Her second husband was the Rev.Dr.Ripley.
I knew Henry Thoreau very intimately.

I went to school with him when I was a little boy and he was a big one.

Afterward I was a scholar in his school.
He was very fond of small boys, and used to take them out with him in his boat, and make bows and arrows for them, and take part in their games.

He liked also to get a number of the little chaps of a Saturday afternoon and take them out in his boat, or for a long walk in the woods.
He knew the best places to find huckleberries and blackberries and chestnuts and lilies and cardinal and other rare flowers.
We used to call him Trainer Thoreau, because the boys called the soldiers the "trainers," and he had a long, measured stride and an erect carriage which made him seem something like a soldier, although he was short and rather ungainly in figure.
He had a curved nose which reminded one a little of the beak of a parrot.
His real name was David Henry Thoreau, although he changed the order of his first two names afterward.

He was a great finder of Indian arrow-heads, spear-heads, pestles, and other stone implements which the Indians had left behind them, of which there was great abundance in the Concord fields and meadows.
He knew the rare forest birds and all the ways of birds and wild animals.