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Title: Journal 02, 1850-September 15, 1851

Author: Henry David Thoreau

Editor: Bradford Torrey

Release date: March 8, 2019 [eBook #59031]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
        produced from images generously made available by The
        Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOURNAL 02, 1850-SEPTEMBER 15, 1851 ***




Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)









Transcriber’s Note:

  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

  The following alternate spellings were noted, but retained:

     Shakspeare and Shakespeare
     Minot and Minott




     MANUSCRIPT EDITION

     LIMITED TO SIX HUNDRED COPIES

     NUMBER ____




  [Illustration: _Star-flowers (Trientalis) (page 266)_]

  [Illustration: _Fair Haven Pond from the Cliffs_]




     THE WRITINGS OF
     HENRY DAVID THOREAU

     JOURNAL

     EDITED BY BRADFORD TORREY

     II
     1850-SEPTEMBER 15, 1851

     BOSTON AND NEW YORK
     HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
     MDCCCCVI




     COPYRIGHT 1906 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

     _All rights reserved_




CONTENTS


     CHAPTER I. 1850 (ÆT. 32-33)                                     3

     The Religion of the Hindoos—Narrow Shoes—The Town of
     Bedford—A Visit to Haverhill and the Dustin House—Taste
     in Eating—Sawing Buttonwood Logs—The Insanity of
     Heroes—The Sand Cherry—Life in a Small Meadow—Turtle and
     Horned Pout—Limestone—The Energy of Our Ancestors—A New
     Bosphorus—Sippio Brister’s Gravestone—Fences—Driving
     Cows to Pasture—Setting Fire to the Woods—The
     Incendiary—The View from Goodman’s Hill in Sudbury—A
     Burner of Brush—Tending a Burning—The Regularity of the
     Cars—The Levels of Life—A Proposed Method of Fighting
     Wood-Fires—The Yezidis—Insects over the River—Cows in a
     Pasture—Horses Fighting—The Advantages of a Fire in the
     Woods—Walking by Night—An Indian Squaw—A Button from the
     Marquis of Ossoli’s Coat—Bones on the Beach—Fresh Water
     in Sand-Bars—Rags and Meanness—Tobacco Legislation—An
     Ideal Friend—Conforming—A Drunken Dutchman—Legs as
     Compasses—Walks about Concord—Meadow-Hay—The Old
     Marlborough Road—Surface of Water—The Money-Digger—The
     Railroad—Tall Ambrosia—The Ways of Cows—Flocks
     of Birds—A Great Blue Heron—The Elm—Uncle Charles
     Dunbar—Lines on a Flower growing in the Middle of the
     Road—A Beautiful Heifer—Water the Only Drink—On the
     River—Music—The Canadian Excursion—Living and Loving
     one’s Life—Canadian Houses—A Frog in the Milk—Apostrophe
     to Diana—Aground at Patchogue—The Relics of a Human
     Body on the Beach—Echoes—Sawmills—Begging Indians—The
     Indian and his Baskets—Uncle Charles on the Dock at New
     York—Nature in November—The Approach of Winter—Changes
     made in Views from the cutting down of Woods—Cats
     run Wild—The Growth of a Wood—Canadian Greatcoats—A
     Root Fence—Wild Apples—An Old Bone—A Miser and his
     Surveyor—The Remains of a Coal-Pit—The Pickerel in the
     Brooks—Wildness—The Attraction of the West—Frightened
     Cows—The Passing of the Wild Apple—Begging
     Governments—Old Maps—The First Cold Day—A New Kind of
     Cranberry—The Discoveries of the Unscientific Man—The
     Sportiveness of Cattle—Fair Haven Pond—Friends and
     Acquaintances—Summer Days in Winter—A Muskrat on
     the Ice—An Encampment of Indians at Concord—Indian
     Lore—Indian Inventions—Instinct in Women—The Little
     Irish Boy—Puffballs—An Ocean of Mist.

     CHAPTER II. December, 1850 (ÆT. 33)                           120

     Moss—Circulation in Plants—The First Snow—Blue-Curls
     and Indigo-weed—Hands and Feet—Sweet-Gale—Promethea
     Cocoons—Frozen-thawed Apples—Swamps in Winter—An
     Old-fashioned Snow-Storm—A Shrike with Prey—The Death of
     Friends—Notes from Gordon Cumming—Blue Jays.

     CHAPTER III. January-April, 1851 (ÆT. 33)                     134

     A Visit to the Clinton Gingham-Mills—Behavior—The
     Knowledge of an Unlearned Man—Snow-covered Hills—The
     Walker Errant—Sauntering—Freedom—F. A. Michaux on
     Certain Trees—Divine Communications—The Tameness of
     English Literature—Quotations from Ovid—Panoramas
     of the Rhine and the Mississippi—The Fertility
     of America—Midwinter—Sir John Mandeville on the
     Peoples of the Earth—A Society for the Diffusion
     of Useful Ignorance—America the She Wolf To-day—The
     Gregariousness of Man—The Edge of the Meadow—Fleets
     of Ice-Flakes—Waterfalls within Us—The Ice-Flakes
     again—Antiquity—The Health of the Farmer—Eating—The
     Fallibility of Friends—Moral Freedom—Manners and
     Character—Getting a Living—Actinism—The Floating
     Crust of the Meadow—Mythology and Geology—Law and
     Lawlessness—Carrying off Sims—Governor Boutwell—Concord
     and Slavery—The Fugitive Slave Law—Slavery and the
     Press—Mahomet—The Sentence of the Judge—The Servility
     of Newspapers—A False Idea of Liberty—Real and Actual
     Communications—The Cat—Love and Marriage.

     CHAPTER IV. May, 1851 (ÆT. 33)                                186

     Purity—An Optical Illusion—A Mountain Tarn—Experiments
     in Living—The Caliph Omar—The Harivansa—The Taming
     of Beasts and Men—The Study of Nature—False Teeth
     or a False Conscience—Taking Ether—Moonlight—Notes
     from Michaux—Vegetation and Human Life—The
     Development of the Mind—The Mind and its Roots—Man
     our Contemporary—Names—Wild Apples and their
     Names—An Inspiring Regret—Medical Botany—The
     Designs of Providence—True Sites for Houses—The
     View from the Wayland Hills—An Organ-Grinder—Materia
     Medica—Tobacco—More Names for Wild Apples.

     CHAPTER V. June, 1851 (ÆT. 33)                                224

     A Visit to Worcester—A Fallen Oak—Angelica and
     Hemlock—Transcendentalism—The Past and the Future—Who
     boosts You?—F. A. Michaux on the Ohio—Various Trees—Our
     Garments and the Trees’—A Moonlight Walk—Crossing
     Bridges at Night—Air-Strata at Night—A Book of the
     Seasons—South American Notes from Darwin’s “Voyage of
     a Naturalist”—Moonlight—Breathing—The Shimmering of the
     Moon’s Reflections on the Rippled Surface of a Pond—The
     Bittern’s Pumping—Twilight—Music Out-of-Doors—The
     Whip-poor-will’s Moon—Fireflies—Darwin again—The
     Rapid Growth of Grass—The Birch the Surveyor’s
     Tree—Criticism—Calmness—The Wood Thrush’s Song—The Ox’s
     Badges of Servitude—A Visit to a Menagerie—Old Country
     Methods of Farming—The Hypæthral Character of the
     “Week”—Dog and Wagon—Haying begun—The Fragrance of the
     Fir.

     CHAPTER VI. July, 1851 (ÆT. 33-34)                            280

     Travellers heard talking at
     Night—Potato-Fields—Hubbard’s Bridge—Moonlight—Sam, the
     Jailer—Intimations of the Night—Shadows of Trees—Perez
     Blood’s Telescope—The Chastity of the Mind—A Rye-Field—A
     Visit to the Cambridge Observatory—Charles River—A
     Gorgeous Sunset—The Forms of Clouds—A Moonlight Walk—The
     Light of the Moon—Waterfalls within Us—Another Moonlight
     Walk—Eating a Raw Turnip—The Experience of Ecstasy—The
     Song Sparrow—Berry-Picking—Signs of the Season—The First
     of the Dog-Days—Pitch Pine Woods—The Ideal Self—The Life
     of the Spirit—A Proposed Occupation—The River’s Crop—An
     Old Untravelled Road—A Black Veil—A Human Footprint—The
     Gentleman—An Immortal Melody—Wild Pigeons—Mirabeau
     as a Highwayman—Ambrosial Fog—Maimed Geniuses—The
     Charm of the French Names in Canada—Walking and
     Writing—Swallows—The Moods of the Mind—Drought—A South
     Shore Excursion—On the Hingham Boat—Hull—The Cohasset
     Shore—Daniel Webster’s Farm—A Mackerel Schooner—Clark’s
     Island—A Boat Swamped—Digging Clams—The Rut of the
     Sea—Seals in Plymouth Harbor—Shells and Seaweeds—The
     Sailboat—Webster’s Nearest Neighbor—A Hard Man—Plymouth.

     CHAPTER VII. August, 1851 (ÆT. 34)                            367

     Return to Concord—An Ill-managed Menagerie—A Summer
     Evening—A Musical Performer—The Moon and the Clouds—The
     Nearness of the Wild—Travelling—Profitable Interest—The
     Spread of Inventions—The Inspiring Melodies—An Unheeded
     Warning—Sounds of a Summer Night—The Moon’s War with
     the Clouds—First Signs of Morning—The Dawn—Thistle
     and Bee—Cool Weather—Delight in Nature—The Snake
     in the Stomach—The Haying—Dogs and Cows—British
     Soldiers in Canada—Liberty in Canada—Canadian
     Fortifications—Prehensile Intellects—The Poet and
     his Moods—Knowing one’s Subject—The Revolution of
     the Seasons—Rattlesnake-Plantain—The Creak of the
     Crickets—Botanical Terms—The Cardinal-Flower—The
     Canadian Feudal System—Government—The Flowering of
     the Vervain—The Conspicuous Flowers of the Season—The
     Visit to Canada—De Quincey’s Style—Charity and
     Almshouses—Men observed as Animals—The Price Farm
     Road—Snake and Toad—An August Wind—Cutting Turf—Burning
     Brush—The Telegraph—The Fortress of Quebec—A Faithful
     Flower—Potato Balls—The Seal of Evening—Solitude in
     Concord—The Names of Plants.

     CHAPTER VIII. September, 1851 (ÆT. 34)                        440

     Disease the Rule of Existence—Finding one’s
     Faculties—Telegraphs—Moose-lipped Words—Cato’s De
     Re Rustica—The Horse and Man—Health and Disease—The
     Telegraph Harp—Walking in England—A Walk to
     Boon’s Pond in Stow—The Farmer and His Oxen—Tempe
     and Arcadia—Footpaths for Poets—Writing on Many
     Subjects—Dammed Streams—The Dog of the Woods—J. J.
     G. Wilkinson—Fastidiousness—A Lake by Moonlight—A
     Formalist—The Fullness of Life—Creatures of
     Institutions—Moments of Inspiration—Gladness—A
     September Evening—Singing heard at Night—Moonlight
     on the River—Fair Haven by Moonlight—Northern
     Lights—Soaring Hawks—The Grass and the Year—The Sky
     at Night—A Factory-Bell—Sunrise—The Color of the
     Poke—The Stone-mason’s Craft—Moral Effort—Benvenuto
     Cellini—An Endymion Sleep—The Mountains in the
     Horizon—The Telegraph Harp—Perambulating the Bounds—A
     Pigeon-Place—An Elusive Scent—The Cross-leaved Polygala.




ILLUSTRATIONS


     STAR-FLOWERS (TRIENTALIS)              Frontispiece
       Carbon photograph (page 266)

     FAIR HAVEN POND FROM THE CLIFFS       Colored plate

     FAIR HAVEN POND FROM THE CLIFFS                  10

     NOVEMBER WOODS                                   86

     FIRST SNOW                                      122

     MIDWINTER                                       150

     TOWN BROOK, PLYMOUTH                            364




THE JOURNAL OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU
VOLUME II




I

1850 (ÆT. 32-33)[1]


The Hindoos are more serenely and thoughtfully religious than the
Hebrews. They have perhaps a purer, more independent and impersonal
knowledge of God. Their religious books describe the first inquisitive
and contemplative access to God; the Hebrew bible a conscientious
return, a grosser and more personal repentance. Repentance is not a
free and fair highway to God. A wise man will dispense with repentance.
It is shocking and passionate. God prefers that you approach him
thoughtful, not penitent, though you are the chief of sinners. It is
only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to him.

       *       *       *       *       *

The calmness and gentleness with which the Hindoo philosophers approach
and discourse on forbidden themes is admirable.

What extracts from the Vedas I have read fall on me like the light of
a higher and purer luminary, which describes a loftier course through a
purer stratum,—free from particulars, simple, universal. It rises on me
like the full moon after the stars have come out, wading through some
far summer stratum of the sky.

The Vedant teaches how, “by forsaking religious rites,” the votary may
“obtain purification of mind.”

One wise sentence is worth the state of Massachusetts many times over.

The Vedas contain a sensible account of God.

The religion and philosophy of the Hebrews are those of a wilder and
ruder tribe, wanting the civility and intellectual refinements and
subtlety of the Hindoos.

       *       *       *       *       *

Man flows at once to God as soon as the channel of purity, physical,
intellectual, and moral, is open.

       *       *       *       *       *

With the Hindoos virtue is an intellectual exercise, not a social and
practical one. It is a knowing, not a doing.

       *       *       *       *       *

I do not prefer one religion or philosophy to another. I have no
sympathy with the bigotry and ignorance which make transient and
partial and puerile distinctions between one man’s faith or form of
faith and another’s,—as Christian and heathen. I pray to be delivered
from narrowness, partiality, exaggeration, bigotry. To the philosopher
all sects, all nations, are alike. I like Brahma, Hari, Buddha, the
Great Spirit, as well as God.

     [Part of leaf missing here.]

A page with as true and inevitable and deep a meaning as a hillside,
a book which Nature shall own as her own flower, her own leaves; with
whose leaves her own shall rustle in sympathy imperishable and russet;
which shall push out with the skunk-cabbage in the spring. I am not
offended by the odor of the skunk in passing by sacred places.[2] I am
invigorated rather. It is a reminiscence of immortality borne on the
gale. O thou partial world, when wilt thou know God? I would as soon
transplant this vegetable to Polynesia or to heaven with me as the
violet.

Shoes are commonly too narrow. If you should take off a gentleman’s
shoes, you would find that his foot was wider than his shoe. Think of
his wearing such an engine! walking in it many miles year after year!
A shoe which presses against the sides of the foot is to be condemned.
To compress the foot like the Chinese is as bad as to compress the
head like the Flatheads, for the head and the foot are one body. The
narrow feet,—they greet each other on the two sides of the Pacific.
A sensible man will not follow fashion in this respect, but reason.
Better moccasins, or sandals, or even bare feet, than a tight shoe. A
wise man will wear a shoe wide and large enough, shaped somewhat like
the foot, and tied with a leather string, and so go his way in peace,
letting his foot fall at every step.

When your shoe chafes your feet, put in a mullein leaf.

       *       *       *       *       *

When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress tells me
gravely, “They do not make them so now,” and I find it difficult to get
made what I want, simply because she cannot believe that I mean what
I say; it surpasses her credulity. Properly speaking, my style is as
fashionable as theirs. “They do not make them so now,” as if she quoted
the Fates! I am for a moment absorbed in thought, thinking, wondering
who _they_ are, where _they_ live. It is some Oak Hall, O call, O.
K., all correct establishment which she knows but I do not. Oliver
Cromwell. I emphasize and in imagination italicize each word separately
of that sentence to come at the meaning of it.[3]

       *       *       *       *       *

Or you may walk into the foreign land of Bedford, where not even yet,
after four or five, or even seven or eight, miles, does the sky shut
down, but the airy and crystal dome of heaven arches high over all,
when you did not suspect that there was so much daylight under its
crystal dome, and from the hill eastward perchance see the small town
of Bedford standing stately on the crest of a hill like some city of
Belgrade with one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. I wonder if
Mr. Fitch lives there among them.

How many noble men and women must have their abode there! So it
seems,—I trust that so it is,—but I did not go into Bedford that time.
But alas! I have been into a village before now, and there was not a
man of a large soul in it. In what respect was it better than a village
of prairie-dogs.[4] I mean to hint no reproach even by implica-[part of
leaf torn off].


Sunday, May 12, 1850, visited the site of the Dustin house in the
northwest part of Haverhill, now but a slight indentation in a
corn-field, three or four feet deep, with an occasional brick and
cellar-stone turned up in plowing. The owner, Dick Kimball, made
much of the corn grown in this hole, some ears of which were sent to
Philadelphia. The apple tree which is said to have stood north from the
house at a considerable distance is gone. A brick house occupied by a
descendant is visible from the spot, and there are old cellar-holes in
the neighborhood, probably the sites of some of the other eight houses
which were burned on that day. It is a question with some which is the
site of the true Dustin house.

Also visited the same day an ancient garrison-house now occupied by
Fred. Ayer, who said it was built one hundred and fifty or one hundred
and sixty years ago by one Emerson, and that several oxen were killed
by lightning while it was building. There was also a pear tree nearly
as old as the house. It was built of larger and thicker and harder
brick than are used nowadays, and on the whole looked more durable
and still likely to stand a hundred years. The hard burnt blue-black
ends of some of the bricks were so arranged as to checker the outside.
He said it was considered the handsomest house in Haverhill when it
was built, and people used to come up from town some two miles to see
it. He thought that they were the original doors which we saw. There
were but few windows, and most of them were about two feet and a half
long and a foot or more wide, only to fire out of. The oven originally
projected outside. There were two large fireplaces. I walked into one,
by stooping slightly, and looked up at the sky. Ayer said jokingly that
some said they were so made to shoot wild geese as they flew over. The
chains and hooks were suspended from a wooden bar high in the chimney.
The timbers were of immense size.

Fourteen vessels in or to be in the port of Haverhill, laden with coal,
lumber, lime, wood, and so forth. Boys go [to] the wharf with their
fourpences to buy a bundle of laths to make a hen-house; none elsewhere
to be had.

Saw two or three other garrison-houses. Mrs. Dustin was an Emerson, one
of the family for whom I surveyed.

Measured a buttonwood tree in Haverhill, one of twenty and more set
out about 1739 on the banks of the Merrimack. It was thirteen and
eight twelfths feet in circumference at three and a half feet from the
ground.

       *       *       *       *       *

Jewett’s steam mill is profitable, because the planing machine alone,
while that is running, makes shavings and waste enough to feed the
engine, to say nothing of the sawdust from the sawmill; and the engine
had not required the least repair for several years. Perhaps, as there
is not so much sawing and planing to be done in England, they therefore
may not find steam so cheap as water.

       *       *       *       *       *

A single gentle rain in the spring makes the grass look many shades
greener.

It is wisest to live without any definite and recognized object from
day to day,—any particular object,—for the world is round, and we are
not to live on a tangent or a radius to the sphere. As an old poet
says, “though man proposeth, God disposeth all.”

Our thoughts are wont to run in muddy or dusty ruts.

I too revive as does the grass after rain. We are never so flourishing,
our day is never so fair, but that the sun may come out a little
brighter through mists and we yearn to live a better life. What have we
to boast of? We are made the very sewers, the cloacæ, of nature.

If the hunter has a taste for mud turtles and muskrats and skunks and
other such savage titbits, the fine lady indulges a taste for some form
of potted cheese, or jelly made of a calf’s foot, or anchovies from
over the water, and they are even. He goes to the mill-pond, she to
her preserve pot. I wonder how he, I wonder how I, can live this slimy,
beastly kind of life, eating and drinking.[5]

       *       *       *       *       *

The fresh foliage of the woods in May, when the leaves are about as big
as a mouse’s ear, putting out like taller grasses and herbs.

In all my rambles I have seen no landscape which can make me forget
Fair Haven. I still sit on its Cliff in a new spring day, and look
over the awakening woods and the river, and hear the new birds sing,
with the same delight as ever. It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever,
what this world is. Fair Haven Lake in the south, with its pine-covered
island and its meadows, the hickories putting out fresh young yellowish
leaves, and the oaks light-grayish ones, while the oven-bird thrums
his sawyer-like strain, and the chewink rustles through the dry leaves
or repeats his jingle on a tree-top, and the wood thrush, the genius
of the wood, whistles for the first time his clear and thrilling
strain,—it sounds as it did the first time I heard it. The sight of
these budding woods intoxicates me,—this diet drink.

The strong-colored pine, the grass of trees, in the midst of which
other trees are but as weeds or flowers,—a little exotic.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the row of buttonwood trees on the banks of the Merrimack in
Haverhill, I saw that several had been cut down, probably because
of their unsightly appearance, they all suffering from the prevalent
disease which has attacked the buttonwood of late years, and one large
one still resting on its stump where it had fallen. It seemed like a
waste of timber or of fuel, but when I inquired about it, they answered
that the millers did not like to saw it. Like other ornamental trees
which have stood by the roadside for a hundred years, the inhabitants
have been accustomed to fasten their horses to them, and have driven
many spikes into them for this purpose. One man, having carried some
buttonwood logs to mill, the miller agreed to saw them if he would make
good the injury which might be done to his saw. The other agreed to it,
but almost at the first clip they ran on to a spike and broke the saw,
and the owner of the logs cried, “Stop!” he would have no more sawed.
They are difficult to split, beside, and make poor timber at best,
being very liable to warp.

The “itinerary distance” between two points, a convenient expression.

  [Illustration: _Fair Haven Pond from the Cliffs_]

Humboldt says, “It is still undetermined where life is most abundant:
whether on the earth or in the fathomless depths of the ocean.”

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a _mirage_, what in Sanscrit, according to Humboldt, is called
“the thirst of the gazelle.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Nothing memorable was ever accomplished in a prosaic mood of mind.
The heroes and discoverers have found true more than was previously
believed, only when they were expecting and dreaming of something more
than their contemporaries dreamed of,—when they were in a frame of mind
prepared in some measure for the truth.

Referred to the world’s standard, the hero, the discoverer, is insane,
its greatest men are all insane. At first the world does not respect
its great men. Some rude and simple nations go to the other extreme and
reverence all kinds of insanity. Humboldt says, speaking of Columbus
approaching the New World: “The grateful coolness of the evening air,
the ethereal purity of the starry firmament, the balmy fragrance of
flowers, wafted to him by the land breeze, all led him to suppose (as
we are told by Herrera, in the Decades (5)), that he was approaching
the garden of Eden, the sacred abode of our first parents. The Orinoco
seemed to him one of the four rivers which, according to the venerable
tradition of the ancient world, flowed from Paradise, to water and
divide the surface of the earth, newly adorned with plants.”

Expeditions for the discovery of El Dorado, and also of the Fountain of
Youth, led to real, though perhaps not compensatory, discoveries.[6]

       *       *       *       *       *

I have heard my brother playing on his flute at evening half a
mile off through the houses of the village, every note with perfect
distinctness. It seemed a more beautiful communication with me than
the sending up of a rocket would have been. So, if I mistake not, the
sound of blasting rocks has been heard from down the river as far as
Lowell,—some twenty miles by its course,—where they were making a deep
cut for the railroad.

       *       *       *       *       *

The sand cherry (_Prunus depressa_ Pursh., _Cerasus pumila_ Mx.) grew
about my door, and near the end of May enlivened my yard with its
umbels arranged cylindrically about its short branches. In the fall,
weighed down with the weight of its large and handsome cherries, it
fell over in wreath-like rays on every side. I tasted them out of
compliment to nature, but I never learned to love them.[7]

If the long-continued rains cause the seeds to rot in the ground and
destroy the potatoes in the low lands, they are good for the grass on
the uplands, though the farmers say it is not so sweet.[8]

       *       *       *       *       *

As I walked, I was intoxicated with the slight spicy odor of the
hickory buds and the bruised bark of the black birch, and, in the fall,
the pennyroyal.

Many a time I have expected to find a woodchuck, or rabbit, or a gray
squirrel, when it was the ground-robin rustling the leaves.

I have been surprised to discover the amount and the various kinds of
life which a single shallow swamp will sustain. On the south side of
the pond, not more than a quarter of a mile from it, is a small meadow
of ten or a dozen acres in the woods, considerably lower than Walden,
and which by some is thought to be fed by the former by a subterranean
outlet,—which is very likely, for its shores are quite springy and its
supply of water is abundant and unfailing,—indeed tradition says that a
sawmill once stood over its outlet, though its whole extent, including
its sources, is not more than I have mentioned,—a meadow through which
the Fitchburg Railroad passes by a very high causeway, which required
many a carload of sand, where the laborers for a long time seemed
to make no progress, for the sand settled so much in the night that
by morning they were where they were the day before, and finally the
weight of the sand forced upward the adjacent crust of the meadow with
the trees on it many feet, and cracked it for some rods around. It is a
wet and springy place throughout the summer, with a ditch-like channel,
and in one part water stands the year round, with cat-o’-nine-tails and
tussocks and muskrats’ cabins rising above it, where good cranberries
may be raked if you are careful to anticipate the frost which visits
this cool hollow unexpectedly early. Well, as I was saying, I heard a
splashing in the shallow and muddy water and stood awhile to observe
the cause of it. Again and again I heard and saw the commotion, but
could not guess the cause of it,—what kind of life had its residence
in that insignificant pool. We sat down on the hillside. Ere long a
muskrat came swimming by as if attracted by the same disturbance, and
then another and another, till three had passed, and I began to suspect
that they were at the bottom of it. Still ever and anon I observed
the same commotion in the waters over the same spot, and at length
I observed the snout of some creature slyly raised above the surface
after each commotion, as if to see if it were observed by foes, and
then but a few rods distant I saw another snout above the water and
began to divine the cause of the disturbance. Putting off my shoes
and stockings, I crept stealthily down the hill and waded out slowly
and noiselessly about a rod from the firm land, keeping behind the
tussocks, till I stood behind the tussock near which I had observed the
splashing. Then, suddenly stooping over it, I saw through the shallow
but muddy water that there was a mud turtle there, and thrusting in my
hand at once caught him by the claw, and, quicker than I can tell it,
heaved him high and dry ashore; and there came out with him a large
pout just dead and partly devoured, which he held in his jaws. It was
the pout in his flurry and the turtle in his struggles to hold him fast
which had created the commotion. There he had lain, probably buried
in the mud at the bottom up to his eyes, till the pout came sailing
over, and then this musky lagune had put forth in the direction of
his ventral fins, expanding suddenly under the influence of a more
than vernal heat,—there are sermons in stones, aye and mud turtles at
the bottoms of the pools,—in the direction of his ventral fins, his
tender white belly, where he kept no eye; and the minister squeaked
his last.[9] Oh, what an eye was there, my countrymen! buried in mud
up to the lids, meditating on what? sleepless at the bottom of the
pool, at the top of the bottom, directed heavenward, in no danger from
motes. Pouts expect their foes not from below. Suddenly a mud volcano
swallowed him up, seized his midriff; he fell into those relentless
jaws from which there is no escape, which relax not their hold even in
death.[10] There the pout might calculate on remaining until nine days
after the head was cut off. Sculled through Heywood’s shallow meadow,
not thinking of foes, looking through the water up into the sky. I saw
his [the turtle’s] brother sunning and airing his broad back like a
ship bottom up which had been scuttled,—foundered at sea. I had no idea
that there was so much going on in Heywood’s meadow.

