Cameron (1956) cites a reference, in the Concord Yeoman’s Gazette for August 21, 1830, to Walden as “Wall’d in,” so T obviously did not coin this pun. It is said in England that the word […]

According to a note in his own copy of W, T got this name from Evelyn’s diary, but the Concord Minot family, which was related to T by marriage, originally came from […]

According to Albanese (327), the Hindus equate 360 human years to one “year of the Gods”: “In the Rig Veda, Vishnu was only a minor sun deity, but later, merging his identity with […]

Sanborn (1909, II, 205) says T identifies this farmer as Mr. Tudor.

The New England Farmer was an agricultural journal published at Quincy Hall in Boston. There was a New England Cultivator and a Boston Cultivator, both published in Boston.

In his Journal for June 3, 1851, T identifies them as a variety of bush bean known as “Phaseolus vulgaris”; later in this chapter he identifies them as “common small white bush beans.” His […]

Van Doren (81) feels that this final paragraph of the chapter shows the direct influence of Sir Thomas Browne in its style.

T was probably again thinking of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, which featured these illustrations on the front cover.

The Goose Ponds just east of Walden.

About fifteen miles east of Concord on the Fitchburg Railroad.

According to Greek legend, a people who lived in a land of plenty and perpetual sunshine beyond the north wind. T may have read of them in Diodorus (2.47).

“But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Matthew 6:20).

Frederic Tudor, the “ice-king” of the nineteenth century New England ice industry, and his former partner, Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth, engaged in a trade war in the mid-1840s. Rather than be […]

Achilles was born in Thessaly, according to tradition. T is probably referring to a rugged, mountainous shore.

Probably Calvin Damon, who in 1834 had established a factory in West Concord that prospered for many years.

Reading, Massachusetts, north of Boston.

This is the first part of a mnemonic device once used in country schools to teach children the alphabet.

Little Reading (New York, 1827) (Gross, 1988).

An allusion to the building of the Tower of Babel.

T was not always a successful lecturer, and after a failure was wont to deride the value of the lecture platform.

Some of the ancient classics have survived only because churchmen of the Middle Ages, not appreciating their value, used the manuscripts as scrap paper for their own notes.

T had perhaps a better knowledge of Greek and Latin than any other transcendentalist, and translated a number of classical works into modern English.

For the influence of Homer upon T, particularly in the writing of W, see Seybold

“Etant assis, parcourir la région du monde spiritual: j’ai eu cet avantage dans les livres. Etre enivré par une seule coupe de Yin: j’ai éprouvé ce plaisir lorsque j’ai bu la liqueur […]

A point of support.

These lines are from a poem by Ellen Hooper, published in the transcendentalist Dial (1, 1840, 193). T omits the first portion of the poem and changes the stanza breaks of the portion […]

T is exaggerating here, for Albert Stacy ran a bookstore with a circulating library (that is, book rental) in Concord for many years

T had a strong belief, as he said in his essay “Walking, or the Wild,” that “In wildness is the preservation of the world,” and this has become the motto of the present-day […]

Usually spelled “but-end”.

These balls are a green alga of the genus Cladophora. A detailed description of them can be found in Smith (424-31).

Although the American chestnut had been one of the commonest trees in T’s day, it was almost completely obliterated by a blight early in this century.

“And waste its sweetness on the desert air” (Thomas Gray, “Elegy in a Country Churchyard”).

“He lived reserved and austere” (Andrew Marvell, “An Horatian Ode,” line 30).

Emerson thus refers to Walden Pond in his Journal for April 9, 1840 (V, 381). Benoit suggests the term was derived from the Hindu concept of Bindu.

The financial district in Boston.

T’s own poem. Critics vary widely in their interpretation of it, though most agree that he is speaking of his own identity with Walden Pond. For further explication see Paul Williams (1964) […]

“Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” (John 1:47).

Another reference to the Irish railroad workers’ shanties about half a mile northwest of T’s cabin site.

Just northwest of Walden Pond, the earth was cut away to some depth to permit the railroad to proceed on a level track.

“But More of More-Hall, with nothing at all, / He slew the dragon of Wantley” (Bishop Percy, “The Dragon of Wantley,” Reliques of Ancient English Poetry).

The Greek’s were finally able to pierce Troy’s defenses by hiding in a wooden horse and persuading the Trojans to drag it into the city as a god.

Locomotive, which in T’s day needed regularly to replenish its water and wood for its steam engine.

That plan was never carried out, and Concord now gets its water from Nagog Pond in Acton.

The battle of April 19, 1775.

“Mordre wol out” (Chaucer, “The Prioress’s Tale,” i.1766).

T inserted “(Hydrometer)” after “insects” in his copy of W.

It was a habit of T’s to bend over and peer at the landscape through his legs, providing a novel view – a device sometimes used by artists.

T’s guess was correct. An account of this fish and its nest-building habits will be found in The Fishes of the Connecticut Lakes and Neighboring Waters, by W. C. Kendall and E. L. Goldsborough, […]

Brister’s Spring, northeast of Walden. It feeds what T called the Fairyland Pond, in what is now the Town Forest.

Slightly west of Walden Pond (Gleason). A boiling spring is not a hot spring, but merely one in which the water can be seen bubbling up from the bottom.