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"the hand-writing of your letter is so miserable, that I am not sure I have made it out. If I have it seems to me you are the same old sixpence you used to be, rather rusty, but a genuine piece." ----Letter, William Ellery Channing (1817-1901) to Thoreau, 5 March 1845 Can you read Thoreau's handwriting? This is a sample from an 1851 Journal entry. Here are some hints. Thoreau wrote with a heavy right slant, so the dots on his i's and the crosses to his t's often appear to the right of the actual letters. Also, some of his letters look alike, especially r and s and z. To make matters worse, Thoreau often made mistakes in spelling or grammar, most of which we reproduce in our edition. He also runs words together, so it can be hard to tell where one word stops and another begins. Finally, keep an eye out for stray marks: random dots and lines, ink splotches, fingerprints. A THOREAU MANUSCRIPTThis manuscript is reproduced courtesy of The Pierpont Morgan Library. Further distribution is prohibited. An INTERACTIVE version of this page is available. To view it, you need to download and install the free Flash plug-in from the Macromedia website. Click here to get it. Follow the simple instructions to install the plug-in, then click here to go the interactive version of this page. .
SAMPLE TRANSCRIPTION
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