The pickerel commonly lie perfectly still at night, like sticks, in
very shallow water near the shore near a brook’s mouth. I have seen
a large one with a deep white wound from a spear, cutting him half in
two, unhealed and unhealable, fast asleep, and forked him into my boat.
I have struck a pickerel sound asleep and knew that I cut him almost
in two, and the next moment heard him go ashore several rods off; for
being thus awakened in their dreams they shoot off with one impulse,
intending only to abandon those parts, without considering exactly
to what places they shall go. One night a small pickerel, which the
boat had probably struck in his sleep, leaped into the boat and so was
secured without a wound.

The chub is a soft fish and tastes like boiled brown paper salted.

I was as interested in the discovery of limestone as if it had been
gold, and wondered that I had never thought of it before. Now all
things seemed to radiate round limestone, and I saw how the farmers
lived near to, or far from, a locality of limestone. I detected it
sometimes in walls, and surmised from what parts it was probably
carted; or when I looked down into an old deserted well, I detected
it in the wall, and found where the first settlers had quarried it
extensively. I read a new page in the history of these parts in the
old limestone quarries and kilns where the old settlers found the
materials of their houses; and I considered that, since it was found
so profitable even at Thomaston to burn lime with coal dust, perchance
these quarries might be worked again.[11]

When the rocks were covered with snow, I even uncovered them with my
hands, that I might observe their composition and strata, and thought
myself lucky when the sun had laid one bare for me; but [now] that they
are all uncovered I pass by without noticing them. There is a time for
everything.

We are never prepared to believe that our ancestors lifted large stones
or built thick walls. I find that I must have supposed that they built
their bank walls of such as a single man could handle. For since we
have put their lives behind us we can think of no sufficient motive
for such exertion. How can their works be so visible and permanent and
themselves so transient? When I see a stone which it must have taken
many yoke of oxen to move, lying in a bank wall which was built two
hundred years ago, I am curiously surprised, because it suggests an
energy and force of which we have no memorials. Where are the traces
of the corresponding moral and intellectual energy? I am not prepared
to believe that a man lived here so long ago who could elevate into a
wall and properly aline a rock of great size and fix it securely,—such
an Archimedes. I walk over the old corn-fields, it is true, where the
grassy corn-hills still appear in the woods, but there are no such
traces of them there. Again, we are wont to think that our ancestors
were all stalwart men, because only their most enduring works have
come down to us. I think that the man who lifted so large a rock in
the course of his ordinary work should have had a still larger for his
monument.

I noticed a singular instance of ventriloquism to-day in a male chewink
singing on the top of a young oak. It was difficult to believe that the
last part of his strain, the concluding jingle, did not proceed from a
different quarter, a woodside many rods off. _Hip-you, he-he-he-he._ It
was long before I was satisfied that the last part was not the answer
of his mate given in exact time. I endeavored to get between the two;
indeed, I seemed to be almost between them already.

I have not seen Walden so high for many years; it is within four feet
of the pond-hole in Hubbard’s woods.

The river is higher than it has been at this season for many years.

When the far mountains are invisible, the near ones look the higher.

The oldest nature is elastic. I just felt myself raised upon the swell
of the eternal ocean, which came rolling this way to land.

When my eye ranges over some thirty miles of this globe’s surface,—an
eminence green and waving, with sky and mountains to bound it,—I am
richer than Crœsus.

The variously colored blossoms of the shrub oaks now, in May, hanging
gracefully like ear-drops, or the similar blossoms of the large oaks.

I have noticed the effect of a flag set up on a hill in the country. It
tames the landscape, subdues it to itself. The hill looks as if it were
a military post. Our green, wild country landscape is gathered under
the folds of a flag.

       *       *       *       *       *

A lively appearance is imparted to the landscape as seen from
Nawshawtuct, by the flood on the meadows,—by the alternation of land
and water, of green and of light colors. The frequent causeways, and
the hedgerows (?) jutting into the meadows, and the islands, have an
appearance full of light and life.

To-day, May 31st, a red and white cow, being uneasy, broke out of
the steam-mill pasture and crossed the bridge and broke into Elijah
Wood’s grounds. When he endeavored to drive her out by the bars, she
boldly took to the water, wading first through the meadows full of
ditches, and swam across the river, about forty rods wide at this
time, and landed in her own pasture again. She was a buffalo crossing
her Mississippi. This exploit conferred some dignity on the herd in my
eyes, already dignified, and reflectedly on the river, which I looked
on as a kind of Bosphorus.

I love to see the domestic animals reassert their native rights,—any
evidence that they have not lost their original wild habits and
vigor.[12]

There is a sweet wild world which lies along the strain of the wood
thrush—the rich intervales which border the stream of its song—more
thoroughly genial to my nature than any other.[13]

The blossoms of the tough and vivacious shrub oak are very handsome.

       *       *       *       *       *

I visited a retired, now almost unused, graveyard in Lincoln to-day,
where five British soldiers lie buried who fell on the 19th April, ’75.
Edmund Wheeler, grandfather of William, who lived in the old house now
pulled down near the present, went over the next day and carted them
to this ground. A few years ago one Felch, a phrenologist, by leave of
the selectmen dug up and took away two skulls. The skeletons were very
large, probably those of grenadiers. William Wheeler, who was present,
told me this. He said that he had heard old Mr. Child, who lived
opposite, say that when one soldier was shot he leaped right up his
full length out of the ranks and fell dead; and he, William Wheeler,
saw a bullet-hole through and through one of the skulls.

Close by stood a stone with this inscription:—

     In memory of
     Sippio Brister
     a man of Colour
     who died
     Nov 1. 1820
     Æt. 64.

But that is not telling us that he lived.[14]

       *       *       *       *       *

There was one Newell, a tailor, his neighbor, who became a Universalist
minister. Breed put on his sign:—

     Tailoring and barbering done with speed
     By John C Newell & John C Breed.[15]

The water was over the turnpike below Master Cheney’s when I returned
(May 31st, 1850).

     [A third of a page torn out here.]

that these fences, to a considerable extent, will be found to mark
natural divisions, especially if the land is not very minutely
divided,—mowing (upland and meadow) pasture, woodland, and the
different kinds of tillage. There will be found in the farmer’s motive
for setting a fence here or there some conformity to natural limits.
These artificial divisions no doubt have the effect of increasing the
area and variety to the traveller. These various fields taken together
appear more extensive than a single prairie of the same size would. If
the divisions corresponded [A third of a page torn out here.]

The year has many seasons more than are recognized in the almanac.
There is that time about the first of June, the beginning of summer,
when the buttercups blossom in the now luxuriant grass and I am first
reminded of mowing and of the dairy. Every one will have observed
different epochs. There is the time when they begin to drive cows
to pasture,—about the 20th of May,—observed by the farmer, but a
little arbitrary year by year. Cows spend their winters in barns and
cow-yards, their summers in pastures. In summer, therefore, they may
low with emphasis, “To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.” I
sometimes see a neighbor or two united with their boys and hired men
to drive their cattle to some far-off country pasture, fifty or sixty
miles distant in New Hampshire, early in the morning, with their sticks
and dogs. It is a memorable time with the farmers’ boys, and frequently
their first journey from home. The herdsman in some mountain pasture
is expecting them. And then in the fall, when they go up to drive
them back, they speculate as to whether Janet or Brindle will know
them. I heard such a boy exclaim on such an occasion, when the calf of
the spring returned a heifer, as he stroked her side, “She knows me,
father; she knows me.” Driven up to be the cattle on a thousand hills.

I once set fire to the woods. Having set out, one April day, to go to
the sources of Concord River in a boat with a single companion, meaning
to camp on the bank at night or seek a lodging in some neighboring
country inn or farmhouse, we took fishing tackle with us that we might
fitly procure our food from the stream, Indian-like. At the shoemaker’s
near the river, we obtained a match, which we had forgotten. Though
it was thus early in the spring, the river was low, for there had not
been much rain, and we succeeded in catching a mess of fish sufficient
for our dinner before we had left the town, and by the shores of Fair
Haven Pond we proceeded to cook them. The earth was uncommonly dry, and
our fire, kindled far from the woods in a sunny recess in the hillside
on the east of the pond, suddenly caught the dry grass of the previous
year which grew about the stump on which it was kindled. We sprang to
extinguish it at first with our hands and feet, and then we fought it
with a board obtained from the boat, but in a few minutes it was beyond
our reach; being on the side of a hill, it spread rapidly upward,
through the long, dry, wiry grass interspersed with bushes.

“Well, where will this end?” asked my companion. I saw that it might be
bounded by Well Meadow Brook on one side, but would, perchance, go to
the village side of the brook. “It will go to town,” I answered. While
my companion took the boat back down the river, I set out through the
woods to inform the owners and to raise the town. The fire had already
spread a dozen rods on every side and went leaping and crackling wildly
and irreclaimably toward the wood. That way went the flames with wild
delight, and we felt that we had no control over the demonic creature
to which we had given birth. We had kindled many fires in the woods
before, burning a clear space in the grass, without ever kindling such
a fire as this.

As I ran toward the town through the woods, I could see the smoke over
the woods behind me marking the spot and the progress of the flames.
The first farmer whom I met driving a team, after leaving the woods,
inquired the cause of the smoke. I told him. “Well,” said he, “it
is none of my stuff,” and drove along. The next I met was the owner
in his field, with whom I returned at once to the woods, running all
the way. I had already run two miles. When at length we got into the
neighborhood of the flames, we met a carpenter who had been hewing
timber, an infirm man who had been driven off by the fire, fleeing
with his axe. The farmer returned to hasten more assistance. I, who was
spent with running, remained. What could I do alone against a front of
flame half a mile wide?

I walked slowly through the wood to Fair Haven Cliff, climbed to the
highest rock, and sat down upon it to observe the progress of the
flames, which were rapidly approaching me, now about a mile distant
from the spot where the fire was kindled. Presently I heard the sound
of the distant bell giving the alarm, and I knew that the town was on
its way to the scene. Hitherto I had felt like a guilty person,—nothing
but shame and regret. But now I settled the matter with myself shortly.
I said to myself: “Who are these men who are said to be the owners
of these woods, and how am I related to them? I have set fire to the
forest, but I have done no wrong therein, and now it is as if the
lightning had done it. These flames are but consuming their natural
food.” (It has never troubled me from that day to this more than if the
lightning had done it. The trivial fishing was all that disturbed me
and disturbs me still.) So shortly I settled it with myself and stood
to watch the approaching flames.[16] It was a glorious spectacle, and
I was the only one there to enjoy it. The fire now reached the base of
the cliff and then rushed up its sides. The squirrels ran before it in
blind haste, and three pigeons dashed into the midst of the smoke. The
flames flashed up the pines to their tops, as if they were powder.

When I found I was about to be surrounded by the fire, I retreated
and joined the forces now arriving from the town. It took us several
hours to surround the flames with our hoes and shovels and by back
fires subdue them. In the midst of all I saw the farmer whom I first
met, who had turned indifferently away saying it was none of his stuff,
striving earnestly to save his corded wood, his stuff, which the fire
had already seized and which it after all consumed.

It burned over a hundred acres or more and destroyed much young wood.
When I returned home late in the day, with others of my townsmen, I
could not help noticing that the crowd who were so ready to condemn the
individual who had kindled the fire did not sympathize with the owners
of the wood, but were in fact highly elate and as it were thankful for
the opportunity which had afforded them so much sport; and it was only
half a dozen owners, so called, though not all of them, who looked sour
or grieved, and I felt that I had a deeper interest in the woods, knew
them better and should feel their loss more, than any or all of them.
The farmer whom I had first conducted to the woods was obliged to ask
me the shortest way back, through his own lot. Why, then, should the
half-dozen owners [and] the individuals who set the fire alone feel
sorrow for the loss of the wood, while the rest of the town have their
spirits raised? Some of the owners, however, bore their loss like men,
but other some declared behind my back that I was a “damned rascal;”
and a flibbertigibbet or two, who crowed like the old cock, shouted
some reminiscences of “burnt woods” from safe recesses for some years
after. I have had nothing to say to any of them. The locomotive engine
has since burned over nearly all the same ground and more, and in some
measure blotted out the memory of the previous fire. For a long time
after I had learned this lesson I marvelled that while matches and
tinder were contemporaries the world was not consumed; why the houses
that have hearths were not burned before another day; if the flames
were not as hungry now as when I waked them. I at once ceased to regard
the owners and my own fault,—if fault there was any in the matter,—and
attended to the phenomenon before me, determined to make the most of
it. To be sure, I felt a little ashamed when I reflected on what a
trivial occasion this had happened, that at the time I was no better
employed than my townsmen.

That night I watched the fire, where some stumps still flamed at
midnight in the midst of the blackened waste, wandering through the
woods by myself; and far in the night I threaded my way to the spot
where the fire had taken, and discovered the now broiled fish,—which
had been dressed,—scattered over the burnt grass.

This has been a cool day, though the first of summer. The prospect of
the meadows from Lee’s Hill was very fine. I observe that the shadows
of the trees are very distinct and heavy in such a day, falling
on the fresh grass. They are as obvious as the trees themselves by
mid-afternoon. Commonly we do not make much account of the distinct
shadows of objects in the landscape.

What is bare and unsightly is covered by the water now. The verdure
seems to spring directly from its bosom; there are no stems nor roots.
The meadows are so many mirrors reflecting the light,—toward sunset
dazzlingly bright.

       *       *       *       *       *

I visited this afternoon (June 3d) Goodman’s Hill in Sudbury, going
through Lincoln over Sherman’s Bridge and Round Hill, and returning
through the Corner. It probably affords the best view of Concord River
meadows of any hill. The horizon is very extensive as it is, and if the
top were cleared so that you could get the western view, it would be
one of the most extensive seen from any hill in the county. The most
imposing horizons are those which are seen from tops of hills rising
out of a river valley. The prospect even from a low hill has something
majestic in it in such a case. The landscape is a vast amphitheatre
rising to its rim in the horizon. There is a good view of Lincoln
lying high up in among the hills. You see that it is the highest town
hereabouts, and hence its fruit. The river at this time looks as large
as the Hudson. I think that a river-valley town is much the handsomest
and largest-featured,—like Concord and Lancaster, for instance, natural
centres. Upon the hills of Bolton, again, the height of land between
the Concord and Nashua, I have seen how the peach flourishes. Nobscot,
too, is quite imposing as seen from the west side of Goodman’s Hill.
On the western side of a continuation of this hill is Wadsworth’s
battle-field.[17]

Returning, I saw in Sudbury twenty-five nests of the new (cliff?)
swallow under the eaves of a barn. They seemed particularly social and
loquacious neighbors, though their voices are rather squeaking. Their
nests, built side by side, looked somewhat like large hornets’ nests,
enough so to prove a sort of connection. Their activity, sociability,
and chattiness make them fit pensioners and neighbors of man—summer
companions—for the barn-yard.

       *       *       *       *       *

The last of May and the first of June the farmers are everywhere
planting their corn and beans and potatoes.

       *       *       *       *       *

To-day, June 4th, I have been tending a burning in the woods. Ray was
there. It is a pleasant fact that you will know no man long, however
low in the social scale, however poor, miserable, intemperate, and
worthless he may appear to be, a mere burden to society, but you will
find at last that there is something which he understands and can do
better than any other. I was pleased to hear that one man had sent Ray
as the one who had had the most experience in setting fires of any man
in Lincoln. He had experience and skill as a burner of brush.

You must burn against the wind always, and burn slowly. When the
fire breaks over the hoed line, a little system and perseverance
will accomplish more toward quelling it than any man would believe.
It fortunately happens that the experience acquired is oftentimes
worth more than the wages. When a fire breaks out in the woods, and
a man fights it too near and on the side, in the heat of the moment,
without the systematic coöperation of others, he is disposed to think
it a desperate case, and that this relentless fiend will run through
the forest till it is glutted with food; but let the company rest
from their labors a moment, and then proceed more deliberately and
systematically, giving the fire a wider berth, and the company will
be astonished to find how soon and easily they will subdue it. The
woods themselves furnish one of the best weapons with which to contend
with the fires that destroy them,—a pitch pine bough. It is the best
instrument to thrash it with. There are few men who do not love better
to give advice than to give assistance.

However large the fire, let a few men go to work deliberately but
perseveringly to rake away the leaves and hoe off the surface of the
ground at a convenient distance from the fire, while others follow with
pine boughs to thrash it with when it reaches the line, and they will
finally get round it and subdue it, and will be astonished at their own
success.

A man who is about to burn his field in the midst of woods should rake
off the leaves and twigs for the breadth of a rod at least, making no
large heaps near the outside, and then plow around it several furrows
and break them up with hoes, and set his fire early in the morning,
before the wind rises.

As I was fighting the fire to-day, in the midst of the roaring and
crackling,—for the fire seems to snort like a wild horse,—I heard
from time to time the dying strain, the last sigh, the fine, clear,
shrill scream of agony, as it were, of the trees breathing their last,
probably the heated air or the steam escaping from some chink. At first
I thought it was some bird, or a dying squirrel’s note of anguish, or
steam escaping from the tree. You sometimes hear it on a small scale
in the log on the hearth. When a field is burned over, the squirrels
probably go into the ground. How foreign is the yellow pine to the
green woods—and what business has it here?

The fire stopped within a few inches of a partridge’s nest to-day, June
4th, whom we took off in our hands and found thirteen creamy-colored
eggs. I started up a woodcock when I went to a rill to drink, at the
westernmost angle of R. W. E.’s wood-lot.

To-night, June 5th, after a hot day, I hear the first peculiar summer
breathing of the frogs.

When all is calm, a small whirlwind will suddenly lift up the blazing
leaves and let them fall beyond the line, and set all the woods in
a blaze in a moment. Or some slight almost invisible cinder, seed of
fire, will be wafted from the burnt district on to the dry turf which
covers the surface and fills the crevices of many rocks, and there it
will catch as in tinder, and smoke and smoulder, perchance, for half
an hour, heating several square yards of ground where yet no fire is
visible, until it spreads to the leaves and the wind fans it into a
blaze.

Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will
run to a fire, whether in warm or in cold weather, by day or by night,
dragging an engine at their heels, I am astonished to perceive how good
a purpose the love of excitement is made to serve. What other force,
pray, what offered pay, what disinterested neighborliness could ever
effect so much? No, these are boys who are to be dealt with, and these
are the motives that prevail. There is no old man or woman dropping
into the grave but covets excitement.

Yesterday, when I walked to Goodman’s Hill, it seemed to me that the
atmosphere was never so full of fragrance and spicy odors. There is a
great variety in the fragrance of the apple blossoms as well as their
tints. Some are quite spicy. The air seemed filled with the odor of
ripe strawberries, though it is quite too early for them. The earth was
not only fragrant but sweet and spicy to the smell, reminding us of
Arabian gales and what mariners tell of the spice islands. The first
of June, when the lady’s-slipper and the wild pink have come out in
sunny places on the hillsides, then the summer is begun according to
the clock of the seasons.


Here it is the 8th of June, and the grass is growing apace. In the
front yards of the village they are already beginning to cut it. The
fields look luxuriant and verdurous, but, as the weather is warmer, the
atmosphere is not so clear. In distant woods the partridge sits on her
eggs, and at evening the frogs begin to dream and boys begin to bathe
in the river and ponds.

Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long
on a level with the feet.

       *       *       *       *       *

The cars come and go with such regularity and precision, and the
whistle and rumble are heard so far, that town clocks and family clocks
are already half dispensed with, and it is easy to foresee that one
extensive well-conducted and orderly institution like a railroad will
keep time and order for a whole country. The startings and arrivals of
the cars are the epochs in a village day.[18]

       *       *       *       *       *

Not till June can the grass be said to be waving in the fields. When
the frogs dream, and the grass waves, and the buttercups toss their
heads, and the heat disposes to bathe in the ponds and streams, then is
summer begun.


June 9th, 1850, Walden is still rising, though the rains have ceased
and the river has fallen very much. I see the pollen of the pitch pine
now beginning to cover the surface of the pond. Most of the pines
at the north-northwest end have none, and on some there is only one
pollen-bearing flower.

       *       *       *       *       *

I saw a striped snake which the fire in the woods had killed, stiffened
and partially blackened by the flames, with its body partly coiled up
and raised from the ground, and its head still erect as if ready to
dart out its tongue and strike its foe. No creature can exhibit more
venom than a snake, even when it is not venomous, strictly speaking.

The fire ascended the oak trees very swiftly by the moss which fringed
them.

       *       *       *       *       *

It has a singular effect on us when we hear the geologist apply
his terms to Judea,—speak of “limestone” and “blocks of trap and
conglomerate, boulders of sandstone and quartz” there. Or think of a
chemical analysis of the water of the Dead Sea!

The pitch and white pines are two years or more maturing their seed.

Certain rites are practiced by the Smrities (among the Hindoos) at the
digging of wells.

In early times the Brahmans, though they were the legislators of India,
possessed no executive power and lived in poverty; yet they were for
the most part independent and respected.

Galbraith’s Math. Tables, Edinburgh, 1834. For descriptions of
instruments he refers to Jones’s edition of Adam’s Geom. and Graphical
Essays, Biot’s Traité d’Astronomie Physique, Base du Système Métrique,
Woodhouse’s, Vince’s, and Pearson’s Treatises of Astronomy. For
problems connected with trigonometrical surveying, to the third volume
of Hutton’s Course of Math. by Dr. O. Gregory, Baron Zach’s work on the
Attraction of Mountains, the Base du Système de Métrique Décimal, and
Puissant’s Géodesie.

Olive or red seems the fittest color for a man, a denizen of the woods.
The _pale white man_! I do not wonder that the African pitied him.[19]

The white pine cones are now two inches long, curved sickle-like from
the topmost branches, reminding you of the tropical trees which bear
their fruit at their heads.[20]

The life in us is like the water in the river; it may rise this year
higher than ever it was known to before and flood the uplands—even this
may be the eventful year—and drown out all our muskrats.[21]

There [are] as many strata at different levels of life as there are
leaves in a book. Most men probably have lived in two or three. When
on the higher levels we can remember the lower levels, but when on the
lower we cannot remember the higher.

My imagination, my love and reverence and admiration, my sense of the
miraculous, is not so excited by any event as by the remembrance of my
youth. Men talk about Bible miracles because there is no miracle in
their lives. Cease to gnaw that crust. There is ripe fruit over your
head.

Woe to him who wants a companion, for he is unfit to be the companion
even of himself.

We inspire friendship in men when we have contracted friendship with
the gods.

When we cease to sympathize with and to be personally related to men,
and begin to be universally related, then we are capable of inspiring
others with the sentiment of love for us.

We hug the earth. How rarely we mount! How rarely we climb a tree! We
might get a little higher, methinks. That pine would make us dizzy. You
can see the mountains from it as you never did before.[22]

Shall not a man have his spring as well as the plants?

The halo around the shadow is visible both morning and evening.[23]

       *       *       *       *       *

After this and some other fires in the woods which I helped to put
out, a more effectual system by which to quell them occurred to me.
When the bell rings, hundreds will run to a fire in the woods without
carrying any implement, and then waste much time after they get there
either in doing nothing or what is worse than nothing, having come
mainly out of curiosity, it being as interesting to see it burn as
to put it out. I thought that it would be well if forty or fifty men
in every country town should enroll themselves into a company for
this purpose and elect suitable officers. The town should provide a
sufficient number of rakes, hoes, and shovels, which it should be the
duty of certain of the company to convey to [the] woods in a wagon,
together with the drum, on the first alarm, people being unwilling to
carry their own tools for fear they will be lost. When the captain or
one of the numerous vice-captains arrives, having inspected the fire
and taken his measures, let him cause the roll to be called, however
the men may be engaged, and just take a turn or two with his men to
form them into sections and see where they are. Then he can appoint and
equip his rake-men and his hoe-men and his bough-men, and drop them at
the proper places, always retaining the drummer and a scout; and when
he has learned through his scout that the fire has broken out in a new
place, he, by beat of drum, can take up one or two men of each class—as
many as can be spared—and repair to the scene of danger.

One of my friends suggests instead of the drum some delicious music,
adding that then he would come. It might be well, to refresh the men
when wearied with work, and cheer them on their return. Music is the
proper regulator.

       *       *       *       *       *

So, far in the East, among the Yezidis, or Worshippers of the Devil, so
called, and the Chaldæans, and so forth, you may hear these remarkable
disputations on doctrinal points.[24]

       *       *       *       *       *

Any reverence, even for a material thing, proceeds from an elevation of
character. Layard, speaking of the reverence for the sun exhibited by
the Yezidis, or Worshippers of the Devil, says: “They are accustomed to
kiss the object on which its first beams fall; and I have frequently,
when travelling in their company at sunrise, observed them perform this
ceremony. For fire, as symbolic, they have nearly the same reverence;
they never spit into it, but frequently pass their hands through the
flame, kiss them, and rub them over their right eyebrow, or sometimes
over the whole face.”

Who taught the oven-bird to conceal her nest? It is on the ground,
yet out of sight. What cunning there is in nature! No man could have
arranged it more artfully for the purpose of concealment. Only the
escape of the bird betrays it.

