [ac. to D. Virg.] & other similar herbs in which that kind of animals delight, and rule the hives so thoroughly with them that the odor & the juice may stick adhere to the vase: quae deinde mundata exigue melle re- spergant, et per nemora non longe a fonti- bus disponant, eaque cum repleta sunt examinibus domum referant.106 which after- ward being cleaned they sprinkle with a little honey, & place here & there through the forest not far from the fountains, & when they are filled with swarms carry them home. sed hoc nisi locis quibus abundant apes, facere non expedit, nam saepe inania vasa nacti, qui forte praetereunt, secum auferunt. but it is not expedient to do this except in places where bees abound, for often those who chance to be passing by, having found the empty vases, carry them away with them. &c &c" But if they got enough bees to pay for the loss of a few vases in this 107short line way--very well. He recommends for a garden--p 404-- a place where elms spring up spontaneously --wild vines--wild pears & plums--& the et injussi consternitur ubere mali & the ground is strewn with the fruit of an un- bidden apple tree. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 23, Friday: When informed of the burning of the town of Lawrence in the Kansas Territory, Captain John Brown went from his cabin into the forest to “converse with God.”

When he returned, it was to order his sons to sharpen the broadswords they had procured in Ohio. Captain Brown and his little band of Osawatomie faithful led by God, carrying surveying equipment to mask their sacred duty, set off on their little expedition to use the latest thing in efficient slaughter, the Sharps rifles known as “Beecher’s Bibles” largely donated to them by the congregation of the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, to good effect. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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A Catholic family of six, that of James P. Doyle, had ventured from Tennessee into the Kansas Territory for the same reason that the New England Emigrant Aid Company was encouraging white people to travel to the Kansas Territory from New England — that is, in order to “get to a free state where there would be no slave labor to hinder white men from making a fair day’s wage.” In other words, this family consisted of, or

conceived that it consisted of, economic refugees fleeing from the unfair competition of America’s people of color. They had been building themselves an isolated cabin on the bank of Pottawatomie Creek, about a march from the cluster of cabins known as Brown’s Station, and this midnight visit was the Brown party’s first stop on their quest for revenge for the burning of Lawrence. The evidence against Doyle, of course, was that he 46 spoke with a Southern drawl. According to Edmund Wilson’s PATRIOTIC GORE:

The murdered boys and their father were part of a family of illiterate poor whites who had emigrated from Tennessee in order to get away, precisely, from the competition of slave labor, and none of these people owned slaves. But Brown, who had circulated among them in his role of land surveyor, had previously satisfied himself that “each one had committed murder in his heart, and, according to the Scriptures... were guilty of murder, and I felt justified in having them killed.”

Sparing Mahala Doyle and her young daughter, and a son who was but 14 years of age, Brown would order Doyle and the two adult sons, William age 22 and Drury age 20, out of the cabin into the dark yard. The vengeance party would split open their heads with the cutlasses (I have no indication as to whether they allowed these Catholics to say their rosaries first). For some reason, perhaps an attempt at resistance, Drury Doyle’s arms would get themselves hacked off. Then the party would go on down along the creek, and an hour later they would be able to kill an actual proslavery person, Allen Wilkinson, and steal his horses, in the presence of his sick wife and several of their young children. Afterward they would go back to the family’s 46. Richard F. Teichgraeber III has commented that Henry Thoreau’s deep contempt for newspapers would have caused him to disbelieve or ignore the reports of John Brown’s massacre on Pottawatomie Creek. I do not agree. Thoreau’s contempt for news reports was in fact an entirely selective contempt. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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barn and take saddles for these horses. Riding on down the bank of Pottawatomie Creek, they would discover a William Sherman, cutting off his left hand “except a little piece of skin” and splitting open his head and leaving him lying in the water, confiscating his horse and bowie knife. A nice night’s work for nightriders for justice, doing God’s work in the world! This affair would be complete by the 26th.

After they would take Captain John Brown’s Sharps rifle away from him at Harpers Ferry, they would allow this little boy to pose with it. Grow up, son, and be a Christian like us: kill people, own slaves.

During the “Indian War” in the Rogue River Valley of Oregon, John Beeson, a Methodist, had made himself an outspoken advocate for the Indians, and against the slaughter and atrocities committed by the whites. On this day he needed to flee from his homestead due to threats from the surrounding community of white people (my information is that both the local newspaper and the local minister were talking up the idea of holding a tar-and-feathers party with him as the guest of honor, and that this caused him to feel that he needed to sneak away in the middle of the night). He would not feel safe in returning to Oregon for more than a decade.47 During that period he would publish A PLEA FOR THE INDIANS ... and lecture across the eastern United States as an advocate for native American rights. PLEA FOR THE INDIANS

May 23. P.M. — To Heywood Spring. Sorrel well open on west side of railroad causeway against H. Wheeler’s land. Noticed the earliest willow catkins turned to masses of cotton yesterday; also a little of the mouse-ear down begins to be loose. Hear often and distinctly, apparently from H. Wheeler’s black spruce wood-lot, the phe phee-ar of the new muscicapa. Red-eye and wood thrush. Houstonias whiten the fields, and looked yesterday like snow, a sugaring of snow, on the side of Lee’s Hill. Heard partridges drum yesterday and to-day. Observed the pads yesterday just begun to spread out on the surface with wrinkled edges and here and there a bullet-like bud; the red white lily pads still more rare as yet. The stellaria at Heywood Spring must be the same with that near the E. Hosmer Spring, though the former has commonly fewer styles and rather slenderer leaves. It appears to be the S. borealis, though the leaves 47. Evidently, however, he would manage to hold onto the family claim to the homestead land along Wagner Creek. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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are narrowly lanceolate; has three to seven styles; a few petals (cleft almost to the bottom) or none; pods, some larger than the ca1yx and apparently ten-ribbed; petals, now about the length of the sepals. After sunset on river. A warm summer-like night. A bullfrog trumps once. A large devil’s-needle goes by after sundown. The ring of toads is loud and incessant. It seems more prolonged than it is. I think it not more than two seconds in each case. At the same time I hear a low, stertorous, dry, but hard-cored note from some frog in the meadows and along the riverside; often heard in past years but not accounted for. Is it a Rana palustris? Dor-bugs hum in the yard, — and were heard against the windows some nights ago. The cat is springing into CAT the air for them. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 24, Saturday: Henry Thoreau surveyed Mrs. Whitman’s Haverhill cemetery lots.

A story by Louisa May Alcott appeared in Boston’s Saturday Evening Gazette, entitled “Mabel’s May Day.”

That night Captain John Brown and his men went to nearby Pottawatomie Creek and he directed his men in the murder of five proslavery settlers. One of the men that “St. John the Just”48 Brown had hacked to pieces

48. So denominated by Bronson Alcott. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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with broadswords was an unarmed settler named James Doyle. This is his widow speaking: “When [we] went to Kansas,... it was to get to a free state where there would be no slave labor to hinder white men from making a fair day’s wages; [he] never owned any slaves, never expected to, nor did not want any.”

“BLEEDING KANSAS” What had been going around was coming around! –It appears that they considered that they were needing to kill exactly five because their statistics were that a total of five free-state settlers had been killed since the outbreak of factional violence in Kansas in late 1855. In addition, it seems they felt that they were taking HDT WHAT? INDEX

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vengeance for the beating of Senator Charles Sumner, as well as for the burning of several buildings in Lawrence KA on May 21st by an armed band of pro-slavery Missourians. –An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, that sort of thingie.

May 24. Pratt gave me the wing of a sparrow (?) hawk which he shot some months ago. He was coming from his house to his shop early in the morning when he saw this small hawk, which looked like a pigeon, fly past him over the Common with a sparrow in his clutches, and alight about six feet up the south buttonwood in front of Tolman’s. Having a small Maynard’s revolver in his pocket, loaded with a ball size of a pea, he followed, and, standing twenty-two paces from the tree in the road, aimed and brought down both hawk and sparrow at a distance of about six rods, cutting off the wing of the former with the ball. Thus he confessed he could not do again if he should try a hundred tunes. It must be a sparrow hawk, according to Wilson and Nuttall, for the inner vanes of the primaries and secondaries are thickly spotted with brownish white. Humphrey Buttrick says that he hears the note of the woodcock [American Woodcock Scolopax minor] from the village in April and early in May (too late now); that there were some this year breeding or singing; by the riverside in front of Abel Heywood’s. He says that when you see one spring right up straight into the air, you may go to the spot, and he will surely come down again after some minutes to within a few feet of the same spot and of you. Has known a partridge [Ruffed Grouse Bonasa umbellus (Partridge)] to fly at once from one to two miles after being wounded (tracked them by the blood) without alighting. Says he has caught as many as a dozen partridges in his hands. He lies right down on them, or where he knows them to be, then passes his hands back and forth under his body till he feels them. You must not lift your body at all or they will surely squeeze out, and when you feel one must be sure you get hold of their legs or head, and not feathers merely. To-day is suddenly overpoweringly warm. Thermometer at 1 P.M., 94° in the shade! but in the afternoon it suddenly fell to 56, and it continued cold the next two days. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June: Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar of Concord went to the Philadelphia convention of the new Republican Party and served on the platform committee. The party chose John Charles Frémont as its candidate for President and William L. Dayton as its candidate for Vice-President. Although the party would lose the national election, it would manage to place Banks in the governor’s seat in Massachusetts. Ebenezer was appointed by Governor Banks to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, along the way of eventually becoming President Grant’s Attorney General. With George Frisbie Hoar a representative and then a senator, people began to speak of the Hoars as Concord’s “royal family.” The Hoars Concord’s “Royal Family”

Henry Thoreau ran a line near the pail factory to show the boundary, on the west side of Derby, of a woodlot George Prescott bought from David Loring.

Waldo Emerson to his journal:

I go for those who have received a retaining fee to this party of freedom, before they came into this world. I would trust Garrison, I would trust Henry Thoreau, that they would make no compromises. I would trust Horace Greeley, I would trust my venerable friend Mr Hoar, that they would be staunch for freedom to the death; but both of these would have a benevolent credulity in the honesty of the other party, that I think unsafe. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 3, Tuesday/4, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for John Hosmer, about 25 acres of meadow and woods in the western part of Concord beyond the pail factory.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/63a.htm

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/63b.htm

June 3 [1856]: Surveying for John Hosmer beyond pail-factory. While running a line in the woods, close to the water, on the southwest side of Loring’s Pond, I observed a chickadee sitting quietly within a few feet. Suspecting a nest, I looked and found it in a small hollow maple stump which was about five inches in diameter and two feet high. I looked down about a foot and could just discern the eggs. Breaking off a little, I managed to get my hand in and took out some eggs. There were seven, making by their number an unusual figure as they lay in the nest, a sort of egg rosette, a circle around with one (or more) in the middle. In the meanwhile the bird sat silent, though rather restless, within three feet. The nest was very thick and warm, of average depth, and made of bluish-slate rabbit’s(?) fur. The eggs were a perfect oval, five eighths inch long, white with small reddish-brown or rusty spots, especially about larger end, partly developed. The bird sat on the remaining eggs next day. I called off the boy in another direction that he might not find it.

June 3, 1856: Everywhere now in dry pitch pine woods stand the red lady’s-slippers over the red pine leaves on the forest floor, rejoicing in June, with their two broad curving green leaves, — some even in swamps. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Uphold their rich, striped red, drooping sack.

June 4. Surveying for J. Hosmer. Very warm. While running a line on the west edge of Loring's Pond, south of the brook, found, on a hummock in the open swamp, in the midst of bushes, at the foot of a pitch pine, a nest about ten inches over, made of dry sedge and moss. I think it must have been a duck's nest.

This pond and its islets, half flooded and inaccessible, afford excellent places. Anthony Wright says that he used to get slippery elm bark from a place southwest of Wetherbee’s Mill, about ten rods south of the brook. He says there was once a house at Mead of hollow next beyond Clainshell. Pointed out the site of “Perch” Hosmer's house in the small field south of road this side of Cozzens’s; all smooth now. Dr. Heywood worked over him a fortnight, while the perch was dissolving in his throat. He got little compassion generally, and the nickname “Perch” into the bargain. Think of going to sleep for fourteen nights with a perch, his fins set and his scales (!), dissolving in your throat!! What dreams! What waking thoughts! Also showed where one Shaw, whom tic could just remember, used to live, in the low field north of Dennis's barn, and also another family in another house by him. English hawthorn from Poplar Hill blossoms in house.

June 5. Thursday. P. M. - To Indian Ditch. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Achillea Millefolium. Black cherry, apparently yesterday. The Muscicapa Cooperi sings pe pe pe', sitting on the top of a pine, and shows white tvml> etc., unlike kingbird. Return by J. Hosmer Desert. Everywhere now in dry pitch pine woods statid the red lady's-slippers over the red pine leaves on the forest floor, rejoicing in June, with their two broad curving green leaves, -some even in swamps. Uphold their rich, striped red, drooping sack. This while rye begins to wave richly in the fields. A brown thrasher's nest with four eggs considerably developed, under a small white pine on the old north edge of the desert, lined with root-fibres. The bird utters its peculiar tchuclc near by. Pitch pine out, the first noticed on low land, maybe a day or two. Froth on pitch pine. A blue jay's nest on a white pine, eight feet from ground, next to the stem, of twigs lined with root-fibres; three fresh eggs, dark dull greenish, with dusky spots equally distributed all over, in Hosmer (?) pines twenty seven paces east of wall and fifty-seven from factory road by wall. Jay screams as usual. Sat till I got within ten feet at first. A cuckoo's nest' with three light bluish-green eggs partly developed, short with rounded ends, nearly of a size; in the thicket up railroad this side high wood, in a black cherry that had been lopped three feet from ground, amid the thick sprouts; a nest of nearly average depth (?), of twigs lined with green leaves, pineneedles, etc., and edged with some dry, branchy weeds. The bird stole off silently at first. Five rods south of railroad. f rmrst call that ccrastium of Alav 22d C. nutans (?), at least for the present, though I do not see grooves in stern. Oakes, in his catalogue in Thompson's “History of Vermont,” says it is not found in northeast out of that. State. The pods of the common one also turn upward. It is about four flowered; no petals; pods, which have formed in tumbler, more than twice but not thrice as long as calyx, bent down nearly at right angles with peduncles and then curving up-ward. The common cerastium is in tufts, spreading, a darker green and much larger, hairy' but not glutinous, pods but little longer than calyx (as yet) and upright.

September 13, Saturday: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for David Loring, 18 acres of Texas Street land. This lot was near William Monroe, Henry Wheeler, Cyrus Hubbard, William W. Wheildon, Nathan Brooks, John Thoreau and the discontinued road which went from Main Street near the present Belknap Street.

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Early September: Bronson Alcott set Henry Thoreau up for a large surveying job with Friend Marcus Spring of a colony for Hicksite Quakers expelled by their meetings, near Perth Amboy, New Jersey across the water from Staten Island.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/116.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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This was the colony in which Theodore Dwight Weld and his wife Angelina Emily Grimké Weld and her sister

Sarah Moore Grimké had started their Eagleswood School, financed in part by the Mott family, and this was the school in which Ellen Wright, a niece of Friend Lucretia Mott who later married a son of William Lloyd Garrison, was educated, as well as other Wright children.

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Thoreau took the train to Fitchburg and from there walked to Westminster; took the train to Brattleboro VT; explored the Connecticut River and Mount Wantastiquet and investigated plants and animals in Vermont; took the train to Bellows Falls; climbed Fall Mountain; took a wagon to Walpole, New Hampshire to visit the Alcott family.

Here is a recollection by Mary Brown Dunton as reported in Elizabeth B. Davenport’s “Thoreau in Vermont in 1856,” Vermont Botanical Club Bulletin III (April 1908), page 37: He struck me as being very odd, very wise and exceedingly observing. He roamed about the country at his own sweet will, and I was fortunate enough to be his companion on a walk up Wantastiquet Mt. I was well acquainted with the flora and could meet him understandingly there, but was somewhat abashed by the numerous questions he asked about all sorts of things, to which I could only reply “I do not know.” It appealed to my sense of humor that a person with such a fund of knowledge should seek information from a young girl like myself, but I could not see that he had any fun in him. The only question I can now recall is this. As we stood on the summit of Wantastiquet, he fixed his earnest gaze on a distant point in the landscape, which he designated, asking “How far is it in a bee line to that spot?” Before dawn on his 1st morning in Brattleboro VT, on his way to visit the Alcotts in New Hampshire, Thoreau reviewed a botanical catalog of Vermont plants. Then, as daylight appeared, he sauntered south along the railroad tracks and back along the banks of the Connecticut River, inspecting plants along the way. He climbed down the embankment to “the cold water path” of Whetstone Brook along neighboring Canal Street and Flat Street. Swamp maples along the Whetstone were beginning to turn color. Deep, dark columns of flowers rose like thick red ropes from the pale green leaves of sumac. He spent the afternoon inspecting plants, testing the murky water, and noting the wildlife. He made a note that Brattleboro appealed to him “for the nearness of primitive woods and mountain.” He stopped to munch on raspberries and made a note of their “quite agreeable taste.” Later that morning he tasted some grapes that were “pleasantly acidic.”

On his 2nd morning in the town, Thoreau wandered far north along the Connecticut River, noting the level of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the river, the shape of the gravel on its banks, and the explosion of late summer flowers that bloomed everywhere. “Will not the prime of the goldenrods and asters be just before the first severe frost?”

On his 3rd day in the town, Thoreau again went “a-botanizing” up Whetstone Brook. The witch-hazel was out, hemlock lined the stream and asters bloomed everywhere. That night he created a two-page list of each plant. He described the Indian rope plant, named for its use as twine: “How often in the woods and fields we want a string or a rope and cannot find one.... This is the plant which Nature made for that purpose.” He noted that farmers in Vermont used the dried bark to tie up their fences, and wondered if it should be cultivated for that purpose.

While in Brattleboro a man who had recently killed a catamount showed Thoreau its skin and skull. By 1856, the mountain lion had become quite rare in southern Vermont. The skin measured nine feet, including its long tail, and the animal had weighed 108 pounds. Thoreau noted that the man had gotten a $20 bounty for his kill.

On the morning of his last day in the Vermont town, Thoreau climbed Wantastiquet Mountain, the hill that rises out of the Connecticut River, towering above the downtown buildings. From the top he could see as far as Mount Ascutney, but he was more attentive to the horses and people he could see below him. “Above all this everlasting mountain is forever lowering over the village, shortening the day and wearing a misty cap each morning.” His considered opinion was that “this town will be convicted of folly if they ever permit this mountain to be laid bare.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THOREAU IN VERMONT:

WALKING WITH HENRY DAVID

BY ALAN BOYE

The glorious late-summer sunlight shone golden on the hills above downtown Brattleboro. Ignored by the people passing by, a man stood at the edge of Main Street and tightened the laces of his boots. He checked to see that his pencil and paper were in his backpack, and then climbed down the embankment to the babbling waters of Whetstone Brook. The swamp maples that grew like weeds along the Whetstone were already showing the first hint of autumnal glory on their leaves. Deep, dark columns of flowers rose like thick red ropes from the pale green leaves of sumac. In the last of summer’s brilliant air, insects flickered and then vanished like sparks of memory. The man paused a moment and then set out on “the cold water path” of Whetstone Brook. He spent the beautiful afternoon inspecting its plants, testing the murky water, and noting the wildlife that scurried along its banks. All the while, the busy residents of the town hurried by on neighboring Canal and Flat streets, unaware of the strange creature below them. The man was America’s greatest naturalist, Henry David Thoreau. It was early September 1856. Thoreau was on his way to visit a friend in New Hampshire and stopped to spend four days walking around Brattleboro. It would be the only time in his life that he would explore Vermont on foot. He wrote in his journal that Brattleboro appealed to him “for the nearness of primitive woods and mountain.” A truck blasts past me and, in a low whine of gears, begins to climb Canal St. from downtown Brattleboro. Behind me, the Whetstone squeezes between a canyon of brick buildings. The water tumbles over massive rocks and then, just as suddenly, surrenders to the placid calm of the wide Connecticut. Cars clanging over the long bridge into New Hampshire nearly drown the sound of the rapids. I head straight for the Whetstone past the somber, concrete-gray walls behind a bagel shop. A motion distracts me from the ordinary. Something mysterious watches me from the shadowed banks of the brook. In the weedy edge of the stream stands a creature; the sharply angled body looks more like Egyptian hieroglyph than bird. A green heron walks away cautiously. The spear point of its stout head stabs at the sky with each of its jerking, upstream HDT WHAT? INDEX

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steps. I move to the bank and follow him, each of my unsure steps an attempt to catch a glimpse of the ghost of Thoreau. In 1856, Thoreau was at the peak of his literary talents. Walden had been published only two years earlier. He was gaining a reputation as a profound lecturer. On podiums across New England, he read aloud the essays that would make him famous for centuries to come. In any era, Thoreau would not have fit well into polite society. First of all, an eagle-sized beak of a nose hung down over a bow-tie mouth; ever a practical man, he had grown a weird, neck- only beard in order to see if it might keep him from getting colds. His hair was almost always unkempt, and his active life gave him the broad, hard look of an athlete. Thoreau had begun to turn away from the broad, philosophical contemplations that made Walden a masterpiece and towards writing focused on the natural world. Ever a keen observer of the world around him, he had turned more and more of his attention to a close study of the plants and animals. He believed that by paying strict attention to the details of the natural world, humankind would finally come to understand and appreciate the essence of life. “In wilderness,” he wrote at about this time, “is the preservation of the world.” Before dawn on his first morning in Brattleboro, Thoreau was studying a catalog of Vermont plants. At daylight he sauntered south along the railroad tracks and then back along the banks of the Connecticut, inspecting every plant along his way. His journal describes with the exactness of a trained botanist each plant he encountered. He stopped to munch on raspberries; he scribbled a note about their “quite agreeable taste.” Later that morning, he found some grapes that tasted “pleasantly acidic.” On his second morning in Brattleboro, Thoreau wandered far north along the Connecticut, noting the level of the river, the shape of the gravel on its banks, and the explosion of late summer flowers that bloomed everywhere. “Will not the prime of the goldenrods and asters be just before the first severe frost?” he wrote. Just twenty yards past the bagel shop, I seem to be in the deepest Vermont wilderness. I have been fighting my way through thick underbrush and stepping from one side of the brook to the other, trying to work my way along the steep banks that tower above me. I stop to inspect an unfamiliar leaf. I spend a good ten minutes with a tree-identification book, only to find the golden treasure I hold is simply the leaf of an ordinary yellow birch. On the third day in Brattleboro, Thoreau was elated because he could “go a-botanizing” up the Whetstone. The witch-hazel was out, hemlock lined the stream and asters bloomed everywhere. Late that night in his sometimes-erratic handwriting, he meticulously scrawled a list of every plant he had found along the Whetstone. The journal entry fills nearly two pages, but he saves the most extensive entry for the Indian rope plant, named for its use as twine. “How often in the woods and fields we want HDT WHAT? INDEX

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a string or a rope and cannot find one,” he wrote. “This is the plant which Nature made for that purpose.” He noted that farmers in Vermont used the dried bark to tie up their fences, and - ever practical - decided it would be a good idea if they were to cultivate it for just that purpose. The stream is littered with good-sized, practical rocks. I lift a smaller one from the mud of the bank. It is cool in my hand. A thin sheen of moss hugs the rough surface of the stone. It’s easy to see why early settlers used these for grinding and sharpening tools. Where could a fella get a good sharpener? Why over to the Whetstone Brook, of course. I set the stone back in its place in the mud. We don’t have much need of whetstones anymore or, for that matter, of Indian rope plant. Neither do we have any pressing need for Thoreau’s detailed record of Vermont’s plants. The days of hook-nosed Transcendental philosophers carefully noting every one of nature’s wonders have passed. Perhaps my search for some remnant of Thoreau is as quaint and as useless as sharpening a horse- drawn ploughshare on a pale white whetstone drawn from a mossy brook. Two cold and electronic chirps from my watch mark the passing of another hour. I turn around and start back down the stream. While in Brattleboro Thoreau saw something that he would spend pages of his journal trying to describe. The man who had recently killed it showed Thoreau the skin and the skull of a catamount. Even in 1856, the mountain lion was a rare creature in southern Vermont. It would be the only catamount, living or dead, that Thoreau would ever see in his lifetime. The beast measured nine feet, including its long tail, and had weighed 108 pounds. Thoreau tried to capture every detail of the beast that he could in his journal. He noted without comment that the man had gotten a $20 bounty for the kill. I spy a ragged and worn house cat, long since having known the comforts of a human home, slinking through the thin underbrush across the brook from where I walk. A series of rusted steel bars poke up through the thin water of the brook. On the morning of his last day in Brattleboro Thoreau climbed Wantastiquet Mountain, the high hill that jumps straight out of the Connecticut River and towers above downtown Brattleboro. Although from the top he could see as far as Mount Ascutney, he was most fascinated by watching horses and people far below. He marveled at how close nature came to the bustling village. “Above all this everlasting mountain is forever lowering over the village, shortening the day and wearing a misty cap each morning.” He cautioned that “this town will be convicted of folly if they ever permit this mountain to be laid bare.” I am nearly back to the bagel shop. Through the trees I see the dark massive shape of Wantastiquet Mountain. Near the top, still covered in thick forest, is the spot where nearly 150 years ago a great man stood and contemplated how the ways of humankind are made small by the glory and grandeur of the remarkable ways of nature. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I look away from the mountain, distracted by a sound. Something stirs near the base of a yellow birch tree. The green heron steps into a clearing and stands at the edge of the water. It stares at me through a black, wild eye. In the brook a few small fish weave threads of pure light through quick, silvery curtains of shadow and water.

