HYPOTHETICAL DUDES OF WALDEN: JOHN SPAULDING AND JOHN FARMER In his drafts D, E, and G for the end of the Higher Laws chapter of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, where Thoreau used the name John Spaulding, he would alter this reference to the name John Farmer: WALDEN: Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Nay nobleness begins at once to refine a man s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. John Farmer sat at his door one September evening, after a hard day s work, his mind still running on his labor more or less. Having bathed he sat down to recreate his intellectual man. It was a rather cool evening, and some of his neighbors were apprehending a frost. He had not attended to the train of his thoughts long when he heard some one playing on a flute, and that sound harmonized with his mood. Still he thought of his work; but the burden of his thought was, that though this kept running in his head, and he found himself planning and contriving it against his will, yet it concerned him very little. It was no more than the scurf of his skin, which was constantly shuffled off. But the notes of the flute came home to his ears out of a different sphere from that he worked in, and suggested work for certain faculties which slumbered in him. They gently did away with the street, and the village, and the state in which he lived. A voice said to him, Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you? Those same stars twinkle over other fields than these. But how to come out of this condition and actually migrate thither? All that he could think of was to practise some new austerity, to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself with ever increasing respect. PEOPLE OF WALDEN JOHN FARMER Per Ronald Earl Clapper s 1967 dissertation DEVELOPMENT OF WALDEN: A GENETIC TEXT, the name John Spaulding was used in versions D, E, and G and John Farmer was a very late alteration. Since CONCORD BIRTHS, MARRIAGES, AND DEATHS mentions no Spauldings at all, Thoreau may well have intended this reference to be non-traceable. His late name substitution seems to have been intended to make it more apparent that the reference was to an everyman rural figure, the conceit of the passage being that every person among us no matter how humble is willy-nilly the builder of a temple to the gods whom they worship. However, as it turns out, there was a man named John Farmer in Chelmsford during Thoreau s lifetime and not only that, this man was a public figure in that he was a published author.
Thoreau mentioned Spaulding in his journal entry of February 27, 1851, before he made that alteration in WALDEN: February 27, Thursday:...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 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... Plausibly, Thoreau was referring here to the surveying job he had just for Cyrus Stow, on February 20-27, 1851 and March 3, 1851. The name Spaulding appears twice again in the journal after the publication of WALDEN, in connection on December 28, 1855 with a notation in Thoreau s father s day-book from 1818 and then on July 8, 1858 with a landlord of a lodge in the White Mountains. Farmer was primarily an English occupational name derived from the Late Latin firmarius by way of the Middle English fermer, and referred to the tax farmer, that is, the person who had paid a fixed amount to purchase from the government the right to collect its taxes and revenues in a particular district (Latin firmus meaning fixed). Secondarily, it has denoted a person who paid a fixed rent for the purpose of cultivating a field. The word farmer, in the context in which we know it today, as a person who owns and runs a piece of rural real estate known as a farm, did not come into use as a synonym for planter, i.e. manager or owner of a plantation, until the early 17th Century. This John Farmer of Chelmsford, Massachusetts who lived during Thoreau s youth, per Henry Whittemore s GENEALOGICAL GUIDE TO THE EARLY SETTERS OF AMERICA, perhaps had a father or grandfather named John Farmer who pertained not only to Charlestown but also, prior to 1677, to Concord in Massachusetts, and had a son who probably was also named John Farmer a son whom, in fact, Thoreau knew: FARMER: Edward Farmer, of Billerica, Massachusetts, son of John [Farmer], of Ansley, or Anceley, near Atherstone, in Warwickshire, came in 1671 or [167]2, with his mother Isabella, a widow who married Elder Thomas Wiswall, of Newton, outlived him and died 1686, at the house of her son. He brought, perhaps, sister Isabella, and brother Thomas, certainly wife Mary, daughter Sarah, born about 1669; and probably John [Farmer], 1671; had here Edward, 1674; Mary, 1675; Barbara, at Woburn, 1678; Elizabeth, 1680; Thomas, 1683; and Oliver, 1686; was a useful townsman. His wife died 1719, aged about 76, and he died 1727, aged 87. JOHN FARMER, of Boston, a soldier, killed in the great fight of Philip s war 1675. JOHN FARMER, of Concord, Massachusetts, had daughter Isabel [Farmer], was of Charlestown, 1677. THOMAS FARMER, of Billerica, Massachusetts, 1675, probably brother of Edward, perhaps came with him, is not heard of after 1684, may have gone home.