I observe to-night, June 15th, the air over the river by the Leaning
Hemlocks filled with myriads of newly fledged insects drifting and
falling as it were like snowflakes from the maples, only not so white.
Now they drift up the stream, now down, while the river below is
dimpled with the fishes rising to swallow the innumerable insects which
have fallen [into] it and are struggling with it. I saw how He fed
his fish. They, swimming in the dark nether atmosphere of the river,
rose lazily to its surface to swallow such swimmers of the light upper
atmosphere as sank to its bottom.[25]

I picked up to-day the lower jaw of a hog, with white and sound teeth
and tusks, which reminded me that there was an animal health and vigor
distinct from the spiritual health. This animal succeeded by other
means than temperance and purity.[26]

There are thirty-eight lighthouses in Massachusetts. The light on the
Highlands of Neversink is visible the greatest distance, _viz_. thirty
miles. There are two there, one revolving, one not.

The fantastic open light crosses which the limbs of the larch make,
seen against the sky, of the sky-blue color its foliage.

In a swamp where the trees stand up to their knees, two or three feet
deep, in the fine bushes as in a moss bed.

The arbor-vitæ fans, rich, heavy, elaborate, like bead-work.


_June 20._ I can see from my window three or four cows in a pasture on
the side of Fair Haven Hill, a mile and a half distant. There is but
one tree in the pasture, and they are all collected and now reposing in
its shade, which, as it is early though sultry, is extended a good way
along the ground. It makes a pretty landscape. That must have been an
epoch in the history of the cow when they discovered to stand in the
shadow of a tree. I wonder if they are wise enough to recline on the
north side of it, that they may not be disturbed so soon. It shows the
importance of leaving trees for shade in the pastures as well as for
beauty. There is a long black streak, and in it the cows are collected.
How much more they will need this shelter at noon! It is a pleasant
life they lead in the summer,—roaming in well-watered pastures,
grazing, and chewing the cud in the shade,—quite a philosophic life
and favorable for contemplation, not like their pent-up winter life
in close and foul barns. If only they could say as on the prairies,
“To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.”

Cattle and horses, however, retain many of their wild habits or
instincts wonderfully. The seeds of instinct are preserved under their
thick hides, like seeds in the bowels of the earth, an indefinite
period.[27] I have heard of a horse which his master could not catch
in his pasture when the first snowflakes were falling, who persisted in
wintering out. As he persisted in keeping out of his reach, his master
finally left him. When the snow had covered the ground three or four
inches deep, the horse pawed it away to come at the grass,—just as
the wild horses of Michigan do, who are turned loose by their Indian
masters,—and so he picked up a scanty subsistence. By the next day he
had had enough of free life and pined for his stable, and so suffered
himself to be caught.

A blacksmith, my neighbor, heard a great clattering noise the other day
behind his shop, and on going out found that his mare and his neighbor
the pumpmaker’s were fighting. They would run at one another, then turn
round suddenly and let their heels fly. The rattling of their hoofs one
against the other was the noise he heard. They repeated this several
times with intervals of grazing, until one prevailed. The next day they
bore the marks of some bruises, some places where the skin was rucked
up, and some swellings.

       *       *       *       *       *

And then for my afternoon walks I have a garden, larger than any
artificial garden that I have read of and far more attractive to
me,—mile after mile of embowered walks, such as no nobleman’s grounds
can boast, with animals running free and wild therein as from the
first,—varied with land and water prospect, and, above all, so retired
that it is extremely rare that I meet a single wanderer in its mazes.
No gardener is seen therein, no gates nor [_sic_]. You may wander away
to solitary bowers and brooks and hills.

       *       *       *       *       *

The ripple marks on the sandy bottom of Flint’s Pond, where the rushes
grow, feel hard to the feet of the wader, though the sand is really
soft,—made firm perchance by the weight of the water.[28]

The rushes over the water are white with the exuviæ, the skeletons,
of insects,—like blossoms,—which have deposited their eggs on their
tops. The skeletons looked like those of shad-flies, though some living
insects were not.

I have seen crimson-colored eggs painting the leaves of the black birch
quite beautifully.

       *       *       *       *       *

And now the ascending sun has contracted the shadow of the solitary
tree, and they are compelled to seek the neighboring wood for shelter.


_June 21._ The flowers of the white pine are now in their prime, but I
see none of their pollen on the pond.

       *       *       *       *       *

This piece of rural pantomime, this bucolic, is enacted before me every
day. Far over the hills on that fair hillside, I look into the pastoral
age.

       *       *       *       *       *

But these are only the disadvantages of a fire. It is without doubt
an advantage on the whole. It sweeps and ventilates the forest floor,
and makes it clear and clean. It is nature’s besom. By destroying the
punier underwood it gives prominence to the larger and sturdier trees,
and makes a wood in which you can go and come. I have often remarked
with how much more comfort and pleasure I could walk in woods through
which a fire had run the previous year. It will clean the forest floor
like a broom perfectly smooth and clear,—no twigs left to crackle
underfoot, the dead and rotten wood removed,—and thus in the course of
two or three years new huckleberry fields are created for the town,—for
birds and men.

When the lightning burns the forest its Director makes no apology to
man, and I was but His agent. Perhaps we owe to this accident partly
some of the noblest natural parks. It is inspiriting to walk amid the
fresh green sprouts of grass and shrubbery pushing upward through the
charred surface with more vigorous growth.

       *       *       *       *       *

Wherever a man goes men will pursue and paw him with their dirty
institutions.[29]

Sometimes an arrowhead is found with the mouldering shaft still
attached. (_Vide_ Charles Hubbard.) A little boy from Compton, R. I.,
told me that his father found an arrowhead sticking in a dead tree and
nearly buried in it. Where is the hand that drew that bow? The arrow
shot by the Indian is still found occasionally, sticking in the trees
of our forest.

It is astonishing how much information is to be got out of very
unpromising witnesses. A wise man will avail himself of the observation
of all. Every boy and simpleton has been an observer in some field,—so
many more senses they are, differently located. Will inquire of eyes
what they have seen, of ears what they have heard, of hands what they
have done, of feet where they have been.


_July 16._ I have not yet been able to collect half a thimbleful of the
pollen of the pine on Walden, abundant as it was last summer.

There is in our yard a little pitch pine four or five years old and not
much more than a foot high, with small cones on it but no male flowers;
and yet I do not know of another pitch pine tree within half a mile.

       *       *       *       *       *

Many men walk by day; few walk by night. It is a very different season.
Instead of the sun, there are the moon and stars; instead of the wood
thrush, there is the whip-poor-will; instead of butterflies, fireflies,
winged sparks of fire! who would have believed it? What kind of life
and cool deliberation dwells in a spark of fire in dewy abodes? Every
man carries fire in his eye, or in his blood, or in his brain. Instead
of singing birds, the croaking of frogs and the intenser dream of
crickets. The potatoes stand up straight, the corn grows, the bushes
loom, and, in a moonlight night, the shadows of rocks and trees and
bushes and hills are more conspicuous than the objects themselves. The
slightest inequalities in the ground are revealed by the shadows; what
the feet find comparatively smooth appears rough and diversified to
the eye. The smallest recesses in the rocks are dim and cavernous; the
ferns in the wood appear to be of tropical size; the pools seen through
the leaves become as full of light as the sky. “The light of day takes
refuge in their bosom,” as the Purana says of the ocean. The woods are
heavy and dark. Nature slumbers. The rocks retain the warmth of the sun
which they have absorbed all night.[30]

The names of those who bought these fields of the red men, the wild men
of the woods, are Buttrick, Davis, Barrett, Bulkley, etc., etc. (_Vide_
History.) Here and there still you will find a man with Indian blood in
his veins, an eccentric farmer descended from an Indian chief; or you
will see a solitary pure-blooded Indian, looking as wild as ever among
the pines, one of the last of the Massachusetts tribes, stepping into
a railroad car with his gun.

Still here and there an Indian squaw with her dog, her only companion,
lives in some lone house, insulted by school-children, making baskets
and picking berries her employment. You will meet her on the highway,
with few children or none, with melancholy face, history, destiny;
stepping after her race; who had stayed to tuck them up in their long
sleep. For whom berries condescend to grow. I have not seen one on
the Musketaquid for many a year, and some who came up in their canoes
and camped on its banks a dozen years ago had to ask me where it came
from. A lone Indian woman without children, accompanied by her dog,
wearing the shroud of her race, performing the last offices for her
departed race. Not yet absorbed into the elements again; a daughter of
the soil; one of the nobility of the land. The white man an imported
weed,—burdock and mullein, which displace the ground-nut.

       *       *       *       *       *

As a proof that oysters do not move, I have been told by a Long Island
oysterman that they are found in large clusters surrounding the parent
oyster in the position in which they must have grown, the young being
several years old.

I find the actual to be far less real to me than the imagined. Why
this singular prominence and importance is given to the former, I do
not know. In proportion as that which possesses my thoughts is removed
from the actual, it impresses me. I have never met with anything
so truly visionary and accidental as some actual events. They have
affected me less than my dreams. Whatever actually happens to a man is
wonderfully trivial and insignificant,—even to death itself, I imagine.
He complains of the fates who drown him, that they do not touch _him_.
They do not deal directly with him. I have in my pocket a button which
I ripped off the coat of the Marquis of Ossoli[31] on the seashore
the other day. Held up, it intercepts the light and casts a shadow,—an
_actual_ button so called,—and yet all the life it is connected with
is less substantial to me than my faintest dreams. This stream of
events which we consent to call actual, and that other mightier stream
which alone carries us with it,—what makes the difference? On the one
our bodies float, and we have sympathy with it through them; on the
other, our spirits. We are ever dying to one world and being born into
another, and possibly no man knows whether he is at any time dead in
the sense in which he affirms that phenomenon of another, or not. Our
thoughts are the epochs of our life: all else is but as a journal of
the winds that blew while we were here.[32]

I do not think much of the actual. It is something which we have long
since done with. It is a sort of vomit in which the unclean love to
wallow.

There was nothing at all remarkable about them. They were simply some
bones lying on the beach. They would not detain a walker there more
than so much seaweed. I should think that the fates would not take
the trouble to show me any bones again, I so slightly appreciate the
favor.[33]

Do a little more of that work which you have sometime confessed to
be good, which you feel that society and your justest judge rightly
demands of you. Do what you reprove yourself for not doing. Know
that you are neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with yourself without
reason. Let me say to you and to myself in one breath, Cultivate the
tree which you have found to bear fruit in your soil. Regard not your
past failures nor successes. All the past is equally a failure and
a success; it is a success in as much as it offers you the present
opportunity. Have you not a pretty good thinking faculty, worth more
than the rarest gold watch? Can you not pass a judgment on something?
Does not the stream still rise to its fountain-head in you? Go to
the devil and come back again. Dispose of evil. Get punished once for
all. Die, if you can. Depart. Exchange your salvation for a glass of
water. If you know of any risk to run, run it. If you don’t know of
any, enjoy confidence. Do not trouble yourself to be religious; you
will never get a thank-you for it. If you can drive a nail and have any
nails to drive, drive them. If you have any experiments you would like
to try, try them; now’s your chance. Do not entertain doubts, if they
are not agreeable to you. Send them to the tavern. Do not eat unless
you are hungry; there’s no need of it. Do not read the newspapers.
Improve every opportunity to be melancholy. Be as melancholy as you can
be, and note the result. Rejoice with fate. As for health, consider
yourself well, and mind your business. Who knows but you are dead
already? Do not stop to be scared yet; there are more terrible things
to come, and ever to come. Men die of fright and live of confidence.
Be not simply obedient like the vegetables; set up your own Ebenezer.
Of man’s “_dis_obedience and the fruit,” etc. Do not engage to find
things as you think they are. Do what nobody can do for you. Omit to do
everything else.[34]

       *       *       *       *       *

According to Lieutenant Davis, the forms, extent, and distribution of
sand-bars and banks are principally determined by tides, not by winds
and waves.[35] On sand-bars recently elevated above the level of the
ocean, fresh water is obtained by digging a foot or two. It is very
common for wells near the shore to rise and fall with the tide. It is
an interesting fact that the low sand-bars in the midst of the ocean,
even those which are laid bare only at low tide, are reservoirs of
fresh water at which the thirsty mariner can supply himself. Perchance,
like huge sponges, they hold the rain and dew which falls on them, and
which, by capillary attraction, is prevented from mingling with the
surrounding brine.[36]

It is not easy to make our lives respectable to ourselves by any course
of activity. We have repeatedly to withdraw ourselves into our shells
of thought like the tortoise, somewhat helplessly; and yet there is
even more than philosophy in that. I do not love to entertain doubts
and questions.

I am sure that my acquaintances mistake me. I am not the man they take
me for. On a little nearer view they would find me out. They ask my
advice on high matters, but they do not even know how poorly on’t I
am for hats and shoes. I have hardly a shift. Just as shabby as I am
in my outward apparel,—aye, and more lamentably shabby, for nakedness
is not so bad a condition after all,—am I in my inward apparel. If I
should turn myself inside out, my rags and meanness would appear. I am
something to him that made me, undoubtedly, but not much to any other
that he has made.[37] All I can say is that I live and breathe and have
my thoughts.

What is peculiar in the life of a man consists not in his obedience,
but his opposition, to his instincts. In one direction or another he
strives to live a supernatural life.

Would it not be worth the while to discover nature in Milton?[38] Be
native to the universe. I, too, love Concord best, but I am glad when
I discover, in oceans and wildernesses far away, the materials out of
which a million Concords can be made,—indeed, unless I discover them, I
am lost myself,—that there too I am at home. Nature is as far from me
as God, and sometimes I have thought to go West after her. Though the
city is no more attractive to me than ever, yet I see less difference
between a city and some dismallest swamp than formerly. It is a swamp
too dismal and dreary, however, for me. I would as lief find a few owls
and frogs and mosquitoes less. I prefer even a more cultivated place,
free from miasma and crocodiles, and I will take my choice.[39]

From time to time I overlook the promised land, but I do not feel that
I am travelling toward it. The moment I begin to look there, men and
institutions get out of the way that I may see. I see nothing permanent
in the society around me, and am not quite committed to any of its
ways.

       *       *       *       *       *

The heaven-born Numa, or Lycurgus, or Solon, gravely makes laws to
regulate the exportation of tobacco. Will a divine legislator legislate
for slaves, or to regulate the exportation of tobacco? What shall a
State say for itself at the last day, in which this is a principal
production?

What have grave, not to say divine, legislators—Numas, Lycurguses,
Solons—to do with the exportation or the importation of tobacco.
There was a man appealed to me the other day, “Can you give me a chaw
of tobacco?” I _legislated_ for him. Suppose you were to submit the
question to any _son of God_, in what State would you get it again?[40]

Do not waste any reverence on my attitude. I manage to sit up where I
have dropped. Except as you reverence the evil one,—or rather the evil
_myriad_. As for missing friends,—fortunate perhaps is he who has any
to miss, whose place a thought will not supply. I have an ideal friend
in whose place actual persons sometimes stand for a season. The last
I may often miss, but the first I recover when I am myself again. What
if we do miss one another? have we not agreed upon a rendezvous? While
each travels his own way through the wood with serene and inexpressible
joy, though it be on his hands and knees over the rocks and fallen
trees, he cannot but be on the right way; there is no wrong way to him.
I have found myself as well off when I have fallen into a quagmire, as
in an armchair in the most hospitable house. The prospect was pretty
much the same. Without anxiety let us wander on, admiring whatever
beauty the woods exhibit.[41]

Do you know on what bushes a little peace, faith, and contentment grow?
Go a-berrying early and late after them.[42] Miss our friends! It is
not easy to get rid of them. We shall miss our bodies directly.

       *       *       *       *       *

As to conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I have
not a very high opinion of that course. Do not let your right hand know
what your left hand does in that line of business. I have no doubt it
will prove a failure.[43]

The wind through the blind just now sounded like the baying of a
distant hound,—somewhat plaintive and melodious.

The railroad cuts make cliffs for swallows.

       *       *       *       *       *

Getting into Patchogue late one night in an oyster-boat, there was a
drunken Dutchman aboard whose wit reminded me of Shakespeare. When we
came to leave the beach, our boat was aground, and we were detained
three hours waiting for the tide. In the meanwhile two of the fishermen
took an extra dram at the beach house. Then they stretched themselves
on the seaweed by the shore in the sun to sleep off the effects of
their debauch. One was an inconceivably broad-faced young Dutchman,—but
oh! of such a peculiar breadth and heavy look, I should not know
whether to call it more ridiculous or sublime. You would say that
he had humbled himself so much that he was beginning to be exalted.
An indescribable mynheerish stupidity. I was less disgusted by their
filthiness and vulgarity, because I was compelled to look on them as
animals, as swine in their sty. For the whole voyage they lay flat on
their backs on the bottom of the boat, in the bilge-water and wet with
each bailing, half insensible and wallowing in their vomit. But ever
and anon, when aroused by the rude kicks or curses of the skipper, the
Dutchman, who never lost his wit nor equanimity, though snoring and
rolling in the vomit produced by his debauch, blurted forth some happy
repartee like an illuminated swine. It was the earthiest, slimiest wit
I ever heard. The countenance was one of a million. It was unmistakable
Dutch. In the midst of a million faces of other races it could not be
mistaken. It told of Amsterdam. I kept racking my brains to conceive
how he could have been born in America, how lonely he must feel, what
he did for fellowship. When we were groping up the narrow creek of
Patchogue at ten o’clock at night, keeping our boat off, now from this
bank, now from that, with a pole, the two inebriates roused themselves
betimes. For in spite of their low estate they seemed to have all their
wits as much about them as ever, aye, and all the self-respect they
ever had. And the Dutchman gave wise directions to the steerer, which
were not heeded. Suddenly rousing himself up where the sharpest-eyed
might be bewildered in the darkness, he leaned over the side of the
boat and pointed straight down into the creek, averring that that
identical hole was a first-rate place for eels. And again he roused
himself at the right time and declared what luck he had once had with
his pots (not his cups) in another place, which we were floating over
in the dark. At last he suddenly stepped on to another boat which
was moored to the shore, with a divine ease and sureness, saying,
“Well, good-night, take care of yourselves, I can’t be with you any
longer.” He was one of the few remarkable men whom I have met. I have
been impressed by one or two men in their cups. There was really a
divinity stirred within them, so that in their case I have reverenced
the drunken, as savages the insane, man. So stupid that he could never
be intoxicated. When I said, “You have had a hard time of it to-day,”
he answered with indescribable good humor out of the very midst of his
debauch, with watery eyes, “Well, it doesn’t happen every day.” It was
happening then.[44] He had taken me aboard on his back, the boat lying
a rod from the shore, before I knew his condition. In the darkness our
skipper steered with a pole on the bottom, for an oysterman knows the
bottom of his bay as well as the shores, and can tell where he is by
the soundings.[45]

       *       *       *       *       *

There was a glorious lurid sunset to-night, accompanied with many
sombre clouds, and when I looked into the west with my head turned, the
grass had the same fresh green, and the distant herbage and foliage in
the horizon the same bark blue, and the clouds and sky the same bright
colors beautifully mingled and dissolving into one another, that I have
seen in pictures of tropical landscapes and skies. Pale saffron skies
with faint fishes of rosy clouds dissolving in them. A blood-stained
sky. I regretted that I had an impatient companion. What shall we make
of the fact that you have only to stand on your head a moment to be
enchanted with the beauty of the landscape?

I met with a man on the beach who told me that when he wanted to jump
over a brook he held up one leg a certain height, and then, if a line
from his eye through his toe touched the opposite bank, he knew that
he could jump it. I asked him how he knew when he held his leg at the
right angle, and he said he knew the hitch very well. An Irishman told
me that he held up one leg and if he could bring his toe in a range
with his eye and the opposite bank he knew that he could jump it. Why,
I told him, I can blot out a star with my toe, but I would not engage
to jump the distance. It then appeared that he knew when he had got his
leg at the right height by a certain hitch there was in it. I suggested
that he should connect his two ankles with a string.[46]

       *       *       *       *       *

I knew a clergyman who, when any person died, was wont to speak of that
portion of mankind who survived as living monuments of God’s mercy. A
negative kind of life to live!

       *       *       *       *       *

I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles, commencing
at my own door, without going by any house, without crossing a road
except where the fox and the mink do. Concord is the oldest inland town
in New England, perhaps in the States, and the walker is peculiarly
favored here. There are square miles in my vicinity which have no
inhabitant. First along by the river, and then the brook, and then the
meadow and the woodside. Such solitude! From a hundred hills I can see
civilization and abodes of man afar. These farmers and their works are
scarcely more obvious than woodchucks.[47]

       *       *       *       *       *

As I was going by with a creaking wheelbarrow, one of my neighbors, who
heard the music, ran out with his grease-pot and brush and greased the
wheels.

That is a peculiar season when about the middle of August the farmers
are getting their meadow-hay. If you sail up the river, you will see
them in all meadows, raking hay and loading it on to carts, great
towering [?] teams, under which the oxen stand like beetles, chewing
the cud, waiting for men to put the meadow on. With the heaviest load
they dash aside to crop some more savory grass,—the half-broken steers.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was reason enough for the first settler’s selecting the elm out
of all the trees of the forest with which to ornament his villages. It
is beautiful alike by sunlight and moonlight, and the most beautiful
specimens are not the largest. I have seen some only twenty-five or
thirty years old, more graceful and healthy, I think, than any others.
It is almost become a villageous tree,—like martins and bluebirds.

The high blueberry has the wildest flavor of any of the huckleberry
tribe. It is a little mithridatic. It is like eating a poisonous berry
which your nature makes harmless. I derive the same pleasure as if I
were eating dog-berries, nightshade, and wild parsnip with impunity.

Man and his affairs,—Church and State and school, trade and commerce
and agriculture,—Politics,—for that is the word for them all here
to-day,—I am pleased to see how little space it occupies in the
landscape. It is but a narrow field. That still narrower highway yonder
leads to it. I sometimes direct the traveller[48] [Two pages missing.]

         And once again,
     When I went a-maying,
     And once or twice more
     I had seen thee before,
     For there grow the mayflower
         (_Epigæa repens_)
     And the mountain cranberry
         And the screech owl _strepens_.

     O whither dost thou go?
     Which way dost thou flow?
     Thou art the way.
     Thou art a road
     Which Dante never trode.
     Not many they be
     Who enter therein,
     Only the guests of the
     Irishman Quin.[49]

There was a cross-eyed fellow used to help me survey,—he was my
stake-driver,—and all he said was, at every stake he drove, “There, I
shouldn’t like to undertake to pull _that_ up with my teeth.”

It sticks in my _crop_. That’s a good phrase. Many things stick there.

     The man of wild habits,
     Partridges and rabbits,
     Who has no cares
     Only to set snares,
     Who liv’st all alone,
     Close to the bone,
     And where life is sweetest
     Constantly eatest.

     Where they once dug for money,
     But never found “ony.”

     To market fares
     With early apples and pears.
     When the spring stirs my blood
       With the instinct to travel,
       I can get enough gravel
     On the Old Marlborough Road.

     If you’ll leave your abode
       With your fancy unfurled,
       You may go round the world
     By the Old Marlborough Road.

     Nobody repairs it,
     For nobody wears it.
     It is a living way,
     As the Christians say.
     What is it, what is it,
       But a direction out there
     And the bare possibility
     Of going somewhere?
       Great guide-_boards_ of stone,
     But travellers none.
     It is worth going there to see
     Where you might be.
     They’re a great endeavor
     To be something for ever.
     They are a monument to somebody,
     To some selectman
     Who thought of the plan.
     What king
     Did the thing,
     I am still wondering.
     Cenotaphs of the towns
     Named on their crowns;
     Huge as Stonehenge;
     Set up how or when,
     By what selectmen?
     Gourgas or Lee,
     Clark or Darby?
     Blank tablets of stone,
     Where a traveller might groan,
     And in one sentence
     Grave all that is known;
     Which another might read,
     In his extreme need.
     I know two or three
     Sentences, _i. e._,
     That might there be.
     Literature that might stand
     All over the land.
     Which a man might remember
     Till after December,
     And read again in the spring,
     After the thawing.[50]

     Old meeting-house bell,
     I love thy music well.
     It peals through the air,
     Sweetly full and fair,
     As in the early times,
     When I listened to its chimes.

I walk over the hills, to compare _great_ things with _small_, as
through a gallery of pictures, ever and anon looking through a gap in
the wood, as through the frame of a picture, to a more distant wood
or hillside, painted with several more coats of air. It is a cheap but
pleasant effect. To a landscape in picture, glassed with air.

What is a horizon without mountains?

       *       *       *       *       *

A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It has new life
and motion. It is intermediate between land and sky. On land, only the
grass and trees wave, but the water itself is _rippled_ by the wind.
I see the breeze dash across it in streaks and flakes of light. It is
somewhat singular that we should _look down_ on the surface of water.
We shall look down on the surface of air next, and mark where a still
subtler spirit sweeps over _it_.[51]

     Without inlet it lies,
     Without outlet it flows.
     From and to the skies
     It comes and it goes.
     I am its source,
     And my life is its course.
     I am its stony shore
     And the breeze that passes o’er.[52]

     [Two thirds of a page missing.]

All that the money-digger had ever found was a pine-tree shilling, once
as he was dunging out. He was paid much more for dunging out, but he
valued more the money which he found. The boy thinks most of the cent
he found, not the cent he earned; for it suggests to him that he may
find a great deal more, but he knows that he can’t earn _much_, and
perhaps did not deserve that.

     [Two pages missing.]

     Among the worst of men that ever lived.
     However, we did seriously attend,
     A little space we let our thoughts ascend,
     Experienced our religion and confessed
     ’T was good for us to be there,—be anywhere.
     Then to a heap of apples we addressed,
     And cleared a five-rail fence with hand on the topmost rider
       _sine_ care.
     Then our Icarian thoughts returned to ground,
     And we went on to heaven the long way round.

     What’s the railroad to me?
     I never go to see
     Where it ends.
     It fills a few hollows,
     And makes banks for the swallows;
     It sets the sand a-flowing,
     And blackberries a-growing.[53]


_Aug. 31._


TALL AMBROSIA

     Among the signs of autumn I perceive
     The Roman wormwood (called by learned men
     _Ambrosia elatior_, food for gods,
     For by impartial science the humblest weed
     Is as well named as is the proudest flower)
     Sprinkles its yellow dust over my shoes
     As I brush through the now neglected garden.
     We trample under foot the food of gods
     And spill their nectar in each drop of dew.
     My honest shoes, fast friends that never stray
     Far from my couch, thus powdered, countrified,
     Bearing many a mile the marks of their adventure,
     At the post-house disgrace the Gallic gloss
     Of those well-dressed ones who no morning dew
     Nor Roman wormwood ever have gone through,
     Who never walk, but are _transported_ rather,
     For what old crime of theirs I do not gather.

