nals, where he is describing the coming on of day, as witnessed by him at the close of a September night in Concord. "Some bird flies over," he writes, "making a noise like the barking of a puppy (it was a cuckoo). It is yet so dark that I have dropped my pencil and cannot find it." No writer of modern times, in fact, was so much awake and abroad at night, or has described better the phenomena of darkness and of moonlight.
It is interesting to note some dates and incidents concerning a few of Thoreau's essays. The celebrated chapter on "Friendship," in the "Week," was written in the winter of 1847-48, soon after he left Walden, and while he was a member of Mr. Emerson's household during the absence of his friend in Europe. On the 13th of January, 1848, Mr. Alcott notes in his diary:—
"Henry Thoreau came in after my hours with the children, and we had a good deal of talk on the modes of popular influence. He read me a manuscript essay of his on Friendship, which he has just written, and which I thought superior to anything I had heard."
To the same period or a little later be-