In the Royal Charter for Virginia, 1609, are found John and George Farmer, gentlemen. NARRATIVE HISTORY AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project The People of Walden
1716 The Quaker meetinghouse on Nantucket Island, erected in 1711, was expanded at this point so that it would seat the more than 300 Friends who desired to take part in silent worship. At this point some Quakers of the Newport, Rhode Island community were engaging in the triangular trade, involving as one of its legs the bulk manufacture of rum and as another of its legs the international slave trade, 1 and some black slaves were present on Nantucket, where at least one Quaker, Friend Stephen Hussey, was a slaveholder. During this year an Englishman, Friend John Farmer, was making a missionary tour of the colonies attempting to persuade us that chattel slavery was not in agreement with Truth. Winning the support of Friend Priscilla Starbuck Coleman, Friend John was able to persuade the monthly meeting on the island into a minute depicting enslavement as immoral. It was not agreeable to Truth for Friends to purchase slaves and keep them for a term of life. 2 This declaration made the Nantucket monthly meeting the 1st group of Friends anywhere in the world to disavow human enslavement, but it would seem that the island s Quakers would fall back somewhat from their commitment to racial fairness, for some sixteen years, while Friend John s success on the island would 1. Below appears the rotting hulk of the slave ship Jem, as of the Year of Our Lord 1891 at Fort Adams near Newport on Aquidneck Island: 2. Refer to Friend Henry J. Cadbury s JOHN FARMER S FIRST AMERICAN JOURNEY, published in Worcester in 1944.
not be matched by any great success on the mainland of the American colonies in fact, in the Philadelphia meeting, he would be put under dealing (visited by an official committee and struggled with), and he would, eventually, be publicly disowned by the Friends. Furthermore, the Friends in England would honor the American disownment, so that Friend John would come to be regarded as troublesome on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Flushing Quakers who would speak out against slavery would include Friend Horseman Mullenix and Friend Matthew Franklin, who would come with another antislavery Friend John, an American one, Friend John Woolman (not yet born), when he would travel on Paumanok Long Island and visit their monthly meeting to speak against slavery. Costumes of Philadelphia Quakers
JOHN FARMER (1789-1838) OF CHELMSFORD 1789 June 12, Friday: John Farmer was born in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, son of John Farmer and Lydia Richardson Farmer. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT The People of Walden Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project
1813 John Farmer (1789-1838) s A FAMILY REGISTER OF THE DESCENDANTS OF EDWARD FARMER, OF BILLERICA, IN THE LINE OF THE YOUNGEST BRANCH OF HIS FAMILY. Concord, New Hampshire: Printed by George Hough for John Farmer, 1813. Description: 12 p. Notes: Descendants of Edward Farmer (ca. 1640-1727) of Billerica, Mass. Shaw & Shoemaker, 28483. Microopaque. New York: Readex Microprint, courtesy of A.A.S., 1977. 1 microopaque; 23 x 15 cm. (Early American imprints. Second series; no. 28481). Photographed from an annotated copy. This would be republished at Concord in 1824 and then reprinted at Hingham in 1828. [Note
that this John Farmer (1789-1838) is a different person from the mapmaking John Farmer (1798-1859).] DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
1814 John Farmer s A Sketch of Amherst, New Hampshire (2 COLL. MASS. HIST. SOC. II. BOSTON). CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT The People of Walden Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project
1816 John Farmer s AN HISTORICAL MEMOIR OF BILLERICA, IN MASSACHUSETTS. CONTAINING NOTICES OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS IN THE CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS OF THE TOWN, FROM ITS FIRST SETTLEMENT TO 1816. BY JOHN FARMER. PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. AMHERST, NEW HAMPSHIRE, R. BOYLSTON, 1816, a pamphlet of 36 pages printed in Amherst, New Hampshire.