The gray blueberry bushes, venerable as oaks,—why is not their fruit
poisonous? Bilberry called _Vaccinium corymbosum_; some say _amœnum_,
or blue bilberry, and _Vaccinium disomorphum_ Mx., black bilberry. Its
fruit hangs on into September, but loses its wild and sprightly taste.

     Th’ ambrosia of the Gods’s a weed on earth,
     Their nectar is the morning dew which on-
     Ly our shoes taste, for they are simple folks.
     ’T is very fit the ambrosia of the gods
     Should be a weed on earth, as nectar is
     The morning dew which our shoes brush aside;
     For the gods are simple folks, and we should pine upon their
       humble fare.

The purple flowers of the humble trichostema mingled with the wormwood,
smelling like it; and the spring-scented, dandelion-scented primrose,
yellow primrose. The swamp-pink (_Azalea viscosa_), its now withered
pistils standing out.

The odoriferous sassafras, with its delicate green stem, its
three-lobed leaf, tempting the traveller to bruise it, it sheds so
rare a perfume on him, equal to all the spices of the East. Then its
rare-tasting root bark, like nothing else, which I used to dig. The
first navigators freighted their ships with it and deemed it worth its
weight in gold.

The alder-leaved clethra (_Clethra alnifolia_), sweet-smelling queen of
the swamp; its long white racemes.

We are most apt to remember and cherish the flowers which appear
earliest in the spring. I look with equal affection on those which are
the latest to bloom in the fall.

The choke-berry (_Pyrus arbutifolia_).

The beautiful white waxen berries of the cornel, either _Cornus alba_
or _paniculata_, white-berried or panicled, beautiful both when full
of fruit and when its cymes are naked; delicate red cymes or stems of
berries; spreading its little fairy fingers to the skies, its little
palms; fairy palms they might be called.

One of the viburnums, _Lentago_ or _pyrifolium_ or _nudum_, with its
poisonous-looking fruit in cymes, first greenish-white, then red, then
purple, or all at once.

The imp-eyed, red, velvety-looking berry of the swamps.[54]

The spotted polygonum (_Polygonum Persicaria_), seen in low lands amid
the potatoes now, wild prince’s-feather (?), slight flower that does
not forget to grace the autumn.

The late whortleberry—dangleberry—that ripens now that other
huckleberries and blueberries are shrivelled and spoiling, September
1st; dangle down two or three inches; can rarely find many. They have
a more transparent look, large, blue, long-stemmed, dangling, fruit of
the swamp concealed.

I detect the pennyroyal which my feet have bruised. Butter-and-eggs
still hold out to bloom.

       *       *       *       *       *

I notice that cows never walk abreast, but in single file commonly,
making a narrow cow-path, or the herd walks in an irregular and loose
wedge. They retain still the habit of all the deer tribe, acquired when
the earth was all covered with forest, of travelling from necessity in
narrow paths in the woods.

At sundown a herd of cows, returning homeward from pasture over a
sandy knoll, pause to paw the sand and challenge the representatives
of another herd, raising a cloud of dust between the beholder and
the setting sun. And then the herd boys rush to mingle in the fray
and separate the combatants, two cows with horns interlocked, the one
pushing the other down the bank.

My grandmother called her cow home at night from the pasture over the
hill, by thumping on a mortar out of which the cow was accustomed to
eat salt.

At Nagog I saw a hundred bushels of huckleberries in one field.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Roman wormwood, pigweed, a stout, coarse red-topped (?) weed
(_Amaranthus hybridus_), and spotted polygonum; these are the lusty
growing plants now, September 2d.

Tall, slender, minute white-flowered weed in gardens, annual fleabane
(_Erigeron Canadensis_).

       *       *       *       *       *

One of my neighbors, of whom I borrowed a horse, cart, and harness
to-day, which last was in a singularly dilapidated condition,
considering that he is a wealthy farmer, did not know but I would make
a book about it.

       *       *       *       *       *

As I was stalking over the surface of this planet in the dark to-night,
I started a plover resting on the ground and heard him go off with
whistling wings.

       *       *       *       *       *

My friends wonder that I love to walk alone in solitary fields and
woods by night. Sometimes in my loneliest and wildest midnight walk
I hear the sound of the whistle and the rattle of the cars, where
perchance some of those very friends are being whirled by night over,
as they think, a well-known, safe, and public road. I see that men
do not make or choose their own paths, whether they are railroads
or trackless through the wilds, but what the powers permit each one
enjoys. My solitary course has the same sanction that the Fitchburg
Railroad has. If they have a charter from Massachusetts and—what is
of much more importance—from Heaven, to travel the course and in the
fashion they do, I have a charter, though it be from Heaven alone,
to travel the course I do,—to take the necessary lands and pay the
damages. It is by the grace of God in both cases.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now, about the first of September, you will see flocks of small birds
forming compact and distinct masses, as if they were not only animated
by one spirit but actually held together by some invisible fluid or
film, and will hear the sound of their wings rippling or fanning the
air as they flow through it, flying, the whole mass, ricochet like a
single bird,—or as they flow over the fence. Their mind must operate
faster than man’s, in proportion as their bodies do.

       *       *       *       *       *

What a generation this is! It travels with some brains in its hat,
with a couple of spare cigars on top of them. It carries a heart in its
breast, covered by a lozenge in its waistcoat pocket.

       *       *       *       *       *

John Garfield brought me this morning (September 6th) a young great
heron (_Ardea Herodias_), which he shot this morning on a pine tree
on the North Branch. It measured four feet, nine inches, from bill
to toe and six feet in alar extent, and belongs to a different race
from myself and Mr. Frost. I am glad to recognize him for a native of
America,—why not an American citizen?

In the twilight, when you can only see the outlines of the trees in
the horizon, the elm-tops indicate where the houses are. I have looked
afar over fields and even over distant woods and distinguished the
conspicuous graceful, sheaf-like head of an elm which shadowed some
farmhouse. From the northwest (?) part of Sudbury you can see an elm on
the Boston road, on the hilltop in the horizon in Wayland, five or six
miles distant. The elm is a tree which can be distinguished farther off
perhaps than any other. The wheelwright still makes his hubs of it, his
spokes of white oak, his fellies of yellow oak, which does not crack on
the corners. In England, ’tis said, they use the ash for fellies.

There is a little grove in a swampy place in Conantum where some
rare things grow,—several bass trees, two kinds of ash, sassafras,
maidenhair fern, the white-berried plant (ivory?), etc., etc., and the
sweet viburnum (?) in the hedge near by.

This will be called the wet year of 1850. The river is as high now,
September 9th, as in the spring, and hence the prospects and the
reflections seen from the village are something novel.

       *       *       *       *       *

Roman wormwood, pigweed, amaranth, polygonum, and one or two coarse
kinds of grass reign now in the cultivated fields.

Though the potatoes have man with all his implements on their side,
these rowdy and rampant weeds completely bury them, between the last
hoeing and the digging. The potatoes hardly succeed with the utmost
care: these weeds only ask to be _let alone_ a little while. I judge
that they have not got the rot. I sympathize with all this luxuriant
growth of weeds. Such is the year. The weeds grow as if in sport and
frolic.

       *       *       *       *       *

You might say green as green-briar.

I do not know whether the practice of putting indigo-weed about horses’
tackling to keep off flies is well founded, but I hope it is, for I
have been pleased to notice that wherever I have occasion to tie a
horse I am sure to find indigo-weed not far off, and therefore this,
which is so universally dispersed, would be the fittest weed for this
purpose.

The thistle is now in bloom, which every child is eager to clutch
once,—just a child’s handful.

       *       *       *       *       *

The prunella, self-heal, small purplish-flowered plant of low grounds.

       *       *       *       *       *

Charles[55] grew up to be a remarkably eccentric man. He was of large
frame, athletic, and celebrated for his feats of strength. His lungs
were proportionally strong. There was a man who heard him named once,
and asked if it was the same Charles Dunbar whom he remembered when he
was a little boy walking on the coast of Maine. A man came down to the
shore and hailed a vessel that was sailing by. He should never forget
that man’s name.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was well grassed, and delicate flowers grew in the middle of the
road.

     I saw a delicate flower had grown up two feet high
     Between the horses’ path and the wheel-track,
     Which Dakin’s and Maynard’s wagons had
     Passed over many a time.
     An inch more to right or left had sealed its fate,
     Or an inch higher. And yet it lived and flourished
     As much as if it had a thousand acres
     Of untrodden space around it, and never
     Knew the danger it incurred.
     It did not borrow trouble nor invite an
     Evil fate by apprehending it.[56]
     For though the distant market-wagon
     Every other day inevitably rolled
     This way, it just as inevitably rolled
     In those ruts. And the same
     Charioteer who steered the flower
     Upward guided the horse and cart aside from it.
     There were other flowers which you would say
     Incurred less danger, grew more out of the way,
     Which no cart rattled near, no walker daily passed,
     But at length one rambling deviously—
     For no rut restrained—plucked them,
     And then it appeared that they stood
     Directly in his way, though he had come
     From farther than the market-wagon.

And then it appeared that this brave flower which grew between the
wheel and horse did actually stand farther out of the way than that
which stood in the wide prairie where the man of science plucked it.

     To-day I climbed a handsome rounded hill
     Covered with hickory trees, wishing to see
     The country from its top, for low hills
     Show unexpected prospects. I looked
     Many miles over a woody lowland
     Toward Marlborough, Framingham, and Sudbury;
     And as I sat amid the hickory trees

And the young sumachs, enjoying the prospect, a neat herd of cows
approached, of unusually fair proportions and smooth, clean skins,
evidently petted by their owner, who must have carefully selected
them. One more confiding heifer, the fairest of the herd, did by
degrees approach as if to take some morsel from our hands, while
our hearts leaped to our mouths with expectation and delight. She by
degrees drew near with her fair limbs progressive, making pretense of
browsing; nearer and nearer, till there was wafted toward us the bovine
fragrance,—cream of all the dairies that ever were or will be,—and
then she raised her gentle muzzle toward us, and snuffed an honest
recognition within hand’s reach. I saw ’t was possible for his herd to
inspire with love the herdsman. She was as delicately featured as a
hind. Her hide was mingled white and fawn-color, and on her muzzle’s
tip there was a white spot not bigger than a daisy, and on her side
toward me the map of Asia plain to see.

Farewell, dear heifer! Though thou forgettest me, my prayer to heaven
shall be that thou may’st not forget thyself. There was a whole bucolic
in her snuff. I saw her name was Sumach. And by the kindred spots I
knew her mother, more sedate and matronly, with full-grown bag; and
on her sides was Asia, great and small, the plains of Tartary, even to
the pole, while on her daughter it was Asia Minor. She not disposed to
wanton with the herdsman.

And as I walked, she followed me, and took an apple from my hand, and
seemed to care more for the hand than apple. So innocent a face as I
have rarely seen on any creature, and I have looked in face of many
heifers. And as she took the apple from my hand, I caught the apple
of her eye. She smelled as sweet as the clethra blossom. There was no
sinister expression. And for horns, though she had them, they were so
well disposed in the right place, bent neither up nor down, I do not
now remember she had any. No horn was held toward me.[57]


_Sept. 11. Wednesday._ The river higher than I ever knew it at this
season, as high as in the spring.

       *       *       *       *       *

Yesterday, September 14, walked to White Pond in Stow, on the
Marlborough road, having passed one pond called sometimes Pratt’s
Pond, sometimes Bottomless Pond, in Sudbury. Saw afterward another pond
beyond Willis’s also called Bottomless Pond, in a thick swamp. To name
two ponds bottomless when both of them have a bottom! Verily men choose
darkness rather than light.[58]

The farmers are now cutting—topping—their corn, gathering their early
fruit, raking their cranberries, digging their potatoes, etc.

Everything has its use, and man seeks sedulously for the best article
for each use. The watchmaker finds the oil of the porpoise’s jaw the
best for oiling his watches. Man has a million eyes, and the race knows
infinitely more than the individual. Consent to be wise through your
race.

       *       *       *       *       *

Autumnal mornings, when the feet of countless sparrows are heard like
rain-drops on the roof by the boy who sleeps in the garret.

       *       *       *       *       *

Villages with a single long street lined with trees, so straight and
wide that you can see a chicken run across it a mile off.


_Sept. 19._ The gerardia, yellow trumpet-like flower. Veiny-leaved
hawkweed (leaves handsome, radical excepting one or two; know
them well) (_Hieracium venosum_), flower like a dandelion.
Canada snapdragon, small pea-like blue flower in the wood-paths,
(_Antirrhinum Canadense_). Pine-weed, thickly branched low weed with
red seed-vessels, in wood-paths and fields, (_Sarothra gentianoides_).
Cucumber-root (_Medeola_). Tree-primrose. Red-stemmed cornel. The very
minute flower which grows now in the middle of the Marlborough road.

       *       *       *       *       *

I am glad to have drunk water so long, as I prefer the natural sky
to an opium-eater’s heaven,—would keep sober always, and lead a
sane life not indebted to stimulants. Whatever my practice may be, I
believe that it is the only drink for a wise man, and only the foolish
habitually use any other. Think of dashing the hopes of a morning with
a cup of coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Wine is not a
noble liquor, except when it is confined to the pores of the grape.
Even music is wont to be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes
destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America.[59]

I have seen where the rain dripped from the trees on a sand-bank on
the Marlborough road, that each little pebble which had protected the
sand made the summit of a sort of basaltic column of sand,—a phenomenon
which looked as if it might be repeated on a larger scale in nature.

The goldenrods and asters impress me not like individuals but great
families covering a thousand hills and having a season to themselves.

The indigo-weed turns black when dry, and I have been interested to
find in each of its humble seed-vessels a worm.

The Deep Cut is sometimes excited to productiveness by a rain in
midsummer. It impresses me somewhat as if it were a cave, with all its
stalactites turned wrong side outward. Workers in bronze should come
here for their patterns.

Those were carrots which I saw naturalized in Wheeler’s field. It was
four or five years since he planted there.

To-day I saw a sunflower in the woods.

It is pleasant to see the _Viola pedata_ blossoming again now, in
September, with a beauty somewhat serener than that of these yellow
flowers.

The trees on the bank of the river have white furrows worn about them,
marking the height of the freshets, at what levels the water has stood.

Water is so much more fine and sensitive an element than earth. A
single boatman passing up or down unavoidably shakes the whole of a
wide river, and disturbs its every reflection. The air is an element
which our voices shake still further than our oars the water.

The red maples on the river, standing far in the water when the
banks are overflown and touched by the earliest frosts, are memorable
features in the scenery of the stream at this season.

Now you can scent the ripe grapes far off on the banks as you row
along. Their fragrance is finer than their flavor.

My companion said he would drink when the boat got under the bridge,
because the water would be cooler in the shade, though the stream
quickly passes through the piers from shade to sun again. It is
something beautiful, the act of drinking, the stooping to imbibe some
of this widespread element, in obedience to instinct, without whim. We
do not so simply drink in other influences.

It is pleasant to have been to a place by the way a river went.

The forms of trees and groves change with every stroke of the oar.

It seems hardly worth the while to risk the dangers of the sea between
Leghorn and New York for the sake of a cargo of juniper berries and
bitter almonds.

Oh, if I could be intoxicated on air and water![60] on hope and memory!
and always see the maples standing red in the midst of the waters on
the meadow!

Those have met with losses, who have lost their children. I saw the
widow this morning whose son was drowned.

That I might never be blind to the beauty of the landscape! To hear
music without any vibrating cord!

A family in which there was singing in the morning. To hear a neighbor
singing! All other speech sounds thereafter like profanity. A man
cannot sing falsehood or cowardice; he must sing truth and heroism to
attune his voice to some instrument. It would be noblest to sing with
the wind. I have seen a man making himself a viol, patiently and fondly
paring the thin wood and shaping it, and when I considered the end of
the work he was ennobled in my eyes. He was building himself a ship
in which to sail to new worlds. I am much indebted to my neighbor who
will now and then in the intervals of his work draw forth a few strains
from his accordion. Though he is but a learner, I find when his strains
cease that I have been elevated.

The question is not whether you drink, but what liquor.

       *       *       *       *       *

Plucked a wild rose the 9th of October on Fair Haven Hill.

Butter-and-eggs, which blossomed several months ago, still freshly [in]
bloom (October 11th).

He knew what shrubs were best for withes.

This is a remarkable year. Huckleberries are still quite abundant and
fresh on Conantum. There have been more berries than pickers or even
worms. (October 9th.)

I am always exhilarated, as were the early voyagers, by the sight
of sassafras (_Laurus Sassafras_). The green leaves bruised have the
fragrance of lemons and a thousand spices. To the same order belong
cinnamon, cassia, camphor.

Hickory is said to be an Indian name. (Nuttall’s continuation of
Michaux.)

The seed vessel of the sweet-briar is a very beautiful glossy
elliptical fruit. What with the fragrance of its leaves, its blossom,
and its fruit, it is thrice crowned.

       *       *       *       *       *

I observed to-day (October 17th) the small blueberry bushes by the
path-side, now blood-red, full of white blossoms as in the spring, the
blossoms of spring contrasting strangely with the leaves of autumn. The
former seemed to have expanded from sympathy with the maturity of the
leaves.

       *       *       *       *       *

Walter Colton in his “California”[61] says, “Age is no certain evidence
of merit, since folly runs to seed as fast as wisdom.”

The imagination never forgives an insult.

       *       *       *       *       *

Left Concord, Wednesday morning, September 25th, 1850, for Quebec.
Fare $7.00 to and fro. Obliged to leave Montreal on return as soon as
Friday, October 4th. The country was new to me beyond Fitchburg.

In Ashburnham and afterwards I noticed the woodbine.[62]

[Eighty-four pages missing,—doubtless the Canada journal.]

       *       *       *       *       *

However mean your life is, meet it and live; do not shun it and call it
hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are
richest. The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise. Love your
life, poor as it is. You may perchance have some pleasant, thrilling,
glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from
the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s house.
The snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see
but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering
thoughts as anywhere, and, indeed, the town’s poor seem to live the
most independent lives of any. They are simply great enough to receive
without misgiving. Cultivate poverty like sage, like a garden herb. Do
not trouble yourself to get new things, whether clothes or friends.
That is dissipation. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not
change; we change. If I were confined to a corner in a garret all my
days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had
my thoughts.[63]

In all my travels I never came to the abode of the present.

I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose alloy was poured a
little bell-metal. Sometimes in the repose of my mid-day there reaches
my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my
contemporaries.[64]

That the brilliant leaves of autumn are not withered ones is proved by
the fact that they wilt when gathered as soon as the green.

But now, October 31st, they are all withered. This has been the most
perfect afternoon in the year. The air quite warm enough, perfectly
still and dry and clear, and not a cloud in the sky. Scarcely the song
of a cricket is heard to disturb the stillness. When they ceased their
song I do not know. I wonder that the impetus which our hearing had got
did not hurry us into deafness over a precipitous silence. There must
have been a thick web of cobwebs on the grass this morning, promising
this fair day, for I see them still through the afternoon, covering not
only the grass but the bushes and the trees. They are stretched across
the unfrequented roads from weed to weed, and broken by the legs of the
horses.

I thought to-day that it would be pleasing to study the dead and
withered plants, the ghosts of plants, which now remain in the fields,
for they fill almost as large a space to the eye as the green have
done. They live not in memory only, but to the fancy and imagination.

As we were passing through Ashburnham, by a new white house which stood
at some distance in a field, one passenger exclaimed so that all the
passengers could hear him, “There, there’s not so good a house as that
in all Canada.” And I did not much wonder at his remark. There is a
neatness as well as thrift and elastic comfort, a certain flexible
easiness of circumstance when not rich, about a New England house
which the Canadian houses do not suggest. Though of stone, they were
no better constructed than a stone barn would be with us. The only
building on which money and taste are expended is the church.[65] At
Beauport we examined a magnificent cathedral, not quite completed,
where I do not remember that there were any but the meanest houses in
sight around it.

Our Indian summer, I am tempted to say, is the finest season of the
year. Here has been such a day as I think Italy never sees.

Though it has been so warm to-day, I found some of the morning’s frost
still remaining under the north side of a wood, to my astonishment.

Why was this beautiful day made, and no man to improve it? We went
through Seven-Star (?) Lane to White Pond.

Looking through a stately pine grove, I saw the western sun falling in
golden streams through its aisles. Its west side, opposite to me, was
all lit up with golden light; but what was I to it? Such sights remind
me of houses which we never inhabit,—that commonly I am not at home in
the world. I see somewhat fairer than I enjoy or possess.

A fair afternoon, a celestial afternoon, cannot occur but we mar our
pleasure by reproaching ourselves that we do not make all our days
beautiful. The thought of what I am, of my pitiful conduct, deters me
from receiving what joy I might from the glorious days that visit me.
After the era of youth is passed, the knowledge of ourselves is an
alloy that spoils our satisfactions.

I am wont to think that I could spend my days contentedly in any
retired country house that I see; for I see it to advantage now and
without incumbrance; I have not yet imported my humdrum thoughts, my
prosaic habits, into it to mar the landscape. What is this beauty in
the landscape but a certain fertility in me? I look in vain to see it
realized but in my own life. If I could wholly cease to be ashamed of
myself, I think that all my days would be fair.

       *       *       *       *       *

When I asked at the principal bookstore in Montreal to see such books
as were published there, the answer was that none were published there
but those of a statistical character and the like, that their books
came from the States.[66]

     [Two thirds of a page missing]

As once he was riding past Jennie Dugan’s, was invited by her
boys to look into their mother’s spring-house. He looked in. It
_was_ a delectable place to keep butter and milk cool and sweet in
dog-days,—but there was a leopard frog swimming in the milk, and
another sitting on the edge of the pan.

     [Half a page missing.]

Thou art a personality so vast and universal that I have never seen
one of thy features. I am suddenly very near to another land than can
be bought and sold; this is not Charles Miles’s swamp. This is a far,
far-away field on the confines of the actual Concord, where nature is
partially present. These farms I have myself surveyed; these lines I
have run; these bounds I have set up; they have no chemistry to fix
them; they fade from the surface of the glass (the picture); this light
is too strong for them.

     [Four and two thirds pages missing.]

My dear, my dewy sister, let thy rain descend on me. I not only love
thee, but I love the best of thee; that is to love thee rarely. I do
not love thee every day. Commonly I love those who are less than thou.
I love thee only on great days. Thy dewy words feed me like the manna
of the morning. I am as much thy sister as thy brother. Thou art as
much my brother as my sister. It is a portion of thee and a portion of
me which are of kin. Thou dost not have to woo me. I do not have to woo
thee. O my sister! O Diana, thy tracks are on the eastern hills. Thou
surely passedst that way. I, the hunter, saw them in the morning dew.
My eyes are the hounds that pursue thee. Ah, my friend, what if I do
not answer thee? I hear thee. Thou canst speak; I cannot. I hear and
forget to answer. I am occupied with hearing. I awoke and thought of
thee; thou wast present to my mind. How camest thou there? Was I not
present to thee likewise?[67]

       *       *       *       *       *

The oystermen had anchored their boat near the shore without regard to
the state of the tide, and when we came to it to set sail, just after
noon, we found that it was aground. Seeing that they were preparing to
push it off, I was about to take off my shoes and stockings in order
to wade to it first, but a Dutch sailor with a singular bullfrog or
trilobite expression of the eyes, whose eyes were like frog ponds in
the broad platter of his cheeks and gleamed like a pool covered with
frog-spittle, immediately offered me the use of his back. So mounting,
with my legs under his arms, and hugging him like one of [the] family,
he set me aboard of the periauger?

They then leaned their hardest against the stern, bracing their feet
against the sandy bottom in two feet of water, the Dutchman with his
broad back among them. In the most Dutch-like and easy way they applied
themselves to this labor, while the skipper tried to raise the bows,
never jerking or hustling but silently exerting what vigor was inherent
in them, doing, no doubt, their utmost endeavor, while I pushed with a
spike pole; but it was all in vain. It was decided to be unsuccessful;
we did not disturb its bed by a grain of sand. “Well, what now?” said
I. “How long have we got to wait?” “Till the tide rises,” said the
captain. But no man knew of the tide, how it was. So I went in to
bathe, looking out for sharks and chasing crabs, and the Dutchman waded
out among the mussels to spear a crab. The skipper stuck a clamshell
into the sand at the water’s edge to discover if it was rising, and the
sailors,—the Dutchman and the other,—having got more drink at Oakes’s,
stretched themselves on the seaweed close to the water’s edge [and]
went to sleep. After an hour or more we could discover no change in the
shell even by a hair’s breadth, from which we learned that it was about
the turn of the tide and we must wait some hours longer.[68]

I once went in search of the relics of a human body—a week after a
wreck—which had been cast up the day before on to the beach, though
the sharks had stripped off the flesh. I got the direction from a
lighthouse. I should find it a mile or two distant over the sand, a
dozen rods from the water, by a stick which was stuck up covered with
a cloth. Pursuing the direction pointed out, I expected that I should
have to look very narrowly at the sand to find so small an object,
but so completely smooth and bare was the beach—half a mile wide of
sand—and so magnifying the mirage toward the sea that when I was half
a mile distant the insignificant stick or sliver which marked the spot
looked like a broken mast in the sand. As if there was no other object,
this trifling sliver had puffed itself up to the vision to fill the
void; and there lay the relics in a certain state, rendered perfectly
inoffensive to both bodily and spiritual eye by the surrounding
scenery,—a slight inequality in the sweep of the shore. Alone with
the sea and the beach, attending to the sea, whose hollow roar seemed
addressed to the ears of the departed,—articulate speech to them. It
was as conspicuous on that sandy plain as if a generation had labored
to pile up a cairn there. Where there were so few objects, the least
was obvious as a mausoleum. It reigned over the shore. That dead body
possessed the shore as no living one could. It showed a title to the
sands which no living ruler could.[69]

My father was commissary at Fort Independence in the last war. He says
that the baker whom he engaged returned eighteen ounces of bread for
sixteen of flour, and was glad of the job on those terms.

       *       *       *       *       *

In a pleasant spring morning all men’s sins are forgiven. You may have
known your neighbor yesterday for a drunkard and a thief, and merely
pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world; but the sun shines
bright and warm this first spring morning, and you meet him quietly,
serenely at any work, and see how even his exhausted, debauched veins
and nerves expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring
influence with the innocence[70] [Two thirds of a page missing.]