September 17: Henry Thoreau surveyed a houselot for David Loring on Main Street in Concord between the lots of John Brown, Jr., and E.R. [Elizabeth Rockwood?] Hoar, through to the Concord River, showing the property of R.C. MacKay near the river, and Samuel Hoar’s property behind Brown. Thoreau’s Field Notes book says he did this for George Brooks. The back of the survey reads: “Samuel Hoar now.”

October 6, Monday: Henry Thoreau added Monroe Street (now Thoreau Street) to the survey he had originally made of Daniel Shattuck’s cottage houselot on Main Street on June 19, 1850. The schoolhouse was moved to Main and River Streets when the school districts were given up.

October: Sometime this month, before the 24th, the leader of the Eagleswood Colony for Christian socialism of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, Friend Marcus Spring, wrote to Henry Thoreau, offering a job of surveying the properties there.

Father told me about his father the other night, who died in 1801, aged forty-seven. When the Revolutionary war came on, he was apprentice or journeyman to a cooper in Boston, who employed many hands. He called them together and told them that, on account of the war, his business was ruined, and he had no more work for them. So my father thinks he went into privateering. Yet he remembers his telling him of being employed digging at some defences, when a cannon-ball came and sprinkled sand all over them. After the war he went into business as a merchant, commencing with a single hogshead of sugar. His shop was on Long Wharf. He was a short man, a little taller than Father, stout, and very strong for his size. Levi Melcher, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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a powerful man, who was his clerk or tender, used to tell my father that he did not believe himself so strong a man as Grandfather, who would never give in to him in handling a hogshead of molasses, —setting it on its head, or the like. Father remembers his father used to breakfast before the family at one time, and he with him, on account of his business. His father used to eat the undercrusts of biscuits, and the boy the upper.

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn has added a footnote to this, to the effect that this strong clerk Levi Melcher was one of his, F.B. Sanborn’s, mother’s uncles, whom he remembered well, and was of an old New Hampshire family in Rockingham County, and subsequently made his fortune in the same wartime privateering business as Jean Thoreau. PRIVATEERING

October 24, Friday: Henry Thoreau traveled with Bronson Alcott by train via Worcester, and then by boat, to New-York, and on to New Jersey to survey Eagleswood. Thoreau would deliver “Walking,” “Moose Story,” and “Life Without Principle” at Eagleswood while surveying in November. Alcott had set this job up for Thoreau with Marcus Spring, the leader at Eagleswood. Thoreau would make a detailed map of the area showing houses and school buildings. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 23, Tuesday: Friend Daniel Ricketson to his journal:

WALDO EMERSON Spent an hour in the Shanty with Mr. Emerson and accompanied him to Boston in the mid-day train; he introduced me to the Athenæum; called at the anti- Slavery Fair in Winter St. Met Mr. E. by agreement and went to Concord with him and passed the night. Found an agreeable and hospitable FRANKLIN B. SANBORN companion, Mr. Sanborn, the teacher, and a Mr. Abbott, sophomore of Cambridge. Called at Mr. Emerson’s in the evening.

FRANCIS ELLINGWOOD ABBOT Meanwhile, that day, Henry Thoreau had been surveying a lot belonging to Deacon Francis Jarvis on the north- west side of Walden Street opposite Brister’s lot. This had been part of the Stratton family’s land earlier, and appeared again on the survey of December 8, 1857 of Sheriff Sam Staples’s plot. BRISTER’S HILL

In his personal copy of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, Thoreau jotted: “Surveying for Cyrus Jarvis Dec. 23 ’56 - he shows me a deed of this lot containing 6 A. 52 rods all on the W. of the Wayland Road — & consisting of plowland, orchading [sic?] & woodland - sold by Joseph Straton to Samuel Swan of Concord In holder Aug. 11th 1777.”

WALDEN: Farther down the hill, on the left, on the old road in the PEOPLE OF woods, are marks of some homestead of the Stratton family; whose WALDEN orchard once covered all the slope of Brister’s Hill, but was long since killed out by pitch-pines, excepting a few stumps, whose old roots furnish still the wild stocks of many a thrifty village tree.

JOSEPH STRATON

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.net/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/Thoreau_surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 30-31, January 1, 4: Henry Thoreau did $18.00 worth of surveying at the Davis Elwell farm on Nawshawtuck Hill (AKA Lee’s Hill) in Concord. The map of the locality shows Egg Rock, Indian Field, Pine

Plain, Muster Field, Dove Rock, (Barrett’s) Old Mill, Grist Mill, Colburn’s land, Dodd’s, Damon’s, McRay’s, and Dodge’s Brook. This farm was Major Simon Willard’s at the founding of the town and later belonged to Dr. Joseph Lee, who had been kept under house arrest there during the Revolution because of his sympathy with the English cause. Thoreau’s friend Witherell helped William Wheeler, the owner during some of this time. The map of the locality shows Egg Rock, Indian Field, Pine Plain, Muster Field, Dove Rock, Barrett’s Old Mill, Grist Mill, Colburn’s land, Dodd’s, Damon’s, McKay’s, and Dodge’s Brook. Thoreau would bill his work of January 1st to Dr. Joseph Lee. (The compass variation there, between January 7th and January 10th, would be 10 1/8°.)

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/29a.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1857

January 10, Saturday: Henry Thoreau surveyed a plot of ground west of Lowell road on the Concord River, called “Merrick’s Pasture,” for Daniel Shattuck. His survey shows the land of Nehemiah Ball, Moses Prichard, and Simon Brown. When Concord was settled, this had been the Reverend Peter Bulkeley’s “Calf Pasture.” It was probably named for the Tilly Merrick who married Sally Minot and lived on Main Street near the present Sudbury Road. While Thoreau was making his measurements, his surveyor’s helper McManus advised him that the land would be worth a hundred or two hundred dollars more, except for the rows of willows, because it was necessary to plow at right angles with such a row: were one to attempt to plow alongside such a row within five rods, the plow would be brought to a halt on account of the spreading surface tree-roots.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/87.htm

March 30, Monday: Henry Thoreau surveyed some land that John Thoreau, Sr. purchased that had been in use as a garden (Thoreau allowed previous owner Julius M. Smith to harvest his root vegetables). This house lot in Concord would become from the estate of Sophia Thoreau the property of the Alcott family, and in 1877 Louisa May Alcott would donate Henry’s autograph survey document of this houselot to the Morgan Library & Museum (225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York City 10016), where it can now be accessed as RecordID 116219 and Accession Number MA2111. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 31, Tuesday: Richard Frederick Fuller remarried, with Adeline Rutter Reeves in Wayland, Massachusetts.

Henry Thoreau plotted a small cemetery lot in Sleepy Hollow for Louis A. Surette.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/127.htm

March 31. A very pleasant day. Spent a part of it in the garden preparing to set out fruit trees. It is agreeable once more to put a spade into the warm mould. The victory is ours at last, for we remain and take possession of the field. In this climate, in which we do not commonly bury our dead in the winter on account of the frozen ground, and find ourselves exposed on a hard bleak crust, the coming out of the frost and the first turning up of the soil with a spade or plow is all event of importance. P.M. — To Hill. As I rise the east side of the Hill, I hear the distant faint peep of hylodes and the fur tut of croaking frogs from the west of the Hill. How gradually and imperceptibly the peep of the hylodes mingles with and swells the volume of sound which makes the voice of awakening nature! If you do not listen carefully for it first note, you probably will not hear it, and, not having heard that, your ears become used to the sound, so that you will hardly notice it at last, however loud and universal. I hear it now faintly from through and over the bare gray twigs and the sheeny needles of an oak and pine wood and from over the russet fields beyond, and it is so intimately HDT WHAT? INDEX

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mingled with the murmur or roar of the wind as to be well-nigh inseparable front it. It leaves such a lasting trace on the ear’s memory that often I think I hear their peeping when I do not. It is a singularly emphatic and ear- piercing proclamation of animal life, when with a very few and slight exceptions vegetation is yet dormant. The dry croaking and tut tut of the frogs (a sound which ducks seem to imitate, a kind of quacking, — and they are both of the water!) is plainly enough down there in some pool in the woods, but the shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular, but seems to take its rise at an indefinite distance over wood and hill and pasture, from clefts or hollows in the March wind. It is a wind-born sound. [This must he the Rana halecina. Vide Apr. 3d, 1853.] To-day both croakers and peepers are pretty numerously heard, and I hear one faint stertorous (bullfrog- like??) sound on the river meadow. What an important part to us the little peeping hylodes acts, filling all our ears with sound in the spring afternoons and evenings, while the existence of the otter, our largest wild animal, is not betrayed to any of our senses (or at least not to more than one in a thousand)! The voice of the peepers is not so much of the earth earthy as of the air airy. It rises at once on the wind and is at home there, and we are incapable of tracing it further back. The earliest gooseberry in the garden begins to show a little green near at hand. An Irishman is digging a ditch for a foundation wall to a new shop where James Adams’s shop stood. He tells me that he dug up three cannon-balls just in the rear of the shop lying within a foot of each other and about eighteen inches beneath the surface. I saw one of them, which was about three and a half inches in diameter and somewhat eaten with rust on one side. These were probably thrown into the pond by the British on the 19th of April, 1775. Shattuck says that five hundred pounds of balls were thrown into the pond and wells. These may have been dropped out the back window. The tortoises now quite commonly lie out sunning on the sedge or the bank. As you float gently down the stream, you hear a slight rustling and, looking up, see the dark shining back of a picta sliding off some little bed of straw-colored coarse sedge which is upheld by the button-hushes or willows above the surrounding water. They are very wary and, as I go tip the Assabet, will come rolling and sliding down a rod or two, though they appear to have but just climbed up to that height.

March 30, Monday: Henry Thoreau surveyed some land that John Thoreau, Sr. purchased that had been in use as a garden (Thoreau allowed previous owner Julius M. Smith to harvest his root vegetables). This house lot in Concord would become from the estate of Sophia Thoreau the property of the Alcott family, and in 1877 Louisa May Alcott would donate Henry’s autograph survey document of this houselot to the Morgan Library & Museum (225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York City 10016), where it can now be accessed as RecordID 116219 and Accession Number MA2111. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 31, Tuesday: Richard Frederick Fuller remarried, with Adeline Rutter Reeves in Wayland, Massachusetts.

Henry Thoreau plotted a small cemetery lot in Sleepy Hollow for Louis A. Surette.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/127.htm

March 31. A very pleasant day. Spent a part of it in the garden preparing to set out fruit trees. It is agreeable once more to put a spade into the warm mould. The victory is ours at last, for we remain and take possession of the field. In this climate, in which we do not commonly bury our dead in the winter on account of the frozen ground, and find ourselves exposed on a hard bleak crust, the coming out of the frost and the first turning up of the soil with a spade or plow is all event of importance. P.M. — To Hill. As I rise the east side of the Hill, I hear the distant faint peep of hylodes and the fur tut of croaking frogs from the west of the Hill. How gradually and imperceptibly the peep of the hylodes mingles with and swells the volume of sound which makes the voice of awakening nature! If you do not listen carefully for it first note, you probably will not hear it, and, not having heard that, your ears become used to the sound, so that you will hardly notice it at last, however loud and universal. I hear it now faintly from through and over the bare gray twigs and the sheeny needles of an oak and pine wood and from over the russet fields beyond, and it is so intimately HDT WHAT? INDEX

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mingled with the murmur or roar of the wind as to be well-nigh inseparable front it. It leaves such a lasting trace on the ear’s memory that often I think I hear their peeping when I do not. It is a singularly emphatic and ear- piercing proclamation of animal life, when with a very few and slight exceptions vegetation is yet dormant. The dry croaking and tut tut of the frogs (a sound which ducks seem to imitate, a kind of quacking, — and they are both of the water!) is plainly enough down there in some pool in the woods, but the shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular, but seems to take its rise at an indefinite distance over wood and hill and pasture, from clefts or hollows in the March wind. It is a wind-born sound. [This must he the Rana halecina. Vide Apr. 3d, 1853.] To-day both croakers and peepers are pretty numerously heard, and I hear one faint stertorous (bullfrog- like??) sound on the river meadow. What an important part to us the little peeping hylodes acts, filling all our ears with sound in the spring afternoons and evenings, while the existence of the otter, our largest wild animal, is not betrayed to any of our senses (or at least not to more than one in a thousand)! The voice of the peepers is not so much of the earth earthy as of the air airy. It rises at once on the wind and is at home there, and we are incapable of tracing it further back. The earliest gooseberry in the garden begins to show a little green near at hand. An Irishman is digging a ditch for a foundation wall to a new shop where James Adams’s shop stood. He tells me that he dug up three cannon-balls just in the rear of the shop lying within a foot of each other and about eighteen inches beneath the surface. I saw one of them, which was about three and a half inches in diameter and somewhat eaten with rust on one side. These were probably thrown into the pond by the British on the 19th of April, 1775. Shattuck says that five hundred pounds of balls were thrown into the pond and wells. These may have been dropped out the back window. The tortoises now quite commonly lie out sunning on the sedge or the bank. As you float gently down the stream, you hear a slight rustling and, looking up, see the dark shining back of a picta sliding off some little bed of straw-colored coarse sedge which is upheld by the button-hushes or willows above the surrounding water. They are very wary and, as I go tip the Assabet, will come rolling and sliding down a rod or two, though they appear to have but just climbed up to that height.

April 24, Friday: In India, the British colonel in charge of the 3d Light Cavalry ordered his riflemen to use the Enfield cartridge which they suspected had been greased with a mixture of cow fat and pig fat. When 85 of the Hindu and Moslem riflemen refused, they were convicted of disobedience to a lawful order, to serve at hard labor.

In the early morning, before daybreak, Henry Thoreau sailed down the Concord River to Ball’s Hill. Then he surveyed, for his Concord Academy classmate John Shepard Keyes, a pasture belonging to Dennis. At some point during the day he walked with Ellery Channing. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 30, Thursday: Founding of what would become San Jose State Teachers College and then San Jose State University.

A letter in solictation was making the rounds in Boston:Henry Thoreau surveyed Lincoln and Concord

JOHN BROWN HARPERS FERRY

woodlots for George Heywood. These lots had been in the Heywood family since the 1700s, and Cyrus Hubbard had surveyed some of them before Thoreau. Thoreau also surveyed a woodlot near Goose Pond near George Heywood and Wyman lots which became Waldo Emerson’s. Willard T. Farrar, who was the grandson of Amos Wright and probably lived at the corner of Sudbury Road and Corne Road,49 paid $2.75 for the survey.

May 9, Saturday: Henry Thoreau surveyed Littleton Mill for Robert D. Gilson. His sketch shows the mill wheel and works. George Brooks may have bought the mill, as he paid Thoreau $4.00 for the work.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail:

49.The Old Road To Nine Acre Corner. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/42.htm

In India, the convicted Indian riflemen of the 3d Light Cavalry were disarmed, stripped of their uniforms, shackled, and led away from their fellows.

May 9. Another fine day. 6 A. M.—On water. Maryland yellow-throat. Aspen leaves one inch over. Hear stake-driver. Black and white creeper’s fine note. Er- te-ter-twee, or evergreen-forest note. Golden-crowned thrush note. Kingbird.

P. M. To Gilson’s Mill, Littleton. George Brooks points to an old house of which one half the roof only has been shingled, etc., etc., and says he guessed it to be a widow’s dower from this, and on inquiry found it so. Went to Gilson’s tumble-down mill and house. He appeared, licking his chaps after dinner, in a mealy coat, and suddenly asked in the midst of a sentence, with a shrug of his shoulders, “Is n’t there something painted on my back?” There were some marks in red chalk they used to chalk the bags with, and he said he thought he had felt his son at the mill chalking his back. He feared he was making an exhibition before strangers. The boy speared fishes, chiefly suckers, pouts, etc. A fire in a hand-crate carried along the bank of the brook (Stony Brook). He had lately speared a sucker weighing five and a quarter pounds, which he sold; went back and forth some twenty-five rods and found the suckers less shy at last than at first. Saw otter there. I saw many perch at the foot of the falls. He said that they and trout could get up five or six feet over the rocks there into the pond, it being a much broken fall. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 10, Sunday:In India, the Sepoy Mutiny began. It will end the East India Company’s control of the country, and in 1858 the British Crown will take over the treaty obligations of the Company and proclaim peace in India.

(The Sepoy Mutiny would prove useful in firing the imaginations of generations of entitled white boys with the useful idea that its a whole lot of fun to go off somewhere and subdue unruly little brown men.)

May 10. Cultivated cherry out. P. M.—Up river. Salix Babylonica behind Dodd’s, how long? Say with S. alba. I observe that the fertile flowers of many plants are more late than the barren ones, as the sweet-gale (whose fertile are now in prime), the sweet-fern, etc. See twenty or thirty tortoises on one stump by stone bridge and more still within a rod along the bank of E. Wood’s ditch. Now the Emys picta lie out in great numbers, this suddenly warm weather, and when you go along the road within a few rods they tumble in. The banks of some ditches look almost as if paved with them. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I went looking for snapping turtles over the meadow south of railroad. Now I see one large head like a brown stake projecting three or four inches above the water four rods off, but it is slowly withdrawn, and I paddle up and catch the fellow lying still in the dead grass there. Soon after I paddle within ten feet of one whose eyes like knobs appear on the side of the stake, and touch him with my paddle. This side Clamshell, strawberries and cinquefoil are abundant. Equisetum sylvaticum. There is a strong wind, against which I push and paddle. But now at last I do not go seeking the warm, sunny, and sheltered coves; the strong wind is enlivening and agreeable. It is a washing day. I love the wind at last. Before night a sudden shower with some thunder and lightning; the first.

May 19, Tuesday: William Francis Channing and Moses G. Farmer obtained patent #17,355 for Improvements in Electro Magnetic Fire Alarm Telegraphs, a patent which they would soon sell to John N. Gamewell, whose company and successive companies still bearing the Gamewell name have manufactured nearly all the familiar “red boxes on the corner.” After the first system in Boston in 1852 would come Philadelphia in 1855, St. Louis in 1858, New Orleans and Baltimore in 1860, and New-York in 1869. In the first boxes a notched code wheel was turned by a hand crank on the front of the box. This crude arrangement would soon be superceded by a spring-driven clockwork type mechanism that would drive the code wheel when actuated by yanking down a lever. Henry Thoreau surveyed a lot belonging to Daniel Shattuck near Peter Hutchinson’s field and Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

May 19. A. M.—Surveying D. Shattuck’s wood-lot beyond Peter’s. See myriads of minute pollywogs, recently hatched, in the water of Moore’s Swamp on Bedford road. Digging again to find a stake in woods, came across a nest or colony of wood ants, yellowish or sand-color, a third of an inch long, with their white grubs, now squirming, still larger, and emitting that same pungent spicy odor, perhaps too pungent to be compared with lemon-peel. This is the second time I have found them in this way this spring (vide April 28th). Is not the pungent scent emitted by wasps quite similar? I see the ferns all blackened on the hillside next the meadow, by the frost within a night or two. That ant scent is not at all sickening, but tonic, and reminds me of a bitter flavor like that of peach-meats. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 22, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed for A. Bronson Alcott an estate of 12 acres and 66 rods on Lexington Road:

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/137.htm

With a loan from Waldo Emerson, Alcott would join the two old houses on the plot together and raise their ceilings, to creat what in this year he was beginning to refer to as Orchard House, now touted as “the home of Louisa May Alcott.”

Orchard House is at 399 Lexington Road in Concord, and the phone number is (508) 368-4118. It is open from April 1st to October 31st from 10:00AM to 4:30PM from Monday to Saturday, and 1:00PM to 4:30PM on Sundays. In March and November, it is open on Saturdays and Sundays only. The admission is $4.00, or $2.50 for children from 6 to 12. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 23, Wednesday: Charles Wesley Slack; Greenfield MA.To Evelina E. Vannevar Slack; Boston MA Account of business trip.

Bronson Alcott wrote from Concord to Abba Alcott in Boston:

The Orchard is surveyed and Thoreau promises to give us the plot fair and finished to the acres and rods, all lined and bounded, tomorrow.

September 23, Wednesday: P.M. –To chestnut oaks. Varieties of nabalus grow along the Walden road in the woods; also, still more abundant, by the Flint’s Pond road in the woods. I observe in these places only the N. alba and Fraseri; but these are not well distinguished; they seem to be often alike in the color of the pappus. Some are very tall and slender, and the largest I saw was an N. Fraseri! One N. alba had a panicle three feet long! The Ripley beeches have been cut. I can’t find them. There is one large one, apparently on Baker’s land, about BAKER FARM two feet in diameter near the ground, but fruit hollow. I see yellow pine-sap, in the woods just east of where the beeches used to stand, just done, but the red variety is very common and quite fresh generally there.50 JAMES BAKER

November 9, Monday: Henry Thoreau surveyed to resolve a boundary dispute between Charles Gordon and Stedman Buttrick. Jacob B. Farmer served as the principal witness but both principals were present, and had brought reinforcements: Buttrick brought his son George and Gordon brought his son-in-law French — the setting for a tragedy. That night Thoreau recorded a shaggy dog story which one of the men told to reduce the tension, to the effect that once upon a time George Melvin had played a practical joke on Jonas Melvin, directing him to the widow Hildreth’s lot (along which the surveying crew was measuring) for chestnuts. The punchline was that Jonas Melvin had taken a hired man, and taken the oxen with the ox-cart carrying some ladders, and the two men had worked all day, and all they got was a half a bushel of the widow Hildreth’s chestnuts. Several days later Thoreau added in his journal “I had most to do with Gordon, who came after me,” so there must have been not only anger and tension-reducing joking but also physical threatening. It must have taken some time for the fence-mending discussions and winding-down discussions which followed after the boundary measurements had been completed on the ground, for Thoreau would continue ironically in his journal that Charles Gordon had been “quite eloquent” at the Thoreau home “on the subject of two neighbors disputing at his time in life about a ‘pelfrey’ sum or a few yards of land.”51

November 9, Monday: Surveying for Stedman Buttrick and Mr. Gordon. Jacob Farmer says that he remembers well a particular bound (which is the subject of dispute between the above two men) from this circumstance: He, a boy, was sent, as the representative of his mother, to witness the placing of the bounds to her lot, and he remembers that, when they had fixed the stake and stones, old Mr. Nathan Barrett asked him if he had a knife about him, upon which he pulled out his knife and gave it to him. Mr. Barrett cut a birch switch and trimmed it in the presence of young Farmer, and then called out, “Boy, here’s your knife;” but as the boy saw that he was going to strike him when he reached his hand for the knife, he dodged into a bush which alone received the blow. And Mr. Barrett said that if it had not been for that, he would have got a blow which would have made him remember that bound as long as he lived, and explained to him that that was his design in striking him. He had before told his mother that since she could not go to the woods to see what bounds were set to her lot, she had better send Jacob as a representative of the family. This made Farmer the important 50.October 14, 1858. 51.HENRY THOREAU seems to have earned Charles Gordon’s respect for his professionalism, for on March 23, 1858 this man employed him to survey a farm on the Bedford Road. Other than this, however, there isn’t any mention of the Gordon family in the JOURNAL. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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witness in this case. He first, some years ago, saw Buttrick trimming up the trees, and told him he was on Gordon’s land and pointed out this as the bound between them. One of the company to-day told of George Melvin once directing Jonas Melvin, for a joke, to go to the widow Hildreth’s lot (along which we were measuring) and gather the chestnuts. They were probably both working there. He accordingly took the oxen and cart and some ladders and another hired man, and they worked all day and got half a bushel. Mr. Farmer tells me that one Sunday he went to his barn, having nothing to do, and thought he would watch the swallows, republican swallows. The old bird was feeding her young, and he sat within fifteen feet, overlooking them. There were five young, and he was curious to know how each received its share; and as often as the bird came with a fly, the one at the door (or opening) took it, and then they all hitched round one notch, so that a new one was presented at the door, who received the next fly; and this was the invariable order, the same one never receiving two flies in succession. At last the old bird brought a very small fly, and the young one that swallowed it did not desert his ground but waited to receive the next, but when the bird came with another, of the usual size, she commenced a loud and long scolding at the little one, till it resigned its place, and the next in succession received the fly. Bigelow, the tavern-keeper, once, wrote C., put up this advertisement in the streets of Concord, “All those who are in favor of the universal salvation of mankind, are requested to meet at the school-house (?) next Saturday evening (?), to choose officers.” Very warm to-day; rainy in forenoon. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 30, Monday-December 3: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Waldo Emerson, some woodlots at Goose Pond and Walden Pond belonging to John Richardson. His sketch showed the road leading from Lincoln to Concord Meeting (now Route 126) as it was in 1797 when the land of Duncan Ingraham, “one of the Squires of the village,” was sold to Richardson for $533.33. The land on the east side of that road had belonged to a farmer named Brister, and Thoreau wrote “Brister Lot, now the state’s because the owner, Brister, was a foreigner.”52 The sketch pinpoints Emerson’s land between Richardson’s and John Potter’s along the “Road to Wayland,” the present Walden Street. Thoreau copied a second survey of Emerson’s land made in December 1848 by Cyrus Hubbard and, at the bottom, noted that in 1791 this land had belonged to William Savage.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/35a.htm

November 30, Monday: A still, warm, cloudy, rain-threatening day. Surveying the J. Richardson lot. The air is full of geese [Canada Goose Branta canadensis]. I saw five flocks within an hour, about 10 A.M., containing from thirty to fifty each, and afterward two more flocks, making in all from two hundred and fifty to three hundred at least, all flying southeast over Goose and Walden Ponds. The former was apparently well named Goose Pond. You first hear a faint honking from one or two in the northeast and think there are but a few wandering there, but, looking up, see forty or fifty coming on in a more or less broken harrow, wedging their way southwest. I suspect they honk more, at any rate they are more broken and alarmed, when passing 52. Would this be the very land on which recently they tried to erect a humongous office building, until they were stopped by the collection of money at rock concerts? Goose Pond actually was two tiny ponds, one of which has now been filled in by the Concord Town Dump:

WALDEN: Goose Pond, of small extent, is on my way to Flint’s....

