Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts 2.djvu/84

 nothing like it; though Hamilton said there was one then three feet higher than the lake. But I brought home a thorn in bloom, and asked if that was it? Mrs. H. then gave me more particular directions, and I searched again faithfully; and this time I brought home an Amelanchier as the nearest of kin—doubting if the apple had ever been seen there,—but she knew both those plants. Her husband had first discovered it by the fruit, but she had not seen it in bloom.

We then called in Fitch and talked about it; he said it was found, the same they had in Vermont (?); and directed me to a Mr. Grimes as one who had found it. He was gone to catch the horses, to send his boy six miles for a doctor on account of a sick child, evidently a surgeon and an inquiring man.

The boy showed me some of the trees he had set out this spring, but they had all died,—having a long tap-root, and being taken up too late. Then I was convinced by the sight of the just expanding though withered leaf, and plucked a solitary withered flower, the better to analyze it. Finally I stayed and went in search of the tree with the