       *       *       *       *       *

There is a good echo from that wood to one standing on the side of
Fair Haven. It was particularly good to-day. The woodland lungs seemed
particularly sound to-day; they echoed your shout with a fuller and
rounder voice than it was given in, seeming to _mouth_ it. It was
uttered with a sort of sweeping intonation half round a vast circle,
_ore rotundo_, by a broad dell among the tree-tops passing it round to
the entrance of all the aisles of the wood. You had to choose the right
key or pitch, else the woods would not echo it with any spirit, and so
with eloquence. Of what significance is any sound if Nature does not
echo it? It does not prevail. It dies away as soon as uttered. I wonder
that wild men have not made more of echoes, or that we do not hear that
they have made more. It would be a pleasant, a soothing and cheerful
mission to go about the country in search of them,—articulating,
speaking, vocal, oracular, resounding, sonorous, hollow, prophetic
places; places wherein to found an oracle, sites for oracles, sacred
ears of Nature.

I used to strike with a paddle on the side of my boat on Walden Pond,
filling the surrounding woods with circling and dilating sound, awaking
the woods, “stirring them up,” as a keeper of a menagerie his lions
and tigers, a growl from all. All melody is a sweet echo, as it were
coincident with [the] movement of our organs. We wake the echo of the
place we are in, its slumbering music.

I should think that savages would have made a god of echo.

I will call that Echo Wood.

Crystal Water for White Pond.

There was a sawmill once on Nut Meadow Brook, near Jennie’s Road. These
little brooks have their history. They once turned sawmills. They even
used their _influence_ to destroy the primitive [forests] which grew on
their banks, and now, for their reward, the sun is let in to dry them
up and narrow their channels. Their crime rebounds against themselves.
You still find the traces of ancient dams where the simple brooks
were taught to use their influence to destroy the primitive forests on
their borders, and now for penalty they flow in shrunken channels, with
repentant and plaintive tinkling through the wood, being by an evil
spirit turned against their neighbor forests.

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free,
meandering brook.

       *       *       *       *       *

You must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which
ruminates when it walks.

       *       *       *       *       *

The actual life of men is not without a dramatic interest to the
thinker. It is not in all its respects prosaic. Seventy thousand
pilgrims proceed annually to Mecca from the various nations of Islam.

       *       *       *       *       *

I was one evening passing a retired farmhouse which had a smooth green
plat before it, just after sundown, when I saw a hen turkey which had
gone to roost on the front fence with her wings outspread over her
young now pretty well advanced, who were roosting on the next rail
a foot or two below her. It completed a picture of rural repose and
happiness such as I had not seen for a long time. A particularly neat
and quiet place, where the very ground was swept around the wood-pile.
The neighboring fence of roots, agreeable forms for the traveller to
study, like the bones of marine monsters and the horns of mastodons or
megatheriums.

       *       *       *       *       *

You might say of a philosopher that he was in this world as a spectator.

       *       *       *       *       *

A squaw came to our door to-day with two pappooses, and said, “Me
want a pie.” Theirs is not common begging. You are merely the rich
Indian who shares his goods with the poor. They merely offer you an
opportunity to be generous and hospitable.

Equally simple was the observation which an Indian made at Mr. Hoar’s
door the other day, who went there to sell his baskets. “No, we don’t
want any,” said the one who went to the door. “What! do you mean to
starve us?” asked the Indian in astonishment, as he was going out
[_sic_] the gate. The Indian seems to have said: I too will do like the
white man; I will go into business. He sees his white neighbors well
off around him, and he thinks that if he only enters on the profession
of basket-making, riches will flow in unto him as a matter of course;
just as the lawyer weaves arguments, and by some magical means wealth
and standing follow. He thinks that when he has made the baskets he
has done his part, now it is yours to buy them. He has not discovered
that it is necessary for him to make it worth your while to buy them,
or make some which it will be worth your while to buy. With great
simplicity he says to himself: I too will be a man of business; I will
go into trade. It isn’t enough simply to make baskets. You have got to
sell them.[71]

       *       *       *       *       *

I have an uncle who once, just as he stepped on to the dock at New
York from a steamboat, saw some strange birds in the water and called
to [a] Gothamite to know what they were. Just then his hat blew off
into the dock, and the man answered by saying, “Mister, your hat is
off,” whereupon my uncle, straightening himself up, asked again with
vehemence, “Blast you, sir, I want to know what those birds are.” By
the time that he had got this information, a sailor had recovered his
hat.


_Nov. 8._ The stillness of the woods and fields is remarkable at this
season of the year. There is not even the creak of a cricket to be
heard. Of myriads of dry shrub oak leaves, not one rustles. Your own
breath can rustle them, yet the breath of heaven does not suffice to.
The trees have the aspect of waiting for winter. The autumnal leaves
have lost their color; they are now truly sere, dead, and the woods
wear a sombre color. Summer and harvest are over. The hickories,
birches, chestnuts, no less than the maples, have lost their leaves.
The sprouts, which had shot up so vigorously to repair the damage which
the choppers had done, have stopped short for the winter. Everything
stands silent and expectant. If I listen, I hear only the note of a
chickadee,—our most common and I may say native bird, most identified
with our forests,—or perchance the scream of a jay, or perchance from
the solemn depths of these woods I hear tolling far away the knell
of one departed. Thought rushes in to fill the vacuum. As you walk,
however, the partridge still bursts away. The silent, dry, almost
leafless, certainly fruitless woods. You wonder what cheer that bird
can find in them. The partridge bursts away from the foot of a shrub
oak like its own dry fruit, immortal bird! This sound still startles
us. Dry goldenrods, now turned gray and white, lint our clothes as we
walk. And the drooping, downy seed-vessels of the epilobium remind us
of the summer. Perchance you will meet with a few solitary asters in
the dry fields, with a little color left. The sumach is stripped of
everything but its cone of red berries.

This is a peculiar season, peculiar for its stillness. The crickets
have ceased their song. The few birds are well-nigh silent. The tinted
and gay leaves are now sere and dead, and the woods wear a sombre
aspect. A carpet of snow under the pines and shrub oaks will make it
look more cheerful. Very few plants have now their spring. But thoughts
still spring in man’s brain. There are no flowers nor berries to speak
of. The grass begins to die at top. In the morning it is stiff with
frost. Ice has been discovered in somebody’s tub very early this morn,
of the thickness of a dollar. The flies are betwixt life and death.
The wasps come into the houses and settle on the walls and windows. All
insects go into crevices. The fly is entangled in a web and struggles
vainly to escape, but there is no spider to secure him; the corner
of the pane is a deserted camp. When I lived in the woods the wasps
came by thousands to my lodge in November, as to winter quarters,
and settled on my windows and on the walls over my head, sometimes
deterring visitors from entering. Each morning, when they were numbed
with cold, I swept some of them out. But I did not trouble myself
to get rid of them. They never molested me, though they bedded with
me, and they gradually disappeared into what crevices I do not know,
avoiding winter.[72] I saw a squash-bug go slowly behind a clapboard to
avoid winter. As some of these melon seeds come up in the garden again
in the spring, so some of these squash-bugs come forth. The flies are
for a long time in a somnambulic state. They have too little energy or
_vis vitæ_ to clean their wings or heads, which are covered with dust.
They buzz and bump their heads against the windows two or three times a
day, or lie on their backs in a trance, and that is all,—two or three
short spurts. One of these mornings we shall hear that Mr. Minott had
to break the ice to water his cow. And so it will go on till the ground
freezes. If the race had never lived through a winter, what would they
think was coming?

  [Illustration: _November Woods_]

Walden Pond has at last fallen a little. It has been so high over
the stones—quite into the bushes—that walkers have been excluded from
it.[73] There has been no accessible shore. All ponds have been high.
The water stood higher than usual in the distant ponds which I visited
and had never seen before. It has been a peculiar season. At Goose
Pond, I notice that the birches of one year’s growth from the stumps
standing in the water are all dead, apparently killed by the water,
unless, like the pine, they die down after springing from the stump.

It is warm somewhere any day in the year. You will find some nook
in the woods generally, at mid-forenoon of the most blustering day,
where you may forget the cold. I used to resort to the northeast side
of Walden, where the sun, reflected from the pine woods on the stony
shore, made it the fireside of the pond. It is so much pleasanter and
wholesomer to be warmed by the sun when you can, than by a fire.

I saw to-day a double reflection on the pond of the cars passing, one
beneath the other, occasioned by a bright rippled streak on the surface
of the water, from which a second reflection sprang.

       *       *       *       *       *

One who would study lichens must go into a new country where the rocks
have not been burned.

       *       *       *       *       *

Therien says that the Canadians say _marche-donc_ to their horses; and
that the acid fruit must be spelled _painbéna_.[74] He says that the
French acre or _arpent_ is ten perches by ten, of eighteen feet each.


_Nov. 9._ It is a pleasant surprise to walk over a hill where an old
wood has recently been cut off, and, on looking round, to see, instead
of dense ranks of trees almost impermeable to light, distant well-known
blue mountains in the horizon and perchance a white village over an
expanded open country. I now take this in preference to all my old
familiar walks. So a new prospect and walks can be created where we
least expected it. The old men have seen other prospects from these
hills than we do. There was the old Kettell place, now Watt’s, which
I surveyed for him last winter and lotted off, where twenty-five years
ago I played horse in the paths of a thick wood and roasted apples and
potatoes in an old pigeon-place[75] and gathered fruit at the pie-apple
tree. A week or two after I surveyed it, it now being rotten and
going to waste, I walked there and was surprised to find the place and
prospect which I have described.

I found many fresh violets (_Viola pedata_) to-day (November 9th) in
the woods.

Saw a cat on the Great Fields, wilder than a rabbit, hunting artfully.
I remember to have seen one once walking about the stony shore at
Walden Pond. It is not often that they wander so far from the houses.
I once, however, met with a cat with young kittens in the woods, quite
wild.[76]

The leaves of the larch are now yellow and falling off. Just a month
ago, I observed that the white pines were parti-colored, green and
yellow, the needles of the previous year now falling. Now I do not
observe any yellow ones, and I expect to find that it is only for a
few weeks in the fall after the new leaves have done growing that there
are any yellow and falling,—that there is a season when we may say the
old pine leaves are now yellow, and again, they are fallen. The trees
were not so tidy then; they are not so full now. They look best when
contrasted with a field of snow.

A rusty sparrow or two only remains to people the drear spaces. It goes
to roost without neighbors.

It is pleasant to observe any growth in a wood. There is the pitch
pine field northeast of Beck Stow’s Swamp, where some years ago I went
a-blackberrying and observed that the pitch pines were beginning to
come in, and I have frequently noticed since how fairly they grew,
dotting the plain as evenly as if dispersed by art. To-day I was aware
that I walked in a pitch pine wood, which ere long, perchance, I may
survey and lot off for a wood auction and see the choppers at their
work. There is also the old pigeon-place field by the Deep Cut. I
remember it as an open grassy field. It is now one of our most pleasant
woodland paths. In the former place, near the edge of the old wood, the
young pines line each side of the path like a palisade, they grow so
densely. It never rains but it pours, and so I think when I see a young
grove of pitch pines crowding each other to death in this wide world.
These are destined for the locomotive’s maw. These branches, which it
has taken so many years to mature, are regarded even by the woodman as
“trash.”

Delicate, dry, feathery (perchance fescue) grasses growing out of a
tuft, gracefully bending over the pathway. I do not know what they are,
but they belong to the season.

The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer
inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five
feet, occasionally lisping a note.

The pitcher-plant, though a little frost-bitten and often cut off by
the mower, now stands full of water in the meadows. I never found one
that had not an insect in it.

I sometimes see well-preserved walls running straight through the midst
of high and old woods, built, of course, when the soil was cultivated
many years ago, and am surprised to see slight stones still lying one
upon another, as the builder placed them, while this huge oak has grown
up from a chance acorn in the soil.

Though a man were known to have only one acquaintance in the world,
yet there are so many men in the world, and they are so much alike,
that when he spoke what might be construed personally, no one would
know certainly whom he meant. Though there were but two on a desolate
island, they would conduct toward each other in this respect as if each
had intercourse with a thousand others.

       *       *       *       *       *

I saw in Canada two or three persons wearing homespun gray greatcoats,
with comical and conical hoods which fell back on their backs between
the shoulders, like small bags ready to be turned up over the head when
need was, though then a hat usurped that place. I saw that these must
be what are called capots. They looked as if they would be convenient
and proper enough as long as the coats were new and tidy, but as if
they would soon come to look like rags and unsightly.[77]


_Nov. 11._ Gathered to-day the autumnal dandelion (?) and the common
dandelion.

Some farmers’ wives use the white ashes of corn-cobs instead of
pearlash.

I am attracted by a fence made of white pine roots. There is, or rather
was, one (for it has been tipped into the gutter this year) on the road
to Hubbard’s Bridge which I can remember for more than twenty years.
It is almost as indestructible as a wall and certainly requires fewer
repairs. It is light, white, and dry withal, and its fantastic forms
are agreeable to my eye. One would not have believed that any trees
had such snarled and gnarled roots. In some instances you have a coarse
network of roots as they interlaced on the surface perhaps of a swamp,
which, set on its edge, really looks like a fence, with its paling
crossing at various angles, and root repeatedly growing into root,—a
rare phenomenon above ground,—so as to leave open spaces, square and
diamond-shaped and triangular, quite like a length of fence. It is
remarkable how white and clean these roots are, and that no lichens,
or very few, grow on them; so free from decay are they. The different
branches of the roots continually grow into one another, so as to make
grotesque figures, sometimes rude harps whose resonant strings of roots
give a sort of musical sound when struck, such as the earth spirit
might play on. Sometimes the roots are of a delicate wine-color here
and there, an evening tint. No line of fence could be too long for
me to study each individual stump. Rocks would have been covered with
lichens by this time. Perhaps they are grown into one another that they
may stand more firmly.

Now is the time for wild apples. I pluck them as a wild fruit native
to this quarter of the earth, fruit of old trees that have been dying
ever since I was a boy and are not yet dead. From the appearance of
the tree you would expect nothing but lichens to drop from it, but
underneath your faith is rewarded by finding the ground strewn with
spirited fruit. Frequented only by the woodpecker, deserted now by the
farmer, who has not faith enough to look under the boughs.[78] Food for
walkers. Sometimes apples red inside, perfused with a beautiful blush,
faery food, too beautiful to eat,—apple of the evening sky, of the
Hesperides.[79]

This afternoon I heard a single cricket singing, chirruping, in a bank,
the only one I have heard for a long time, like a squirrel or a little
bird, clear and shrill,—as I fancied, like an evening robin, singing
in this evening of the year. A very fine and poetical strain for such a
little singer. I had never before heard the cricket so like a bird. It
is a remarkable note. The earth-song.

That delicate, waving, feathery dry grass which I saw yesterday is to
be remembered with the autumn. The dry grasses are not dead for me. A
beautiful form has as much life at one season as another.

I notice that everywhere in the pastures minute young fragrant
life-everlasting, with only four or five flat-lying leaves and
thread-like roots, all together as big as a fourpence, spot the ground,
like winter rye and grass which roots itself in the fall against
another year. These little things have bespoken their places for the
next season. They have a little pellet of cotton or down in their
centres, ready for an early start in the spring.

The autumnal (?) dandelion is still bright.

I saw an old bone in the woods covered with lichens, which looked like
the bone of an old settler, which yet some little animal had recently
gnawed, and I plainly saw the marks of its teeth, so indefatigable is
Nature to strip the flesh from bones and return it to dust again. No
little rambling beast can go by some dry and ancient bone but he must
turn aside and try his teeth upon it. An old bone is knocked about till
it becomes dust; Nature has no mercy on it. It was quite too ancient
to suggest disagreeable associations. It was like a piece of dry pine
root. It survives like the memory of a man. With time all that was
personal and offensive wears off. The tooth of envy may sometimes
gnaw it and reduce it more rapidly, but it is much more a prey to
forgetfulness. Lichens grow upon it, and at last, in what moment no
man knows, it has completely wasted away and ceases to be a bone any
longer.

The fields are covered now with the empty cups of the _Trichostema
dichotomum_, all dry.

We had a remarkable sunset to-night. I was walking in the meadow, the
source of Nut Meadow Brook.[80]

     [Two pages missing.]

We walked in so pure and bright a light, so softly and serenely
bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without
a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of every wood and rising
ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium.[81] An adventurous spirit
turns the evening into morning. A little black brook in the midst of
the marsh, just beginning to meander, winding slowly round a decaying
stump,—an artery of the meadow.[82]

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout
in the milk.

A people who would begin by burning the fences and let the forest
stand! I saw the fences half consumed, their ends lost in the middle
of the prairie, and some worldly miser with a surveyor looking after
his bounds, while heaven had taken place around him, and he did not see
the angels around, but was looking for an old post-hole in the midst of
paradise. I looked again and saw him standing in the middle of a boggy
Stygian fen, surrounded by devils, and he had found his bounds without
a doubt, three little stones where a stake had been driven, and,
looking nearer, I saw that the Prince of Darkness was his surveyor.[83]


_Nov. 14._ Saw to-day, while surveying in the Second Division woods, a
singular round mound in a valley, made perhaps sixty or seventy years
ago. Cyrus Stow thought it was a pigeon-bed, but I soon discovered
the coal and that it was an old coal-pit. I once mistook one in the
Maine woods for an Indian mound. The indestructible charcoal told the
tale. I had noticed singular holes and trenches in the former wood, as
if a fox had been dug out. The sun has probably been let in here many
times, and this has been a cultivated field; and now it is clothed in
a savage dress again. The wild, rank, luxuriant place is where mosses
and lichens abound. We find no heroes’ cairns except those of heroic
colliers, who once sweated here begrimed and dingy, who lodged here,
tending their fires, who lay on a beetle here, perchance, to keep
awake.


_Nov. 15._ I saw to-day a very perfect lichen on a rock in a meadow.
It formed a perfect circle about fifteen inches in diameter though the
rock was uneven, and was handsomely shaded by a darker stripe of older
leaves, an inch or more wide, just within its circumference, like a
rich lamp-mat. The recent growth on the outside, half an inch in width,
was a sort of tea-green or bluish-green color.

The ivy berries are now sere and yellowish, or sand-colored, like the
berries of the dogwood.

The farmers are now casting out their manure, and removing the
muck-heap from the shore of ponds where it will be inaccessible in the
winter; or are doing their fall plowing, which destroys many insects
and mellows the soil. I also see some pulling their turnips, and even
getting in corn which has been left out notwithstanding the crows.
Those who have wood to sell, as the weather grows colder and people can
better appreciate the value of fuel, lot off their woods and advertise
a wood auction.

       *       *       *       *       *

You can tell when a cat has seen a dog by the size of her tail.


_Nov. 16._ I found three good arrowheads to-day behind Dennis’s. The
season for them began some time ago, as soon as the farmers had sown
their winter rye, but the spring, after the melting of the snow, is
still better.

I am accustomed to regard the smallest brook with as much interest for
the time being as if it were the Orinoco or Mississippi. What is the
difference, I would like to know, but mere size? And when a tributary
rill empties in, it is like the confluence of famous rivers I have read
of. When I cross one on a fence, I love to pause in mid-passage and
look down into the water, and study its bottom, its little mystery.
There is none so small but you may see a pickerel regarding you with
a wary eye, or a pygmy trout glance from under the bank, or in spring,
perchance, a sucker will have found its way far up its stream. You are
sometimes astonished to see a pickerel far up some now shrunken rill,
where it is a mere puddle by the roadside. I have stooped to drink at
a clear spring no bigger than a bushel basket in a meadow, from which a
rill was scarcely seen to dribble away, and seen lurking at its bottom
two little pickerel not so big as my finger, sole monarchs of this
their ocean, and who probably would never visit a larger water.

In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is only
another name for tameness. It is the untamed, uncivilized, free, and
wild thinking in Hamlet, in the Iliad, and in all the scriptures and
mythologies that delights us,—not learned in the schools, not refined
and polished by art. A truly good book is something as wildly natural
and primitive, mysterious and marvellous, ambrosial and fertile, as
a fungus or a lichen.[84] Suppose the muskrat or beaver were to turn
his views [_sic_] to literature, what fresh views of nature would he
present! The fault of our books and other deeds is that they are too
humane, I want something speaking in some measure to the condition of
muskrats and skunk-cabbage as well as of men,—not merely to a pining
and complaining coterie of philanthropists.

I discover again about these times that cranberries are good to eat in
small quantities as you are crossing the meadows.

I hear deep amid the birches some row among the birds or the squirrels,
where evidently some mystery is being developed to them. The jay is on
the alert, mimicking every woodland note. What _has_ happened? Who’s
dead? The twitter retreats before you, and you are never let into the
secret. Some tragedy surely is being enacted, but murder will out. How
many little dramas are enacted in the depth of the woods at which man
is not present!

When I am considering which way I will walk, my needle is slow to
settle, my compass varies by a few degrees and does not always point
due southwest; and there is good authority for these variations in the
heavens. It pursues the straighter course for it at last, like the ball
which has come out of a rifle, or the quoit that is twirled when cast.
To-day it is some particular wood or meadow or deserted pasture in that
direction that is my southwest.[85]

I love my friends very much, but I find that it is of no use to go
to see them. I hate them commonly when I am near them. They belie
themselves and deny me continually.

Somebody shut the cat’s tail in the door just now, and she made such
a caterwaul as has driven two whole worlds out of my thoughts. I saw
unspeakable things in the sky and looming in the horizon of my mind,
and now they are all reduced to a cat’s tail. Vast films of thought
floated through my brain, like clouds pregnant with rain enough to
fertilize and restore a world, and now they are all dissipated.

There is a place whither I should walk to-day. Though oftenest I fail
to find, when by accident I ramble into it, great is my delight. I have
stood by my door sometimes half an hour, irresolute as to what course
I should take.[86]

Apparently all but the evergreens and oaks have lost their leaves now.
It is singular that the shrub oaks retain their leaves through the
winter. Why do they?

The walnut trees spot the sky with black nuts. Only catkins are seen on
the birches.

I saw the other day a dead limb which the wind or some other cause had
broken nearly off, which had lost none of its leaves, though all the
rest of the tree, which was flourishing, had shed them.

There seems to be in the fall a sort of attempt at a spring, a
rejuvenescence, as if the winter were not expected by a part of nature.
Violets, dandelions, and some other flowers blossom again, and mulleins
and innumerable other plants begin again to spring and are only checked
by the increasing cold. There is a slight uncertainty whether there
will be any winter this year.

I was pleased to-day to hear a great noise and trampling in the woods
produced by some cows which came running toward their homes, which
apparently had been scared by something unusual, as their ancestors
might have been by wolves. I have known sheep to be scared in the same
[way] and a whole flock to run bleating to me for protection.

What shall we do with a man who is afraid of the woods, their solitude
and darkness? What salvation is there for him? God is silent and
mysterious.

Some of our richest days are those in which no sun shines outwardly,
but so much the more a sun shines inwardly. I love nature, I love
the landscape, because it is so sincere. It never cheats me. It never
jests. It is cheerfully, musically earnest. I lie and relie [_sic_] on
the earth.

Land where the wood has been cut off and is just beginning to come up
again is called sprout land.

The sweet-scented life-everlasting has not lost its scent yet, but
smells like the balm of the fields.

The partridge-berry leaves checker the ground on the side of
moist hillsides in the woods. Are _they_ not properly called
_checker_-berries?

The era of wild apples will soon be over. I wander through old orchards
of great extent, now all gone to decay, all of native fruit which for
the most part went to the cider-mill. But since the temperance reform
and the general introduction of grafted fruit, no wild apples, such as
I see everywhere in deserted pastures, and where the woods have grown
up among them, are set out. I fear that he who walks over these hills
a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples.
Ah, poor man! there are many pleasures which he will be debarred from!
Notwithstanding the prevalence of the Baldwin and the Porter, I doubt
if as extensive orchards are set out to-day in this town as there were
a century ago, when these vast straggling cider-orchards were planted.
Men stuck in a tree then by every wall-side and let it take its chance.
I see nobody planting trees to-day in such out of the way places, along
almost every road and lane and wall-side, and at the bottom of dells
in the wood. Now that they have grafted trees and pay a price for them,
they collect them into a plot by their houses and fence them in.[87]

My Journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only
of the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what
I love to think of. I have no more distinctness or pointedness in my
yearnings than an expanding bud, which does indeed point to flower and
fruit, to summer and autumn, but is aware of the warm sun and spring
influence only. I feel ripe for something, yet do nothing, can’t
discover what that thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seedtime with
me. I have lain fallow long enough.

Notwithstanding a sense of unworthiness which possesses me, not without
reason, notwithstanding that I regard myself as a good deal of a scamp,
yet for the most part the spirit of the universe is unaccountably
kind to me, and I enjoy perhaps an unusual share of happiness. Yet I
question sometimes if there is not some settlement to come.


_Nov. 17._ It is a strange age of the world this, when empires,
kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to our doors and utter their
complaints at our elbows. I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that
some wretched government or other, hard pushed and on its last legs,
is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it,—more importunate
than an Italian beggar. Why does it not keep its castle in silence, as
I do? The poor President, what with preserving his popularity and doing
his duty, does not know what to do. If you do not read the newspapers,
you may be impeached for treason. The newspapers are the ruling power.
What Congress does is an afterclap. Any other government is reduced to
a few marines at Fort Independence. If a man neglects to read the Daily
Times, government will go on its knees to him; this is the only treason
in these days. The newspapers devote some of their columns specially to
government and politics without charge, and this is all that saves it,
but I never read those columns.[88]

I found this afternoon, in a field of winter rye, a snapping turtle’s
egg, white and elliptical like a pebble, mistaking it for which I broke
it. The little turtle was perfectly formed, even to the dorsal ridge,
which was distinctly visible.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Chesipooc Sinus” is on Wytfliet’s Map of 159-.

Even the Dutch were forward to claim the great river of Canada. In a
map of New Belgium in Ogilby’s “America,” 1670, the St. Lawrence is
also called “De Groote Rivier van Niew Nederlandt.”[89]

On this same map, east of Lake Champlain, called “Lacus Irocoisiensis”
or in Dutch “Meer der Irocoisen,” is a chain of mountains answering to
the Green Mountains of Vermont, and “Irocoisia,” or the country of the
Iroquois, between the mountains and the lake.