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over a village, and are seen falling into their ranks again, assuming the perfect harrow form. Hearing only one or two honking, even for the seventh time, you think there are but few till you see them. According to my calculation a thousand or fifteen hundred may have gone over Concord to-day. When they fly low and near, they look very black against the sky.53 Northwest of Little Goose Pond, on the edge of Mrs. Bigelow’s wood-lot, are several hornbeams (Carpinus). Looking into a cleft in one of them about three feet from the ground, which I thought might be the scar of a blazing, I found some broken kernels of corn, probably placed there by a crow or jay. This was about half a mile from a corn-field.

Just at the end of this November, in Lawrence in the Kansas Territory, Richard Realf, published poet and a correspondent for the Illinois State Gazette, was being introduced to John Brown. John E. Cook, a member of Brown’s sacred squad, would persuade this Englishman to sign on for the holy crusade.

53.I hear that one was killed by Lee in the Corner about this time. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December: Henry Thoreau surveyed woodlots in Concord and Lincoln for Waldo Emerson. He surveyed a lot by Walden Pond amounting to 13 acres 80 rods.

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/31a.htm

This is the land on which Thoreau built a shanty and created a beanfield. Cyrus Hubbard had surveyed this land for Emerson on December 16, 1848. According to a letter written by Emerson to his brother William Emerson on October 4, 1844, he had bought the land from some men he met while walking in the woods. The next day he went back with some “well beloved gossips” and they persuaded him to buy about 3 more acres from Heartwell Bigelow to protect his investment. Thoreau also surveyed Ebenezer Hubbard’s woodlot, between Walden Street and the Cambridge Turnpike, that would become part of Fairyland in 1935. The survey of Hubbard’s woodlot showed the neighbors as Josh Jones, the Ministerial Lot, John Richardson, Francis Jarvis, Cyrus Warren, N.J., (?) Haywood, Abel Brooks, Reuben Rice, Brister [Brister Freeman] and the Poor Farm on Walden Street. On unspecified days, Thoreau surveyed woodlots for Abel Moore and John Hosmer, lotting off some of the land for firewood. He copied from Cyrus Hubbard’s survey of 1842. His plan shows the Pond Hole, Darius Hubbard’s land, Ephraim Wheeler’s land, and Isaac Brook’s land. Abel Moore’s son John inherited the land. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Here is a portrait of the Waldo Emerson for whom Thoreau was doing so much surveying:

Emerson by Rowse in 1857

December 3, Thursday-December 8, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed some Fair Haven woodlots belonging to John Richardson, west of the railroad near the land of Rufus Morse, Abel Moore, John Hosmer, and James Baker.

December 3, Thursday: Surveying the Richardson lot, which bounds on Walden Pond, I turned up a rock near the pond to make a bound with, and found under it, attached to it, a collection of black ants (say a quarter of an inch long) an inch in diameter, collected around one monster black ant as big as four or five at least, and a small parcel of yellowish eggs (?). The large ant had no wings and was probably their queen. The ants were quite lively, though but little way under the edge of the rock. The eggs (?) adhered to the rock when turned up. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 13, Sunday: The Reverend Convers Francis preached in Concord. His prooftext for the Concord faithful was Matthew 7:5 and his topic was “Moral Evil is Prolific.”

December 13, Sunday: P.M. –To Goose Pond. This and the like ponds are just covered with virgin ice just thick enough to bear, though it cracks about the edges on the sunny sides. You may call it virgin ice as long as it is transparent. I see the water-target leaves frozen in under the ice in Little Goose Pond. I see those same two tortoises (of December 2d), moving about in the same place under the ice, which I cannot crack with my feet. The Emerson children see six under the ice of Goose Pond to-day. Apparently many winter in the mud of these ponds and pond-holes. In sickness and barrenness it is encouraging to believe that our life is dammed and is coming to a head, so that there seems to be no loss, for what is lost in time is gained in power. All at once, unaccountably, as we are walking in the woods or sitting in our chamber, after a worthless fortnight, we cease to feel mean and barren. I go this afternoon thinking I may find the stakes set for auction lots on the Ministerial Lot in December,’51. I find one white birch standing and two fallen. The latter were faced at one end, for the numbers, and at the other rollen and broken off as short, apparently, as if sawed, because the bark so tears. At first I did not know but they had been moved, but thinking that if they had fallen where they stood I should find some hole or looseness in the ground at the rotten end, I felt for it and in each case found it; in one, also, the rotten point of the stake. Thus in six years two out of three stout (two-and-a-half-inch) birch stakes were flat. The hickory stake I set on R.W.E.’s town line in March,’50, was flat this last summer, or seven years, but a white [sic] stake set in’49-’50 on Moore and Hosmer’s lot was standing aslant this month. A surveyor should know what stakes last longest. I hear a characteristic anecdote respecting Mrs. Hoar, from good authority. Her son Edward, who takes his EDWARD HOAR father’s place and attends to the same duties, asked his mother the other night, when about retiring, “Shall I put the cat down cellar?” “No,” said she, “you may put her outdoors.” The next night he asked, “Shall I put the cat CAT outdoors?” “No,” answered she, “you may put her down cellar.” The third night he asked, “Shall I put the cat down cellar or outdoors?” “Well,” said his mother, “you may open the cellar door and then open the front door, and let her go just which way she pleases.” Edward suggested that it was a cold night for the cat to be outdoors, but his mother said, “Who knows but she has a little kitten somewhere to look after?” Mrs. H. is a peculiar woman, who has her own opinion and way, a strong-willed, managing woman. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 14, Monday: Henry Thoreau repeated his survey of March 1850 in “Samuel Heywood’s pasture” south of Walden Pond in Lincoln, a plot of 13 acres 80 rods, to adjust the woodlot lines between Waldo Emerson and Charles Bartlett who owned land east of his. SAMUEL HEYWOOD

(Cyrus Hubbard had surveyed this land for Emerson on December 16, 1848. According to a letter written by Emerson to his brother William Emerson on October 4, 1844, he had bought the land from some men whom he met while walking in the woods. The next day he went back with some “well beloved gossips” and they persuaded him to buy about 3 more acres from Heartwell Bigelow to protect his investment. This is the land on which Thoreau built his house. Thoreau may also have done some surveying for Warren Nixon, of Lincoln land near the Emerson-Bartlett land.)

View Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys (but not this one) courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.net/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/Thoreau_surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

In the District of Columbia, home of our nation’s puzzle palace, an idea reached its completion that had begun process ’way back on December 26, 1849: Know all men by these presents that I, Mary Watts of Saint Mary's County and State of Maryland for and in consideration of the sum of seven hundred dollars current money, to me in hand paid by Thomas Sumerville F.B. of the county and state aforesaid, at and before the sealing and delivery hereof, the receipt whereof I do hereby acknowledge; have granted, bargained and sold, and by these presents, do, grant, bargain and sell unto the said Thomas Sumerville F.B. his executors, administrators and assigns, one Negro woman Maria aged twenty five years, one Negro child named Sarah Ann ages six years, one Negro child named Thomas Randolph aged three years, and one other Negro child named Mary Ellen aged one year, all which Negroes are slaves for life. To have and hold the said described Negroes above bargained and sold to the said Thomas Somerville F.B. his executors, administrators and assigns, forever unto his and their only proper use and benefit, and I, the said Mary Watts for myself, my executors and administrators, shall and will warrant, and forever defend by these presents to the said Thomas Somerville F.B. his executors, administrators and assigns, the said described Negroes, against my executors and administrators, and against and all every other person or persons whomsoever I administer the same or any part thereof. In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and affixed my seal the twenty sixth day of December Eighteen Hundred and Forty Nine. Signed, sealed and delivered in the presence of } Mary Watts {seal} N. Furck HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Received of Thomas Sumerville F.B. the sum of seven hundred dollars in the full of the consideration specified to be paid in the above Bill of sale. 26th December 1849 Mary Watts State of Maryland, St. Mary's County, J.P. On this 26th day of December 1849 before one of the justices of the peace of the state of Maryland in and for said county, personally appeared Mary Watts and acknowledges the foregoing bill of sale or instrument of writing to be her act and deeds according to the purport true intent and meaning thereof-And at the same time and place also appeared before me Thomas Somerville F.B. the grantee oath that the consideration set forth in the said Bill of sale is true and bona fide as therein set forth. Acknowledged & sworn before N. Furck, J.P. {seal}

Jany. 3rd 1850. Recd. of Thomas Sumerville the sum of one dollar the stamp duty required by law on this Bill of sale. Wm. T. Maddox St. Mary's Cnty.

Saint Marys County to wit Thereby certify that the aforegoing is truly taken from the original field in my office on the 3rd Jany. 1850. In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and affixed the seal of my office this 12th day of March eighteen hundred and fifty. Wm. Maddox St. Mry’s. Cnty. Clk.

Deed of manumission District of Columbia, County of Washington To all whom it may concern. Be it known that I, Thomas Sumerville of the city of Washington in the district of Columbia for divers good causes and considerations, me thereunto moving have released from slavery, liberated, manumitted and set free and by means presents do hereby release from slavery, liberate, manumit and set free my wife Maria being of the age of thirty four years and able to work and gain a sufficient livelihood and maintenance and she the said Negro slave named Maria Somerville I do declare to be henceforth free, manumitted, discharged from all manner of service or servitude to me, my executors and administrators forever. In witness whereof I have this fourteenth day of December in the year of our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty Seven set my hand and seal. Thomas (X) Sumerville {seal} Signed Sealed and delivered in presence of Witness Jas. Cull ?Alexander Cull HDT WHAT? INDEX

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District of Columbia, Washington County On this 14th day of December 1857 before me the subscriber a Justice of the Peace for the County aforesaid personally appeared Thomas Sumerville and acknowledged the above Deed of manumission to be his act and deed for the purpose set forth. Jas. Cull, J.P. {seal}

December 22, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed for Caleb Bates, 18 acres and 88 rods of woodland located between Walden Street and Cambridge Turnpike, later owned by Heartwell Bigelow. Caleb had a farm on Bedford Street near the Bedford line. Sherman Barrett bought it later. This survey was probably made to settle the estate of Heartwell Bigelow who had died in 1850 leaving a widow whom Thoreau helped.

December 23, Wednesday-24, Thursday: Henry Thoreau surveyed a lot on Walden Pond for John Richardson, Esq. (who had built the Town House on the Common on the West side, and then in 1789 swapped it with the County for the hotel that was then on the spot that later would come to be occupied by the Middlesex Hotel.)

December 24, Thursday: Henry Thoreau surveyed for M. Ellis a meadow near Thomas M. Balcom and Charles Gordon’s land on Bedford Road. William Haggarty helped with this one. Thoreau was paid $1.50.

December 25, Friday: Henry Thoreau surveyed for Mrs. Heartwell Bigelow a woodlot near Walden Street east of the present Fairyland (and again on November 22).

On this Christmas Day he also surveyed the old woodlot which had belonged to Caleb Bates, Senior. Mrs. Heartwell Bigelow’s name appears on the surveys of Ebby Hubbard and Abel Brooks.

December 25, Friday: Surveying for heirs of J. Richardson, G. Heywood and A. Brooks accompanying. Skate on Goose Pond. Heywood says that some who have gone into Ebby Hubbard’s barn to find him have seen the rats run over his shoulders, they are so familiar with him. This because I stopped to speak with Hubbard in his barn about bounds. I find the true line between Richardson and Mrs. Bigelow, which Captain Hubbard overlooked in 1840, and yet I find it by his own plan of 1827. Bigelow had set a split stone far into Richardson. After making the proper allowance for variation since 1827, I set my stake exactly on an old spotted line, which was overlooked in 1840 and is probably as old as the survey of ’27, or thirty years. It is on good-sized white pines, and is quite distinct now, though not blazed into the wood at first. It would not be detected unless you were looking for it.

December 28, Monday: Walden Pond froze.

Henry Thoreau surveyed a white pine woodlot by Dugan Desert, and a “partly oak” woodlot north of the road, belonging to Cyrus Hosmer, that would be cut on January 21, 1858 for wood for use by Mr. Warner in the pail factory. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 29, Tuesday: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a descendant of the John Alden and Priscilla Mullens who were a couple of early hoots, created a poem in honor of his famous Mayflower ancestors and their putative proclivities that he would entitle “The Courtship of Miles Standish.” JOHN AND PRISCILLA

Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Abel Brooks, 3 acres 58 rods of woodlot near Mrs. Bigelow and Ebby Hubbard. Mr. Brooks lived on Sudbury Road on the south side between Stow and Devens Streets. Thoreau remarked that he found it easy to do this survey as Brooks had worn a path around it as he walked the bounds each day. The lot was on Walden Street near Brister’s Hill. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1858

January 12, Tuesday: Israel Billings of Lincoln had sold some woodlots near Sandy Pond Road to Nathan and Cyrus Stow in 1829 with Cyrus Hubbard as the surveyor. Henry Thoreau copied part of Hubbard’s survey to straighten the line between the Stow property and the Waldo Emerson lot with the waterfall, and called the Stow property “Chestnut Field Lot,” saying that Stow bought it from Abel Brooks in 1843.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/126.htm

January 20, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed some Lincoln, Massachusetts land near Lexington Road for William Rice 2d.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/102.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 25, Monday: Waldo Emerson recorded in his journal (shortly after an entry dated “Jan. 1858” and shortly before an entry dated “Jan. 28”) a chance conversation with Henry Thoreau in “my” woods (whose woods these are we think we know), in which Thoreau tried again to lay on him one of his pieces of mysticism about our real life, the totality of it, being entirely here and now. What Emerson saw fit to record of this advice was “He thought nothing to be hoped from you, if this bit of mould under your feet was not sweeter to you to eat, than any other in this world, or in any world,” but in his journal he then went immediately on from the wisdom to an illustration of it, with the illustration of it being treated not as an illustration of it but as a distraction, a way to get away from the wisdom of it, a mere piece of arcana of the forest. And at the end of the selection, Emerson has made his escape from his friend’s advice, and has succeeded in quite changing the subject, and is praising woods lore as being such a cheerful study: “here there is no taint of mortality.”

I found Henry T. yesterday in my woods. He thought nothing to be hoped from you, if this bit of mould under your feet was not sweeter to you to eat, than any other in this world, or in any world. We talked of the willows. He says, ‘tis impossible to tell when they push the bud (which so marks the arrival of spring) out of its dark scales. It is done & doing all winter. It is begun in the previous autumn. It seems one steady push from autumn to spring. I say, How divine these studies! Here there is no taint of mortality. How aristocratic, & of how defiant a beauty! This is the garden of Edelweisen.

After this Emerson wrote in pencil under a horizontal line, also in pencil, “I want animal spirits.” He would use this passage in his eulogy on Thoreau.

In his journal entry of January 18, 1858, Thoreau had written, “I hear that the Emerson children found ladies’- delights out yesterday,” and a week later, on January 25, 1858, Thoreau wrote:

What a rich book might be made about buds, including, perhaps, sprouts!—the impregnable, vivacious willow catkins, but half asleep under the armor of their black scales, sleeping along the twigs; the birch and oak sprouts, and the rank and lusty dogwood sprouts; the round red buds of the blueberries; the small pointed red buds, close to the twig, of the panicled andromeda; the large yellowish buds of the swamp-pink, etc. How healthy and vivacious must he be who would treat of these things! You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake. You must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand heap. You must have so good an appetite as this, else you will live in vain. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau completed his survey of March 1850 and December 14, 1857 in “Samuel Heywood’s pasture” south of Walden Pond in Lincoln to adjust the line between Emerson and the Charles Bartlett whose land abutted on the east side. And Bronson Alcott wrote to Ainsworth R. Spofford that “Last evening [January 24th] I saw Thoreau who is trenchant and masterly as ever. He had been reading some papers in Drawing rooms to a good company lately at Lynn.”

Thoreau was being written to by someone presumably in Athol, Massachusetts.

March 23, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed a farm on Bedford Road near the intersection of Old Bedford Road for Charles Gordon. The fee was $4.50. Gordon was related to the Jacob B. Farmer family of Lowell Road and owned a woodlot near Bateman’s Pond on Lowell Road.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/43.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 8, Thursday: The schooner Thomas Kingsford sailed out of Oswego, beginning its season of voyages between New York and Chicago.

On this day and the following one Henry Thoreau surveyed the John Kettell farm on Lexington Road for Sam Staples, and charged him $11.50. The farm stretched from Lexington Road across the field to Cambridge

Turnpike and then to the Mill Brook and had belonged to Isaac Watts54 in 1849 when Thoreau divided the woods on the hill behind and northeast of the house into 52 woodlots.

Marcia Moss believes that 1849 survey was the first one Thoreau recorded in his Field Notes book. It shows the location of land belonging to Sexton, George Heywood, C.B. Davis, Cyrus Warren, Shannon, Richard Messer, John B. Moore, and the surroundings. Thoreau’s journal for October 4, 1857 indicates that he seriously injured himself one day while building a woodshed on this land.

54. This was not the Isaac Watts who authored hymns. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/74.htm This would presumably be the event described later by Sheriff Sam to Dr. Edward Emerson: Sam Staples told me ... “When I bought that farm next to your father’s, I had him [Thoreau] run the lines for me. I guess ’twas about the last work he did. Well the line against your father’s pear orchard and meadow running down to the brook, I’d always supposed was right, as his hedge ran, and so I dug that ditch between his meadow and mine, right in the line of the hedge. Well, when we come to run the line, the corner of the hedge on the Turnpike was right, but when we got to the other end of the hedge, ’twas several feet over on to what I’d bought. And at the brook, the ditch which I’d dug to it from the hedge-corner, supposing that this was the line, came much as a rod into my meadow by the deed. That tickled Thoreau mightily. ‘We’ll call Emerson down and show it to him,’ says he. ‘Oh, never mind,’ says I, ‘he don’t know about it; let it be as it is.’ ‘No,’ says he, ‘I’ll get Emerson down.’ So he went up to the house and told him we got something to show him down at the meadow, and he put on his hat and came along with Henry. Well, when we got him down there, Thoreau, says he, ‘I didn’t think this of you, Mr. Emerson, stealing so much land of Staples here.’ Well, your father was troubled when he saw where the ditch was over in my land. ‘I’ll pay you for the land,’ says he, ‘what’s it worth?’ ‘Oh, no,’ says I, ‘I dug the ditch there supposing the hedge was the line. ’Twan’t your fault. ’Twas the man you bought of showed you where to put the hedge. Let it be as the ditch now.’ It pleased Thoreau to get the joke on him.”

April 10, Saturday: Henry Thoreau was being written to by Richard Warner in Boston about some surveying.

Boston April 10 1858 Mr Henry. D Thoreau Sir I wish you would go & masure the pice of land that I bought of Mr Brown immeatly if you HDT WHAT? INDEX

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will call at my mill & tell Mr Smith to let Thom [Sulivan] go with you & [S]hew th lines I [S]hell be up nxt week wednesday or Saturdy if you get th land masurd before you will [S]end th masur to me by mail yours Truly R Warner

Dr. H.C. Preston recited a poem of more than 400 lines before an audience at the Tremont Temple in Boston on the centennial birth-day of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, another homœopathic physician. Then there was a banquet. ...for now an hundred times the Sun, Around the radiant belt his circling course has run, Since first Therapeia’s glorious morning dawn began, And hosts of waiting spirits welcom’d Hahnemann! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 12, Monday: William D. Brown paid Henry Thoreau $3.00 to survey an Acton woodlot near Damon’s Factory. Part of this lot was cut during 1857-1858 and the lot was sold to Richard Warner.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: HDT WHAT? INDEX

SURVEYING SURVEYING

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/15.htm

Hinton Rowan Helper sought to assault Senator Asa Biggs of his home state of North Carolina for having accused him, on April 5th on the floor of the US Senate, of having changed his name from “Helfer” and of having committed petty theft. However, his Colt revolver and Bowie knife were confiscated and he was taken under arrest. A number of the prominent Republican legislators, amused at the sight of one of their Southern Democratic colleagues being assaulted by one of his constituents, raised a fund of $1,000 and posted bail for this racist abolitionist Southern Republican.

HINTON ROWAN HELPER

(Cassius M. Clay, who would become a Major General of the US Volunteers in the civil war, was at this point an enthusiastic supporter and distributor of Helperist literature. –As was Senator Andrew Johnson, who would become in 1865 the President of the United States.)

April 12, 1858: A. M. — Surveying part of William P. Brown’s wood-lot in Acton, west of factory. Returning on the railroad, the noon train down passed us opposite the old maid Hosmer’s house. In the woods just this side, we came upon a partridge [Ruffed Grouse Bonasa umbellus (Partridge)] standing on the track, between the rails over which the cars had just passed. She had evidently been run down, but though a few small feathers were scattered along for a dozen rods beyond her, and she looked a little ruffled, she was apparently more disturbed in mind than body. I took her up and carried her one side to a safer place. At first she made no resistance, but at length fluttered out of my hands and ran two or three feet. I had to take her up again and carry and drive her further off, and left her standing with head erect as at first, as if beside herself. She was not lame, and I suspect no wing was broken. I did not suspect that this swift wild bird was ever run down by the cars. We have an account in the newspapers of every cow and calf that is run over, but not of the various wild creatures who meet with that accident. It may be many generations before the partridges learn to give the cars a sufficiently wide berth. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SURVEYING SURVEYING

June 5, Saturday: The Reverend Grindall Reynolds purchased the plot which Henry Thoreau had surveyed on May 25, 1852 for J. Barnard McKay (T. Bernard MacKay?) on Main Street in Concord, between the property of Ellery Channing and the property of Frances Monroe.