[Note that John Farmer (1789-1838) is a different person from the mapmaking John Farmer (1798-1859).] This historical memoir would be of significant assistance to the Reverend Wilkes Allen in his preparation of his 192-page THE HISTORY OF CHELMSFORD..., to be issued in 1820. In this year or the following one, the Reverend would be creating a public library which he would keep in his own house in Chelmsford. 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. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project The People of Walden
1818 John Farmer s A Topographical and Historical Description of the County of Hillsborough, New Hampshire (2 COLL. MASS. HIST. SOC. VII. BOSTON). THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project The People of Walden
1820 John Farmer s 35-page AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF AMHERST, NEW HAMPSHIRE, FROM THE FIRST SETTLEMENT TO 1820, published at Amherst (a 52-page 2d edition would be published at Concord, New Hampshire in 1837). THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project The People of Walden
1821 John Farmer (1789-1838) s 36-page AN ECCLESIASTICAL REGISTER OF NEW-HAMPSHIRE: CONTAINING A SUCCINCT ACCOUNT OF THE DIFFERENT RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS, THEIR ORIGIN AND PROGRESS AND PRESENT NUMBERS, WITH A CATALOGUE OF THE MINISTERS OF THE SEVERAL CHURCHES, FROM 1638 TO 1822, THE DATE OF THEIR SETTLEMENT, REMOVAL OR DEATH, AND THE NUMBER OF COMMUNICANTS IN 1821. Concord, New Hampshire: Hill and Moore, 1821. [Note that this John Farmer (1789-1838) is a different
person from the mapmaking John Farmer (1798-1859).]
1822 John Farmer (1789-1838) s THE NEW MILITARY GUIDE; CONTAINING, EXTRACTS FROM THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES AND OF NEW-HAMPSHIRE; ORGANIZATION OF THE MILITIA OF NEW-HAMPSHIRE; DUTY OF OFFICERS, NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS AND PRIVATES; MISCELLANEOUS RULES FOR THE OBSERVANCE OF OFFICERS; A SYSTEM FOR FORMING, INSPECTING, ORGANIZING AND REVIEWING A REGIMENT; EXTRACTS FROM GEN. SCOTT S MILITARY INSTITUTES; OBJECT, GENERAL POWERS AND DUTIES OF COURTS MARTIAL, COURTS OF INQUIRY, &C., ACTS OF CONGRESS RELATING TO THE MILITIA; THE ORDER OF UNIFORM FOR THE INFANTRY ESTABLISHED BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF; DIFFERENT FORMS USED BY THE MILITIA WITH INSTRUCTIONS FOR FILLING THEM UP; FORM OF KEEPING A REGIMENTAL ROSTER, AND DIRECTIONS FOR KEEPING RECORDS.
COMP. FOR THE USE OF THE MILITIA. CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE. Printed by Hill and Moore. Farmer would also be putting out, at Concord, New Hampshire, beginning in this year and continuing for the following 16 years, an annual THE NEW HAMPSHIRE ANNUAL REGISTER AND UNITED STATES CALENDAR (1822 to 1838), each issue being made up of roughly 150 pages. [Note that this John Farmer (1789-1838) is a different person from the mapmaking John Farmer (1798-1859).]
1823 John Farmer (1789-1838) s A GAZETTEER OF THE STATE OF NEW-HAMPSHIRE. BY JOHN FARMER AND JACOB B. MOORE. EMBELLISHED WITH AN ACCURATE MAP OF THE STATE, AND SEVERAL OTHER ENGRAVINGS: BY ABEL BOWEN. CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE: J.B. MOORE, 1823. Description: iv, [5]-276 p. front. (fold. map) illus., plates. 18 cm. From this year into 1831, Farmer and Jacob Bailey Moore would be putting out three volumes of COLLECTIONS, HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS; AND MONTHLY LITERARY JOURNAL. ED. BY J. FARMER AND J. B. MOORE. Volume I, which would be reprinted in 1831, had originally appeared in 1822 as COLLECTIONS, TOPOGRAPHICAL, HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RELATING PRINCIPALLY TO NEW HAMPSHIRE. [Note that John Farmer (1789-1838) is an entirely different person from the mapmaking John
Farmer (1798-1859).]