_Nov. 19._ The first really cold day. I find, on breaking off a shrub
oak leaf, a little life at the foot of the leafstalk, so that a part
of the green comes off. It has not died quite down to the point of
separation, as it will do, I suppose, before spring. Most of the oaks
have lost their leaves except on the lower branches, as if they were
less exposed and less mature there, and felt the changes of the seasons
less. The leaves have either fallen or withered long since, yet I
found this afternoon, cold as it is,—and there has been snow in the
neighborhood,—some sprouts which had come up this year from the stump
of a young black-looking oak, covered still with handsome fresh red
and green leaves, very large and unwithered and unwilted. It was on
the south side of Fair Haven in a warm angle, where the wood was cut
last winter and the exposed edge of the still standing wood running
north and south met the cliff at right angles and served for a fence to
keep off the wind. There were one or two stumps here whose sprouts had
fresh leaves which transported me back to October. Yet the surrounding
shrub oak leaves were as dry and dead as usual. There were also some
minute birches only a year old, their leaves still freshly yellow, and
some young wild apple trees apparently still growing, their leaves as
green and tender as in summer. The goldenrods, one or more species of
the white and some yellow ones, were many of them still quite fresh,
though elsewhere they are all whitish and dry. I saw one whose top
rose above the edge of a rock, and so much of it was turned white and
dry; but the lower part of its raceme was still yellow. Some of the
white species seemed to have started again as if for another spring.
They had sprung up freshly a foot or more, and were budded to blossom,
fresh and green. And sometimes on the same stem were old and dry and
white downy flowers, and fresh green blossom-buds not yet expanded. I
saw there some _pale_ blue asters still bright, and the mullein leaves
still large and green, one green to its top. And I discovered that when
I put my hand on the mullein leaves they felt decidedly warm, but the
radical leaves of the goldenrods felt cold and clammy. There was also
the columbine, its leaves still alive and green; and I was pleased to
smell the pennyroyal which I had bruised, though this dried up long
ago. Each season is thus drawn out and lingers in certain localities,
as the birds and insects know very well. If you penetrate to some
warm recess under a cliff in the woods, you will be astonished at the
amount of summer life that still flourishes there. No doubt more of
the summer’s life than we are aware thus slips by and outmanœuvres the
winter, gliding from fence to fence. I have no doubt that a diligent
search in proper places would discover many more of our summer flowers
thus lingering till the snow came, than we suspect. It is as if the
plant made no preparation for winter.

Now that the grass is withered and the leaves are withered or fallen,
it begins to appear what is evergreen: the partridge[-berry] and
checkerberry, and wintergreen leaves even, are more conspicuous.

The old leaves have been off the pines now for a month.

I once found a kernel of corn in the middle of a deep wood by Walden,
tucked in behind a lichen on a pine, about as high as my head, either
by a crow or a squirrel. It was a mile at least from any corn-field.

Several species plainly linger till the snow comes.


_Nov. 20._ It is a common saying among country people that if you eat
much fried hasty pudding it will make your hair curl. My experience,
which was considerable, did not confirm this assertion.

Horace Hosmer was picking out to-day half a bushel or more of a
different and better kind of cranberry, as he thought, separating them
from the rest. They are very dark red, shaded with lighter, harder and
more oblong, somewhat like the fruit of the sweet-briar or a Canada red
plum, though I have no common cranberry to compare with them. He says
that they grow apart from the others. I must see him about it. It may
prove to be one more of those instances in which the farmer detects
a new species and makes use of the knowledge from year to year in his
profession, while the botanist expressly devoted to such investigation
has failed to observe it.

The farmer, in picking over many bushels of cranberries year after
year, finds at length, or has forced upon his observation, a new
species of that berry, and avails himself thereafter of his discovery
for many years before the naturalist is aware of the fact.

Desor, who has been among the Indians at Lake Superior this summer,
told me the other day that they had a particular name for each species
of tree, as of the maple, but they had but one word for flowers; they
did not distinguish the species of the last.

It is often the unscientific man who discovers the new species. It
would be strange if it were not so. But we are accustomed properly to
call that only a scientific discovery which knows the relative value of
the thing discovered, uncovers a fact to mankind.


_Nov. 21._ For a month past the grass under the pines has been covered
with a new carpet of pine leaves. It is remarkable that the old leaves
turn and fall in so short a time.

Some of the densest and most impenetrable clumps of bushes I have
seen, as well on account of the closeness of their branches as of their
thorns, have been wild apples. Its [_sic_] branches as stiff as those
of the black spruce on the tops of mountains.[90]

I saw a herd of a dozen cows and young steers and oxen on Conantum
this afternoon, running about and frisking in unwieldy sport like
huge rats. Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. They even played
like kittens, in their way; shook their heads, raised their tails, and
rushed up and down the hill.[91]

The witch-hazel blossom on Conantum has for the most part lost its
ribbons now.

Some distant angle in the sun where a lofty and dense white pine wood,
with mingled gray and green, meets a hill covered with shrub oaks,
affects me singularly, reinspiring me with all the dreams of my youth.
It is a place far away, yet actual and where we have been. I saw the
sun falling on a distant white pine wood whose gray and moss-covered
stems were visible amid the green, in an angle where this forest
abutted on a hill covered with shrub oaks. It was like looking into
dreamland. It is one of the avenues to my future. Certain coincidences
like this are accompanied by a certain flash as of hazy lightning,
flooding all the world suddenly with a tremulous serene light which it
is difficult to see long at a time.

I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island, and meadow between the island
and the shore, and a strip of perfectly still and smooth water in the
lee of the island, and two hawks, fish hawks perhaps, sailing over
it. I did not see how it could be improved. Yet I do not see what
these things can be. I begin to see such an object when I cease to
_understand_ it and see that I did not realize or appreciate it before,
but I get no further than this. How adapted these forms and colors to
my eye! A meadow and an island! What are these things? Yet the hawks
and the ducks keep so aloof! and Nature is so reserved! I am made
to love the pond and the meadow, as the wind is made to ripple the
water.[92]

As I looked on the Walden woods eastward across the pond, I saw
suddenly a white cloud rising above their tops, now here, now there,
marking the progress of the cars which were rolling toward Boston far
below, behind many hills and woods.

October must be the month of ripe and tinted leaves. Throughout
November they are almost entirely withered and sombre, the few that
remain. In this month the sun is valued. When it shines warmer or
brighter we are sure to observe it. There are not so many colors to
attract the eye. We begin to remember the summer. We walk fast to keep
warm. For a month past I have sat by a fire.

Every sunset inspires me with the desire to go to a _West_ as distant
and as fair as that into which the sun goes down.[93]

I get nothing to eat in my walks now but wild apples, sometimes some
cranberries, and some walnuts. The squirrels have got the hazelnuts and
chestnuts.


_Nov. 23._ To-day it has been finger-cold.[94] Unexpectedly I found ice
by the side of the brooks this afternoon nearly an inch thick. Prudent
people get in their barrels of apples to-day.[95] The difference of
the temperature of various localities is greater than is supposed.
If I was surprised to find ice on the sides of the brooks, I was much
more surprised to find quite a pond in the woods, containing an acre
or more, quite frozen over so that I walked across it. It was in a cold
corner, where a pine wood excluded the sun. In the larger ponds and the
river, of course, there is no ice yet. It is a shallow, weedy pond.
I lay down on the ice and looked through at the bottom. The plants
appeared to grow more uprightly than on the dry land, being sustained
and protected by the water. Caddis-worms were everywhere crawling about
in their handsome quiver-like sheaths or cases.

The wild apples, though they are more mellow and edible, have for some
time lost their beauty, as well as the leaves, and now too they are
beginning to freeze. The apple season is well-nigh over. Such, however,
as are frozen while sound are not unpleasant to eat when the spring sun
thaws them.[96]

I find it to be the height of wisdom not to endeavor to oversee myself
and live a life of prudence and common sense, but to see over and above
myself, entertain sublime conjectures, to make myself the thoroughfare
of thrilling thoughts, live all that can be lived. The man who is
dissatisfied with himself, what can he not do?


_Nov. 24._ Plucked a buttercup on Bear Hill to-day.

I have certain friends whom I visit occasionally, but I commonly part
from them early with a certain bitter-sweet sentiment. That which we
love is so mixed and entangled with that we hate in one another that
we are more grieved and disappointed, aye, and estranged from one
another, by meeting than by absence. Some men may be my acquaintances
merely, but one whom I have been accustomed to regard, to idealize, to
have dreams about as a friend, and mix up intimately with myself, can
never degenerate into an acquaintance. I must know him on that higher
ground or not know him at all. We do not confess and explain, because
we would fain be so intimately related as to understand each other
without speech. Our friend must be broad. His must be an atmosphere
coextensive with the universe, in which we can expand and breathe. For
the most part we are smothered and stifled by one another. I go and see
my friend and try his atmosphere. If our atmospheres do not mingle, if
we repel each other strongly, it is of no use to stay.


_Nov. 25._ I feel a little alarmed when it happens that I have walked
a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. I would
fain forget all my morning’s occupation, my obligations to society. But
sometimes it happens that I cannot easily shake off the village; the
thought of some work, some surveying, will run in my head, and I am not
where my body is, I am out of my senses. In my walks I would return to
my senses like a bird or a beast. What business have I in the woods, if
I am thinking of something out of the woods?[97]

This afternoon, late and cold as it is, has been a sort of Indian
summer. Indeed, I think that we have summer days from time to time
the winter through, and that it is often the snow on the ground makes
the whole difference. This afternoon the air was indescribably clear
and exhilarating, and though the thermometer would have shown it to be
cold, I thought that there was a finer and purer warmth than in summer;
a wholesome, intellectual warmth, in which the body was warmed by the
mind’s contentment. The warmth was hardly sensuous, but rather the
satisfaction of existence.

I found Fair Haven skimmed entirely over, though the stones which I
threw down on it from the high bank on the east broke through. Yet the
river was open. The landscape looked singularly clean and pure and dry,
the air, like a pure glass, being laid over the picture, the trees so
tidy, stripped of their leaves; the meadows and pastures, clothed with
clean dry grass, looked as if they had been swept; ice on the water and
winter in the air, but yet not a particle of snow on the ground. The
woods, divested in great part of their leaves, are being ventilated.
It is the season of perfect works, of hard, tough, ripe twigs, not of
tender buds and leaves. The leaves have made their wood, and a myriad
new withes stand up all around pointing to the sky, able to survive the
cold. It is only the perennial that you see, the iron age of the year.

These expansions of the river skim over before the river itself takes
on its icy fetters. What is the analogy?

I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice. He is a man wilder
than Ray or Melvin. While I am looking at him, I am thinking what he
is thinking of me. He is a different sort of a man, that is all. He
would dive when I went nearer, then reappear again, and had kept open
a place five or six feet square so that it had not frozen, by swimming
about in it. Then he would sit on the edge of the ice and busy himself
about something, I could not see whether it was a clam or not. What a
cold-blooded fellow! thoughts at a low temperature, sitting perfectly
still so long on ice covered with water, mumbling a cold, wet clam in
its shell. What safe, low, moderate thoughts it must have! It does not
get on to stilts. The generations of muskrats do not fail. They are not
preserved by the legislature of Massachusetts.

Boats are drawn up high which will not be launched again till spring.

There is a beautiful fine wild grass which grows in the path in sprout
land, now dry, white, and waving, in light beds soft to the touch.

I experience such an interior comfort, far removed from the sense
of cold, as if the thin atmosphere were rarefied by heat, were the
medium of invisible flames, as if the whole landscape were one great
hearthside, that where the shrub oak leaves rustle on the hillside, I
seem to hear a crackling fire and see the pure flame, and I wonder that
the dry leaves do not blaze into yellow flames.

I find but little change yet on the south side of the Cliffs; only the
leaves of the wild apple are a little frostbitten on their edges and
curled dry there; but some wild cherry leaves and blueberries are still
fresh and tender green and red, as well as all the other leaves and
plants which I noticed there the other day.

When I got up so high on the side of the Cliff the sun was setting
like an Indian-summer sun. There was a purple tint in the horizon. It
was warm on the face of the rocks, and I could have sat till the sun
disappeared, to dream there. It was a mild sunset such as is to be
attended to. Just as the sun shines into us warmly and serenely, our
Creator breathes on us and re-creates us.


_Nov. 26._ An inch of snow on ground this morning,—our first.

Went to-night to see the Indians, who are still living in tents. Showed
the horns of the moose, the black moose they call it, that goes in
lowlands. Horns three or four feet wide. (The red moose they say is
another kind; runs on mountains and has horns six feet wide.) Can move
their horns. The broad, flat side portions of the horns are covered
with hair, and are so soft when the creature is alive that you can run
a knife through them.[98] They color the lower portions a darker color
by rubbing them on alders, etc., to harden them. Make _kee-nong-gun_
or pappoose cradle, of the broad part of the horn, putting a rim on
it. Once scared, will run all day. A dog will hang to their lips and be
carried along and swung against a tree and drop off. Always find two or
three together. Can’t run on glare ice, but can run in snow four feet
deep. The caribou can run on ice.[99] Sometimes spear them with a sharp
pole, sometimes with a knife at the end of a pole. Signs, good or bad,
from the turn of the horns. Their caribou-horns had been gnawed by mice
in their wigwams. The moose-horns and others are not gnawed by mice
while the creature is alive. Moose cover themselves with water, all but
noses, to escape flies.[100] About as many now as fifty years ago.

Imitated the sounds of the moose, caribou, and deer with a birch-bark
horn, which last they sometimes make very long. The moose can be heard
eight or ten miles sometimes,—a loud sort of bellowing sound, clearer,
more sonorous than the looing of cattle. The caribou’s, a sort of
snort; the small deer, like a lamb.

Made their clothes of the young moose-skin. Cure the meat by smoking
it; use no salt in curing it, but when they eat it.

Their spear very serviceable. The inner, pointed part, of a hemlock
knot; the side spring pieces, of hickory. Spear salmon, pickerel,
trout, chub, etc.; also by birch-bark light at night, using the other
end of spear as pole.

  [Illustration]

Their sled, _jeborgon_ or _jebongon_ (?), one foot wide, four or
five long, of thin wood turned up in front; draw by a strong rope of
basswood bark.

Canoe of moose-hide. One hide will hold three or four. Can be taken
apart and put together very quickly. Can take out cross-bars and bring
the sides together. A very convenient boat to carry and cross streams
with. They say they did not make birch canoes till they had edge tools.
The birches the lightest. They think our birches the same, only second
growth.

Their _kee-nong-gun_, or cradle, has a hoop to prevent the child
being hurt when it falls. Can’t eat dirt; can be hung up out of way of
snakes.

_Aboak-henjo_ [?], a birch-bark vessel for water. Can boil meat in it
with hot stones; takes a long time. Also a vessel of birch bark, shaped
like a pan. Both ornamented by scratching the bark, which is wrong side
out. Very neatly made. Valued our kettles much.

  [Illustration]

Did not know use of eye in axe. Put a string through it and wore it
round neck. Cut toes.

Did not like gun. Killed one moose; scared all the rest.

The _squaw-heegun_ for cooking, a mere stick put through the game and
stuck in the ground slanted over the fire, a spit. Can be eating one
side while the other is doing.

The _ar-tu-e-se_, a stick, string, and bunch of leaves, which they toss
and catch on the point of the stick. Make great use of it. Make the
clouds go off the sun with it.

Snowshoes of two kinds; one of same shape at both ends so that the
Mohawks could not tell which way they were going. (Put some rags in the
heel-hole to make a toe-mark?)

  [Illustration: Side View]

  [Illustrations]

Log trap to catch many kinds of animals. Some for bears let the log
fall six or seven feet. First there is a frame, then the little stick
which the animal moves, presses down, as he goes through under the log;
then the crooked stick is hung over the top of the frame, and holds
up the log by a string; the weight of the log on this keeps the little
stick up.

A drizzling and misty day this has been, melting the snow. The mist,
divided into a thousand ghostly forms, was blowing across Walden.
Mr. Emerson’s Cliff Hill, seen from the railroad through the mist,
looked like a dark, heavy, frowning New Hampshire mountain. I do not
understand fully why hills look so much larger at such a time, unless,
being the most distant we see and in the horizon, we suppose them
farther off and so magnify them. I think there can be no looming about
it.


_Nov. 28. Thursday._ Cold drizzling and misty rains, which have melted
the little snow. The farmers are beginning to pick up their dead wood.
Within a day or two the walker finds gloves to be comfortable, and
begins to think of an outside coat and of boots. Embarks in his boots
for the winter voyage.

The Indian talked about “our folks” and “your folks,” “my grandfather”
and “my grandfather’s cousin,” Samoset.

It is remarkable, but nevertheless true, as far as my observation
goes, that women, to whom we commonly concede a somewhat finer and
more sibylline nature, yield a more implicit obedience even to their
animal instincts than men. The nature in them is stronger, the reason
weaker. There are, for instance, many young and middle-aged men among
my acquaintance—shoemakers, carpenters, farmers, and others—who have
scruples about using animal food, but comparatively few girls or women.
The latter, even the most refined, are the most intolerant of such
reforms. I think that the reformer of the severest, as well as finest,
class will find more sympathy in the intellect and philosophy of man
than in the refinement and delicacy of woman. It is, perchance, a
part of woman’s conformity and easy nature. Her savior must not be too
strong, stern, and intellectual, but charitable above all things.

The thought of its greater independence and its closeness to nature
diminishes the pain I feel when I see a more interesting child than
usual destined to be brought up in a shanty. I see that for the present
the child is happy and is not puny, and has all the wonders of nature
for its toys. Have I not faith that its tenderness will in some way be
cherished and protected, as the buds of the spring in the remotest and
wildest wintry dell no less than in the garden plot and summer-house?

     I am the little Irish boy
       That lives in the shanty.
     I am four years old to-day
       And shall soon be one and twenty.

       I shall grow up
         And be a great man,
       And shovel all day
         As hard as I can.

       Down in the Deep Cut,

       *       *       *       *       *

       Where the men lived
       Who made the railroad.

     For supper
       I have some potato
         And sometimes some bread,
       And then, if it’s cold,
         I go right to bed.

       I lie on some straw
       Under my father’s coat.

     At recess I play
     With little Billy Gray,
     And when school is done,
     Then home I run.

     And if I meet the cars,
       I get on the other track,
     And then I know whatever comes
       I needn’t look back.

     My mother does not cry,
       And my father does not scold,
     For I am a little Irish boy,
       And I’m four years old.

     Every day I go to school
       Along the railroad.
     It was so cold it made me cry
       The day that it snowed.

     And if my feet ache
       I do not mind the cold,
     For I am a little Irish boy,
       And I’m four years old.[101]


_Nov. 29._ Still misty, drizzling weather without snow or ice. The
puffballs, with their open rays, checker the path-side in the woods,
but they are not yet dry enough to make much dust. Damp weather in the
fall seems to cause them to crack open, _i. e._ their outer skin. They
look white like the shells of five-fingers on the shore.

The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist,
perhaps because, though near, yet being in the visible horizon and
there being nothing beyond to compare them with, we naturally magnify
them, supposing them further off.

It is very still yet in the woods. There are no leaves to rustle, no
crickets to chirp, and but few birds to sing.

The pines standing in the ocean of mist, seen from the Cliffs, are
trees in every stage of transition from the actual to the imaginary.
The near are more distinct, the distant more faint, till at last they
are a mere shadowy cone in the distance. What, then, are these solid
pines become? You can command only a circle of thirty or forty rods
in diameter. As you advance, the trees gradually come out of the mist
and take form before your eyes. You are reminded of your dreams. Life
looks like a dream. You are prepared to see visions. And now, just
before sundown, the night wind blows up more mist through the valley,
thickening the veil which already hung over the trees, and the gloom of
night gathers early and rapidly around. Birds lose their way.




II

DECEMBER, 1850

(ÆT. 33)


_Dec. 1._ It is quite mild and pleasant to-day. I saw a little
green hemisphere of moss which looked as if it covered a stone, but,
thrusting my cane into it, I found it was nothing but moss, about
fifteen inches in diameter and eight or nine inches high. When I broke
it up, it appeared as if the annual growth was marked by successive
layers half an inch deep each. The lower ones were quite rotten, but
the present year’s quite green, the intermediate white. I counted
fifteen or eighteen. It was quite solid, and I saw that it continued
solid as it grew by branching occasionally, just enough to fill the
newly gained space, and the tender extremities of each plant, crowded
close together, made the firm and compact surface of the bed. There was
a darker line separating the growths, where I thought the surface had
been exposed to the winter. It was quite saturated with water, though
firm and solid.


_Dec. 2._ The woodpeckers’ holes in the apple trees are about a fifth
of an inch deep or just through the bark and half an inch apart.
They must be the decaying trees that are most frequented by them, and
probably their work serves to relieve and ventilate the tree and, as
well, to destroy its enemies.

The barberries are shrivelled and dried. I find yet cranberries hard
and not touched by the frost.


_Dec. 4. Wednesday._ Fair Haven Pond is now open, and there is no snow.
It is a beautiful, almost Indian-summer, afternoon, though the air is
more pure and glassy. The shrub oak fire burns briskly as seen from the
Cliffs. The evergreens are greener than ever. I notice the row of dwarf
willows advanced into the water in Fair Haven, three or four rods from
the dry land, just at the lowest water-mark. You can get no disease but
cold in such an atmosphere.

Though the sun is now an hour high, there is a peculiar bright light on
the pines and on their stems. The lichens on their bark reflect it. In
the horizon I see a succession of the brows of hills, bare or covered
with wood,—look over the eyebrows of the recumbent earth. These are
separated by long valleys filled with vapory haze.

If there is a little more warmth than usual at this season, then the
beautiful air which belongs to winter is perceived and appreciated.


_Dec. 6._ Being at Newburyport this evening, Dr. (H. C.?) Perkins
showed me the circulations in the nitella, which is slightly different
from the chara, under a microscope. I saw plainly the circulation,
looking like bubbles going round in each joint, up one side and down
the other of a sort of white line, and sometimes a dark-colored mote
appeared to be carried along with them. He said that the circulation
could be well seen in the common celandine, and moreover that when a
shade was cast on it by a knife-blade the circulation was reversed.
Ether would stop it, or the death of the plant.

He showed me a green clamshell,—_Anodon fluviatilis_,—which he said was
a _female_ with young, found in a pond near by.

Also the head of a Chinook or Flathead.

Also the humerus of a mylodon (of Owen) from Oregon. Some more remains
have been found in Missouri, and a whole skeleton in Buenos Ayres. A
digging animal.

He could not catch his frogs asleep.


_Dec. 8._ It snowed in the night of the 6th, and the ground is now
covered,—our first snow, two inches deep. A week ago I saw cows being
driven home from pasture. Now they are kept at home. Here’s an end to
their grazing. The farmer improves this first slight snow to accomplish
some pressing jobs,—to move some particular rocks on a drag, or the
like. I perceive how quickly he has seized the opportunity. I see
no tracks now of cows or men or boys beyond the edge of the wood.
Suddenly they are shut up. The remote pastures and hills beyond the
woods are now closed to cows and cowherds, aye, and to cowards. I am
struck by this sudden solitude and remoteness which these places have
acquired. The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter
makes possible! carpeting the earth with snow, furnishing more than
woolen feet to all walkers, cronching the snow only. From Fair Haven I
see the hills and fields, aye, and the icy woods in the corner shine,
gleam with the dear old wintry sheen. Those are not surely the cottages
I have seen all summer. They are some cottages which I have in my mind.

  [Illustration: _First Snow_]

Now Fair Haven Pond is open and ground is covered with snow and ice; a
week or two ago the pond was frozen and the ground was still bare.

Still those particular red oak leaves which I had noticed are quite
unwilted under the cliffs, and the apple leaves, though standing
in snow and ice and incrusted with the latter, still ripe red, and
_tender_ fresh green leaves.

It is interesting to observe the manner in which the plants bear
their snowy burden. The dry calyx leaves, like an oblong cup, of the
_Trichostema dichotomum_ have caught the rain or melting snow, and so
this little butter-boat is filled with a frozen pure drop which stands
up high above the sides of the cup,—so many pearly drops covering the
whole plant,—in the wood-paths. The pennyroyal there also retains its
fragrance under the ice and snow.

I find that the indigo-weed, whose _shade_ still stands and holds its
black seed-vessels, is not too humble to escape enemies. Almost every
seed-vessel, which contains half a dozen seeds or more, contains also a
little black six-legged bug about as big as a bug [_sic_], which gnaws
the seeds; and sometimes I find a grub, though it is now cold weather
and the plant is covered with ice. Not only our peas and grain have
their weevils, but the fruit of the indigo-weed!

This evening for the first time the new moon is reflected from the
frozen snow-crust.


_Dec. 13._ The river froze over last night,—skimmed over.


_Dec. 16._ Walden is open still. The river is probably open again.

There are wild men living along the shores of the Frozen Ocean.
Who shall say that there is not as great an interval between the
civilized man and the savage as between the savage and the brute? The
undiscovered polar regions are the home of men.

I am struck with the difference between my feet and my hands. My feet
are much nearer to foreign or inanimate matter or nature than my hands;
they are more brute, they are more like the earth they tread on, they
are more clod-like and lumpish, and I scarcely animate them.

Last Sunday, or the 14th, I walked on Loring’s Pond to three or four
islands there which I had never visited, not having a boat in the
summer. On one containing an acre or two, I found a low, branching
shrub frozen into the edge of the ice, with a fine spicy scent
somewhat like sweet-fern and a handsome imbricate bud. When I rubbed
the dry-looking fruit in my hands, it felt greasy and stained them a
permanent yellow, which I could not wash out; it lasted several days,
and my fingers smelled medicinal. I conclude that it is sweet-gale, and
we named the island Myrica Island.

On those unfrequented islands, too, I noticed the red osier or willow,
that common hard-berried plant with small red buds,[102] apparently two
kinds of swamp-pink buds, some yellow, some reddish, a brittle, rough
yellowish bush with handsome pinkish shoots; in one place in the meadow
the greatest quantity of wild rose hips of various forms that I ever
saw, now slightly withered; they were as thick as winterberries.

I noticed a bush covered with cocoons which were artfully concealed by
two leaves wrapped round them, one still hanging by its stem, so that
they looked like a few withered leaves left dangling. The worm, having
first encased itself in another leaf for greater protection, folded
more loosely around itself one of the leaves of the plant, taking care,
however, to encase the leaf-stalk and the twig with a thick and strong
web of silk, so far from depending on the strength of the stalk, which
is now quite brittle. The strongest fingers cannot break it, and the
cocoon can only be got off by slipping it up and off the twig. There
they hang themselves secure for the winter, proof against cold and the
birds, ready to become butterflies when new leaves push forth.[103]

The snow everywhere was covered with snow-fleas like pepper. When
you hold a mass in your hand, they skip and are gone before you know
it. They are so small that they go through and through the new snow.
Sometimes when collected they look like some powder which the hunter
has spilled in the path.