View this particular survey in fine detail:

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/86.htm

Thoreau surveyed a Lincoln woodlot for Thomas Brooks, on land that had been burned over in the previous year, and was paid $4.00 by George Brooks. See also Samuel Barrett’s woodlot, and Bedford Road survey for George Brooks.

The USS Constellation returned from its cruise of the Caribbean to the New-York Navy Yard.

Thoreau surveyed a Lincoln woodlot for Thomas Brooks and was paid $4.00 by George Brooks of Concord. This woodland had burned in 1857.

November 22, day: Henry Thoreau wrote to Friend Daniel Ricketson. Concord Nov. 22d 1858 Friend Ricketson I thank you for your “History,” Though I have not yet read it again, I have looked far enough to see that I like the homeliness of it; that is the good old-fashioned way of writing as if you actually lived where you wrote. A man's interest in a single bluebird, is more than a complete, but dry, list of the fauna & flora of a town. It is also a considerable advantage to be able to say at any time, If R. is not here, here is his book. Alcott being here and inquiring after you (whom he has been expecting) I lent the book to him almost immediately. He talks of going west the latter part of this week. Channing is here again, as I am told, but I have not seen him. I thank you also for the account of the trees. It was to my purpose, and I hope that you got something out of it too. I suppose that the cold weather prevented your coming here. Suppose you try a winter walk or skate– Please remember me to your family– Yrs H.D.T.

Thoreau continued a survey he made for the estate of Heartwell Bigelow on December 25, 1857. He made surveys for the estate of a woodlot near Walden Street east of the present Fairyland, and of the old woodlot which had belonged to Caleb Bates, Sr.

November 22. In surveying Mr. Bigelow’s wood-lot today I found at the northeasterly angle what in HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the deed from the Thayers in ’~8 was called “an old stump by the wall.” It is still quite plain and may last twenty years longer. It is oak. This is quite a pleasant day, but hardly amounting to Indian summer. I see swarms of large mosquito-like insects dancing in the garden. They may be a large kind of Tipuli~. Had slender ringed abdomens and no plumes. The river is quite low,–about as low as it has been, for it has not been very low. About the first of November a wild pig from the West, said to weigh three hundred pounds, jumped out of a car at the depot and made for the woods. The owner had to give up the chase at once, not to lose his passage, while some railroad employees pursued the pig even into the woods a mile and a half off, but there the pig turned and pursued them so resolutely that they ran for their lives and one climbed a tree. The next day being Sunday, they turned out in force with a gun and a large mastiff, but still the pig had the best of it,–fairly I [Excursons, p. 279; Riv. 342.]frightened the men by his fierce charges,–and the dog was so wearied and injured by the pig that the men were obliged to carry him in their arms. The pig stood it better than the dog. Ran between the gun man’s legs, threw him over, and hurt his shoulder, though pierced in many places by a pitchfork. At the last accounts, he had been driven or baited into a barn in Lincoln, but no one durst enter, and they were preparing to shoot him. Such pork might be called venison. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1859

Henry Thoreau was asked by the River Meadow Association to survey the Concord River from East Sudbury to Billerica, a distance of 22.15 miles, and provide an account of the building of all the bridges on it. The facts obtained would be used at the Supreme Judicial Court trial against the Middlesex Canal during January 1860 (Thoreau made his annotations on a copy of Loammi Baldwin’s 2d map of May 1834, surveyed and drawn originally by B.F. Perham). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 18, Monday: John E. Cook got married with a woman of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Mary V. Kennedy. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Note that the farmhouse on which the conspirators would descend would be the Kennedy one:

Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Stedman Buttrick, a woodlot in the south part of Acton that he was selling to Sumner Blood.

April 18: 8 A.M.– To the south part of Acton, surveying, with Stedman Buttrick. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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When B. came to see me the other evening, and stood before the door in the dark, my mother asked, “Who is it?” to which he replied, quite seriously, “Left-tenant [SIC] Stedman Buttrick.” B. says that he shot some crossbills which were opening pine cones in the neighborhood of the Easterbrook place some years ago, that he saw two dildees [SIC] here as much as a month ago at least, and that they used to breed on that island east of his house, – I think he called it Burr’s Island. He sees the two kinds of telltale here. Once shot an eider duck here. Has often shot the pintail (he calls it spindle-tail) duck here. Thinks he has killed four (?!) kinds of teal here. Once shot a sheldrake which had a good-sized sucker in its throat, the tail sticking out its bill, so that, as he thought, it could not have flown away with it. It was a full-plumaged male. Once, in the fall, shot a mackerel gull on what I call Dove Rock. Once shot a whole flock of little ducks not more than two thirds the size of a pigeon, yet full-grown, near the junction of the two rivers. Also got two ducks, the female all white and the male with a long and conspicuous bottle-green crest above the white. Looked through J.J. AUDUBON Audubon, but could find no account of them. Sees two kinds of gray ducks, one larger than a black duck. Has seen the summer duck here carrying its young to the water in her bill, as much as thirty rods. Says that teal have bred here. His boy found, one February, as much as a peck of chestnuts in different parcels within a short distance of one another, just under the leaves in Hildreth’s chestnut wood, placed there, as he says, by the chip-squirrel, which they saw eating them. He has seen the cross fox here. I am looking for acorns these days, to sow on the Walden lot, but can find very few sound ones. Those which the squirrels have not got are mostly worm-eaten and quite pulverized or decayed. A few which are cracked at the small [END], having started last fall, have yet life in them, perhaps enough to plant. Even these look rather discolored when you cut them open, but Buttrick says they will do for pigeon-bait. So each man looks at things from his own point of view. I found by trial that the last or apparently sound acorns would always sink in water, while the rotten ones would float, and I have accordingly offered five cents a quart for such as will sink. You can thus separate the good from the bad in a moment. I am not sure, however, but the germs of many of the latter [THAT IS, SUCH AS WILL SINK. THE SENTENCE “You can thus separate the good from the bad in a moment” WAS WRITTEN AFTERWARD AND INSERTED OVER A CARET.] have been injured by the frost. Hear a field sparrow. Ed. Emerson shows me his aquarium. He has two minnows from the brook, which I think must be the banded minnow; a little more than an inch long with very conspicuous broad black transverse bars. Some Rana sylvatica spawn just begun to flat out. Also several kinds of larvae in the water, – one very like a dragon-fly, with three large feather-like appendages to the tail, small gyrinus, which he says nibbled off the legs of the skater (?), etc., etc., but no dragon-fly grubs.

Two salamanders, one from Ripple Lake and the other from the pool behind my house that was. One some four inches long, with a carinated and waved (crenated) edged tail as well as light-vermilion spots on the back, evidently the Salamandra dorsalis. (This I suspect is what I called S. symmetrica last fall.) (This is pale-brown above.) The other two thirds as large, a very handsome bright orange salmon, also with vermilion spots, which must be the true S. symmetrica. Both thickly sprinkled with black dots. The latter’s tail comparatively thick and straight-edged. Haynes (Heavy) says that trout spawn twice in a year, – once in October and again in the spring. Saw snow ice a yard across to-day under the north side of a wood. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SURVEYING SURVEYING

May 3, Tuesday: Continuing work that began in March 1850 and February 1853 and would complete in April 1860 just before the entire parcel was auctioned off on May 10, 1860, Henry Thoreau surveyed land on Lexington Road for John B. Moore, who was doing a “Faustus-progress thing” by buying up swampland and draining it for farming. This had been the site of the home of Dr. Prescott of Revolutionary War fame. The land stretched over the hill to Bedford Road and as far east as the Merriam land on the Old Bedford Road and, according to the February 1853 survey, had been purchased by E.W. Bull, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott, and Charles Davis.

Thoreau made a survey of John B. Moore’s Swamp, now erroneously called Moses’s Swamp, for which he was paid $5.00 by George Brooks for the Town of Concord.

May 3. Surveying the Bedford road. Hear the te-e-e of a white-throat sparrow. I hear of phoebes’, robins’, and bluebirds’ nests and eggs. I have not heard any snipes boom for about a week, nor seen a tree sparrow certainly since April 30 (??), nor F. hyemalis for several days.

May 6, Friday: Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt died in Berlin, a few months before Mr. Charles Darwin. M.A.’s landmark volume, THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, was published.

Henry Thoreau was paid $3.50 for surveying a houselot and woodlot near Factory Village for Samuel A. Willis. This survey was copied by surveyor William D. Tuttle on April 25, 1864.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/150a.htm

Thoreau also began to survey, for Edward Damon, the factory site in West Concord called Factory Village on the Assabet River near the Acton Line. He would continue on the 7th, 13th, 14th, and 16th. Thoreau would be paid $36.00 for this survey. This factory made satinet, white wool flannel, and domet flannel. This wooden structure was badly gutted by fire in 1862 but was rebuilt in brick, and can still be seen in part on Route 62 almost at the Acton line. http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/25a.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 6: Surveying for Willis & Damon at the factory. Hear the tea-lee of the white-throat sparrow. It is suddenly very warm and oppressive, especially in the woods with thick clothing. Viola pedata begins to be common about white pine woods there. While surveying this forenoon behind Willis’s house on the shore of the mill-pond, I saw remarkable swarms of that little fuzzy gnat (Tipulidae). Hot as it was, –oppressively so,– they were collected in the hollows in the meadow, apparently to be out of the way of the little breeze that there was, and in many such places in the meadow, within a rod of the water, the ground was perfectly concealed by them. Nay, much more than that. I saw one shallow hollow some three feet across which was completely filled with them, all in motion but resting one upon another, to the depth, as I found by measurement with a stick, of more than an inch, – a living mass of insect life. There were a hundred of these basins full of them, and I then discovered that what I had mistaken for some black dye on the wet shore was the bodies of those that were drowned and washed up, blackening the shore in patches for many feet together like so much mud. We were also troubled by getting them into our mouths and throats and eyes. This insect resembles the plate of the Chironomus plumosus (“Library of Entertaining Knowledge, Insect Transformations,” page 305), also the Corethra plumicornis (page 287), both of which live at first in the water, like the mosquito. Young red maples suddenly bursting into leaf are very conspicuous now in the woods, among the most prominent of all shrubs or trees. The sprouts are reddish. Hear yellow-throat vireo, and probably some new warblers. See the strong-scented wood ants in a stump. Black suckers, so called, are being speared at the factory bridge.55 This is about the last of the very dry leaves in the woods, for soon the ground will be shaded by expanded green leaves. It is quite hazy, if not smoky, and I smell smoke in the air, this hot day. My assistants, being accustomed to work indoors in the factory, are quite overcome by this sudden heat. The old leaves and earth are driest now, just before the new leaves expand and when the heat is greatest. I see the black traces of many a recent fire in the woods, especially in young woods. At evening I hear the first sultry buzz of a fly in my chamber, telling of sultry nights to come.

May 9, Monday and 18, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed for Cyrus Stow near Flint’s Pond.

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/121b.htm

May 9. Surveying for Stow near Flint’s Pond. Hear the warbling vireo and oven-bird; yellow-throat vireo (?). One helping me says he scared up a whip-poor- will from the ground. See black birch bloom fallen effete. The first thunder this afternoon.

55.Actually, the white sucker is not only the only species of sucker currently present in the Assabet River, but is the only one which has ever been detected there. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SURVEYING SURVEYING

May 13, Friday: An official charter for the Russian Musical Society was granted for “the development of musical education and musical taste in Russia and the encouragement of native talents.”

On this day and the following one, Henry Thoreau was continuing to survey for Edward Damon, at his factory site in West Concord called Factory Village on the Assabet River near the Acton Line. He would wrap up this piece of work on the 16th. Thoreau did a close-up of the factory. There is no date on it but he recorded in his Journal for May 6-7, 13-14, and 16th that he had been at Damon’s. Thoreau was paid $36.00 for this work. This factory made satinet, white wool flannel, and domet flannel. It would be badly gutted by fire in 1862, but would be rebuilt, and a part of it can still be glimpsed from Route 62 when you get almost to the Acton line.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/25a.htm

May 13. Friday. Surveying Damon’s Acton lot. Hear the pe-pe and evergreen-forest note, also night-warbler (the last perhaps the 11th). Apple in bloom.

May 14, Saturday: Friend Joseph Sturge died in Edgbaston, in Birmingham in Warwickshire. Thoreau surveyed for Mr. Damon.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/25a.htm

May 14. Saturday. Surveying for Damon. Rhodora out, says C. Yorrick heard the 12th. Did I hear a bobolink this morning? C. says he heard a yellow-legs yesterday. Bought a black sucker (?), just speared at the factory dam, fifteen inches long, blacker than I am used to, I think; at any rate a very good fish to eat, as I proved, while the other common sucker there is said not to be. This had very conspicuous corrugations on the lips. I suspect that their other one is the horned chub. They have speared the former a long time there, and it is getting late for them. Vernal grass quite common at Willis Spring now. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SURVEYING SURVEYING

May 16, Monday: John Brown wrote from Boston to his second-in-command, John Henry Kagi: Dear Sir, I should have acknowledged the receipt of yours of April 21, to Henry Thompson, together with writing-case and papers (all safe, so far as I now see), and also yours of April 27 to me, but for being badly down with the ague, so much so as to disqualify me for everything, nearly. I have been here going on two weeks, and am getting better for two days past; but am very weak. I wish you to say to our folks, all as soon as may be, that there is scarce a doubt but that all will be set right in a very few days more, so that I can be on my way back. They must none of them think I have been slack to try and urge forward a delicate and very difficult matter. I cannot now write you a long letter, being obliged to neglect replying to others, and also to put off some very important correspondence. My reception has been everywhere most cordial and cheering. Your friend in truth, John Brown

Henry Thoreau surveyed Edward Damon’s farm and factory lot “Damondale.”

View Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

May 16. Monday. Surveying Damon’s farm and factory lot. Our corydalis was out the 13th. Hear a tanager to-day, and one was seen yesterday. Sand cherry out. Ranunculus abortivus well out (when?), southwest angle of Damon’s farm. Hear a bobolink and kingbird, and find sparrows’ nests on the ground. At eve the first spark of a nighthawk. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SURVEYING SURVEYING

May 17, Tuesday: The first Australian rules for football were drawn up, at the Melbourne Football Club.

Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Samuel Lees, some Factory Village land near the Old Stow Road and the Damon Factory. He made no entry in his journal.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/77.htm [NO ENTRY FOR 17 MAY]

May 18, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau completed the surveying he had begun on May 9th for Cyrus Stow in Lincoln.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/121b.htm

May 18. Surveying for Stow in Lincoln. Two-leaved Solomon’s-seal. I hear of young song sparrows and young robins since the 16th. That handsome spawn of Ed. Emerson’s aquarium–minute transparent ova in a double row on the glass or the stones–turns out to be snail-spawn, it having just hatched, and there was no salamander-spawn, as I thought on the 18th of April. Not Paludina decisa, but the smaller and simpler one. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SURVEYING SURVEYING

May 23, Monday: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Joseph Harrington, a small plot of land in the western part of Concord near the land of John Brown and the Damon Farms. He made no entry in his journal.

Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surviving surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

SURVEYING SURVEYING

June 10, Friday: John Brown was at Westport, Connecticut.

C.F. Bernard wrote to Charles Wesley Slack to request the distribution of a report. He praised the 28th Congregational Society and the Reverend Theodore Parker, and sent well wishes.

Henry Thoreau surveyed on College Road below Annursnack Hill near the Acton town line, for Daniel Brooks Clark, and was informed that the road had received that name due to “a house so called once standing on it”:

He also surveyed 16 acres near Prescott Barrett’s house on Barrett’s Mill Road west of Spencer Brook. Thoreau remarked that the whole area had belonged to Peter Temple in 1811, and part was sold to Jonathan 50 Hildreth and part to Stephen Barrett. The List of Bills in the FIELD NOTES shows a bill for $2. for this date.

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/4.htm

June 10, Friday: Surveying for D. B. Clark on “College Road,” so called in Peter Temple’s deed in 1811, Clark thought from a house so called once standing on it. Cut a line, and after measured it, in a thick wood, which passed within two feet of a blue jay’s nest which was about four feet up a birch, beneath the leafy branches and quite exposed. The bird sat perfectly still with its head up and bill open upon its pretty large young, not moving in the least, while we drove a stake close by, within three feet, and cut and measured, being about there twenty minutes at least. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SURVEYING SURVEYING

June 22, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau began to paddle along, taking the statistics of the bridges over the Concord River between Heard’s Bridge and Billerica dam. This would be a 3-day project.

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/107b.htm

June 22. Paddle up the river to Lee’s, measuring the bridges. The sun coming out at intervals to-day, after a long rainy and cloudy spell in which the weeds have grown much, I observe that the rough goldenrods and one other, which have grown one to two feet high, have many of them in various parts of the town immediately drooped their tops, hanging down five or six inches. This weed appears to be particularly tender in this respect, having probably grown very rapidly in the rain. Comara palustris, how long? Scirpus lacustris is freshly out. I notice a black willow top a foot above water, a dozen rods from shore, near the outlet of Fair Haven Pond, or just off the point of the Island, where the water is ten feet deep by my measure, and it is alive and green. Yet one who was not almost daily on the river would not perceive this revolution constantly going on. Only in very few cases [And at lowest water a month later.] can I discover where the surface has been taken up, since the water stands over and conceals the scar till it is healed, and for similar reasons it is hard to tell what is a fresh deposit and what an old growth. I should say that the largest masses, or islands, of button-bushes standing in the meadows had drifted there. Even the owner of the meadow and the haymakers may not always detect what was imported thus the previous spring, these transplanted plants look so at home there. So the revolution is almost an imperceptible one. Many seeing the green willow-tops rising above the surface in deep water think that there is a rock there on which they grow. There is a very large mass of bushes thus moved on the right shore, some way above Sherman’s Bridge, and a large mass above Heard’s Bridge some distance, on the east side (having drifted across). I hear now that snapping sound under the pads, or probably as soon as the pads are thickly spread over the surface. Also I hear it made by a fish darting to the surface in midstream where are no weeds,–a dry, snapping sound. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 7, Thursday: The Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson of the Secret “Six” conspiracy wrote to Gerrit Smith that “I could not live with myself if I thought I were knowingly sending Brown [!] in the way of certain death.”56

Eventually the slavecatchers from Kentucky and from Columbus who had trapped the fugitive John Price had been arrested by Ohio officials and charged with kidnapping and, in return for that charge being dropped, had agreed to drop their charges against the rescuers, including Professor Henry C. Peck of Oberlin College. Thus,

on this day, everyone except Simeon Bushnell, who was still serving out his 60-day sentence, was able to return to Oberlin, Ohio. There they were the guests of honor at a great celebration. Bonfires lined the streets that led to the church in which this celebration was held. Even their Cleveland jailor got introduced during the celebrations, and was able to go on about how he had been acting as the prisoners’ “postmaster.” All sang the “Marseillaise.” (When Simeon Bushnell also would be released and would be able to return on July 11, 1859,

56. Later, with the benefit of hindsight and with the benefit of self-legitimation, it would become clear to Higginson that his co- conspirators Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the Reverend Theodore Parker, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Gerrit Smith, and the Reverend George Luther Stearns of the Secret “Six” conspiracy had, unlike him, fully grasped from the earliest moment the fact that the probable result of their attempt to incite a race war, of black Americans against white Americans, would be, at least initially, a defeat of their black forces. These other five of the white conspirators clearly had been willing to sacrifice the lives of their black allies in order to foment civil war between Northern and Southern white Americans. But not him, he believed in the light of his Monday- morning quarterbacking, and he dug out this old letter to Smith to prove how unaware he himself had been of the outcome to be anticipated for the raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. (However, if you look carefully at this quoted letter, you see that Higginson was not agonizing over the fate to which he had unknowingly subjected a number of anonymous black men, but was, rather, agonizing over the fate to which he had unknowingly subjected one particular named white friend: “…if I thought I were knowingly sending Brown in the way of certain death.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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he also would be greeted by a hailing crowd of his fellow citizens.)57

July 7: P.M.–To Great Meadows. P. Hutchinson says he once found a wood duck’s nest in a hollow maple by Heywood’s meadow (now by railroad), and tried to get the young as soon as hatched, but they were gone too soon for him. On the first, or westerly, part of the Great Meadows, i. e. the firmer parts and the bank, I find, mixed with sedges of different kinds, much red-top (coloring the surface extensively), fowl-meadow (just begun to bloom and of a purplish lead-color, taller than the red-top), the slender purple-spiked panic, Agrostis (perennans? or scabra??). In the wet, or main, part, beside various other sedges,–as [CAREX] stellulata, lanuginosa, stricta, etc., etc.,–wool-grass, now in flower, a sedge (apparently C. ampullacea var. utriculata toward Holbrook’s) thicker-culmed than wool-grass, but softer and not round, with fertile spikes often three inches long, and slender. A great part of the meadow is covered with, I think, either this or wood grass (not in flower). I am not certain which prevails, but I think wool-grass, which does not flower. Also, mixed with these and lower, dulichium, Eleocharis palustris, etc., etc. [Vide back, June 16th.] First notice pontederia out; also tephrosia, how long?

57. We know definitely that Oberlin College preparatory student John Anderson Copeland, Jr. did not go to jail with the other rescuers. The rumor was that he had escorted John Price to Canada and was staying there with his adopted sister. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The note of the bobolink has begun to sound rare? Do not young nighthawks run pretty soon after being hatched? I hear of their being gone very soon. Bathing at Barrett’s Bay, I find it to be composed in good part of sawdust, mixed with sand. There is a narrow channel on each side, deepest on the south. The potamogeton is eight feet long there in eighteen inches of water. I learn from measuring on Baldwin’s second map that the river (i. e. speaking of that part below Framingham) is much the straightest in the lower part of its course, or from Ball’s Hill to the Dam. It winds most in the broad meadows. The greatest meander is in the Sudbury meadows. From upper end of Sudbury Canal to Sherman’s Bridge direct is 558 rods (1 mile 238 rods); by thread of river, 1000 rods (3 miles 40 rods), or nearly twice as far. But, though meandering, it is straighter in its general course than would be believed. These nearly twenty-three miles in length (or 16+ direct) are contained within a breadth of two miles twenty-six rods; i. e., so much it takes to meander in. It can be plotted by the scale of one thousand feet to an inch on a sheet of paper seven feet one and one quarter inches long by eleven inches wide. The deep and lake-like are the straightest reaches. The straightest reach within these limits above Ball’s Hill is from Fair Haven Pond to Clamshell Hill. I observed in Maine that the dam at the outlet of Chesuncook Lake, some twenty miles off, had raised the water so as to kill the larches on the Umbazookskus extensively. They were at least four or five miles up the Umbazookskus.

July 10, Sunday: Martin Robison Delany arrived on shores of Liberia at Cape Palmas.

July 10: Water ten and a half inches above summer level. 8 A.M.–Take boat at Fair Haven Pond and paddle up to Sudbury Causeway, sounding the river. To-day, like yesterday, is very hot, with a blue haze concealing the mountains and hills, looking like hot dust in the air. Hearing a noise, I look up and see a pigeon woodpecker pursued by a kingbird, and the former utters loud shrieks with fear. Paddling through the wild Sudbury meadows, I am struck with the regularity with which the phalanxes of bulrushes (Scirpus lacustris) occur. They do not grow in a continuous line, like pipes or pontederia, but in small isolated patches. At each bend, though it does not appear on Baldwin’s map, there is a bay-like expansion of the liver, now half emerged, thus:–

where the more stagnant water has deposited mud, and in each such place, with remarkable regularity, a phalanx of bulrushes presents itself as you ascend. It occasionally occupies a corresponding place as you descend, and also intermediate shores of a similar character. Yet it so constantly occurs in just this position as to be remarkable. It is not very common along our river, being mainly confined to the larger and wilder meadows,– at any rate to the expansions, be they larger or smaller. These phalanxes are from one to three or more rods wide, and the rush is of a glaucous green, very interesting with its shafts slanting different ways. At one bend, especially, grows–and I have not noticed it elsewhere except in this meadow–the great Scirpus fluviatilis (how long out?). Yet the leaves are not so roughish nor so long as described. The Arundo Phragmites is not nearly out, though quite tall. Spartina cynosuroides well out. The green pipes border the stream for long distances. The high water of the last month has left a whitish scum on the grass. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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We scare up eight or a dozen wood ducks, already about grown. The meadow is quite alive with them. What was that peculiar loud note from some invisible water-fowl near the Concord line? Any kind of plover? or clapper rail? H. Buttrick says he has shot a meadow-hen much larger than the small one here. I hear in the ridge the peculiar notes of, I think, the meadow-hen,–same e. g. [SIC] where I got an egg and nest. The young are probably running there. Often hear it in the great Sudbury meadow. See many young birds now,–blackbirds, swallows, kingbirds, etc., in the air. Even hear one link from a bobolink. I notice at Bittern Cliff that the sparganium floats upstream, probably because the wind has blown thus.

