Select men.

September 16.

Met the selectmen of Sudbury, ____and ____. I trust that towns will remember that they are supposed to be fairly represented by their select men.

From the specimen which Acton sent, I should judge that the inhabitants of that town were made up of a mixture of quiet, respectable, and even gentlemanly farmer people, well to do in the world, with a rather boisterous, coarse, and a little self-willed class; 

that the inhabitants of Sudbury are farmers almost exclusively, exceedingly rough and countrified and more illiterate than usual, very tenacious of their rights and dignities and difficult to deal with; 

that the inhabitants of Lincoln yield sooner than usual to the influence of the rising generation, and are a mixture of rather simple but clever with a well-informed and trustworthy people; 

that the inhabitants of Bedford are mechanics, who aspire to keep up with the age, with some of the polish of society, mingled with substantial and rather intelligent farmers.

____of Sudbury thinks the river would be still lower now if it were not for the water in the reservoir pond in Hopkinton running into it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 16, 1851