_Dec. 17._ Flint’s Pond apparently froze completely over last night.
It is about two inches thick. Walden is only slightly skimmed over a
rod from the shore. I noticed, where it had been frozen for some time
near the shore of Flint’s Pond and the ice was thicker and whiter,
there were handsome spider-shaped dark places, where the under ice had
melted, and the water had worn it running through,—a handsome figure on
the icy carpet.

I noticed when the snow first came that the days were very sensibly
lengthened by the light being reflected from the snow. Any work which
required light could be pursued about half an hour longer. So that we
may well pray that the ground may not be laid bare by a thaw in these
short winter days.


_Dec. 19._ Yesterday I tracked a partridge in the new-fallen snow, till
I came to where she took to flight, and I could track her no further. I
see where the snowbirds have picked the seeds of the Roman wormwood and
other weeds and have covered the snow with the shells and husks. The
smilax berries are as plump as ever. The catkins of the alders are as
tender and fresh-looking as ripe mulberries. The dried choke-cherries
so abundant in the swamp are now quite sweet. The witch-hazel is
covered with fruit and drops over gracefully like a willow, the yellow
foundation of its flowers still remaining. I find the sweet-gale
(_Myrica_) by the river also. The wild apples are frozen as hard as
stones, and rattle in my pockets, but I find that they soon thaw when
I get to my chamber and yield a sweet cider.[104] I am astonished that
the animals make no more use of them.


_Dec. 22._ The apples are now thawed. This is their first thawing.
Those which a month ago were sour, crabbed, and uneatable are now
filled with a rich, sweet cider which I am better acquainted with
than with wine. And others, which have more substance, are a sweet and
luscious food,—in my opinion of more worth than the pineapples which
are imported from the torrid zone. Those which a month ago I tasted
and repented of it, which the farmer willingly left on the tree, I
am now glad to find have the property of hanging on like the leaves
of the shrub oak. It is a way to keep cider sweet without boiling.
Let the frost come to freeze them first solid as stones, and then the
sun or a warm winter day—for it takes but little heat—to thaw them,
and they will seem to have borrowed a flavor from heaven through the
medium of the air in which they hang. I find when I get home that they
have thawed in my pocket and the ice is turned to cider. But I suspect
that after the second freezing and thawing they will not be so good.
I bend to drink the cup and save my lappets. What are the half-ripe
fruits of the torrid south, to this fruit matured by the cold of the
frigid north. There are those crabbed apples with which I cheated my
companion, and kept a smooth face to tempt him to eat. Now we both
greedily fill our pockets with them, and grow more social with their
wine. Was there one that hung so high and sheltered by the tangled
branches that our sticks could not dislodge it? It is a fruit never
brought to market that I am aware of,—quite distinct from the apple of
the markets, as from dried apple and cider. It is not every winter that
produces it in perfection.[105]

In winter I can explore the swamps and ponds. It is a dark-aired
winter day, yet I see the summer plants still peering above the snow.
There are but few tracks in all this snow. It is the Yellow Knife
River or the Saskatchewan. The large leafy lichens on the white pines,
especially on the outside of the wood, look almost a golden yellow
in the light reflected from the snow, while deeper in the wood they
are ash-colored. In the swamps the dry, yellowish-colored fruit of
the poison dogwood hangs like jewelry on long, drooping stems. It is
pleasant to meet it, it has so much character relatively to man. Here
is a stump on which a squirrel has sat and stripped the pine cones of a
neighboring tree. Their cores and scales lie all around. He knew that
they contained an almond[106] before the naturalist did. He has long
been a close observer of Nature; opens her caskets. I see more tracks
in the swamps than elsewhere.


_Dec. 23._ Here is an old-fashioned snow-storm. There is not much
passing on railroads. The engineer says it is three feet deep above.
Walden is frozen, one third of it, though I thought it was all frozen
as I stood on the shore on one side only. There is no track on the
Walden road. A traveller might cross it in the woods and not be sure it
was a road. As I pass the farmers’ houses I observe the cop [_sic_] of
the sled propped up with a stick to prevent its freezing into the snow.
The needles of the pines are drooping like cockerels’ feathers after a
rain, and frozen together by the sleety snow. The pitch pines now bear
their snowy fruit.

I can discern a faint foot or sled path sooner when the ground is
covered with snow than when it is bare. The depression caused by the
feet or the wheels is more obvious; perhaps the light and shade betray
it, but I think it is mainly because the grass and weeds rise above it
on each side and leave it blank, and a blank space of snow contrasts
more strongly with the woods or grass than bare or beaten ground.

Even the surface of the snow is wont to be in waves like billows of the
ocean.


_Dec. 24._ In walking across the Great Meadows to-day on the
snow-crust, I noticed that the fine, dry snow which was blown over the
surface of the frozen field, when I [looked] westward over it or toward
the sun, looked precisely like steam curling up from its surface, as
sometimes from a wet roof when the sun comes out after a rain.

The snow catches only in the hollows and against the reeds and grass,
and never rests there, but when it has formed a broad and shallow drift
or a long and narrow one like a winrow on the ice, it blows away again
from one extremity, and leaves often a thin, tongue-like projection at
one end, some inches above the firm crust.

I observe that there are many dead pine-needles sprinkled over the
snow, which had not fallen before.

Saw a shrike pecking to pieces a small bird, apparently a snowbird. At
length he took him up in his bill, almost half as big as himself, and
flew slowly off with his prey dangling from his beak. I find that I had
not associated such actions with my idea of birds. It was not birdlike.

It is never so cold but it melts somewhere. Our mason well remarked
that he had sometimes known it to be melting and freezing at the same
time on a particular side of a house; while it was melting on the roof
the icicles [were] forming under the eaves. It is always melting and
freezing at the same time when icicles are formed.

Our thoughts are with those among the dead into whose sphere we are
rising, or who are now rising into our own. Others we inevitably
forget, though they be brothers and sisters. Thus the departed may
be nearer to us than when they were present. At death our friends and
relations either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart further
from us and are forgotten. Friends are as often brought nearer together
as separated by death.


_Dec. 26. Thursday._ The pine woods seen from the hilltops, now that
the ground is covered with snow, are not green but a dark brown,
greenish-brown perhaps. You see dark patches of wood. There are still
half a dozen fresh ripe red and glossy oak leaves left on the bush
under the Cliffs.

Walden not yet more than half frozen over.


_Dec. 30._ In R. Gordon Cumming’s “Hunter’s Life in South Africa,”[107]
I find an account of the honey-bird, which will lead a person to a wild
bees’ nest and, having got its share of the spoil, will sometimes lead
to a second and third. (Vol. I, page 49.)

He saw dry sheep’s dung burning, and after eighteen months it was
burning still. One heap was said to have burned seven years. Remarkable
for burning slowly. (Page 62.)

He came across a Boer who manufactured ashes by burning a particular
bush and sold it to the richer Boers. (Page 71.)

He says that the oryx or gemsbok, a kind of antelope, never tastes
water. Lives on the deserts. (Page 94.)

The Bushmen conceal water in ostrich eggs at regular intervals across
the desert, and so perform long journeys over them safely. (Page 101.)

The hatching of ostrich eggs not left to heat of sun. (Page 105.) The
natives empty them by a small aperture at one end, fill with water, and
cork up the hole with grass. (Page 106.)

The Hottentots devoured the marrow of a koodoo raw as a matter of
course.[108]

The Bechuanas use “the assagai,” “a sort of light spear or javelin”
with a shaft six feet long, which they will send through a man’s body
at a hundred yards. (Page 201.)

The Bakatlas smelt and work in iron quite well; make spears,
battle-axes, knives, needles, etc., etc. (Page 207.)

The skin of the eland just killed, like that of most other antelopes,
emits the most delicious perfume of trees and grass. (Page 218.)[109]

When waiting by night for elephants to approach a fountain, he “heard
a low rumbling noise ..., caused (as the Bechuanas affirmed) by the
bowels of the elephants which were approaching the fountain.” (Page
261.)

“A child can put a hundred of them [elephants][110] to flight by
passing at a quarter of a mile to windward.” (Page 263.)

It is incredible how many “goodly” trees an elephant will destroy,
sometimes wantonly. (265.)

An elephant’s friend will protect its wounded companion at the risk of
its own life. (268.)

The rhinoceros-birds stick their bills in the ear of the rhinoceros
and wake him up when the hunter is approaching. They live on ticks and
other parasitic insects on his body. He perfectly understands their
warning. He has chased a rhinoceros many miles on horseback and fired
many shots before he fell, and all the while the birds remained by
him, perched on his back and sides, and as each bullet struck him they
ascended about six feet into the air, uttering a cry of alarm, and
then resumed their position. Sometimes they were swept off his back
by branches of trees. When the rhinoceros was shot at midnight, they
have remained by his body thinking him asleep, and on the hunter’s
approaching in the morning have tried to wake him up. (Page 293.)

The Bechuanas make a pipe in a few moments by kneading moistened earth
with their knuckles on a twig, until a hole is established, then one
end of the aperture is enlarged with their fingers for a bowl. (Page
306.)


_Dec. 31._ I observe that in the cut by Walden Pond the sand and stones
fall from the overhanging bank and rest on the snow below; and thus,
perchance, the stratum deposited by the side of the road in the winter
can permanently be distinguished from the summer one by some faint
seam, to be referred to the peculiar conditions under which it was
deposited.

The pond has been frozen over since I was there last.

Certain meadows, as Heywood’s, contain warmer water than others and are
slow to freeze. I do not remember to have crossed this with impunity
in all places. The brook that issues from it is still open completely,
though the thermometer was down to eight below zero this morning.

The blue jays evidently notify each other of the presence of an
intruder, and will sometimes make a great chattering about it, and so
communicate the alarm to other birds and to beasts.




III

JANUARY-APRIL, 1851

(ÆT. 33)


_Jan. 2._ Saw at Clinton last night a room at the gingham-mills which
covers one and seven-eighths acres and contains 578 looms, not to speak
of spindles, both throttle and mule. The rooms all together cover three
acres. They were using between three and four hundred horse-power, and
kept an engine of two hundred horse-power, with a wheel twenty-three
feet in diameter and a band ready to supply deficiencies, which have
not often occurred. Some portion of the machinery—I think it was where
the cotton was broken up, lightened up, and mixed before being matted
together—revolved eighteen hundred times in a minute.

I first saw the pattern room where patterns are made by a hand loom.
There were two styles of warps ready for the woof or filling. The
operator must count the threads of the woof, which in the mill is done
by the machinery. It was the ancient art of weaving, the shuttle flying
back and forth, putting in the filling. As long as the warp is the
same, it is but one “style,” so called.

The cotton should possess a long staple and be clean and free from
seed. The Sea Island cotton has a long staple and is valuable for
thread. Many bales are thoroughly mixed to make the goods of one
quality. The cotton is then torn to pieces and thoroughly lightened
up by cylinders armed with hooks and by fans; then spread, a certain
weight on a square yard, and matted together, and torn up and matted
together again two or three times over; then the matted cotton fed
to a cylindrical card, a very thin web of it, which is gathered into
a copper trough, making six (the six-card machines) flat, rope-like
bands, which are united into one at the railway head and drawn. And
this operation of uniting and drawing or stretching goes on from one
machine to another until the thread is spun, which is then dyed (calico
is printed after being woven),—having been wound off on to reels and so
made into skeins,—dyed and dried by steam; then, by machinery, wound
on to spools for the warp and the woof. From a great many spools the
warp is drawn off over cylinders and different-colored threads properly
mixed and arranged. Then the ends of the warp are drawn through the
harness of the loom by hand. The operator knows the succession of
red, blue, green, etc., threads, having the numbers given her, and
draws them through the harness accordingly, keeping count. Then the
woof is put in, or it is _woven_!! Then the inequalities or nubs are
picked off by girls. If _they_ discover any imperfection, they tag it,
and if necessary the wages of the weaver are reduced. Now, I think,
it is passed over a red-hot iron cylinder, and the fuzz singed off,
then washed with wheels with cold water; then the water forced out by
centrifugal force within horizontal wheels. Then it is starched, the
ends stitched together by machinery; then stretched smooth, dried, and
ironed by machinery; then measured, folded, and packed.

This the agent, Forbes, says is the best gingham-mill in this country.
The goods are better than the imported. The English have even stolen
their name Lancaster Mills, calling them “Lancasterian.”

The machinery is some of it peculiar, part of the throttle spindles (?)
for instance.

The coach-lace-mill, only place in this country where it is made by
machinery; made of thread of different materials, as cotton, worsted,
linen, as well as colors, the raised figure produced by needles
inserted woof fashion. Well worth examining further. Also pantaloon
stuffs made in same mill and dyed after being woven, the woolen not
taking the same dye with the cotton; hence a slight parti-colored
appearance. These goods are sheared, _i. e._ a part of the nap taken
off, making them smoother. Pressed between pasteboards.

The Brussels carpets made at the carpet-factory said to be the best in
the world. Made like coach lace, only wider.

Erastus (?) Bigelow inventor of what is new in the above machinery;
and, with his brother and another, owner of the carpet-factory.

I am struck by the fact that no work has been shirked when a piece of
cloth is produced. Every thread has been counted in the finest web;
it has not been matted together. The operator has succeeded only by
patience, perseverance, and fidelity.

       *       *       *       *       *

The direction in which a railroad runs, though intersecting another at
right angles, may cause that one will be blocked up with snow and the
other be comparatively open even for great distances, depending on the
direction of prevailing winds and valleys. There are the Fitchburg and
Nashua & Worcester.


_Jan. 4._ The longest silence is the most pertinent question most
pertinently put. Emphatically silent. The most important question,
whose answers concern us more than any, are never put in any other way.

It is difficult for two strangers, mutually well disposed, so truly
to bear themselves toward each other that a feeling of falseness and
hollowness shall not soon spring up between them. The least anxiety
to behave truly vitiates the relation. I think of those to whom I am
at the moment truly related, with a joy never expressed and never to
be expressed, before I fall asleep at night, though I am hardly on
speaking terms with them these years. When I think of it, I am truly
related to them.


_Jan. 5._ The catkins of the alders are now frozen stiff!!

Almost all that my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be
bad. If I repent of anything, it is of my good behavior. What demon
possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you
can, old man,—you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of
a kind,—I hear an irresistible voice, the voice of my destiny, which
invites me away from all that.[111]


_Jan. 7._ The snow is sixteen inches deep at least, but [it] is a mild
and genial afternoon, as if it were the beginning of a January thaw.
Take away the snow and it would not be winter but like many days in
the fall. The birds acknowledge the difference in the air; the jays are
more noisy, and the chickadees are oftener heard.

Many herbs are not crushed by the snow.

I do not remember to have seen fleas except when the weather was mild
and the snow damp.

I must live above all in the present.

       *       *       *       *       *

Science does not embody all that men know, only what is for men of
science. The woodman tells me how he caught trout in a box trap, how
he made his trough for maple sap of pine logs, and the spouts of sumach
or white ash, which have a large pith. He can relate his facts to human
life.

The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a
forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part
inaccessible and going to waste; the knowledge of the man of science is
like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports
a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot.

I felt my spirits rise when I had got off the road into the open
fields, and the sky had a new appearance. I stepped along more
buoyantly. There was a warm sunset over the wooded valleys, a yellowish
tinge on the pines. Reddish dun-colored clouds like dusky flames stood
over it. And then streaks of blue sky were seen here and there. The
life, the joy, that is in blue sky after a storm! There is no account
of the blue sky in history. Before I walked in the ruts of travel; now
I adventured. This evening a fog comes up from the south.

If I have any conversation with a scamp in my walk, my afternoon is
wont to be spoiled.

The squirrels and apparently the rabbits have got all the frozen apples
in the hollow behind Miles’s. The rabbits appear to have devoured what
the squirrels dropped and left. I see the tracks of both leading from
the woods on all sides to the apple trees.


_Jan. 8._ The smilax (green-briar) berries still hang on like small
grapes. The thorn of this vine is very perfect, like a straight dagger.

The light of the setting sun falling on the snow-banks to-day made them
glow almost yellow.

The hills seen from Fair Haven Pond make a wholly new landscape;
covered with snow and yellowish green or brown pines and shrub
oaks, they look higher and more massive. Their white mantle relates
them to the clouds in the horizon and to the sky. Perchance what is
light-colored looks loftier than what is dark.

You might say of a very old and withered man or woman that they hung
on like a shrub oak leaf, almost to a second spring. There was still a
little life in the heel of the leaf-stalk.


_Jan. 10._ The snow shows how much of the mountains in the horizon are
covered with forest. I can also see plainer as I stand on a hill what
proportion of the township is in forest.

Got some excellent frozen-thawed apples off of Annursnack, soft and
luscious as a custard and free from worms and rot. Saw a partridge
budding, but they did not appear to have pecked the apples.

There was a remarkable sunset; a mother-of-pearl sky seen over the
Price farm; some small clouds, as well as the edges of large ones, most
brilliantly painted with mother-of-pearl tints through and through. I
never saw the like before. Who can foretell the sunset,—what it will
be?

The near and bare hills covered with snow look like mountains, but the
mountains in the horizon do not look higher than hills.

I frequently see a hole in the snow where a partridge has squatted, the
mark or form of her tail very distinct.

The chivalric and heroic spirit, which once belonged to the chevalier
or rider only, seems now to reside in the walker. To represent the
chivalric spirit we have no longer a knight, but a walker, errant.[112]
I speak not of pedestrianism, or of walking a thousand miles in a
thousand successive hours.

The Adam who daily takes a turn in his garden.

Methinks I would not accept of the gift of life, if I were required
to spend as large a portion of it sitting foot up or with my legs
crossed, as the shoemakers and tailors do. As well be tied neck and
heels together and cast into the sea. Making acquaintance with my
extremities.

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who
understood the art of taking walks daily,—not [to] exercise the legs
or body merely, nor barely to recruit the spirits, but positively
to exercise both body and spirit, and to succeed to the highest and
worthiest ends by the abandonment of all specific ends,—who had a
genius, so to speak, for sauntering. And this word “saunter,” by the
way, is happily derived “from idle people who roved about the country
[in the Middle Ages][113] and asked charity under pretence of going
_à la Sainte Terre_,” to the Holy Land, till, perchance, the children
exclaimed, “There goes a _Sainte-Terrer_,” a Holy-Lander. They who
never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed
mere idlers and vagabonds.[114]

       *       *       *       *       *

     [Four pages missing.]

[Perhaps I am more] than usually jealous of my freedom. I feel that my
connections with and obligations to society are at present very slight
and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and
by which I am serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet a pleasure
to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far
I am successful, and only he is successful in his business who makes
that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him. But I
foresee that if my wants should be much increased the labor required to
supply them would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons
and afternoons to society, neglecting my peculiar calling, there would
be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell
my birthright for a mess of pottage.[115]

F. Andrew Michaux says that “the species of large trees are much more
numerous in North America than in Europe: in the United States there
are more than one hundred and forty species that exceed thirty feet in
height; in France there are but thirty that attain this size, of which
eighteen enter into the composition of the forests, and seven only are
employed in building.”[116]

The perfect resemblance of the chestnut, beech, and hornbeam in Europe
and the United States rendered a separate figure unnecessary.

He says the white oak “is the only oak on which a few of the dried
leaves persist till the circulation is renewed in the spring.”

Had often heard his father say that “the fruit of the common European
walnut, in its natural state, is harder than that of the American
species just mentioned [the pacane-nut hickory][117] and inferior to it
in size and quality.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The arts teach us a thousand lessons. Not a yard of cloth can be woven
without the most thorough fidelity in the weaver. The ship must be made
_absolutely_ tight before it is launched.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is an important difference between two characters that the one is
satisfied with a happy but level success but the other as constantly
elevates his aim. Though my life is low, if my spirit looks upward
habitually at an elevated angle, it is as it were redeemed. When the
desire to be better than we are is really sincere we are instantly
elevated, and so far better already.

I lose my friends, of course, as much by my own ill treatment and ill
valuing of them, prophaning of them, cheapening of them, as by their
cheapening of themselves, till at last, when I am prepared to [do] them
justice, I am permitted to deal only with the memories of themselves,
their ideals still surviving in me, no longer with their actual selves.
We exclude ourselves, as the child said of the stream in which he
bathed head or foot. (_Vide_ Confucius.)

       *       *       *       *       *

It is something to know when you are addressed by Divinity and not by
a common traveller. I went down cellar just now to get an armful of
wood and, passing the brick piers with my wood and candle, I heard,
methought, a commonplace suggestion, but when, as it were by accident,
I reverently attended to the hint, I found that it was the voice
of a god who had followed me down cellar to speak to me. How many
communications may we not lose through inattention!

I would fain keep a journal which should contain those thoughts and
impressions which I am most liable to forget that I have had; which
would have in one sense the greatest remoteness, in another, the
greatest nearness to me.

’T is healthy to be sick sometimes.

       *       *       *       *       *

I do not know but the reason why I love some Latin verses more than
whole English poems is simply in the elegant terseness and conciseness
of the language, an advantage which the individual appears to have
shared with his nation.

       *       *       *       *       *

When we can no longer ramble in the fields of nature, we ramble in the
fields of thought and literature. The old become readers. Our heads
retain their strength when our legs have become weak.

English literature from the days of the minstrels to the Lake Poets,
Chaucer and Spenser and Shakspeare and Milton included, breathes no
quite fresh and, in this sense, wild strain. It is an essentially tame
and civilized literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. Her wilderness
is a greenwood, her wild man a Robin Hood. There is plenty of genial
love of nature in her poets, but [not so much of nature herself.] Her
chronicles inform us when her wild animals, but not when the wild man
in her, became extinct.[118] There was need of America. I cannot think
of any poetry which adequately expresses this yearning for the Wild,
the _wilde_.[119]

       *       *       *       *       *

Ovid says:—

     Nilus in extremum fugit perterritus orbem,
     Occuluitque caput, quod adhuc latet.

     (Nilus, terrified, fled to the extremity of the globe,
     And hid his head, which is still concealed.)

And we moderns must repeat, “_Quod adhuc latet_.” Phaëton’s epitaph:—

     Hic situs est Phaëton, currûs auriga paterni;
     Quem si non tenuit, magnis tamen excidit ausis.

His sister Lampetie _subitâ radice retenta est_. All the sisters were
changed to trees while they were in vain beseeching their mother not to
break their branches. _Cortex in verba novissima venit._

His brother Cycnus, lamenting the death of Phaëton killed by Jove’s
lightning, and the metamorphosis of his sisters, was changed into a
swan,—

             nec se coeloque, Jovique
     Credit, ut injustè missi memor ignis ab illo.

                   (Nor trusts himself to the heavens
     Nor to Jove, as if remembering the fire unjustly sent by him),

_i. e._ against Phaëton. (Reason why the swan does not fly.)

     ... precibusque minas regaliter addit.
     ([Jove] royally adds threats to prayers.)

Callisto _miles erat Phoebes_, _i. e._ a huntress.

           ... (neque enim coelestia tingi
     Ora decet lachrymis).

     (For it is not becoming that the faces of the celestials be tinged
     with tears,—keep a stiff upper lip.)

How much more fertile a nature has Grecian mythology its root in
than English literature! The nature which inspired mythology still
flourishes. Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its
soil was exhausted. The West is preparing to add its fables to those of
the East.[120] A more fertile nature than the Mississippi Valley.

None of your four-hour nights for me. The wise man will take a fool’s
allowance. The corn would not come to much if the nights were but four
hours long.

The soil in which those fables grew is deep and inexhaustible.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lead cast by the Balearian sling:—

             Volat illud, et incandescit eundo;
       Et, quos non habuit, sub nubibus invenit ignes.
           (That flies and grows hot with going,
     And fires which it had not finds amid the clouds.)

       *       *       *       *       *

I went some months ago to see a panorama of the Rhine. It was like
a dream of the Middle Ages. I floated down its historic stream in
something more than imagination, under bridges built by the Romans and
repaired by later heroes, past cities and castles whose very names were
music to me,—made my ears tingle,—and each of which was the subject
of a legend. There seemed to come up from its waters and its vine-clad
hills and valleys a hushed music as of crusaders departing for the Holy
Land. There were Ehrenbreitstein and Rolandseck and Coblentz, which I
knew only in history. I floated along through the moonlight of history
under the spell of enchantment. It was as if I remembered a glorious
dream,—as if I had been transported to a heroic age and breathed an
atmosphere of chivalry. Those times appeared far more poetic and heroic
than these.

Soon after I went to see the panorama of the Mississippi, and as
I fitly worked my way upward in the light of to-day, and saw the
steamboats wooding up, and looked up the Ohio and the Missouri, and
saw its unpeopled cliffs, and counted the rising cities,[121] and saw
the Indians removing west across the stream, and heard the legends
of Dubuque and of Wenona’s Cliff,—still thinking more of the future
than of the past or present,—I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a
different kind.[122]

       *       *       *       *       *

The Old World, with its vast deserts and its arid and elevated steppes
and table-lands, contrasted with the New World with its humid and
fertile valleys and savannas and prairies and its boundless primitive
forests, is like the exhausted Indian corn lands contrasted with the
peat meadows. America requires some of the sand of the Old World to be
carted on to her rich but as yet unassimilated meadows.

       *       *       *       *       *

Guyot says, “The Baltic Sea has a depth of only 120 feet between
the coasts of Germany and those of Sweden” (page 82). “The Adriatic,
between Venice and Trieste, has a depth of only 130 feet.” “Between
France and England, the greatest depth does not exceed 300 feet.” The
most extensive forest, “the most gigantic wilderness,” on the earth
is in the basin of the Amazon, and extends almost unbroken more than
fifteen hundred miles. South America the kingdom of palms; nowhere
a greater number of species. “This is a sign of the preponderating
development of leaves over every other part of the vegetable growth; of
that expansion of foliage, of that _leafiness_, peculiar to warm and
moist climates. America has no plants with slender, shrunken leaves,
like those of Africa and New Holland. The Ericas, or heather, so
common, so varied, so characteristic of the flora of the Cape of Good
Hope, is a form unknown to the New World. There is nothing resembling
those Metrosideri of Africa, those dry Myrtles (Eucalyptus) and
willow-leaved acacias, whose flowers shine with the liveliest colors,
but their narrow foliage, turned edgewise to the vertical sun, casts no
shadow.”[123]

       *       *       *       *       *

The white man derives his nourishment from the earth,—from the roots
and grains, the potato and wheat and corn and rice and sugar, which
often grow in fertile and pestilential river bottoms fatal to the life
of the cultivator. The Indian has but a slender hold on the earth. He
derives his nourishment in great part but indirectly from her, through
the animals he hunts.[124]

       *       *       *       *       *

“Compared with the Old World, the New World is the humid side of our
planet, the _oceanic, vegetative_ world, the passive element awaiting
the excitement of a livelier impulse from without.”[125]

       *       *       *       *       *

“For the American, this task is to work the virgin soil.”