The bottom of Fair Haven Pond is very muddy. I can generally thrust a pole down three feet into it, and it may be very much deeper. Young pouts are an inch long, and in some ditch s left high and dry and dead with the old. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 14, Thursday: M. Jean-François Gravelot, “The Great Blondin,” again did his tightrope stunt above the Niagara Falls:

July 14: P.M.–Sounded river from Ball’s Hill (i. e. off Squaw [?] Harbor) to Atkins’s boat-house corner. The river, in all the above distance, nowhere washes the base of an isolated (i. e. to except long, lowish hillbanks like Clamshell, etc.) steep hill, without a greater depth off it. The average depth between Sudbury Causeway and Atkins’s boat-house bend at wall, or for fifteen miles two hundred and eighty-two rods, is eight and one eighth feet. There extends from Tarbell Hill to Skelton Bend what I will call the Straight Reach, a mile and a third long and quite straight. This is the finest water view, making the greatest impression of size, of any that I know on the river. It is very broad, deep, and clear of weeds. Average depth 11+ feet (and at highest water some 19 feet). The bottom is almost everywhere muddy. No weeds in the middle. Measuring on the plan by Baldwin, it is three to four hundred feet wide. The depth is also very uniform, varying but little (in the thread) from the average 11+ (except a deep hole and channel at the commencement off Tarbell Hill). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Yesterday (the 13th) Frank Adams brought me a bird’s nest and egg from an apple tree near the road by Addison Fay’s house. He says it was about twelve feet high in the tree, and it appears to have been in a fork. The nest is most like a kingbird’s, or a stout, thick cherry-bird’s, or even a very thick tanager’s, or a purple finch’s half as large again as usual. The egg is the size and form of the phoebe’s, but blue-white. The nest is three inches high and five inches wide outside, two inches deep and two and a half wide inside; composed of coarse stubble, strings, coarse root-fibre, etc., externally, and neatly lined with fine withered grass. The egg is pale blue-white, four tenths of an inch long by three tenths wide at the larger end, being broad at one end like a phoebe’s. Can it be a cherry-bird’s without spots and of the form described by Wilson? He also has a very large cuckoo’s egg, which again makes me suspect that we have the yellow-billed cuckoo.

July 22, Friday: Seth Ford swam across the Niagara River from a location north of the always-deadly American Falls, to the Canadian shoreline.

The Hawthornes had returned from Italy to England, where they would remain for approximately a year. On this date they arrived at the resort Redcar on the coast of Yorkshire, where Nathaniel Hawthorne would work on his manuscript for TRANSFORMATION, or THE MARBLE FAUN.

July 22: Start just before 8 A M. and sail to the Falls of Concord River. Water 21+ inches above summer level. A southwest wind rises and blows us rapidly along. We are early enough to see the light reflected from the sides of the gyrating water-bugs. Heard from a bittern above the factory yesterday, too large for the small one and too small, perhaps, for the large one, a peculiar hoarse, grating note, lazily uttered,–a bittern’s croak,–at 1 P.M., as it flew over the meadows,–a sound perfectly becoming the bird, far as possible from music. Some have just begun to get the hay on our Great Meadows. The peetweet, our only beach-bird, teeters along the shore, reminding me that this is an arm of the ocean stream. At Hill’s Bridge we begin to find ourselves shut in by hills, and the character of the shores is fairly changed. There is very little meadow along the stream henceforward, but commonly a firm bank and pastures and cultivated fields–corn and potatoes–down to the shore, for it is commonly a firm shore, though it may be subject to inundation. The shores are still uninhabited,–the road being remote,–especially on the west side, and in the neighborhood of Middle Bridge we find ourselves off the middle of Billerica, the quiet town, and see its rural spire rising above the trees. Many handsome elm-tops and groves of elms are visible in Billerica. There is a fine grove of elms about the first house of the Atkins boat-house. Jug Island is a peculiar one, the only one of the kind that I know in the river,–except the small one at Falls,–firm and rocky, not made by the river, with deep water about it, especially on the east side, always separated from the shore, rising to a considerable height above the surface,–a part of the adjacent rocky range cut off by the river. The interval becomes more and more narrow and sandy or firm below this island and range of hills, and you see red-top and corn on it and woods. For the last mile above the Falls the river becomes rocky, the rocks gradually increasing in number, until at the Falls its bed is crowded with them. Some of the rocks are curiously water-worn. They are, as usual in our black river, almost as black as ink,–the parts much submerged,–and I notice that bricks and white crockery on the bottom acquire the same color from the water, as if painted black. The water of this river is a black paint-brush which coats all things with fast colors. Rocks half a dozen feet in diameter which were originally of the usual lumpish form

are worn thus HDT WHAT? INDEX

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by the friction of the pebbles, etc., washed against them by the stream at high water. Several of them have this peculiar sheaf-like form; and black as ink. But, though evidently worn into this form by the rush of water, they are by no means worn smooth, but are as rough as a grater, such being their composition. These are just above the Fordway. There are two pleasant old houses near the Fordway on the east side. I was surprised to see on the upright sides of these rocks, one or two feet above the present water, very distinct white spots, looking like white paint across the river.

Examining, I found them to be three fourths to one inch in diameter of an oval or circular form; the white coating spreading on to the rock in an irregular fringe like the feet of an insect, increasing their resemblance to a bug, and they were raised one eighth or one tenth of an inch and finely dotted with the contained ova, reminding me of coins,–shaped like bugs or coins,–and I at first bent to read the inscriptions as if they were a work of art.

They were full of ova with much water in them or other liquid. [Vide August 8th.] Subtracting two and a quarter inches, I find the water at the Fordway, west side, two and one fourth feet deep, but generally not quite two feet. Apparently the stream has been cleared of rocks and deepened on the westerly side at the Falls. At the narrowest place, where there is a willow in the middle, there is a clear channel on the west about thirty-five feet wide and four and a quarter feet deep (at deepest), or to the willow thirty-eight and a quarter feet, to opposite shore fifty- four feet more, and about two feet deep at deepest, with many rocks; in all say ninety-two feet. We lunched about 12 o’clock (having got to the Falls about eleven), sitting on the largest rocky islet there, which, as I remember, may have been four to six rods long, but though it was not six feet above the water, if so much, there was no trace of the water ever having washed over it. Indeed, I think it does not rise more than five feet there ever, to judge from appearances. The obvious water-marks were about four feet above the present water. On this rock were dense trees and bushes, grass and soil, etc., etc., only five feet above the present surface and evidently not disturbed by water or ice. In the very midst of the Falls, on the rocky ridge where is some earth, only a foot or two above the water, grows the nesaea, as also abundantly on the sides. The hibiscus is very common along the neighboring shores. When I was here a month ago, the water being high, the current was very strong here, so that I could not paddle, perhaps could not have rowed a boat against it at the narrowest place; but now I can paddle against it there, and easily push about anywhere. When the water is high, then, it is strong and hard to resist at all falls and rapids. Now there is not so much of a rush as at the bridge near the powder-mills. The shores at the Falls are firm and rocky, though for the most part covered densely with bushes,–maples, alders, grape-vines, cat-briars, etc. There is no space for the river to expand in, and it is withal very much contracted in capacity by the rocks in it. Its bed is more or less strewn with rocks for some sixty rods, the largest forming rocky isles with soil and bushes and trees on them, though only some five or maybe six (?) feet high. There is water six and a half feet deep between the Fordway and the narrowest place below. I was surprised to see on the rocks, densely covering them, though only in the midst of the fall, where was the swiftest water, a regular seaweed, growing just like rockweed and of the same olive-green color, –“Podostemon Ceratophyllum, River-weed,”– still in bloom, though chiefly gone to seed. Gray says it is “attached to loose stones,” and Torrey says it “adheres to pebbles,” but here it covered the rocks under water in the swiftest place only, and was partly uncovered by the fall of the water. I found, in what I gathered, a little pout which had taken refuge in it. Though the botanist, in obedience to his rules, puts it among phaenogamous plants, I should not hesitate to associate it with the rockweed. It is the rockweed of our river. I have never seen it elsewhere in the river, though possibly it grows at the factory or other swift places. It seemed as if our river had there for a moment anticipated the sea, suffered a sea-change, mimicked the great ocean stream. I did not see it a few rods HDT WHAT? INDEX

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above or below, where the water is more sluggish. So far as I know, then, it grows only in the swiftest water, and there is only one place, and that the Falls, in Concord River where it can grow. Gray only speaks of it as growing at “the bottom of shallow streams,” Torrey says “at the bottom of shallow pebbly streams,” and Bigelow only says it is attached to stones at the bottom. Yet apparently our sluggish river is only a stream, and sufficiently like ordinary rippling streams to admit of its growth at this one spot. A careless observer might confound it with the rockweed of the sea. It covers the rocks in exactly the same manner, and when I tore it off, it brought more or less of the thin, scaly surface of the rocks with it. It is a foretaste of the sea. It is very interesting and remarkable that at this one point we have in our river a plant which so perfectly represents the rockweed of the seashore. This is from four to eight or nine inches long. It has the peculiar strong fresh-water scent. The west end of Hill’s Bridge is (upper side of planking) eight feet eleven inches above summer level, under side of string-piece seven feet eight inches. I cannot hear that it ever rises on to this bridge, but there is a good deal of fresh drift stuff on the top of the abutment under the string-piece at seven feet eight inches above summer level, apparently washed on in the spring. The upper side of planking at east end is about nine feet eight inches above summer level. At Turnpike Bridge the water has apparently washed away a part of the abutment some seven and a half feet above summer level. At Middle Bridge, judging from water-marks on the piers, I should think the water might have risen there seven feet seven inches (more or less) above summer level, i. e. up to the timber which rests crosswise on the piers, twenty-two inches below top of planks. A carpenter who lives (?) at Billerica Corner says the water stood all around the nearest inhabited two-story house to the bridge last spring, so that you could go round it in a boat. (It is the opposite side the road to the river.) I think that this proves a rise here of at least seven feet above summer level and perhaps more. Therefore, as far as my observation goes, the rise of the river last spring from Sherman’s Bridge to Billerica Corner Bridge was very uniform and to about the same height above summer level, but it must fall off rapidly two or three feet or more at the Falls. I see neither of the small islands which are on Baldwin’s map below the Atkins house. It is a question if the river has as much created the shoal places as found them. The shallowest place in all the river above described also from Pelham Pond–is at the Fordway above the Falls, where it is not two and a half [FEET] at deepest to-day, and generally only two feet, with a hard bottom and numerous rocks in its bed. It is quite fordable in a carriage. The weediest place is at the Sudbury causeway. The most of a sand-bar visibly formed or forming is Barrett’s Bar. If a large piece of meadow should lodge on this, it would help make an island of it rapidly. The deepest and broadest place is in Fair Haven Pond. I think that the river proper is nowhere so wide as in some parts between Squaw [?] Harbor and Skelton Bend. The presence or absence of weeds at a given shallowness is a good gauge of the rapidity of the current. At the Fordway they do not grow where it is only two feet on an average, owing to the swiftness of the current (as well as stoniness), and in the very swiftest and narrowest part of the Falls occurs one species, the podostemon, which I have not found in any other part of the river. The muddiest are the most stagnant parts. The hibiscus and white maple do not occur on the main stream for a long distance above the mouth of the Assabet, maybe ten miles. It is remarkable how the river, even from its very source to its mouth, runs with great bends or zigzags regularly recurring and including many smaller ones, first northerly, then northeasterly, growing more and more simple and direct as it descends, like a tree; as if a mighty current had once filled the valley of the river, and meandered in it according to the same law that this small stream does in its own meadows. A river of this character can hardly be said to fall at all: it rather runs over the extremity of its trough, being filled to overflowing. Its only fall at present (above the Falls and this side Framingham) is like the fall produced by a dam, the dam being in this case the bottom in a shallow. If, after flowing twenty miles, all the water has got to rise as high as it was when it started, or rather if it has got to pass over a bottom which is as high as that was where it started, it cannot be said to have gained anything or have fallen at all. It has not got down to a lower level. You do not produce a fall in the channel or bottom of a trough by cutting a notch in its edge. The bottom may lose as much as the surface gains. Rocks which are covered by freshets a week or more will have lichens on them, as that on my old plan just below the Hemlocks. If our river had been dry a thousand years, it would be difficult to guess even where its channel had been without a spirit level. I should expect to find water-worn stones and a few muddy pools and small swamps. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 17, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed for Rufus Morse in Lincoln. The land was near Hosmer-Moore land. According to the FARRAR BOOK OF HOUSES, some of it had belonged to Thomas Goble in 1640.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. found that, to Californians at least, he was a famous man.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: August 17th. The customs of California are free; and any person who knows about my book speaks to me. The newspapers have announced the arrival of the veteran pioneer of all. I hardly walk out without meeting or making acquaintances. I have already been invited to deliver the anniversary oration before the Pioneer Society, to celebrate the settlement of San Francisco. Any man is qualified for election into the society who came to California before 1853. What moderns they are! I tell them of the time when Richardson’s shanty of 1835– not his adobe house of 1836– was the only human habitation between the Mission and the Presidio, and when the vast bay, with all its tributaries and recesses, was a solitude,– and yet I am but little past forty years of age. They point out the place where Richardson’s adobe house stood, and tell me that the first court and first town council were convened in it, the first Protestant worship performed in it, and in it the first capital trial by the Vigilance Committee held. I am taken down to the wharves, by antiquaries of a ten or twelve years’ range, to identify the two points, now known as Clark’s and Rincon, which formed the little cove of Yerba Buena, where we used to beach our boats,– now filled up and built upon. The island we called “Wood Island,” where we spent the cold days and nights of December, in our launch, getting wood for our year’s supply, is clean shorn of trees; and the bare rocks of Alcatraz Island, an entire fortress. I have looked at the city from the water and islands from the city, but I can see nothing that recalls the times gone by, except the venerable Mission, the ruinous Presidio, the high hills in the rear of the town, and the great stretches of the bay in all directions. To-day I took a California horse of the old style,– the run, the loping gait,– and visited the Presidio. The walls stand as they did, with some changes made to accommodate a small garrison of United States troops. It has a noble situation, and I saw from it a clipper ship of the very largest class, coming through the Gate, under her fore-and-aft sails. Thence I rode to the Fort, now nearly finished, on the southern shore of the Gate, and made an inspection of it. It is very expensive and of the latest style. One of the engineers here is Custis Lee, who has just left West Point at the head of his class,– a son of Colonel Robert E. Lee, who distinguished himself in the Mexican War. Another morning I ride to the Mission Dolores. It has a strangely solitary aspect, enhanced by its surroundings of the most uncongenial, rapidly growing modernisms; the hoar of ages surrounded by the brightest, slightest, and rapidest of modern growths. Its old belfries still clanged with the discordant HDT WHAT? INDEX

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bells, and Mass was saying within, for it is used as a place of worship for the extreme south part of the city. In one of my walks about the wharves, I found a pile of dry hides lying by the side of a vessel. Here was something to feelingly persuade me what I had been, to recall a past scarce credible to myself. I stood lost in reflection. What were these hides– what were they not?– to us, to me, a boy, twenty-four years ago? These were our constant labor, our chief object, our almost habitual thought. They brought us out here, they kept us here, and it was only by getting them that we could escape from the coast and return to home and civilized life. If it had not been that I might be seen, I should have seized one, slung it over my head, walked off with it, and thrown it by the old toss– I do not believe yet a lost art– to the ground. How they called up to my mind the months of curing at San Diego, the year and more of beach and surf work, and the steering of the ship for home! I was in a dream of San Diego, San Pedro,– with its hills so steep for taking up goods, and its stones so hard to our bare feet,– and the cliffs of San Juan! All this, too, is no more! The entire hide-business is of the past, and to the present inhabitants of California a dim tradition. The gold discoveries drew off all men from the gathering or cure of hides, the inflowing population made an end of the great droves of cattle; and now not a vessel pursues the– I was about to say dear– the dreary once hated business of gathering hides upon the coast, and the beach of San Diego is abandoned and its hide- houses have disappeared. Meeting a respectable-looking citizen on the wharf, I inquired of him how the hide-trade was carried on. “O,” said he, “there is very little of it, and that is all here. The few that are brought in are placed under sheds in winter, or left out on the wharf in summer, and are loaded from the wharves into the vessels alongside. They form parts of cargoes of other materials.” I really felt too much, at the instant, to express to him the cause of my interest in the subject, and only added, “Then the old business of trading up and down the coast and curing hides for cargoes is all over?” “O yes, sir,” said he, “those old times of the Pilgrim and Alert and California, that we read about, are gone by.”

August 17, Wednesday: Frost in low ground this morning. That was purple grass which I saw to-day. I see also the saw-grass in the shorn fields. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 16, Thursday: Henry Thoreau surveyed some land on Bedford Road near P.J. Sexton and J.B. Moore (this would not be Jacob Bailey Moore of New Hampshire because he had died in San Francisco in 1853), for Waldo Emerson. His fee was $2.00.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/385.htm

September 16. Another and severer frost, which cut off all our vines, etc., lespedeza, corn, etc. P. M.–By the roadside, forty or fifty rods east of the South Acton station, I find the Aster Novae-Angliae, apparently past prime. I must call it a plant of this vicinity, then. I thought it “in prime or a little past” at Salem, September 21, 1858. I will venture to put it with the A. punlceus. Young Nealy says that there are blue-winged teal about now. Others are out after ducks. Nealy says he shot the first golden plover he has seen, this morning. [Does he know it??]58 How unpromising are promising men! Hardly any disgust me so much. I have no faith in them. They make gratuitous promises, and they break them gratuitously. When an Irishwoman tells me that she wouldn’t tell a lie for her life (because I appear to doubt her), it seems to me that she has already told a lie. She holds herself and the truth very cheap to say that so easily. What troubles men lay up for want of a little energy and precision! A man who steps quickly to his mark leaves a great deal of filth behind. There’s many a well-meaning fellow who thinks he has a hard time of it who will not put his shoulder to the wheel, being spell-bound, – who sits about, as if he were hatching his good intentions, and every now and then his friends get up a subscription for him, and he is cursed with the praise of being “a clever fellow.” It would really be worth his while to go straight to his master the devil, if he would only shake him up when he got there. Men who have not learned the value of time, or of anything else; for whom an infant 58. This “Young Nealy” (Edward Nealy or Neally or Nealey), would eventually be buried beneath an Indian grindstone which he would allege he and Thoreau had found together. There seems, however, to be a lack of evidence as to said grindstone: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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school and a birchen rod is still and forever necessary. A man who is not prompt affects me as a creature covered with slime, crawling through mud and lying dormant a great part of the year. Think of the numbers –men and women– who want and will have and do have (how do they get it?!) what they will not earn! The non-producers. How many of these bloodsuckers there are fastened to every helpful man or woman in this world! They constitute this world. It is a world full of snivelling prayers, – whose very religion is a prayer! As if beggars were admirable, were respectable, to anybody! Again and again I am surprised to observe what an interval there is, in what is called civilized life, between the shell and the inhabitant of the shell, – what a disproportion there is between the life of man and his conveniences and luxuries. The house is neatly painted, has many apartments. You are shown into the sitting-room, where is a carpet and couch and mirror and splendidly bound Bible, daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, photographs of the whole family even, on the mantelpiece. One could live here more deliciously and improve his divine gifts better than in a cave surely. In the bright and costly saloon man will not be starving or freezing or contending with vermin surely, but he will be meditating a divine song or a heroic deed, or perfuming the atmosphere by the very breath of his natural and healthy existence. As the parlor is preferable to the cave, so will the life of its occupant be more godlike than that of the dweller in the cave. I called at such a house this afternoon, the house of one who in Europe would be called an operative. The woman was not in the third heavens, but in the third kitchen, as near the wood-shed or to outdoors and to the cave as she could instinctively get, for there she belonged, – a coarse scullion or wench, not one whit superior, but in fact inferior, to the squaw in a wigwam, – and the master of the house, where was he? He was drunk somewhere, on some mow or behind some stack, and I could not see him. He had been having a spree. If he had been as sober as he may be to-morrow, it would have been essentially the same; for refinement is not in him, it is only in his house, – in the appliances which he did not invent. So is it in the Fifth Avenue and all over the civilized world. There is nothing but confusion in our New England life. The hogs are in the parlor. This man and his wife –and how many like them!– should have sucked their claws in some hole in a rock, or lurked like gypsies in the outbuildings of some diviner race. They’ve got into the wrong boxes; they rained down into these houses by mistake, as it is said to rain toads sometimes. They wear these advantages helter-skelter and without appreciating them, or to satisfy a vulgar taste, just as savages wear the dress of civilized men, just as that Indian chief walked the streets of New Orleans clad in nothing but a gaudy military coat which his Great Father had given him. Some philanthropists trust that the houses will civilize the inhabitants at last. The mass of men, just like savages, strive always after the outside, the clothes and finery of civilized life, the blue beads and tinsel and centre-tables. It is a wonder that any load ever gets moved, men are so prone to put the cart before the horse. We do everything according to the fashion, just as the Flatheads flatten the heads of their children. We conform ourselves in a myriad ways and with infinite pains to the fashions of our time. We mourn for our lost relatives according to fashion, and as some nations hire professed mourners to howl, so we hire stone-masons to hammer and blast by the month and so express our grief. Or if a public character dies, we get up a regular wake with eating and drinking till midnight. Grasshoppers have been very abundant in dry fields for two or three weeks. Sophia walked through the Depot Field a fortnight ago, and when she got home picked fifty or sixty from her skirts, – for she wore hoops and crinoline. Would not this be a good way to clear a field of them, – to send a bevy of fashionably dressed ladies across a field and leave them to clean their skirts when they get home? It would supplant anything at the patent office, and the motive power is cheap. I am invited to take some party of ladies or gentlemen on an excursion, –to walk or sail, or the like,– but by all kinds of evasions I omit it, and am thought to be rude and unaccommodating therefore. They do not consider that the wood-path and the boat are my studio, where I maintain a sacred solitude and cannot admit promiscuous company. I will see them occasionally in an evening or at the table, however. They do not think of taking a child away from its school to go a-huckleberrying with them. Why should not I, then, have my school and school hours to be respected? Ask me for a certain number of dollars if you will, but do not ask me for my afternoons. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At about this point in time (which is to say, mid-month), Martin Robison Delany was sailing along the coast of Africa toward Lagos. He would be spending five weeks there.

At about this point in time, also, the handsome John E. Cook was reconnoitering Harpers Ferry on behalf of Captain John Brown’s guerrillas, when he hailed the debonair local plantation owner and slavemaster Lewis W. Washington on the street: “I believe you have a great many interesting relics at your house; could I have permission to see them if I should walk out someday?”

Cook was of course aware, as everyone was aware, that this Washington was a descendant of the General/ President George Washington as well as a special assistant to Henry A. Wise, the Governor of Virginia. When Cook would visit the Washington plantation a few days later, he would be especially fascinated by the neato pistol presented to General Washington by the Marquis de Lafayette after the Revolution, enough so as to inquire whether it shot well, and by the neato ceremonial sword which had been presented to General HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Washington by none other than Frederick the Great of Prussia.

<__ George Washington’s sword (in the famous Leutze painting).

October 29, Saturday: Henry Thoreau lotted off, for John Hosmer, a 33-acre woodlot near the Union Turnpike (now Elm Street). The neighbors are shown as Dennis, A. [Andrew, son of Edmund??] Hosmer, and E. Wood. Thoreau would later record his bill for $7.00 as “not paid.”

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/64.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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[THOREAU WOULD MAKE NO ENTRIES IN HIS JOURNAL FOR OCTOBER 29, 30, and 31] HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1860

The widowed Mrs. Mary Peabody Mann and her four sons moved out of “The Wayside” so it could be reoccupied by Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family as they returned from their extended stay in Europe. They would be living again in this Concord home until the widowed Mrs. Hawthorne would take her two daughters and son abroad again in October 1868. The Hawthornes’ neighbors were the Alcotts, since they had purchased the Orchard House (previously referred to as the Moore house) next door.

