Thoreau, Henry David....

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Thoreau, Henry David. Partial autograph manuscript (unsigned), 1 page (7.25 x 3 in.; 184 x 76 mm.), no place, no date. Ten lines of text darkly penned, presumably from Thoreau's notebooks. Not found in his published writings. Matted with an engraved portrait with a facsimile signature and framed to 13.75 x 19.75 in. (349 x 502 mm.). Unpublished Thoreau notes on the importance of actual experience. Thoreau writes in full: ... principle witness. We do not want want [sic] to see hear the man who saw the track only - or even followed the trail - and found the bones and the hide and deposited them in his cabinet - but him whose sheep the wolf killed who has summered and wintered within hearing of his howl - and who finally encountered and overcame him - This will be - this is the only report which The passage strongly endorses Thoreau's commitment to direct experience as the most reliable source of information. In this case he is saying that he does not want a report about a wolf from someone who has only known a wolf from a distance, even if the person found a the wolf's "bones and the hide to study" ("and deposited them in his cabinet"). Thoreau is only willing to hear from someone who has lived near enough to the wolf to hear its howl - year-round - and whose sheep the wolf has killed - and who has ultimately met and conquered the wolf. Only someone with that much direct experience would be a reliable source of information for Thoreau. The passage is reminiscent of what Thoreau wrote in Walden, in part, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach ... and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion..." On the verso of the notes (color photocopy is present), Thoreau writes in pencil, in part:"Dr Gould, report this singular fact is recorded in..." Dr. Gould is almost certainly Dr. Augustus A. Gould (1805-1866), a member of the Boston Society of Natural History and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, who frequently contributed to their publications and knew Thoreau. Provenance: This unsigned partial autograph manuscript accompanied Thoreau's Greek Lexicon which was once owned by W. Stephen Thomas, former president of the Thoreau Society, and was sold by his son.