1824 John Farmer s 7-page Memoir of the Penacook Indians was published as an Appendix to Moore s ANNALS OF CONCORD. Volume III of John Farmer s and Jacob Bailey Moore s COLLECTIONS, HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS;
AND MONTHLY LITERARY JOURNAL: COMPREHENDING HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF INDIAN WARS; AND OF THE SUFFERINGS OF CAPTIVES. CIVIL, POLITICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. TOPOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. MEMOIRS AND ANECDOTES OF EMINENT PERSONS. ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS FROM AMERICAN JOURNALS. POETRY, ORIGINAL AND SELECTED. ORIGINAL LETTERS; ANECDOTES, AND CURIOUS FRAGMENTS. AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENTS AND USEFUL INVENTIONS. STATISTICAL TABLES. LITERARY NOTICES. CASUALTIES AND DEATHS. EDITED BY J. FARMER AND J.B. MOORE. Concord [New Hampshire]: Published by J.B. Moore. Of the 3-volume set, the initial volume published in 1822 by Hill & Moore and reprinted in 1831 by H.R. & J.W. Moore, and the 2d volume published in 1823 by J.B. Moore, this 3d volume would be in the personal library of Henry Thoreau and would be mentioned at three points in A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS, on pages 119-122, 161, and 168. 3 JOHN FARMER, 1822 JOHN FARMER, 1823 JOHN FARMER, 1824 3. Thoreau s personal library would also contain a map of Michigan and Ouisconsin territories by a John Farmer (1798-1859) and we should bear in mind that this map was an entirely different person from this local New Hampshire historian John Farmer (1789-1838).
1828 John Farmer (1789-1838) s 20-page pamphlet A GENEALOGICAL MEMOIR OF THE FAMILY BY THE NAME OF FARMER WHO SETTLED AT BILLERICA, MASS. Hingham, Massachusetts: Farmer and Brown... Printer. [Note that this genealogist John Farmer (1789-1838) is a different person from the mapmaking John Farmer (1798-1859).]
1829 John Farmer (1789-1838) s 4 A GENEALOGICAL REGISTER OF THE FIRST SETTLERS OF NEW ENGLAND. AN ALPHABETICAL LIST OF THE GOVERNOURS, POLITICIANS, GRADUATES OF HARVARD COLLEGE, MEMBERS OF THE ARTILLERY COMPANY OF 1662, FREEMEN ADMITTED TO THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY FROM 1630-1662 AND MANY OF THE VERY EARLY INHABITANTS OF NEW ENGLAND AND LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK FROM 1620-1675. TO WHICH ARE ADDED VARIOUS GENEALOGICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES COLLECTED FROM ANCIENT RECORDS, MANUSCRIPTS AND PRINTED WORKS (that s not the book, that s the title) was published in Lancaster, Massachusetts by Carter, Andrews & Company. This work would be revised and significantly extended by James Savage in 1860 to create A GENEALOGICAL DICTIONARY OF THE FIRST SETTLERS OF NEW ENGLAND. It would prove so popular among those who have nothing to be proud of but their ancestry, that in addition to being thus revised and expanded, it would also be reissued in its original 4. Note that this John Farmer (1789-1838) is a different person from the mapmaking John Farmer (1798-1859).
form. 5 Also in this year Farmer produced an 87-page A CATECHISM OF THE HISTORY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, FROM ITS FIRST SETTLEMENT, FOR SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES. 5. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1989. Reprinted with additions and corrections by Samuel G. Drake.
1830 John Farmer (1798-1859) s 33-page THE EMIGRANTS GUIDE, OR, POCKET GAZETTEER OF THE SURVEYED PART OF MICHIGAN / BY JOHN FARMER was printed in Albany, New York by B.D. Packard and Company. 6 Also in this year Farmer revised and extended his 1829 A CATECHISM OF THE HISTORY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, FROM ITS FIRST SETTLEMENT, FOR SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES, and created a 21-page list of PASTORS, DEACONS, AND MEMBERS OF THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH IN CONCORD, N.H., FROM NOV. 18, 1730, TO NOV. 18, 1830. 6. Note that this mapmaking John Farmer (1798-1859) is a different person from the New Hampshire genealogist John Farmer (1789-1838).
1831 John Farmer (1798-1859) s AN EDITION OF THE CONSTITUTION OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, WITH QUESTIONS; DESIGNED FOR THE USE OF ACADEMIES AND DISTRICT SCHOOLS IN SAID STATE. Also, a new edition of Belknap, containing various Corrections and Illustrations of the first and second volumes of Dr. Belknap s HISTORY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, and additional Facts and Notices of Persons and Events therein mentioned.