During this year Henry Thoreau surveyed the property:

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/51a.htm

January 29, Sunday: The sermon of the Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway celebrated the birthday of Thomas Paine (this would be distributed in the form of a pamphlet by the Office of THE DIAL: A MONTHLY MAGAZINE FOR LITERATURE, PHILOSOPHY, AND RELIGION in Cincinnati, Ohio). READ THIS PAMPHLET

Jan. 29. Colder than before, and not a cloud in the sky to-day.

P.M.—To Fair Haven Pond and return via Andromeda Ponds and railroad. Half an inch or more of snow fell last night, the ground being half bare before. It was a snow of small flakes not star-shaped. As usual, I now see, walking on the river and river-meadow ice, thus thinly covered with the fresh snow, that conical rainbow, or parabola of rainbow-colored reflections, from the myriad reflecting crystals of the snow, i.e., as I walk toward the sun,—

always a little in advance of me, of course, angle of reflection being equal to that of incidence. To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines.

Not only the Indian, but many wild birds and quadrupeds and insects, welcomed the apple tree to these shores. As it grew apace, the bluebird, robin, cherrybird, kingbird, and many more came with a rush and built their nests in it, and so became orchard-birds. The woodpecker found such a savory morsel under its bark that he perforated it in a ring quite round the tree, a thing he had never done before. It did not take the partridge [Ruffed Grouse Bonasa umbellus (Partridge)] long to find out how sweet its buds were, and every winter day she flew and still flies from the wood to pluck them, much to the farmer’s sorrow. The rabbit too was not slow to learn the taste of its twigs and bark. The owl crept into the first one that became hollow, and fairly hooted with delight, finding it just the place for him. He settled down into it, and has remained there ever since. The lackey caterpillar saddled her eggs on the very first twig that was formed, and it has since divided her affections with the wild cherry; and the canker-worm also in a measure abandoned the elm to feed on it. And when the fruit was ripe, the squirrel half carried, half rolled, it to his hole, and even the musquash crept up the bank and greedily devoured it; and when it was frozen and thawed, the crow and jay did not disdain to peck it. And the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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beautiful wood duck, having made up her mind to stay a while longer with us, has concluded that there is no better place for her too.

In order to obtain evidence, that the River Meadow Association needed for use against the Middlesex Canal Corporation in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (they were accused of having deliberately elevated the waters of the river system above the dams which fed water into their canal, in such manner as to have caused damage to river meadows belonging to others),59 Thoreau made a chart of all the bridges along 22.15 miles of the Concord and Sudbury Rivers from East Sudbury to Billerica. He utilized Loammi Baldwin’s 2d map, of May 1834, which had been surveyed and drawn originally by B.F. Perham and which Thoreau had analyzed and brought up to date during his July 1859 river soundings.

March 27, 28, 31, and April: Henry Thoreau surveyed the Snelling Farm in South Lincoln of Edward Sherman Hoar.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail:

59. Note that the Middlesex Canal itself had had to be abandoned in 1853 due to its inability to compete economically with the new rail system, and that whatever business this shell corporation was doing was in the genre of water supply for power, water level regulation, etc. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/53.htm

This farm was very near Mount Misery, James Baker’s houselot, Garfield, and Frederic Hayden. On the back of this survey is written “Snelling Far, So. Lincoln” meaning “Snelling farm in South Lincoln.”

[Lewis Hayden happens to have been a black leader in downtown Boston, an escapee from Kentucky. Does that mean that this “Frederic Hayden,” mentioned here and nowhere else in this database, was likewise black?]

April: Early in this month, Lydia Maria Child’s tract THE PATRIARCHAL INSTITUTION, AS DESCRIBED BY MEMBERS OF ITS OWN FAMILY and THE RIGHT WAY, THE SAFE WAY, PROVED BY EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES was printed and ready for distribution. She mailed off the first 1,000 copies to every Southerner whose name and address she could ascertain, as well as all the members of the US Congress, and to every governor and judge listed in the AMERICAN ALMANAC.

Completing work that began in April 1850, Henry Thoreau surveyed land on Lexington Road for John B. Moore. This was the site of the home of Dr. Prescott of Revolutionary War fame. Moore was purchasing and draining swampland for farming. The February 1853 survey shows land sold to Ephriam Wales Bull, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott, and Charles B. Davis. The land stretched over the hill to Bedford Road and as far HDT WHAT? INDEX

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east as the Merriam land on the Old Bedford Road. (The entire parcel would be sold at auction on May 10th.)

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/94b.htm

Thoreau testified for one last day in court in Boston, during this month, in the continuing case of his aunts Aunt Maria Thoreau and Aunt Jane Thoreau vs. the spite fence that had been erected by Eliza Pallies.60

HENRY’S RELATIVES

60. This case had been before the court since June 1858. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 19, Thursday: At the annual celebration of the Lexington / Concord fight, the reputed patriotic poetaster and favorite son Samuel Ripley Bartlett raised questions as to the adequacy of the current generation of patriots: Oh! Can it be that we degenerate sons, False to our blood that from such sources runs, Have ceased to pray by word, by deed, by thought; Base heirs to glory which our Fathers bought? PATRIOTS’ DAY But on second though the poet recognized that the current generation of patriots would be adequate to this task:61 Here still in Concord sleeps the ancient force; Here rebels wild, fanatics fierce, we find, Who war against a tyranny more dread Than that of old, the thraldom of the mind. What the old spirit dead? No, No! — it lives.

OLD NORTH BRIDGE

April 19, Surveying J.B. Moore’s farm.62

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/94a.htm

Hear the field sparrow sing on his dry upland, it being a warm day, and see the small butterfly hovering over the dry leaves. Toward night, hear a partridge [Ruffed Grouse Bonasa umbellus (Partridge)] drum. You will hear at first a single beat or two far apart and have time to say, “There is a partridge,” so distinct and deliberate is it often, before it becomes a rapid roll. CURRENT YOUTUBE VIDEO Part of the Bedford road in Moore’s swamp had settled a few days ago so much more that the water was six inches deep over it, when they proceeded to cart on more sand; and about the 17th, when they had carted on considerable, half a dozen rods in length suddenly sank before their eyes, and only water and sand was seen where the road had been. One said that the water was six feet deep over the road. It certainly was four or five. The road was laid out fifty feet wide, and without this, one ach side, a broad ditch had been dug, thus:—

As I calculate, at least ten feet in thickness of sand have been placed on this swamp, and the firm mud could not 61. Do you suppose he was speaking of our Henry? –Or was he merely speaking for himself? 62. Captain John Brooks Moore, son of Abel Moore and Ruth Moore born February 18, 1817, had gotten married with Sarah Augusta Hunt of Concord on February 20, 1840 and then, after her death, her sister Almira Caroline Hunt. In 1852, according to the Middlesex Agricultural Society, he had in addition to grapes and vegetables grown 20 varieties of pears and 30 of apples. He would become the sheriff of the county, and would die on August 21, 1887.

At 1P.M. on May 10, Thursday, 1860 at the office of the Old State House in Boston, the firm of N.A. Thompson & Co. would auction Thoreau’s plan of John B. Moore’s farm in Concord, showing his farmland and the owners of the land that abutted his, oriented with true north at upper left, as a 17-inch by 25-inch document printed on cloth: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/94b.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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have been less than a dozen more. The weight of the sand has now at last pressed down the mud and broken through it, causing the sides to turn up suddenly, i.e., a thickness of six feet or more to turn, indeed, completely over and bottom side up on to the middle of the road a part of the way. The weight of sand suddenly jerked this tremendous weight of mud right back on to the road, bottom up.

The evening of the 21st a few rods more, with the culvert, went down, so that it was full four feet under water, making some seven or eight rods in all. Up to about the 17th it had settled gradually, but then it sank instantly some five feet. This shows that the weight of sand had burst through the mud, and that therefore it must have been comparatively liquid beneath. Perhaps it was water. In the deepest part of many a seemingly firm swamp which is cultivated, there is an exceedingly thin and liquid mud, or perhaps water. Here was probably once a pond, which has filled up and grown over, but still a relic of it survives deep under the mud in the deepest part. There are thus the relics of ponds concealed deep under the surface, where they are little suspected, perchance, as under cleared and cultivated swamps or under roads and culverts. The two walls of the culvert must have been ten or twelve feet high, of heavy rocks, and yet they had not broken through in all this time till now!

April 30, Monday: Fort Defiance was besieged by some thousand red warriors. Defy this, white man!

Henry Thoreau made a quick sketch for Waldo Emerson of the 5 acres 56 rods on the south edge of Walden Pond that burned “last March.” His sketch shows the railroad and “fence” to the west of the pond.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/36.htm

April 30. Cattle begin to go up-country, and every week day, especially Mondays, to this time [SIC] May 7th [And 14th; thereafter few.], at least, the greatest droves to-day. Methinks they will find slender picking up there for a while. Now many a farmer’s boy makes his first journey, and sees something to tell of,—makes acquaintance with those hills which are mere blue warts in his horizon, finds them solid and terra firma, after all, and inhabited by herdsmen, partially be fenced and measurable by the acre, with cool springs where you may quench your thirst after a dusty day’s walk. Surveying Emerson’s wood-lot to see how much was burned near the end of March, I find that what I anticipated is exactly true,—that the fire did not burn hard on the northern slopes, there being then frost in the ground, and where the bank was very steep, say at angle of forty-five degrees, which was the case with more than a quarter of an acre, it did not run down at all, though no man hindered it. That fire in the woods in Groton on the 27th, which was seen so far, so very dun and extensive the smoke, so that you looked to see the flames too, proves what slight burnings it is, comparatively, that we commonly see making these cloud-like or bluish smokes in the horizon, and also how very far off they may often be. Those whitish columns of smoke which we see from the hills, and count so many of at once, are probably often fifty HDT WHAT? INDEX

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or sixty miles off or more. I can now believe what I have read of a traveller making such a signal on the slope of the Rocky Mountains a hundred miles off, to save coming back to his party. Yet, strange to say, I did not see the smoke of the still larger fire between Concord and Acton in March at all, I being in Lincoln and outdoors all the time. This Groton fire did not seem much further off than a fire in Walden Woods, and, as I believe and hear, in each town the inhabitants supposed it to be in the outskirts of their own township.

May 10, Thursday: At 1P.M. at the office of the Old State House in Boston, the firm of N.A. Thompson & Co. auctioned Henry Thoreau’s survey plan of John B. Moore’s farm in Concord prepared on April 19th, showing his farmland and the owners of the land that abutted his, oriented with true north at upper left, as a 17-inch by 25-inch document printed on cloth:

http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/94b.htm

Theodore Parker died in Firenze, Italy, not quite 50 years of age.

Here is a remark by the Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway: From many censorious lips came the homage to Parker’s dust which had been denied in his living presence. AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II Here is the Reverend’s reverent obituary as it would appear in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly: THEODORE PARKER. “Sir Launcelot! ther thou lyest; thou were never matched of none earthly knights hands; thou were the truest freende to thy lover that ever bestrood horse; and thou were the kindest man that ever strooke with sword; and thou were the sternest knight to thy mortall foe that ever put spere in the rest.” LA MORTE D’ARTHUR. In the year 1828 there was a young man of eighteen at work upon a farm in Lexington, performing bodily labor to the extent of twenty hours in a day sometimes, and that for several days together, and at other times studying intensely when work was less pressing. Thirty years after, that same man sat in the richest private library in Boston, working habitually from twelve to seventeen hours a day in severer toil. The interval was crowded with labors, with acquisitions, with reproaches, with victories, with honors; and he who experienced all this died exhausted at the end of it, less than fifty years old, but looking seventy. That man was Theodore Parker. The time is far distant when out of a hundred different statements of contemporaries some calm biographer will extract sufficient materials for a true picture of the man; and meanwhile all that each can do is to give fearlessly his own honest impressions, and so tempt others to give theirs. Of the multitude of different photographers, each perchance may catch some one trait without which the whole portraiture would have remained incomplete; and the time to secure this is now, while his features are fresh in our minds. It is a daring effort, but it needs to be made. Yet Theodore Parker was so strong and self-sufficing upon his HDT WHAT? INDEX

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own ground, he needed so little from any other, while giving so freely to all, that one would hardly venture to add anything to the autobiographies he has left, but for the high example he set of fearlessness in dealing with the dead. There may be some whose fame is so ill-established, that one shrinks from speaking of them precisely as one saw them; but this man’s place is secure, and that friend best praises him who paints him just as he seemed. To depict him as he was must be the work of many men, and no single observer, however intimate, need attempt it. The first thing that strikes an observer, in listening to the words of public and private feeling elicited by his departure, is the predominance in them all of the sentiment of love. His services, his speculations, his contests, his copious eloquence, his many languages, these come in as secondary things, but the predominant testimony is emotional. Men mourn the friend even more than the warrior. No fragile and lovely girl, fading untimely into heaven, was ever more passionately beloved than this white-haired and world-weary man. As he sat in his library, during his lifetime, he was not only the awakener of a thousand intellects, but the centre of a thousand hearts; — he furnished the natural home for every foreign refugee, every hunted slave, every stray thinker, every vexed and sorrowing woman. And never was there one of these who went away uncomforted, and from every part of this broad nation their scattered hands now fling roses upon his grave. This immense debt of gratitude was not bought by any mere isolated acts of virtue; indeed, it never is so bought; love never is won but by a nobleness which, pervades the life. In the midst of his greatest cares there never was a moment when he was not all too generous of his time, his wisdom, and his money. Borne down by the accumulation of labors, grudging, as a student grudges, the precious hour that once lost can never be won back, he yet was always holding himself at the call of some poor criminal, at the Police Office, or some sick girl in a suburban town, not of his recognized parish perhaps, but longing for the ministry of the only preacher who had touched her soul. Not a mere wholesale reformer, he wore out his life by retailing its great influences to the poorest comer. Not generous in money only, — though the readiness of his beneficence in that direction had few equals, — he always hastened past that minor bestowal to ask if there were not some other added gift possible, some personal service or correspondence, some life-blood, in short, to be lavished in some other form, to eke out the already liberal donation of dollars. There is an impression that he was unforgiving. Unforgetting he certainly was; for he had no power of forgetfulness, whether for good or evil. He had none of that convenient oblivion which in softer natures covers sin and saintliness with one common, careless pall. So long as a man persisted in a wrong attitude before God or man, there was no day so laborious or exhausting, no night so long or drowsy, but Theodore Parker’s unsleeping memory stood on guard full-armed, ready to do battle at a HDT WHAT? INDEX

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moment’s warning. This is generally known; but what may not be known so widely is, that, the moment the adversary lowered his spear, were it for only an inch or an instant, that moment Theodore Parker’s weapons were down and his arms open. Make but the slightest concession, give him but the least excuse to love you, and never was there seen such promptness in forgiving. His friends found it sometimes harder to justify his mildness than his severity. I confess that I, with others, have often felt inclined to criticize a certain caustic tone of his, in private talk, when the name of an offender was alluded to; but I have also felt almost indignant at his lenient good-nature to that very person, let him once show the smallest symptom of contrition, or seek, even in the clumsiest way, or for the most selfish purpose, to disarm his generous antagonist. His forgiveness in such cases was more exuberant than his wrath had ever been. It is inevitable, in describing him, to characterize his life first by its quantity. He belonged to the true race of the giants of learning; he took in knowledge at every pore, and his desires were insatiable. Not, perhaps, precocious in boyhood, —for it is not precocity to begin Latin at ten and Greek at eleven, to enter the Freshman class at twenty and the professional school at twenty-three,— he was equalled by few students in the tremendous rate at which he pursued every study, when once begun. With strong body and great constitutional industry, always acquiring and never forgetting, he was doubtless at the time of his death the most variously learned of living Americans, as well as one of the most prolific of orators and writers. Why did Theodore Parker die? He died prematurely worn out through this enormous activity, — a warning, as well as an example. To all appeals for moderation, during the latter years of his life, he had but one answer, — that he had six generations of long-lived farmers behind him, and had their strength to draw upon. All his physical habits, except in this respect, were unexceptionable: he was abstemious in diet, but not ascetic, kept no unwholesome hours, tried no dangerous experiments, committed no excesses. But there is no man who can habitually study from twelve to seventeen hours a day (his friend Mr. Clarke contracts it to “from six to twelve,” but I have Mr. Parker’s own statement of the fact) without ultimate self-destruction. Nor was this the practice during his period of health alone, but it was pushed to the last moment: he continued in the pulpit long after a withdrawal was peremptorily prescribed for him; and when forbidden to leave home for lecturing, during the winter of 1858, he straightway prepared the most laborious literary works of his life, for delivery as lectures in the Fraternity Course at Boston. He worked thus, not from ambition, nor altogether from principle, but from an immense craving for mental labor, which had become second nature to him. His great omnivorous, hungry intellect must have constant food, — new languages, new HDT WHAT? INDEX

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statistics, new historical investigations, new scientific discoveries, new systems of Scriptural exegesis. He did not for a day in the year nor an hour in the day make rest a matter of principle, nor did he ever indulge in it as a pleasure, for he knew no enjoyment so great as labor. Wordsworth’s “wise passiveness” was utterly foreign to his nature. Had he been a mere student, this had been less destructive. But to take the standard of study of a German Professor, and superadd to that the separate exhaustions of a Sunday-preacher, a lyceum- lecturer, a radical leader, and a practical philanthropist, was simply to apply half a dozen distinct suicides to the abbreviation of a single life. And, as his younger companions long since assured him, the tendency of his career was not only to kill himself, but them; for each assumed that he must at least attempt what Theodore Parker accomplished. It is very certain that his career was much shortened by these enormous labors, and it is not certain that its value was increased in a sufficient ratio to compensate for that evil. He justified his incessant winter-lecturing by the fact that the whole country was his parish, though this was not an adequate excuse. But what right had he to deprive himself even of the accustomed summer respite of ordinary preachers, and waste the golden July hours in studying Sclavonic dialects? No doubt his work in the world was greatly aided both by the fact and the fame of learning, and, as he himself somewhat disdainfully said, the knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was “a convenience” in theological discussions; but, after all, his popular power did not mainly depend on his mastery of twenty languages, but of one. Theodore Parker’s learning was undoubtedly a valuable possession to the community, but it was not worth the price of Theodore Parker’s life. “Strive constantly to concentrate yourself,” said the laborious Goethe, “never dissipate your powers; incessant activity, of whatever kind, leads finally to bankruptcy.” But Theodore Parker’s whole endeavor was to multiply his channels, and he exhausted his life in the effort to do all men’s work. He was a hard man to relieve, to help, or to cooperate with. Thus, the “Massachusetts Quarterly Review” began with quite a promising corps of contributors; but when it appeared that its editor, if left alone, would willingly undertake all the articles, — science, history, literature, everything,— of course the others yielded to inertia and dropped away. So, some years later, when some of us met at his room to consult on a cheap series of popular theological works, he himself was so rich in his own private plans that all the rest were impoverished; nothing could be named but he had been planning just that for years, and should by-and-by get leisure for it, and there really was not enough left to call out the energies of any one else. Not from any petty egotism, but simply from inordinate activity, he stood ready to take all the parts. In the same way he distanced everybody; every companion-scholar found soon that it was impossible to keep pace with one who was HDT WHAT? INDEX

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always accumulating and losing nothing. Most students find it necessary to be constantly forgetting some things to make room for later arrivals; but the peculiarity of his memory was that he let nothing go. I have more than once heard him give a minute analysis of the contents of some dull book read twenty years before, and have afterwards found the statement correct and exhaustive. His great library, —the only private library I have ever seen which reminded one of the Astor,— although latterly collected more for public than personal uses, was one which no other man in the nation, probably, had sufficient bibliographical knowledge single-handed to select, and we have very few men capable of fully appreciating its scholarly value, as it stands. It seems as if its possessor, putting all his practical and popular side into his eloquence and action, had indemnified himself by investing all his scholarship in a library of which less than a quarter of the books were in the English language. All unusual learning, however, brings with it the suspicion of superficiality; and in this country, where, as Mr. Parker himself said, “every one gets a mouthful of education, but scarce one a full meal,” —where every one who makes a Latin quotation is styled “a ripe scholar,”— it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the true from the counterfeit. It is, however, possible to apply some tests. I remember, for instance, that one of the few undoubted classical scholars, in the old-fashioned sense, whom New England has seen, —the late John Glen King of Salem,— while speaking with very limited respect of the acquirements of Rufus Choate in this direction, and with utter contempt of those of Daniel Webster, always became enthusiastic on coming to Theodore Parker. “He is the only man,” said Mr. King more than once to the writer, “with whom I can sit down and seriously discuss a disputed reading and find him familiar with all that has been written upon it.” Yet Greek and Latin were only the preliminaries of Mr. Parker’s scholarship. I know, for one, —and there are many who will bear the same testimony,— that I never went to Mr. Parker to talk over a subject which I had just made a speciality, without finding that on that particular matter he happened to know, without any special investigation, more than I did. This extended beyond books, sometimes stretching into things where his questioner’s opportunities of knowledge had seemed considerably greater, — as, for instance, in points connected with the habits of our native animals and the phenomena of out-door Nature. Such were his wonderful quickness and his infallible memory, that glimpses of these things did for him the work of years. But, of course, it was in the world of books that this wonderful superiority was chiefly seen, and the following example may serve as one of the most striking among many. It happened to me, some years since, in the course of some historical inquiries, to wish for fuller information in regard to the barbarous feudal codes of the Middle Ages, —as the Salic, Burgundian, and Ripuarian,— before the time of Charlemagne. The HDT WHAT? INDEX

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common historians, even Hallam, gave no very satisfactory information and referred to no very available books; and supposing it to be a matter of which every well-read lawyer would at least know something, I asked help of the most scholarly member of that profession within my reach. He regretted his inability to give me any aid, but referred me to a friend of his, who was soon to visit him, a young man, who was already eminent for legal learning. The friend soon arrived, but owned, with some regret, that he had paid no attention to that particular subject, and did not even know what books to refer to; but he would at least ascertain what they were, and let me know. (N.B. I have never heard from him since.) Stimulated by ill-success, I aimed higher, and struck at the Supreme Bench of a certain State, breaking in on the mighty repose of His Honor with the name of Charlemagne. “Charlemagne?” responded my lord judge, rubbing his burly brow, — “Charlemagne lived, I think, in the sixth century?” Dismayed, I retreated, with little further inquiry; and sure of one man, at least, to whom law meant also history and literature, I took refuge with Charles Sumner. That accomplished scholar, himself for once at fault, could only frankly advise me to do at last what I ought to have done at first, — to apply to Theodore Parker. I did so. “Go,” replied he instantly, “to alcove twenty-four, shelf one hundred and thirteen, of the College Library at Cambridge, and you will find the information you need in a thick quarto, bound in vellum, and lettered ‘Potgiesser de Statu Servorum.’” I straightway sent for Potgiesser, and found my fortune made, it was one of those patient old German treatises which cost the labor of one man’s life to compile and another’s to exhaust, and I had no reason to suppose that any reader had disturbed its repose until that unwearied industry had explored the library. Amid such multiplicity of details he must sometimes have made mistakes, and with his great quickness of apprehension he sometimes formed hasty conclusions. But no one has a right to say that his great acquirements were bought by any habitual sacrifice of thoroughness. To say that they sometimes impaired the quality of his thought would undoubtedly be more just; and this is a serious charge to bring. Learning is not accumulation, but assimilation; every man’s real acquirements must pass into his own organization, and undue or hasty nutrition does no good. The most priceless knowledge is not worth the smallest impairing of the quality of the thinking. The scholar cannot afford, any more than the farmer, to lavish his strength in clearing more land than he can cultivate; and Theodore Parker was compelled by the natural limits of time and strength to let vast tracts lie fallow, and to miss something of the natural resources of the soil. One sometimes wished that he had studied less and dreamed more, — for less encyclopedic information, and more of his own rich brain. But it was in popularizing thought and knowledge that his great and wonderful power lay. Not an original thinker, in the same sense with Emerson, he yet translated for tens of thousands that HDT WHAT? INDEX

