The rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly.

February 3

3 p. m. — To Gowing's Swamp.

I accurately pace the swamp in two directions and find it to be shaped thus: —

When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, — as that a sentence must never end with a particle, — and perceive how implicitly even the learned obey it, I think — 

Any fool can make a rule

 And every fool will mind it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 3, 1860

To Gowing's Swamp. See August 23, 1854 ("I improve the dry weather to examine the middle of Gowing's Swamp. There is in the middle an open pool, twenty or thirty feet in diameter . . .”); May 31, 1857 (“That central meadow and pool in Gowing's Swamp is its very navel,”); January 30, 1858 ("The pool, where there is nothing but water and sphagnum to be seen and where you cannot go in the summer, is about two rods long and one and a half wide."); February 1, 1858 ("When the surface of a swamp shakes for a rod around you, you may conclude that it is a network of roots two or three feet thick resting on water or a very thin mud. The surface of that swamp, composed in great part of sphagnum, is really floating.")

The rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, — as that a sentence must never end with a particle. See January 2, 1859 ("When I hear the hypercritical quarrelling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc.,. . . I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural. . .Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 3

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023