1833 John Farmer s MEMORIALS OF THE GRADUATES OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, IN CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, COMMENCING WITH THE FIRST CLASS, MDCXLII. By John Farmer... Concord NH: Marsh, Capen and Lyon. Contains biographies of 25 graduates, 1642-1647: Benjamin Woodbridge, George Downing, John Bulkley, William Hubbard, Samuel Bellingham, John Wilson, Henry Saltonstall, Tobias Barnard, Nathaniel Brewster, John Jones, Samuel Mather, Samuel Danforth, John Allin, John Oliver, Jeremiah Holland, William Ames, John Russell, Samuel Stow, James Ward, Robert Johnson, John Alcock, John Brock, George Stirk, Nathaniel White, Jonathan Mitchel (incomplete). Most of the biographies were included also, in different form, in the AMERICAN QUARTERLY REGISTER, Volume 8, pages 129-143 (Memoirs of ministers) the
sketch of Mitchel being there completed.
1834 John Farmer s 16-page pamphlet FIRST GRADUATES OF HARVARD COLLEGE, CLASS OF 1642 consisted of extracts from his Memorials of the graduates of Harvard University, published in the COLLECTIONS OF THE NEW HAMPSHIRE HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Volume 4, 1834, pages 39-83 with the exception of the final biography, the incomplete one of Jonathan Mitchel, which was omitted.
1835 John Farmer (1789-1838) s 159-page A LIST OF THE GRADUATES, AND THOSE WHO HAVE RECEIVED DEGREES, AT ALL OF THE NEW ENGLAND COLLEGES, FROM THEIR FOUNDATION... FORMING A COMPLETE INDEX TO ALL THE TRIENNIAL CATALOGUES OF ALL THE COLLEGES IN NEW ENGLAND / BY JOHN FARMER... was printed in Boston: by Perkins, Marvin, & Company. 7
John Farmer (1798-1859) s MAP OF THE TERRITORIES OF MICHIGAN AND OUISCONSIN / BY JOHN FARMER OF DETROIT. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Historical Society of Michigan, 1987 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: West Michigan Printing Inc.) Description: 1 map: col. ; 50 x 83 cm. Notes: Scale [ca. 1:1,830,000] (W 1010 W 790/N 520 N 390). Facsimile. Prime meridians: Greenwich and Washington. Engraved by Rowdon Clark & Co., Albany, N.Y. Entered according to Act of Congress in the Clerks Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York by J.H. Colton & Co. on the 9th Novr. 1835. Henry Thoreau would have in his personal library a copy of this map dated 1854. JOHN FARMER, 1854 7. Disambiguation: This mapmaker John Farmer (1789-1838) who was in this year issuing a map of Michigan and Ouisconsin territories was an entirely different person from this genealogist John Farmer (1798-1859) who was in that same year issuing his compendium of Harvard graduates!
1837 John Farmer (1789-1838) s 52-page HISTORICAL SKETCH OF AMHERST, IN THE COUNTY OF HILLSBOROUGH, IN NEW-HAMPSHIRE: FROM ITS FIRST SETTLEMENT TO THE YEAR MDCCCXXXVII / BY JOHN FARMER. 2d edition, enlarged. Concord, New Hampshire: Printed by A. M Farland. [Note that this local historian John Farmer (1789-1838) is a different person from the mapmaking John Farmer (1798-1859).]