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which Emerson spoke to hundreds only. No matter who had been heard on any subject, the great mass of intelligent, “progressive” New-England thinkers waited to hear the thing summed up by Theodore Parker. This popular interest went far beyond the circle of his avowed sympathizers; he might be a heretic, but nobody could deny that he was a marksman. No matter how well others seemed to have hit the target, his shot was the triumphant one, at last. Thinkers might find no new thought in the new discourse, leaders of action no new plan, yet, after all that had been said and done, his was the statement that told upon the community. He knew this power of his, and had analyzed some of the methods by which he attained it, though, after all, the best part was an unconscious and magnetic faculty. But he early learned, so he once told me, that the New-England people dearly love two things, — a philosophical arrangement, and a plenty of statistics. To these, therefore, he treated them thoroughly; in some of his “Ten Sermons” the demand made upon the systematizing power of his audience was really formidable; and I have always remembered a certain lecture of his on the Anglo-Saxons as the most wonderful instance that ever came within my knowledge of the adaptation of solid learning to the popular intellect. Nearly two hours of almost unadorned fact, — for there was far less than usual of relief and illustration, — and yet the lyceum-audience listened to it as if an angel sang to them. So perfect was his sense of purpose and of power, so clear and lucid was his delivery, with such wonderful composure did he lay out, section by section, his historical chart, that he grasped his hearers as absolutely as he grasped his subject: one was compelled to believe that he might read the people the Sanscrit Lexicon, and they would listen with ever fresh delight. Without grace or beauty or melody, his mere elocution was sufficient to produce effects which melody and grace and beauty might have sighed for in vain. And I always felt that he well described his own eloquence while describing Luther’s, in one of the most admirably moulded sentences he ever achieved, — “The homely force of Luther, who, in the language of the farm, the shop, the boat, the street, or the nursery, told the high truths that reason or religion taught, and took possession of his audience by a storm of speech, then poured upon them all the riches of his brave plebeian soul, baptizing every head anew, — a man who with the people seemed more mob than they, and with kings the most imperial man.” Another key to his strong hold upon the popular mind was to be found in his thorough Americanism of training and sympathy. Surcharged with European learning, he yet remained at heart the Lexington farmer’s-boy, and his whole atmosphere was indigenous, not exotic. Not haunted by any of the distrust and over - criticism which are apt to effeminate the American scholar, he plunged deep into the current of hearty national life around him, loved it, trusted it, believed in it; and the combination of this vital faith with such tremendous criticism of public and private sins formed an irresistible power. He could condemn HDT WHAT? INDEX

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without crushing, — denounce mankind, yet save it from despair. Thus his pulpit became one of the great forces of the nation, like the New York “Tribune.” His printed volumes had but a limited circulation, owing to a defective system of publication, which his friends tried in vain to correct; but the circulation of his pamphlet-discourses was very great; he issued them faster and faster, latterly often in pairs, and they instantly spread far and wide. Accordingly he found his listeners everywhere; he could not go so far West but his abundant fame had preceded him; his lecture-room in the remotest places was crowded, and his hotel-chamber also, until late at night. Probably there was no private man in the nation, except, perhaps, Beecher and Greeley, whom personal strangers were so eager to see; while from a transatlantic direction he was sought by visitors to whom the two other names were utterly unknown. Learned men from the continent of Europe always found their way, first or last, to Exeter Place; and it is said that Thackeray, on his voyage to this country, declared that the thing in America which he most desired was to hear Theodore Parker talk. Indeed, his conversational power was so wonderful that no one could go away from a first interview without astonishment and delight. There are those among us, it may be, more brilliant in anecdote or repartee, more eloquent, more profoundly suggestive; but for the outpouring of vast floods of various and delightful information, I believe that he could have had no Anglo-Saxon rival, except Macaulay. And in Mr. Parker’s case, at least, there was no alloy of conversational arrogance or impatience of opposition. He monopolized, not because he was ever unwilling to hear others, but because they did not care to hear themselves when he was by. The subject made no difference; he could talk on anything. I was once with him in the society of an intelligent Quaker farmer, when the conversation fell on agriculture: the farmer held his own ably for a time; but long after he was drained dry, our wonderful companion still flowed on exhaustless, with accounts of Nova Scotia ploughing and Tennessee hoeing, and all things rural, ancient and modern, good and bad, till it seemed as if the one amusing and interesting theme in the universe were the farm. But it soon proved that this was only one among his thousand departments, and his hearers felt, as was said of old Fuller, as if he had served his time at every trade in town. But it must now be owned that these astonishing results were bought by some intellectual sacrifices which his nearer friends do not all recognize, but which posterity will mourn. Such a rate of speed is incompatible with the finest literary execution. A delicate literary ear he might have had, perhaps, but he very seldom stopped to cultivate or even indulge it. This neglect was not produced by his frequent habit of extemporaneous speech alone; for it is a singular fact, that Wendell Phillips, who rarely writes a line, yet contrives to give to his hastiest efforts the air of elaborate preparation, while Theodore Parker’s most scholarly performances were still stump-speeches. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Vigorous, rich, brilliant, copious, they yet seldom afford a sentence which falls in perfect cadence upon the ear; under a show of regular method, they are loose and diffuse, and often have the qualities which he himself attributed to the style of John Quincy Adams, — “disorderly, ill-compacted, and homely to a fault.” He said of Dr. Channing,— “Diffuseness is the old Adam of the pulpit. There are always two ways of hitting the mark, — one with a single bullet, the other with a shower of small shot: Dr. Channing chose the latter, as most of our pulpit orators have done.” Theodore Parker chose it also. Perhaps Nature and necessity chose it for him. If not his temperament, at least the circumstances of his position, cut him off from all high literary finish. He created the congregation at the Music Hall, and that congregation, in turn, moulded his whole life. For that great stage his eloquence became inevitably a kind of brilliant scene-painting, —large, fresh, profuse, rapid, showy;— masses of light and shade, wonderful effects, but farewell forever to all finer touches and delicate gradations! No man can write for posterity, while hastily snatching a half- day from a week’s lecturing, during which to prepare a telling Sunday harangue for three thousand people. In the perpetual rush and hurry of his life, he had no time to select, to discriminate, to omit anything, or to mature anything. He had the opportunities, the provocatives, and the drawbacks which make the work and mar the fame of the professional journalist. His intellectual existence, after he left the quiet of West Roxbury, was from hand to mouth. Needing above all men to concentrate himself, he was compelled by his whole position to lead a profuse and miscellaneous life. All popular orators must necessarily repeat themselves, — preachers chiefly among orators, and Theodore Parker chiefly among preachers. The mere frequency of production makes this inevitable, — a fact which always makes every finely organized intellect, first or last, grow weary of the pulpit. But in his case there were other compulsions. Every Sunday a quarter part of his vast congregation consisted of persons who had never, or scarcely ever, heard him before, and who might never hear him again. Not one of those visitors must go away, therefore, without hearing the great preacher define his position on every point, — not theology alone, but all current events and permanent principles, the Presidential nomination or message, the laws of trade, the laws of Congress, woman’s rights, woman’s costume, Boston slave-kidnappers, and Dr. Banbaby, — he must put it all in. His ample discourse must be like an Oriental poem, which begins with the creation of the universe, and includes all subsequent facts incidentally. It is astonishing to look over his published sermons and addresses, and see under how many different names the same stirring speech has been reprinted; — new illustrations, new statistics, and all remoulded with such freshness that the hearer had no suspicions, nor the speaker either, — and yet the same essential thing. Sunday discourse, lyceum lecture, convention speech, it made no difference, he HDT WHAT? INDEX

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must cover all the points every time. No matter what theme might be announced, the people got the whole latitude and longitude of Theodore Parker, and that was precisely what they wanted. He broke down the traditional non-committalism of the lecture-room, and oxygenated all the lyceums of the land. He thus multiplied his audience very greatly, while perhaps losing to some degree the power of close logic and of addressing a specific statement to a special point. Yet it seemed as if he could easily leave the lancet to others, grant him only the hammer and the forge. Ah, but the long centuries, where the reading of books is concerned, set aside all considerations of quantity, of popularity, of immediate influence, and sternly test by quality alone, — judge each author by his most golden sentence, and let all else go. The deeds make the man, but it is the style which makes or dooms the writer. History, which always sends great men in groups, gave us Emerson by whom to test the intellectual qualities of Parker. They cooperated in their work from the beginning, in much the same mutual relation as now; in looking back over the rich volumes of the “Dial,” the reader now passes by the contributions of Parker to glean every sentence of Emerson’s, but we have the latter’s authority for the fact that it was the former’s articles which originally sold the numbers. Intellectually, the two men form the complement to each other; it is Parker who reaches the mass of the people, but it is probable that all his writings put together have not had so profound an influence on the intellectual leaders of the nation as the single address of Emerson at Divinity Hall. And it is difficult not to notice, in that essay in which Theodore Parker ventured on higher intellectual ground, perhaps, than anywhere else in his writings, —his critique on Emerson in the “Massachusetts Quarterly,”— the indications of this mental disparity. It is in many respects a noble essay, full of fine moral appreciations, bravely generous, admirable in the loyalty of spirit shown towards a superior mind, and all warm with a personal friendship which could find no superior. But so far as literary execution is concerned, the beautiful sentences of Emerson stand out like fragments of carved marble from the rough plaster in which they are imbedded. Nor this alone; but, on drawing near the vestibule of the author’s finest thoughts, the critic almost always stops, unable quite to enter their sphere. Subtile beauties puzzle him; the titles of the poems, for instance, giving by delicate allusion the key-note of each, — as “Astraea,” “Mithridates,” “Hamatreya,” and “Étienne de la Boéce,” — seem to him the work of “mere caprice”; he pronounces the poem of “Monadnoc” “poor and weak”; he condemns and satirizes the “Wood-notes,” and thinks that a pine-tree which should talk like Mr. Emerson’s ought to be cut down and cast into the sea. The same want of fine discrimination was usually visible in his delineations of great men in public life. Immense in accumulation of details, terrible in the justice which held the balance, they yet left one with the feeling, that, after all, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the delicate main-springs of character had been missed. Broad contrasts, heaps of good and evil, almost exaggerated praises, pungent satire, catalogues of sins that seemed pages from some Recording Angel’s book, — these were his mighty methods; but for the subtilest analysis, the deepest insight into the mysteries of character, one must look elsewhere. It was still scene- painting, not portraiture; and the same thing which overwhelmed with wonder, when heard in the Music Hall, produced a slight sense of insufficiency, when read in print. It was certainly very great in its way, but not in quite the highest way; it was preliminary work, not final; it was Parker’s Webster, not Emerson’s Swedenborg or Napoleon. The same thing was often manifested in his criticisms on current events. The broad truths were stated without fear or favor, the finer points passed over, and the special trait of the particular phase sometimes missed. His sermons on the last revivals, for instance, had an enormous circulation, and told with great force upon those who had not been swept into the movement, and even upon some who had been. The difficulty was that they were just such discourses as he would have preached in the time of Edwards and the “Great Awakening”; and the point which many thought the one astonishing feature of the new excitement, its almost entire omission of the “terrors of the Lord,” the far gentler and more winning type of religion which it displayed, and from which it confessedly drew much of its power, this was entirely ignored in Mr. Parker’s sermons. He was too hard at work in combating the evangelical theology to recognize its altered phases. Forging lightning-rods against the tempest, he did not see that the height of the storm had passed by. These are legitimate criticisms to make on Theodore Parker, for he was large enough to merit them. It is only the loftiest trees of which it occurs to us to remark that they do not touch the sky, and a man must comprise a great deal before we complain of him for not comprising everything. But though the closest scrutiny may sometimes find cases where he failed to see the most subtile and precious truth, it will never discover one where, seeing, he failed to proclaim it, or, proclaiming, failed to give it force and power. He lived his life much as he walked the streets of Boston, — not quite gracefully, nor yet statelily, but with quick, strong, solid step, with sagacious eyes wide open, and thrusting his broad shoulders a little forward, as if butting away the throng of evil deeds around him, and scattering whole atmospheres of unwholesome cloud. Wherever he went, there went a glance of sleepless vigilance, an unforgetting memory, a tongue that never faltered, and an arm that never quailed. Not primarily an administrative nor yet a military mind, he yet exerted a positive control over the whole community around him, by sheer mental and moral strength. He mowed down harvests of evil as in his youth he mowed the grass, and all his hours of study were but whetting the scythe. And for this great work it was not essential that the blade HDT WHAT? INDEX

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should have a razor’s edge. Grant that Parker was not also Emerson; no matter, he was Parker. If ever a man seemed sent into the world to find a certain position, and found it, he was that man. Occupying a unique sphere of activity, he filled it with such a wealth of success, that there is now no one in the nation whom it would not seem an absurdity to nominate for his place. It takes many instruments to complete the orchestra, but the tones of this organ the Music Hall shall never hear again. One feels, since he is gone, that he made his great qualities seem so natural and inevitable, we forgot that all did not share them. We forgot the scholar’s proverbial reproach of timidity and selfishness, in watching him. While he lived, it seemed a matter of course that the greatest acquirements and the heartiest self-devotion should go together. Can we keep our strength, without the tonic of his example? How petty it now seems to ask for any fine-drawn subtilties of poet or seer in him who gave his life to the cause of the humblest! Life speaks the loudest. We do not ask what Luther said or wrote, but only what he did; and the name of Theodore Parker will not only long outlive his books, but will last far beyond the special occasions out of which he moulded his grand career.

May 10. River six and one eighth inches below summer level. Thermometer at 2 P. M., 71. The winds died away with April. In the midst of a remarkable drought. Hear of great fires in the woods up country the past week, it is so dry. Some farmers plowed around their houses to save them.

P. M.—To Bateman’s Pond. Salix alba flower in prime and resounding with the hum of bees on it. The sweet fragrance fills the air for a long distance. How much the planting of this willow adds to the greenness and cheerfulness of our landscape at this season! As I stand on Hunt’s Bridge, I notice the now comparatively dark green of the canary grass (Phalaris), the coarse grass vigorously spring[ing] up on the muddy islands and edges, the glaucous green of Carex stricta tufts, and the light yellowish green of the very coarse sedges of the meadow. Going over the hill behind S. Brown’s, when we crossed the triangular space between the roads beyond the pump-maker’s, I saw countless little heaps of sand like the small ant-hills, but, looking more closely, the size of the holes (a little less than a quarter of an inch) and the comparative irregularity of the heaps — as if the sand had been brought forth and dropped in greater quantity at once — attracted my attention and I found they were the work of bees. The bees were hovering low over the surface, and were continually entering and issuing from the holes. They were about the size of a honey-bee, black bodied, with, I thought, yellow thighs, — if it was not pollen. Many of the holes appeared to have been freshly stopped up with granules of moist sand. These holes were made close together in the dry and sandy soil there, with very little grass on it, sloping toward the west, between the roads, and covered a triangular space some seven rods by three. I counted twenty-four in a square foot. There must have been some twenty-five thousand of these nests in all. The surface was yellowed with them. Evidently a kind of mining bee. I see in roadside hard sward, by the brook beyond, a sedge darker than the stricta and not in tufts, quite short. Is it the C. vulgaris? Its leading spikes are effete. Evergreen-forest note. Some very young oaks — white oak, etc. — in woods begin to leaf. Hear the first cricket. The red maples, fruiting now, are in the brick-red state. I heard yesterday one or two warblers. One’s note was, in rhythm, like a very feeble field sparrow. Was it the redstart? Probably one or two strange warblers now. Was it not the parti-colored warbler, — with bluish head and yellow beneath, but not the screeper note, but note ending with a jingle slightly like the field sparrow? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Meadow fox-tail grass out several days.

May 12, Saturday: Henry Thoreau surveyed the boundary between Moses Prichard’s woods skirting the river, which were furnished with winding walks and rustic seats and formed an attractive and cool retreat, and the Joseph Holbrook houselots on Main Street in Concord. Thoreau’s charge was $1.50. Holbrook’s house was on the site of the house of common entertainment that belonged to William Buss in 1660, almost opposite the site that is now the Concord Free Public Library. This survey shows that the garbage disposal of that day was the pig, for Thoreau included the “piggery.” Thoreau’s charge was $0.25. Joseph Holbrook also owned land in Great Meadows and part of Frosty Poplar Hollow near Gowing’s Swamp and Copan.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/55.htm

A group of 105 white miners were trekking toward Pyramid Lake, seeking retribution against the redskins for their having massacred the five white rapists at Williams Station, when the Payute intercepted the group, managing to kill roughly half of them. Two days after the Reverend Theodore Parker’s death, Dr. B. Appleton (a Boston physician who had been in attendance during his last months) and Parker’s close friend Professor Pierre Jean Édouard Desor performed an autopsy, removing the brain and the heart. Expecting the corpse to be shipped back to Massachusetts for reburial, they sealed it in a lead casket, packed tightly in hemp and pickled in strong spirits. The brain and heart were put in separate boxes and sent on ahead, perhaps assuming that after the organs were studied they would be interred in the casket with the rest of Parker’s corpse. Parker’s widow, however, considered that moving his HDT WHAT? INDEX

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corpse would violate one of his final wishes, and would have the remainder interred in the Protestant cemetery

in Firenze in which Elizabeth Barrett Browning would be being interred in the following year, and Thoreau’s friend Thomas Cholmondeley in 1864:

So have I seen a pine tree in the woods, old, dry at its roots, capped with age-resembling snow; it stood there, and seemed to stand; but a little touch of wind drove it headlong, and it fell with a long, resounding crash. —Theodore Parker

We know that his brain was sent to Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe at the Perkins School for the Blind, for a sailor would show up at the Howes’ door unexpectedly with a brain in a box. The cover letter had been lost in transit, so Julia Ward Howe stuck the box and its grisly contents in a closet on the top floor of the Perkins School (one of the Howe daughters would reminisce about being terrified of that closet as a child). Dr. Howe, meanwhile, would not mention the disgusting matter to anyone; for years, even Mrs. Parker would not know where her husband’s brain had gotten to. What happened to the box containing the heart is even more unclear; it may have been sent to Dr. Samuel Cabot, Parker’s physician and president of the Boston Society of Natural History.

Parker’s gravestone in Italy is of marble, about 4 feet high, and is topped by an “eternal flame” in a lamp that resembles a Unitarian-Universalist chalice. The stone provides a side view of Parker’s bust, with laurel wreath. The stone has become tilted and someday may fall and shatter. The cemetery is opened for visitors from 10AM to 1PM, except on Sundays and Mondays. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THEODORE PARKER THE GREAT AMERICAN PREACHER BORN AT LEXINGTON MASSACHUSETTS UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AUGUST 24 1810 DIED AT FLORENCE ITALY MAY 10 1860 HIS NAME IS ENGRAVED IN MARBLE HIS VIRTUES IN THE HEARTS OF THOSE HE HELPED TO FREE FROM SLAVERY AND SUPERSTITION

May 12. Celandine. Very hot.

2.30 P. M.—81°. We seek the shade to sit in for a day or two. The neck-cloth and single coat is too thick; wear a half-thick coat at last [?]. The sugar maple blossoms on the Common resound with bees. Ostrya flower commonly out on Island, how long? Maybe a day or two. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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First bathe in the river. Quite warm enough. River five and one half plus inches below summer level. Very heavy dew and mist this morning; plowed ground black and moist with it. The earth is so dry it drinks like a sponge.

May 28, Monday: Henry Thoreau did $3.00 worth of surveying for R. [Rufus?] Warren in the woods east of the deep railroad cut near Walden Pond.

The Reverend Samuel Joseph May presented a decidedly ambiguous message to the American Peace Society. Civil war at this point might, he hypothecated, however temporarily horrible, bring to an end forever “slavery, oppression, fighting, intemperance, and human misery in every form.”

Ends/Means Scorecard for Our Civil War Brought an end forever to human slavery Well… Brought an end forever to oppression Nope Brought an end forever to fighting Nope Brought an end forever to intemperance Huh? Brought an end forever to human misery in every form Nope

This of course would be pretty sad, were it all there was to the reverend’s oration. However, although May could not under these extreme circumstances overcome this ambivalence (and who can really blame him?), he did reiterate his nonresistant ideals. War was un-Christian in that by its very essence it made slaves of all the poor, forcing them to sacrifice their very lives at the command of the rich. In particular our Revolutionary War had been damnable, for it had been this spasm of violence what had set us on our course of supposing that destructive means might be able to produce righteous ends.

May 28. P. M.—To Deep Cut. Carex debilis, not long. Along the edge of Warren’s wood east of the Cut, see not only the chestnut-sided warbler but the splendid Sylvia pardalina. It is a bright yellow beneath, with a broad black stripe along each side of the throat, becoming longish black marks crescentwise on the fore part of the breast,

leaving a distinct clear bright-yellow throat, and all the rest beneath bright-yellow; a distinct bright-yellow ring around eye; a dark bluish brown apparently all above; yellowish legs. Not shy; on the birches. Probably saw it the 23d. I see apparently a vireo, much like the red-eye (no yellow throat), with the white or whitish line above eye but a head differently formed, i. e., a crest erectile at will and always prominent.

Solid white fog over meadow in evening. I notice to-night that the potamogetons have just reached the surface of the river and begun to spread out there. The surface of the water in shallow places begins to be interrupted or dimpled with small brown leaves. First, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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from the 9th to 13th the first pads began [to] spread, and the pontederia, etc., showed themselves. Now the appearance of the potamogetons marks a new era in the vegetation of the river, the commencement of its summer stage. Its spring ends now; its time of freshet (generally) is over. The river is now some three inches below summer level.

August 20, Monday: British and French land and naval forces pushed back the Taiping Chinese Christian Army at Shanghai.

During this night, 1,500 of Giuseppe Garibaldi’s men crossed in rowboats from Faro in Sicily to Favazzina on the Italian mainland.

Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Nathaniel Hawthorne, his estate on Lexington Road known as “The Wayside.” Julian Hawthorne, then 14 years of age, watched him, and on three occasions in his later life he would write about his having watched Thoreau during this survey. This survey shows two pieces of land and measures about 20 acres in all. Thoreau made a note that there was a hedge of osage orange.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/51a.htm [THOREAU MADE NO ENTRY IN HIS JOURNAL FOR AUGUST 20]

On three successive confabulations in later life, Julian Hawthorne would report about his having watched Thoreau survey on this day. We can see how utterly fabulistic these progressive confabulations were, by noticing that Julian backdates a survey made on August 20, 1860, after his return to Concord from Liverpool when he was at the age of 16 and about to enter Harvard College as a student of civil engineering, to the year 1852, while he was at the tender age of 8, prior to his sailing for Liverpool: Pasadena Star-News, December 12, 1923: “My first distinct recollection of him was when he surveyed our little estate at Concord, some twenty acres of hill, meadow and woodland. I saw the rather undersized, queer man coming along the road with his long steps carrying on his shoulder a queer instrument and looking very serious. I got down from the mulberry tree in which I was perched and watched his doing in silent absorption. Wherever he went I followed; neither of us spoke a word from first to last. Up the terraces with their apple trees, over the brow of the hill, into the wood and out again, down into the meadow to the brook, and so back to the house again. Finally my father came out and they talked a little, and my father paid him ten dollars, and Thoreau strode away, after remarking, with a glance at me, ‘That boy has more eyes than tongue.’”63 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Dearborn Independent, August 20, 1927: “‘Good boy! sharp eyes, and no tongue!’ On that basis I was admitted to his friendship.”

THE MEMOIRS OF JULIAN HAWTHORNE (as reprocessed by his widow Edith Garrigues Hawthorne for Macmillan in 1938): “Once, when I was nearly seven years old, Thoreau came to the Wayside to make a survey of our land, bringing his surveying apparatus on his shoulder. I watched the short, dark, unbeautiful man with interest and followed him about, all over the place, never losing sight of a movement and never asking a question or uttering a word. The thing must have lasted a couple of hours; when we got back, Thoreau remarked to my father: ‘Good boy! Sharp eyes, and no tongue!’ On that basis I was admitted to his friendship; a friendship or comradeship which began in 1852 and was to last until his death in 1862.64 In our walks about the country, Thoreau saw everything, and would indicate the invisible to me with a silent nod of the head. The brook that skirted the foot of our meadow was another treasure-house which he discovered to me, though he was too shy to companion me there; when he had given me a glimpse of Nature in her privacy, he left me alone with her ... on a hot August day, I would often sit, hidden from the world, thinking boy thoughts. I learned how to snare chub, and even pickerel, with a loop made of a long-stemmed grass; dragon-flies poised like humming-birds, and insects skated zigzag on the surface, casting odd shadows on the bottom.... Yes, Thoreau showed me things, and though it didn’t aid me in the Harvard curriculum,65 it helped me through life. Truly, Nature absorbed his attention, but I don’t think he cared much for what is called the beauties of nature; it was her way of working, her mystery, her economy in extravagance; he delighted to trace her footsteps toward their source.... He liked to feel that the pursuit was endless, with mystery at both ends of it....

63. It is extremely unlikely that Thoreau actually said anything at all like “That boy has more eyes than tongue,” because although one might imagine such a comment being made about one or another tongue-tied 8-year-old, it is not the sort of remark that anyone would ever make about any teener — no matter how sullen and comatose. 64. Actually we do not know of a single other occasion on which Julian came within eyesight of Thoreau. 65. Julian became a student of civil engineering, but the college asked him to leave and there would be no diploma. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 30, Thursday/31, Friday: Henry Thoreau surveyed George Minott’s seven acres on Mill Brook. He jotted down that the land was sold by John Whiting to Abel Prescott in 1746, and that it bounded Ebenezer Hubbard’s land to the southwest, Deacon Samuel Merriam’s land to the southeast, the Mill Brook to the north and northeast, and John Whiting’s own property called “Dam Pasture” to the west. Shannon, Mrs. Bigelow, Collier, and Warren were abutters.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/91.htm

August 30, Thursday: Surveying Minott’s land. GEORGE MINOTT Am surprised to find on his hard land, where he once raised potatoes, the hairy huckleberry, which before I had seen in swamps only. Here, too, they are more edible, not so insipid, yet not quite edible generally. They are improved, you would say, by the firmer ground. The berries are in longer racemes or clusters than any of our huckleberries. They are the prevailing berry all over this field. They are oblong and black, and the thick, shaggy- feeling coats left in the mouth are far from agreeable to the palate. Are now in prime. Also find, in one of his ditches where peat was dug (or mud), the Lemna polyrhiza; not found in Concord before, and said not to blossom in this country. I found it at Pushaw. Also the Muhlenbergia glomerata near the lemna, or southeast of it. The hairy huckleberry and muhlenbergia, I think, grow here still because Minott is an old-fashioned man and has not scrubbed up and improved his land as many, or most, have. It is in a wilder and more primitive condition. The very huckleberries are shaggy there. There was only one straight side to his land, and that I cut through a dense swamp. The fences are all meandering, just as they were at least in 1746, when it was described. The lemna reminds me strongly of that greenish or yellowish scum which I see mantling some barn-yard pools. It makes the same impression on the eye at a little distance. You would say it was the next higher stage of vegetation. The smallest of pads, one sixth of an inch in diameter and, like the white lily pad, crimson beneath. It completely covers two or three ditches under the edge of the wood there, except where a frog has jumped in and revealed the dark water,–and maybe there rests, his green snout concealed amid it; but it soon closes over him again when he has dived. These minute green scales completely cover some ditches, except where a careless frog has leapt in or swam across, and rent the veil. There is also, floating in little masses, a small ranunculus-like plant, flattish-stemmed with small forks, some of it made into minute caddis-cases. Perhaps it was cut up by some creature at the bottom. Vide press. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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[NO JOURNAL ENTRY FOR AUGUST 31, FRIDAY] HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 29, Saturday: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Daniel Shattuck, on a portion of the estate which would eventuate in the Colonial Inn on Concord Common near Monument Street. His sketch shows as neighbors Joseph Reynolds, Aunt Maria Thoreau, John Shepard Keyes, and Mrs. Charles W. Goodnow.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/113.htm

Also, Thoreau was working on his natural history materials. He posted to editor Horace Greeley his “SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES” for publication in the New-York Weekly Tribune. Concord Sep 29th 1860 Friend Greeley, Knowing your interest in whatever relates to Agriculture, I send you with this a short Address delivered by me before “The Middlesex Ag- ricultural Society”, in this town, Sep. 20th; on The Succession of Forest Trees. It is part of a chapter on the Dispersion of Seeds. If you would like to print it, please accept it. If you do not wish to print it entire, return it to me at once, for it is due to the Societys “Report” a month or 6 weeks hence Yrs truly Henry D. Thoreau

September 29, Saturday: Another hard frost and a very cold day. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In the hard frost of September 29th and 30th and October 1st the thermometer would go all the way down to 20° and all Ephriam Wales Bull’s Concord grapes, some fifty bushels of them, would be frozen.

66 Theodore Henry Hittell’s THE ADVENTURES OF JAMES CAPEN ADAMS, MOUNTAINEER AND GRIZZLY BEAR HUNTER, OF CALIFORNIA (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, Lee and Company. 117 Washington Street. San Francisco: Towne and Bacon). The book contained a dozen woodcuts by Charles Nahl. JAMES CAPEN ADAMS

66. Hittell had completely bought into Grizzly Adams’s story that his real name was James Capen Adams rather than John Adams. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 1, Monday: Bedrich Smetana reopened his music institute in Göteborg.

Giuseppe Garibaldi’s forces defeated the royal army of Naples at the Volturno.

In Syracuse, New York, the 9th annual “Jerry Celebration” sponsored by the Unitarian congregation of the Reverend Samuel Joseph May, honoring the freeing of Jerry McHenry from the federal marshals who had been seeking to “return” him to his “owner” on October 1, 1851. Henry Thoreau sketched, for Mr. Rhodes representing the Town of Concord, the boundaries of the eight towns in Concord area (Concord, Carlisle, Bedford, Lincoln, Wayland, Sudbury, Maynard, and Acton, totaling 127.49 square miles).

“So long as the past and present are outside one another, knowledge of the past is not of much use in the problems of the present. But suppose the past lives on in the present: suppose, though encapsulated in it, and at first sight hidden beneath the present’s contradictory and more prominent features, it is still alive and active; then the historian may very well be related to the non-historian as the trained woodsman is to the ignorant traveller.”

— R.G. Collingwood, AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939, page 100 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Concord is surrounded by nearby little towns like Lexington, Lincoln, Acton, Bedford, Sudbury, Maynard, Wayland, Waltham, and Carlisle, each having its own Common and its own militia and its own drummer-boy and its own tradition of military heroism.

All these youths within earshot of each other –in particular from Concord you can hear the church bells of Lincoln, Acton, and Bedford– so that these heros could conceivably step to the beat of the wrong drum and get out of step: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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WALDEN: On gala days the town fires its great guns, which echo PEOPLE OF like popguns to these woods, and some waifs of martial music WALDEN occasionally penetrate thus far. To me, away there in my bean- field at the other end of the town, the big guns sounded as if a puff ball had burst; and when there was a military turnout of which I was ignorant, I have sometimes had a vague sense all the day of some sort of itching and disease in the horizon, as if some eruption would break out there soon, either scarlatina or canker- rash, until at length some more favorable puff of wind, making haste over the fields and up the Wayland road, brought me information of the “trainers.” It seemed by the distant hum as if somebody’s bees had swarmed, and that the neighbors, according to Virgil’s advice, by a faint tintinnabulum upon the most sonorous of their domestic utensils, were endeavoring to call them down into the hive again. And when the sound died quite away, and the hum had ceased, and the most favorable breezes told no tale, I knew that they had got the last drone of them all safely into the Middlesex hive, and that now their minds were bent on the honey with which it was smeared. I felt proud to know that the liberties of Massachusetts and of our fatherland were in such safe keeping; and as I turned to my hoeing again I was filled with an inexpressible confidence, and pursued my labor cheerfully with a calm trust in the future. When there were several bands of musicians, it sounded as if the village was a vast bellows, and all the buildings expanded and collapsed alternately with a din. But sometimes it was a really noble and inspiring strain that reached these woods, and the trumpet that sings of fame, and I felt as if I could spit a Mexican with a good relish, –for why should we always stand for trifles?– and looked round for a woodchuck or a skunk to exercise my chivalry upon. These martial strains seemed as far away as Palestine, and reminded me of a march of crusaders in the horizon, with a slight tantivy and tremulous motion of the elm-tree tops which overhang the village. This was one of the great days; though the sky had from my clearing only the same everlastingly great look that it wears daily, and I saw no difference in it.

VIRGIL FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS WAR ON MEXICO HDT WHAT? INDEX

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View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/23.htm

October 1: Remarkable frost and ice this morning; quite a wintry prospect. The leaves of trees stiff and white at 7 A. M. I hear it was 21 this morning early. I do not remember such cold at this season. This is about the full of the moon (it fulled at 9 P.M. the 29th) in clear, bright moonlight nights. We have fine and bright but cold days after it. One man tells me that he regretted that he had not taken his mittens with him when he went to his morning’s work,–mowing in a meadow,– and when he went to a spring at 11 A. M., found the dipper with two inches of ice in it frozen solid. P.M.–Rain again. Button-bush balls were fairly reddened yesterday, and the Andropogon scoparius looked silvery in sun. Gossamer was pretty thick on the meadows, and noticed the round green leafy buds of the utricularia in the clear, cold, smooth v water. Water was prepared for ice, and C. saw the first Vanessa Antiopa since spring.

October 3, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed some of Cyrus Temple’s meadow land north of Spencer Brook and Samuel Barrett’s land on Barett’s Mill Road (Temple was selling four acres to Samuel Barrett).

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/128.htm

October 3. See Vanessa Antiopa. The hard frost of September 28th, 29th, and 30th, and especially of October 1st, has suddenly killed, crisped, and caused to fall a great many leaves of ash, hickory, etc., etc. These (and the locusts, generally) look shrivelled and hoary, and of course they will not ripen or be bright. They are killed and withered green,–all the more tender leaves. Has killed all the burdock flowers and no doubt many others. Sam Barrett says that last May he waded across the Assabet River on the old dam in front of his house without going over his india-rubber boots, which are sixteen and a half inches high. I do not believe you could have done better than this a hundred years ago, or before the canal dam was built. Bay-wings about. I have seen and heard sparrows in flocks, more as if flitting by, within a week, or since the frosts began. Gathered to-day my apples at the Texas house. I set out the trees, fourteen of them fourteen years ago and five of them several years later, and I now get between ten and eleven barrels of apples from them.

November 13, Wednesday: In the morning Henry Thoreau surveyed a houselot on Monument Street belonging to Daniel Shattuck67 and in the afternoon he walked out to Mount Misery and measured the rings in some hickory stumps.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/114.htm

November 13. P.M.–To Mt. Misery. A white birch (Belula alba) west edge of Trillium Wood, two feet seven inches [IN] circumference at three feet. On the Moore and Hosmer lot, cut in ’52 (I think), west of railroad, south of Heywood’s meadow, an oak stump fifteen and a half inches [IN] diameter, ninety-three rings; another, white oak, fourteen and a half inches [IN] diameter, ninety-four rings. In the first case there were two stumps of same age, evidently sprouts from an older stock, they curving around it, but I observed only a slight hollow where apparently the old stump had been. In the second case there was but one stump, but that rather concave on one side where there was a deep hollow in the earth. In both of these cases the tenacious mould, covered slightly with a fine greenish lichen, appeared heaved up about where the old stump had been. It w as a good hundred years since that old stump was cut. The 67. The survey shows William Monroe, Jr. was to the East, Nathan Barrett to the West, Emeline Barrett also to the West, and Jack Garrison was in back. Someone has written on the obverse: “Now, Lorenzo Eaton and M. Murray” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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inmost rings of the recent stumps were coarse, as with sprouts. Near these apparently a black (?) oak, or maybe a chestnut (?), twenty inches [IN] diameter and seventy-four rings, but the centre was within four inches of the westerly side. A white oak standing by the fence west of Spanish Brook dam on Morse’s lot, circumference six feet and two twelfths at three feet. Near by a hornbeam a foot and a half [IN] circumference at three feet. J. Baker’s pitch pines south of upper wood-path north of his house abundantly confirm the rule of young white pines under pitch pines. That fine young white pine wood west of this is partly of these which were left when the pitch pines were cut. Baker’s hill between-farm and Pleasant Meadow, oak (apparently a black), diameter twenty-six, seventy-one rings. The stumps here were cut some five or six years ago and have fifty to sixty rings. Commonly no sprouts from those of this age here. On top of Mt. Misery, looked again at those old stumps (of the 8th). There are three or four quite plain, just showing themselves above the surface, with rounded, flaky, decaying and crumbling edge, close to the recent stump of the shoot or shoots which sprang from them and which w ere cut last winter. One of these recent stumps, counted to-night, gives sixty years, but the first two or three are uncertain. Hence this old stump is as old as the century. There are several perfectly dry and exposed stumps on bare rocky shelves, or else lying on rocks on their sides, quite well preserved and showing the marks of the axe, which I have but little doubt are of the same age, preserved by being tipped out of the earth many years ago. [Vide account of pine stump, April 5, 1859.] Am surprised at the very slow growth of some hickory (stumps) along the wall on the top of this hill,–so fine I did not count quite accurately. One was 10 inches in diameter with 104 rings " " 61* " " about 115 " " " 141 " " " 84 " " " 11 3/4 " " 121 " * [Have this. Vide November 19th.] I think that the oak stumps have lasted unusually long on this hill, on account of their having originally grown slowly here and since been so much exposed to the light and air over and amid the rocks. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 1, Saturday: Documentation of the international slave trade, per W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: “Report of the Secretary of the Navy.” –SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 36 Cong. 2 sess. III. pt. 1, No. 1, pt. 3, pp. 8-9.

In order to rally the diminishing circulation of his magazine All the Year Round, Charles Dickens began a HDT WHAT? INDEX

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serialization of GREAT EXPECTATIONS. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/93b.htm

December 1: P.M.–To Fair Haven Hill. Yesterday, rain, raising river somewhat. Examined the young hickories on Fair Haven Hill slope to see how old they are. I sawed off three at two or three inches below the surface, and also higher up. These were about three feet high. The rings are very hard to discern, but I judge the smallest of them (which is about one inch in diameter and three feet high) to be seven years old. The other two are probably older, yet not nearly so old as the pines whose beginning I remember. It therefore must be that these hickories have sprung up from nuts within seven to twenty-five years past. They are most numerous in openings four or five rods over amid the pines, and are also found many rods from the pines in the open pasture, and also especially along walls, though yet very far from other trees of any kind. I infer, therefore, that animals plant them, and perhaps their growing along walls may be accounted for in part by the fact that the squirrels with nuts oftenest take that road. What is most remarkable is that they should be planted so often in open land, on a bare hillside, where oaks rarely are. I do not know of a grove of oaks springing up in this manner,–with broad intervals of bare sward between them, and away from pines. How is this to be accounted for? Yet I did notice oak seedlings coming up in this manner in Potter’s open field beyond Bear Garden. It is wonderful how much these hickories have endured and prevailed over. Though I searched the whole hillside, not only for the smallest, but the most perpendicular and soundest, each of the three that I sawed off had died down once at least, years ago. Though it might not betray any scar above ground, on digging I found it an inch below the surface. Most of these small ones consist of several stems from one root, and they are often of such fantastic forms and so diseased that they seem to be wholly dead at a little distance, and yet evidently many of them make erect, smooth, and sound trees at last, all defects smoothed over or obliterated. Some which have thus died down and sprung up again are in the form of rude harps and the like. These had great tap-roots considerably larger just beneath the surface than the stock above, and they were so firmly set in the ground that, though the tree was scarcely an inch in diameter and you had dug around it to the depth of three or four inches, it was impossible to pull one up; yet I did not notice any side roots, so high. They are iron trees, so rigid and so firm set are they. It may be that they are more persistent at the root than oaks, and so at last succeed in becoming trees in these localities where oaks fail. They may be more persevering. Perhaps, also, cattle do not browse them, but do oaks. It will be very suggestive to a novice just to go and dig up a dozen seedling oaks and hickories and see what they have had to contend with. Theirs is like the early career of genius. Measured a great red maple near the south end of E. Hubbard’s swamp, dividing in two at the ground, the largest trunk 7 feet and 10 inches at three feet and draped for three or four feet up with the pulmonaria (?) lichen. This the largest I know. Another is 5 1/2 feet, a third 5 1/4, a fourth in open land just south of turnpike 6 1/6. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 4, Tuesday: The Reverend John Stetson Barry and Louisa Young Barry’s daughter Caroline Louisa Barry got married with Charles Willard Morton, son of Charles O. Morton and Persis Morton of Needham, Massachusetts.

Henry Thoreau surveyed William Monroe, Jr.’s land on the east side of Monument Street next to Daniel Shattuck’s property and Richard Gourgas’s property.68 Laying down his surveying tools after this job, he would not use them again.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/93a.htm

Dec. 4. The first snow, four or five inches, this evening. Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone. It exists in the Northern States, and I am reminded by what I find in the newspapers that it exists in Canada. I never yet met with, or heard of, a judge who was not a slave of this kind, and so the finest and most unfailing weapon of injustice. He fetches a slightly higher price than the black man only because he is a more valuable slave. It appears that a colored man killed his would-be kidnapper in Missouri and fled to Canada. The bloodhounds have tracked him to Toronto and now demand him of her judges. From all that I can learn, they are playing their parts like judges. They are servile, while the poor fugitive in their jail is free in spirit at least. This is what a Canadian writes to the New York Tribune: “Our judges may be compelled to render a judgment adverse to the prisoner. Depend upon it, they will not do it unless compelled [his italics]. And then the poor fellow will be taken back, and probably burned to death by the brutes of the South.”69 Compelled! By whom? Does God compel them? or is it some other master whom they serve? Can’t they hold out a little longer against the tremendous pressure? If they are fairly represented, I wouldn’t trust their courage to defend a setting hen of mine against a weasel. Will this excuse avail them when the real day of judgment comes? They have not to fear the slightest bodily harm: no one stands over them with a stick or a knife even [?]. They have at the worst only to resign their places and not a mouse will squeak about it. And yet they are likely to assist in tying this victim to the stake! Would that his example might teach them to break their own fetters! They appear not to know what kind of justice that is which is to be done though the heavens fall. Better that the British Empire be destroyed than that it should help to reenslave this man! This correspondent suggests that the “good people” of New York may rescue him as he is being carried back. There, then, is the only resort of justice,–not where the judges are, but where the mob is, where human hearts are beating, and hands move in obedience to their impulses. Perhaps his fellow-fugitives in Toronto may not feel compelled to surrender him. Justice, departing from the Canadian soil, leaves her last traces among these. What is called the religious world very generally deny virtue to all who have not received the Gospel. They accept no god as genuine but the one that bears a Hebrew name. The Greenlander’s Pirksoma [?] (he that is above), or any the like, is always the name of a false god to them. C. says that Walden was first frozen over on the 16th December.

68. It was this William Monroe, Jr. who later gave the funds to build and maintain the Concord Free Public Library. 69. This was from the issue of November 29, 1860 and appeared on page 6. It pertained to a fugitive slave in Toronto, known there as John Anderson. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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[NO ENTRIES FOR 5-21 DECEMBER] HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1861

August 30, Friday: Barclay Coppoc, who had escaped from Harpers Ferry to become a 1st Lieutenant in Colonel Montgomery’s regiment of the 3d Kansas Infantry, died when a train out of Leavenworth plunged from a 40- foot trestle over the Platte River, the supports of which had been burned by Confederate guerrillas.

General John Charles Frémont prematurely freed the slaves of Missouri, mistaking the political objectives of the civil war and quite exceeding his authority and, incidentally, setting himself up as very feasible alternative wartime presidential material for the next national election. This, one might suspect, would transform a sitting president who intended to run for re-election into something of a political enemy, or, wouldn’t it? It would nowadays, and maybe things were pretty much the same back then. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Lieutenant-Colonel James Duncan Graham was appointed as Superintendent of the United States Lake Survey and Lighthouse Engineer of the 10th and 11th Districts (covering the Great Lakes except for Lake Champ1ain). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1864

April 25, day: There was fighting at Marks’ Mills. Truce negotiations between Prussia, Austria, and Denmark opened in London.

“Another Book by Thoreau” was reviewed in the Oneida Community’s Circular.

WALDEN Print H William D. Tuttle copied a houselot survey made in Damon’s Mills by Henry Thoreau on May 6, 1859. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1866

Henry Thoreau had left his surveying equipment with his sister Sophia E. Thoreau. In this year she had Sam Staples auction his surveying compass and tripod, which were purchased by Sampson Douglass Mason (he would present them to the Concord Free Public Library in 1913/1914 — and you may view them in the library research room in the basement).

Emma Lazarus’s father had her poems and translations to date printed up “for private circulation” as POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS: WRITTEN BETWEEN THE AGES OF FOURTEEN AND SIXTEEN. (This volume would of course be dedicated “To My Father.”) Soon after this appeared, the young poet would be introduced to Waldo Emerson, and eventually she would be presented with one of Thoreau’s compasses — not merely a similar one, but one he had actually used.

View Thoreau’s surveys at the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/Thoreau_surveys.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1873

April 4: Up to this point Thoreau’s journals had been in Maine with his sister Sophia. From this point they would be stored in the attic at Orchard House in Concord (later, it would be in this attic that the books of Thoreau family flute music, with botanical samples still pressed in their pages, would be discovered). Bronson Alcott wrote in his journal: “PM Thoreau’s journals, manuscripts and such book as his sister wishes to have in care come to hand. They are sent in three trunks, the MSS. and the books, with a bookcase made by Thoreau himself. I am to hold them sacred from all but Thoreau’s friends, allow none to take them away for perusal, subject to his sister’s pleasure during her lifetime, and if I survive her then they become mine for quotation or publishing. Many volumes may be compiled from them, and will be when his editor appears. I house them under lock and key safely in my attic. Along with the books are maps and surveys of local value.”

View Thoreau’s surveys at the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/Thoreau_surveys.htm

April 6: Bronson Alcott wrote in his journal: “I look into Thoreau’s books and find some valuable volumes. These especially: Wright’s Provincial Diary, 2 vols, Bartlett’s Americanisms, Loudon’s Encyclopedia of Plants, Winthrop’s Journal, Belkap’s American Biography, Paley’s Works, Locke’s Essays, Stewart’s Philosophy. There are volumes of manuscripts concerning the Indians, of literary character, from which several volumes of equal interest with those already compiled by himself and published may be compiled. The maps and surveys, of which there are ___ are of local value. Also several letters which should be published in a second edition so the Letters.” View Thoreau’s surveys at the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/Thoreau_surveys.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1874

Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau deposited her brother’s surveying papers at the Concord Free Public Library.

View Henry Thoreau’s surveys courtesy of the Concord library’s presence on the internet: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/Thoreau_surveys.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1910

In Rochester, New York, Sarah L. Willis, a spry 92-year-old Quaker lady, wanted to recount her memories of a sermon by Friend Elias from her childhood, before she died:

One other thing I recall was a talk, or sermon, to the young especially. He related that once he threw a stone and killed a bird, and was struck with consternation and regret at killing an innocent bird that might be a parent. He appealed feelingly to the boys to refrain from giving needless pain.

ELIAS HICKS

“We are on a level with all the rest of God’s creatures.”

Perhaps too much can be made of such historical-influence studies as this. As a corrective, may I offer the suggestion that we might investigate the possibility that Friend Elias Hicks, Rammohan Roy, Friend Lucretia Mott, and Henry Thoreau may all four have been separately influenced by some 5th party, like Elias a carpenter, or like Roy a stranger to aspects of our Western culture, or like Friend Lucretia a minister, or like Henry (at least in the sense of Alexander Selkirk), a surveyor?

(Am I being too mysterious? A full-page image of the “5th party” of whom I speak, as imagined by the British Broadcasting Company, appears on the following screen. What the BBC did was, it obtained some skulls dating to the first century in Palestine, and had the skulls padded with clay to represent the muscles and soft tissues, and then had a computer add skin and texture, and then added eye color and hair color typical of Palestinian peasants, and a peasant haircut — and they came up, as shown, with a first-order approximation of what Yehoshua bar Yusef might possibly have looked like. Yehoshua bar Yusef, that’s “Jesus” to you.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1968

Fall: Albert F. McLean, Jr.’s “Thoreau’s True Meridian: Natural Fact and Metaphor.” READ ALL ABOUT IT HDT WHAT? INDEX

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2010

October 10, Sunday: Patrick Chura’s THOREAU THE LAND SURVEYOR (Gainesville: UP of Florida). “Patrick Chura analyzes this seeming contradiction to show how the best surveyor in Concord combined civil engineering with civil disobedience.” “Placing Thoreau’s surveying in historical context, THOREAU THE LAND SURVEYOR explains the cultural and ideological implications of surveying work in the mid-nineteenth century. Chura delineates the ways that Thoreau’s environmentalist disposition and philosophical convictions asserted themselves even as he reduced the land to measurable terms and acted as an agent for bringing it under proprietary control.” He also describes in detail Thoreau’s 1846 survey of Walden Pond. By identifying the origins of Walden in –of all places– surveying data, Chura recreates a previously lost supporting manuscript of this American classic. This book remakes some of Thoreau’s boundaries — not the many physical property lines he created while surveying but rather intangible markers, remnants of his life and character that have been lost or neglected. In part, it is a book about the recovery of history. THOREAU AND SURVEYING

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Surveying HDT WHAT? INDEX

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: April 25, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.