1838 August 13, Monday: John Farmer died. The body would be interred at Concord, New Hampshire.
1855 February 22, Thursday: It would not be until the availability of stop-motion photography in 1931 that it would be possible to ascertain that the male ruffed grouse makes its drumming noise not by striking its wings against its drumming stand or its body or behind its back, but by the rapidity of the motion of its feathers through the air (This would be photographically documented by Dr. Arthur A. Allen). CURRENT YOUTUBE VIDEO JOHN FARMER February 22. P. M. To J. Farmer s Remarkably warm and pleasant weather, perfect spring. I even listen for the first bluebird. I see a seething in the air over clean russet fields [Also the 24th, which is very cold.]. The westerly wind is rather raw, but in sheltered places it is deliciously warm. The water has so far gone down that I get over the Hunt Bridge causeway by going half a dozen rods on the wall in one place. This water must have moved two or three hundred cartloads of sand to the side of the road. This damage would be avoided by raising the road J. Farmer showed me an ermine weasel he caught in a trap three or four weeks ago. They are not very common about his barns. All white but the tip of the tail; two conspicuous canine teeth in each jaw. In summer they are distinguished from the red weasel, which is a little smaller, by the length of their tails, particularly, six or more inches, while the red one s is not two inches long. He says their track is like that of the mink: as if they had only two legs. They go on the jump. Sometimes make a third mark. He saw one in the summer (which he called the red weasel, but, as he thought the red twice as big as the white, it may have been a white one) catch a striped squirrel thus: He was at work near the wall near his house when he saw a striped squirrel come out of the wall and jump along by the side of a large stone. When he had got two or three feet along it, as it were in the air, the weasel appeared behind him, and before he had got four feet had him by the throat. Said a man told him that he saw a weasel come running suddenly to an apple tree near which he was working, run round and round and up it, when a squirrel sitting on the end of a branch jumped off, and the weasel, jumping, had him before he touched the ground. He had no doubt that when the weasel ran round the tree he was on the track of the squirrel F. said he had many of the black rat, but none or very few of the wharf rats, on his premises. He had seen micenests twenty feet up trees. Three or four weeks ago he traced a mink by his tracks on the snow to where he had got a frog from the bottom of a ditch, dug him out. Says that where many minnows are kept in a spring they will kill four or five hundred at once and pile them up on the bank. Showed me his spring, head of one of the sources of Dodge s Brook, which by his mark is not a quarter of an inch higher now, when there is so much water on the surface, than it was in the midst of the great drought last summer. But the important peculiarity of it is that when, in a dry spell, this stream is dry fifteen or twenty rods from this source, it may suddenly fill again before any rain comes. This does not freeze, even for twenty rods. A pool in it, some dozen or more rods from source, where his cattle drink, he never saw frozen He had seen a partridge [Ruffed Grouse Bonasa umbellus (Partridge)] drum standing on a wall. Said it stood very upright and produced the sound by striking its wings together behind its back, as a cock often does, but did not strike the wall nor its body. This he is sure of, and declares that he is mistaken who affirms the contrary, though it were Audubon himself. Wilson says he begins to strike with his stiffened wings while standing on a log, but does not say what he strikes, though one would infer it was either the log or his body. Peabody says he beats his body with his wings The sun goes down to-night under clouds, a round red orb, and I am surprised to see that its light, falling on my book and the wall, is a beautiful purple, like the poke stem or perhaps some kinds of wine You see fresh upright green radical leaves of some plants the dock, probably water dock, for one in and about water now the snow is gone there, as if they had grown all winter. Pitch pine cones must be taken from the tree at the right season, else they will not open or blossom in a chamber. I have one which was gnawed off by squirrels, apparently of full size, but which does not open. Why should they thus open in the chamber or elsewhere? I suppose that under the influence of heat or dryness the upper side of each scale expands while the lower contracts, or perhaps only the one expands or the other contracts. I notice that the upper side is a lighter, almost cinnamon, color, the lower a dark (pitchy?) red.
1862 The Reverend Jeremy Belknap (1744-1798) s THE HISTORY OF NEW-HAMPSHIRE. BY JEREMY BELKNAP, D.D. FROM A COPY OF THE ORIGINAL ED., HAVING THE AUTHOR S LAST CORRECTIONS. TO WHICH ARE ADDED NOTES, CONTAINING VARIOUS CORRECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE TEXT, AND ADDITIONAL FACTS AND NOTICES OF PERSONS AND EVENTS THEREIN MENTIONED. BY JOHN FARMER (1789-1838). Dover NH: G. Wadleigh (A copy of the edition of 1831, with new title-page added).
1884 Daniel Chester French did the Reverend John Harvard up brown: 8 Le Bosquet s MEMORIAL OF JOHN FARMER (Boston). 8. It appears that the model for the body of this statue (Sherman Hoar attired in a 17th-Century costume) may have been a fellow MIT student.
1964 Republication of John Farmer (1789-1838) s massive A GENEALOGICAL REGISTER OF THE FIRST SETTLERS OF NEW ENGLAND. Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Company. [Note that this John Farmer (1789-1838) is a different person from the mapmaking John Farmer (1798-1859).] MAGISTERIAL HISTORY IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project The People of Walden
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 <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. 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: July 27, 2014
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.
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 <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. Arrgh.