“Agriculture here already assumes proportions unknown everywhere
else.”[126]


_Feb. 9._ The last half of January was warm and thawy. The swift
streams were open, and the muskrats were seen swimming and diving
and bringing up clams, leaving their shells on the ice. We had now
forgotten summer and autumn, but had already begun to anticipate
spring. Fishermen improved the warmer weather to fish for pickerel
through the ice. Before it was only the autumn landscape with a thin
layer of snow upon it; we saw the withered flowers through it; but
now we do not think of autumn when we look on this snow. That earth
is effectually buried. It is midwinter. Within a few days the cold
has set in stronger than ever, though the days are much longer now.
Now I travel across the fields on the crust which has frozen since the
January thaw, and I can cross the river in most places. It is easier to
get about the country than at any other season,—easier than in summer,
because the rivers and meadows are frozen and there is no high grass or
other crops to be avoided; easier than in December before the crust was
frozen.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sir John Mandeville says, “In fro what partie of the earth that men
dwell, outher aboven or benethen, it seemeth always to hem that dwellen
there, that they gon more right than any other folk.” Again, “And yee
shulle undirstonde, that of all theise contrees, and of all theise
yles, and of all the dyverse folk, that I have spoken of before,
and of dyverse laws and of dyverse beleeves that thei have, yit is
there non of hem alle, but that thei have sum resoun within hem and
understondinge, but gif it be the fewere.”

I have heard that there is a Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge. It is said that knowledge is power and the like. Methinks
there is equal need of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance,
for what is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit
that we know something, which robs us of the advantages of our actual
ignorance.[127]

       *       *       *       *       *

For a man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful but beautiful, while
his knowledge is oftentimes worse than useless, beside being ugly.[128]
In reference to important things, whose knowledge amounts to more
than a consciousness of his ignorance? Yet what more refreshing and
inspiring knowledge than this?

How often are we wise as serpents without being harmless as doves!

Donne says, “Who are a little wise the best fools be.” Cudworth says,
“We have all of us by nature μάντευμά τε (as both Plato and Aristotle
call it), a certain divination, presage and parturient vaticination
in our minds, of some higher good and perfection than either power
or knowledge.” Aristotle himself declares, that there is λόγον τι
κρεῖττον, which is λόγον ἀρχή,—(something better than reason and
knowledge, which is the principle and original of all). Lavater says,
“Who finds the clearest not clear, thinks the darkest not obscure.”

       *       *       *       *       *

My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to commune with
the spirit of the universe, to be intoxicated even with the fumes, call
it, of that divine nectar, to bear my head through atmospheres and over
heights unknown to my feet, is perennial and constant.[129]

  [Illustration: _Midwinter_]

It is remarkable how few events or crises there are in our minds’
histories, how little _exercised_ we have been in our minds, how few
experiences we have had.[130]

     [Four pages missing.]

The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a mere
fable; the founders of every state which has risen to eminence have
drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar source. It is because
the children of the empire were not suckled by wolves that they were
conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who
were.[131]

America is the she wolf to-day, and the children of exhausted Europe
exposed on her uninhabited and savage shores are the Romulus and Remus
who, having derived new life and vigor from her breast, have founded a
new Rome in the West.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is remarkable how few passages, comparatively speaking, there are in
the best literature of the day which betray any intimacy with Nature.

It is apparent enough to me that only one or two of my townsmen or
acquaintances—not more than one in many thousand men, indeed—feel or at
least obey any strong attraction drawing them toward the forest or to
Nature, but all, almost without exception, gravitate exclusively toward
men, or society.[132] The young men of Concord and in other towns
do not walk in the woods, but congregate in shops and offices. They
suck one another. Their strongest attraction is toward the mill-dam.
A thousand assemble about the fountain in the public square,—the town
pump,—be it full or dry, clear or turbid, every morning, but not one
in a thousand is in the meanwhile drinking at that fountain’s head. It
is hard for the young, aye, and the old, man in the outskirts to keep
away from the mill-dam a whole day; but he will find some excuse, as an
ounce of cloves that might be wanted, or a _New England Farmer_ still
in the office, to tackle up the horse, or even go afoot, but he will go
at some rate. This is not bad comparatively; this is because he cannot
do better. In spite of his hoeing and chopping, he is unexpressed and
undeveloped.

I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or
modern, any adequate account of that Nature with which I am acquainted.
Mythology comes nearest to it of any.[133]

The actual life of men is not without a dramatic interest at least to
the thinker. It is not always and everywhere prosaic. Seventy thousand
pilgrims proceed annually to Mecca from the various nations of Islam.
But this is not so significant as the far simpler and more unpretending
pilgrimage to the shrines of some obscure individual, which yet makes
no bustle in the world.

I believe that Adam in paradise was not so favorably situated on
the whole as is the backwoodsman in America.[134] You all know how
miserably the former turned out,—or was turned out,—but there is some
consolation at least in the fact that it yet remains to be seen how the
western Adam in the wilderness will turn out.

     In Adam’s fall
     We sinned all.
     In the new Adam’s rise
     We shall all reach the skies.

An infusion of hemlock in our tea, if we must drink tea,—not the
poison hemlock, but the hemlock spruce, I mean,[135]—or perchance the
Arbor-Vitæ, the tree of life,—is what we want.


_Feb. 12. Wednesday._ A beautiful day, with but little snow or ice on
the ground. Though the air is sharp, as the earth is half bare the hens
have strayed to some distance from the barns. The hens, standing around
their lord and pluming themselves and still fretting a little, strive
to fetch the year about.

A thaw has nearly washed away the snow and raised the river and the
brooks and flooded the meadows, covering the old ice, which is still
fast to the bottom.

I find that it is an excellent walk for variety and novelty and
wildness, to keep round the edge of the meadow,—the ice not being
strong enough to bear and transparent as water,—on the bare ground
or snow, just between the highest water mark and the present water
line,—a narrow, meandering walk, rich in unexpected views and objects.
The line of rubbish which marks the higher tides—withered flags and
reeds and twigs and cranberries—is to my eyes a very agreeable and
significant line, which Nature traces along the edge of the meadows. It
is a strongly marked, enduring natural line, which in summer reminds
me that the water has once stood over where I walk. Sometimes the
grooved trees tell the same tale. The wrecks of the meadow, which fill
a thousand coves, and tell a thousand tales to those who can read them.
Our prairial, mediterranean shore. The gentle rise of water around
the trees in the meadow, where oaks and maples stand far out in the
sea, and young elms sometimes are seen standing close around some rock
which lifts its head above the water, as if protecting it, preventing
it from being washed away, though in truth they owe their origin and
preservation to it. It first invited and detained their seed, and now
preserves the soil in which they grow. A pleasant reminiscence of the
rise of waters, to go up one side of the river and down the other,
following this way, which meanders so much more than the river itself.
If you cannot go on the ice, you are then gently compelled to take this
course, which is on the whole more beautiful,—to follow the sinuosities
of the meadow. Between the highest water mark and the present water
line is a space generally from a few feet to a few rods in width. When
the water comes over the road, then my spirits rise,—when the fences
are carried away. A prairial walk. Saw a caterpillar crawling about on
the snow.

The earth is so bare that it makes an impression on me as if it were
catching cold.

I saw to-day something new to me as I walked along the edge of the
meadow. Every half-mile or so along the channel of the river I saw at a
distance where apparently the ice had been broken up while freezing by
the pressure of other ice,—thin cakes of ice forced up on their edges
and reflecting the sun like so many mirrors, whole fleets of shining
sails, giving a very lively appearance to the river,—where for a dozen
rods the flakes of ice stood on their edges, like a fleet beating
up-stream against the sun, a fleet of ice-boats.

It is remarkable that the cracks in the ice on the meadows sometimes
may be traced a dozen rods from the water through the snow in the
neighboring fields.

It is only necessary that man should start a fence that Nature should
carry it on and complete it. The farmer cannot plow quite up to the
rails or wall which he himself has placed, and hence it often becomes
a hedgerow and sometimes a coppice.

I found to-day apples still green under the snow, and others frozen and
thawed, sweeter far than when sound,—a sugary sweetness.[136]

There is something more than association at the bottom of the
excitement which the roar of a cataract produces. It is allied to the
circulation in our veins. We have a waterfall which corresponds even
to Niagara somewhere within us.[137] It is astonishing what a rush
and tumult a slight inclination will produce in a swollen brook. How
it proclaims its glee, its boisterousness, rushing headlong in its
prodigal course as if it would exhaust itself in half an hour! How it
spends itself! I would say to the orator and poet, Flow freely and
_lavishly_ as a brook that is full,—without stint. Perchance I have
stumbled upon the origin of the word “lavish.” It does not hesitate
to tumble down the steepest precipice and roar or tinkle as it goes,
for fear it will exhaust its fountain. The impetuosity of descending
water even by the slightest inclination! It seems to flow with ever
increasing rapidity.

It is difficult to believe what philosophers assert, that it is merely
a difference in the form of the elementary particles—as whether
they are square or globular—which makes the difference between the
steadfast, everlasting, and reposing hillside and the impetuous torrent
which tumbles down it.

It is refreshing to walk over sprout-lands, where oak and chestnut
sprouts are mounting swiftly up again into the sky, and already
perchance their sere leaves begin to rustle in the breeze and reflect
the light on the hillsides.

     “Heroic underwoods that take the air
     With freedom, nor respect their parents’ death.”[138]

I trust that the walkers of the present day are conscious of the
blessings which they enjoy in the comparative freedom with which they
can ramble over the country and enjoy the landscape, anticipating with
compassion that future day when possibly it will be partitioned off
into so-called pleasure-grounds, where only a few may enjoy the narrow
and exclusive pleasure which is compatible with ownership,—when walking
over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing
on some gentleman’s grounds, when fences shall be multiplied and man
traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road. I
am thankful that we have yet so much room in America.[139]


_Feb. 13._ Skated to Sudbury. A beautiful, summer-like day. The
meadows were frozen just enough to bear. Examined now the fleets of
ice-flakes close at hand. They are a very singular and interesting
phenomenon, which I do not remember to have seen. I should say that
when the water was frozen about as thick as pasteboard, a violent gust
had here and there broken it up, and while the wind and waves held it
up on its edge, the increasing cold froze it in firmly. So it seemed,
for the flakes were for the most part turned one way; _i. e._ standing
on one side, you saw only their edges, on another—the northeast or
southwest—their sides. They were for the most part of a triangular
form, like a shoulder[_sic_]-of-mutton sail, slightly scalloped, like
shells. They looked like a fleet of a thousand mackerel-fishers under
a press of sail careering before a smacking breeze. Sometimes the
sun and wind had reduced them to the thinness of writing-paper, and
they fluttered and rustled and tinkled merrily. I skated through them
and strewed their wrecks around. They appear to have been elevated
expressly to reflect the sun like mirrors, to adorn the river and
attract the eye of the skater. Who will say that their principal end
is not answered when they excite the admiration of the skater? Every
half-mile or mile, as you skate up the river, you see these crystal
fleets. Nature is a great imitator and loves to repeat herself. She
wastes her wonders on the town. It impresses me as one superiority in
her art, if art it may be called, that she does not require that man
appreciate her, takes no steps to attract his attention.

  [Illustration]

The trouble is in getting on and off the ice; when you are once on you
can go well enough. It melts round the edges.

Again I saw to-day, half a mile off in Sudbury, a sandy spot on the top
of a hill, where I prophesied that I should find traces of the Indians.
When within a dozen rods, I distinguished the foundation of a lodge,
and merely passing over it, I saw many fragments of the arrowhead
stone. I have frequently distinguished these localities half a mile
[off], gone forward, and picked up arrowheads.

Saw in a warm, muddy brook in Sudbury, quite open and exposed, the
skunk-cabbage spathes above water. The tops of the spathes were
frost-bitten, but the fruit [_sic_] sound. There was one partly
expanded. The first flower of the season; for it is a flower. I doubt
if there is [a] month without its flower. Examined by the botany all
its parts,—the first flower I have seen. The _Ictodes fœtidus_.

Also mosses, mingled red and green. The red will pass for the blossom.

As for antiquities, one of our old deserted country roads, marked only
by the parallel fences and cellar-hole with its bricks where the last
inhabitant died, the victim of intemperance, fifty years ago, with
its bare and exhausted fields stretching around, suggests to me an
antiquity greater and more remote from the America of the newspapers
than the tombs of Etruria. I insert the rise and fall of Rome in the
interval. This is the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is important to observe not only the subject of our pure and
unalloyed joys, but also the secret of any dissatisfaction one may
feel.

In society, in the best institutions of men, I remark a certain
precocity. When we should be growing children, we are already little
men. Infants as we are, we make haste to be weaned from our great
mother’s breast, and cultivate our parts by intercourse with one
another.

I have not much faith in the method of restoring impoverished soils
which relies on manuring mainly and does not add some virgin soil or
muck.

Many a poor, sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster,
both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very
late to study, he honestly slumbered a fool’s allowance.[140]

I would not have every man cultivated, any more than I would have every
acre of earth cultivated. Some must be preparing a mould by the annual
decay of the forests which they sustain.[141]

Saw half a dozen cows let out and standing about in a retired meadow as
in a cow-yard.


_Feb. 14._ Consider the farmer, who is commonly regarded as the
healthiest man. He may be the toughest, but he is not the healthiest.
He has lost his elasticity; he can neither run nor jump. Health is
the free use and command of all our faculties, and equal development.
His is the health of the ox, an overworked buffalo. His joints are
stiff. The resemblance is true even in particulars. He is cast away in
a pair of cowhide boots, and travels at an ox’s pace. Indeed, in some
places he puts his foot into the skin of an ox’s shin. It would do
him good to be thoroughly shampooed to make him supple. His health is
an insensibility to all influence. But only the healthiest man in the
world is sensible to the finest influence; he who is affected by more
or less of electricity in the air.

We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see.
How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding!
How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

One afternoon in the fall, November 21st, I saw Fair Haven Pond with
its island and meadow; between the island and the shore, a strip of
perfectly smooth water in the lee of the island; and two hawks sailing
over it; and something more I saw which cannot easily be described,
which made me say to myself that the landscape could not be improved.
I did not see how it could be improved. Yet I do not know what these
things can be; I begin to see such objects only when I leave off
understanding them, and afterwards remember that I did not appreciate
them before. But I get no further than this. How adapted these forms
and colors to our eyes, a meadow and its islands! What are these
things? Yet the hawks and the ducks keep so aloof, and nature is so
reserved! We are made to love the river and the meadow, as the wind to
ripple the water.[142]

There is a difference between eating for strength and from mere
gluttony. The Hottentots eagerly devour the marrow of the koodoo and
other antelopes raw, as a matter of course, and herein perchance have
stolen a march on the cooks of Paris. The eater of meat must come to
this. This is better than stall-fed cattle and slaughter-house pork.
Possibly they derive a certain wild-animal vigor therefrom which the
most artfully cooked meats do not furnish.[143]

We learn by the January thaw that the winter is intermittent and are
reminded of other seasons. The back of the winter is broken.


_Feb. 15._ Fatal is the discovery that our friend is fallible, that he
has prejudices. He is, then, only prejudiced in our favor. What is the
value of his esteem who does not justly esteem another?

Alas! Alas! when my friend begins to deal in confessions, breaks
silence, makes a theme of friendship (which then is always something
past), and descends to merely human relations! As long as there is a
spark of love remaining, cherish that alone. Only _that_ can be kindled
into a flame. I thought that friendship, that love was still possible
between [us]. I thought that we had not withdrawn very far asunder.
But now that my friend rashly, thoughtlessly, profanely speaks,
_recognizing_ the distance between us, that distance seems infinitely
increased.

Of our friends we do not incline to speak, to complain, to others; we
would not disturb the foundations of confidence that may still be.

       *       *       *       *       *

Why should we not still continue to live with the intensity and
rapidity of infants? Is not the world, are not the heavens, as
unfathomed as ever? Have we exhausted any joy, any sentiment?

       *       *       *       *       *

The author of Festus well exclaims:—

     “Could we but think with the intensity
     We love with, we might do great things, I think.”


_Feb. 16._ Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free
from King George the Fourth and continue the slaves of prejudice? What
is it [to] be born free and equal, and not to live? What is the value
of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a
freedom to be slaves or a freedom to be free, of which we boast? We are
a nation of politicians, concerned about the outsides of freedom, the
means and outmost defenses of freedom. It is our children’s children
who may perchance be essentially free. We tax ourselves unjustly.
There is a part of us which is not represented. It is taxation without
representation. We quarter troops upon ourselves. In respect to virtue
or true manhood, we are essentially provincial, not metropolitan,—mere
Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our
standards; because we do not worship truth but the reflection of truth;
because we are absorbed in and narrowed by trade and commerce and
agriculture, which are but means and not the end. We are essentially
provincial, I say, and so is the English Parliament. Mere country
bumpkins they betray themselves, when any more important question
arises for them to settle. Their natures are subdued to what they work
in!

The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity when
contrasted with a finer intelligence. They appear but as the fashions
of past days,—mere courtliness, small-clothes, and knee-buckles,—have
the vice of getting out of date; an attitude merely. The vice of
manners is that they are continually deserted by the character; they
are cast-off clothes or shells, claiming the respect of the living
creature. You are presented with the shells instead of the meat, and
it is no excuse generally that, in the case of some fish, the shells
are of more worth than the meat. The man who thrusts his manners upon
me does as if he were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet
of curiosities, when I wish to see himself. Manners are conscious;
character is unconscious.[144]

My neighbor does not recover from his formal bow so soon as I do from
the pleasure of meeting him.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Feb. 18. Tuesday._ Ground nearly bare of snow. Pleasant day with a
strong south wind. Skated, though the ice was soft in spots. Saw the
skunk-cabbage in flower. Gathered nuts and apples on the bare ground,
still sound and preserving their colors, red and green, many of them.

Yesterday the river was over the road by Hubbard’s Bridge.

Surveyed White Pond yesterday, February 17th.

There is little or nothing to be remembered written on the subject
of getting an honest living. Neither the New Testament nor Poor
Richard speaks to our condition. I cannot think of a single page which
entertains, much less answers, the questions which I put to myself on
this subject. How to make the getting our living poetic! for if it is
not poetic, it is not life but death that we get. Is it that men are
too disgusted with their experience to speak of it? or that commonly
they do not question the common modes? The most practically important
of all questions, it seems to me, is how shall I get my living, and
yet I find little or nothing said to the purpose in any book. Those
who are living on the interest of money inherited, or dishonestly, _i.
e._ by false methods, acquired, are of course incompetent to answer it.
I consider that society with all its arts, has done nothing for us in
this respect. One would think, from looking at literature, that this
question had never disturbed a solitary individual’s musings. Cold and
hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men
have adopted and advise to ward them off.[145] If it were not that I
desire to do something here,—accomplish some work,—I should certainly
prefer to suffer and die rather than be at the pains to get a living by
the modes men propose.

There may be an excess even of informing light.

Niepce, a Frenchman, announced that “no substance can be exposed to
the sun’s rays without undergoing a chemical change.” Granite rocks
and stone structures and statues of metal, etc., “are,” says Robert
Hunt, “all alike destructively acted upon during the hours of sunshine,
and, but for provisions of nature no less wonderful, would soon perish
under the delicate touch of the most subtile of the agencies of the
universe.” But Niepce showed, says Hunt, “that those bodies which
underwent this change during daylight possessed the power of restoring
themselves to their original conditions during the hours of night, when
this excitement was no longer influencing them.” So, in the case of the
daguerreotype, “the picture which we receive to-night, unless we adopt
some method of securing its permanency, fades away before the morning,
and we try to restore it in vain.” (Infers) “the hours of darkness
are as necessary to the inorganic creation as we know night and sleep
are to the organic kingdom.” Such is the influence of “actinism,” that
power in the sun’s rays which produces a chemical effect.[146]


_Feb. 25._ A very windy day. A slight snow which fell last night was
melted at noon. A strong, gusty wind; the waves on the meadows make a
fine show. I saw at Hubbard’s Bridge that all the ice had been blown
up-stream from the meadows, and was collected over the channel against
the bridge in large cakes. These were covered and intermingled with a
remarkable quantity of the meadow’s crust. There was no ice to be seen
up-stream and no more downstream.

The meadows have been flooded for a fortnight, and this water has
been frozen barely thick enough to bear once only. The old ice on the
meadows was covered several feet deep. I observed from the bridge, a
few rods off northward, what looked like an island directly over the
channel. It was the crust of the meadow afloat. I reached [it] with
a little risk and found it to be four rods long by one broad,—the
surface of the meadow with cranberry vines, etc., all connected and
in their natural position, and no ice visible but around its edges. It
appeared to be the frozen crust (which was separated from the unfrozen
soil as ice is from the water beneath), buoyed up (?), perchance, by
the ice around its edges frozen to the stubble. Was there any pure
ice under it? Had there been any above it? Will frozen meadow float?
Had ice which originally supported it from above melted except about
the edges? When the ice melts or the soil thaws, of course it falls
to the bottom, wherever it may be. Here is another agent employed in
the distribution of plants. I have seen where a smooth shore which I
frequented for bathing was in one season strewn with these hummocks,
bearing the button-bush with them, which have now changed the character
of the shore. There were many rushes and lily-pad stems on the ice. Had
the ice formed about them as they grew, broken them off when it floated
away, and so they were strewn about on it?


_Feb. 26. Wednesday._ Examined the floating meadow again to-day. It
is more than a foot thick, the under part much mixed with ice,—ice
and muck. It appeared to me that the meadow surface had been heaved by
the frost, and then the water had run down and under it, and finally,
when the ice rose, lifted it up, wherever there was ice enough mixed
with it to float it. I saw large cakes of ice with other large cakes,
the latter as big as a table, on top of them. Probably the former rose
while the latter were already floating about. The plants scattered
about were bulrushes and lily-pad stems.

Saw five red-wings and a song sparrow (?) this afternoon.


_Feb. 27._ Saw to-day on Pine Hill behind Mr. Joseph Merriam’s house
a Norway pine, the first I have seen in Concord. Mr. Gleason pointed
it out to me as a singular pine which he did not know the name of. It
was a very handsome tree, about twenty-five feet high. E. Wood thinks
that he has lost the surface of two acres of his meadow by the ice. Got
fifteen cartloads out of a hummock left on another meadow. Blue-joint
was introduced into the first meadow where it did not grow before.

       *       *       *       *       *

Of two men, one of whom knows nothing about a subject, and, what is
extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, and the other really knows
something about it, but thinks that he knows all,—what great advantage
has the latter over the former? which is the best to deal with? I do
not know that knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel
and grand surprise, or a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of
all that we had called knowledge before; an indefinite sense of the
grandeur and glory of the universe. It is the lighting up of the mist
by the sun. But man cannot be said to know in any higher sense, [any
more] than he can look serenely and with impunity in the face of the
sun.[147]

A culture which imports much muck from the meadows and deepens
the soil, not that which trusts to heating manures and improved
agricultural implements only.

       *       *       *       *       *

How, when a man purchases a thing, he is determined to get and get hold
of it, using how many expletives and how long a string of synonymous
or similar terms signifying possession, in the legal process! What’s
mine’s my own. An old deed of a small piece of swamp land, which I have
lately surveyed at the risk of being mired past recovery, says that
“the said Spaulding his Heirs and Assigns, shall and may from this (?)
time, and at all times forever hereafter, by force and virtue of these
presents, lawfully, peaceably and quietly have, hold, use, occupy,
possess and enjoy the said swamp,” etc.

       *       *       *       *       *

Magnetic iron, being anciently found in _Magnesia_,—hence _magnes_, or
magnet,—employed by Pliny and others. Chinese appear to have discovered
the magnet very early, A. D. 121 and before (?); used by them to steer
ships in 419; mentioned by an Icelander, 1068; in a French poem, 1181;
in Torfæus’ History of Norway, 1266. Used by De Gama in 1427. Leading
stone, hence loadstone.

The peroxide of hydrogen, or ozone, at first thought to be a chemical
curiosity merely, is found to be very generally diffused through
nature.

The following bears on the floating ice which has risen from the bottom
of the meadows. Robert Hunt says: “Water conducts heat downward but
very slowly; a mass of ice will remain undissolved but a few inches
under water on the surface of which ether or any other inflammable
body is burning. If ice swam beneath the surface, the summer sun would
scarcely have power to thaw it; and thus our lakes and seas would be
gradually converted into solid masses.”

The figures of serpents, of griffins, flying dragons, and other
embellishments of heraldry, the eastern idea of the world on an
elephant, that on a tortoise, and that on a serpent again, etc.,
usually regarded as mythological in the common sense of that word,
are thought by some to “indicate a faint and shadowy knowledge of a
previous state of organic existence,” such as geology partly reveals.

The fossil tortoise has been found in Asia large enough to support an
elephant.

Ammonites, snake-stones, or petrified snakes have been found from of
old, often decapitated.

In the northern part of Great Britain the fossil remains of encrinites
are called “St. Cuthbert’s beads.” “Fiction dependent on truth.”

Westward is heaven, or rather heavenward is the west. The way to heaven
is from east to west round the earth. The sun leads and shows it. The
stars, too, light it.

Nature and man; some prefer the one, others the other; but that is all
_de gustibus_. It makes no odds at what well you drink, provided it be
a well-head.

Walking in the woods, it may be, some afternoon, the shadow of the
wings of a thought flits across the landscape of my mind, and I am
reminded how little eventful are our lives. What have been all these
wars and rumors of wars, and modern discoveries and improvements
so-called? A mere irritation in the skin. But this shadow which is so
soon past, and whose substance is not detected, suggests that there
are events of importance whose interval is to us a true historic
period.[148]

The lecturer is wont to describe the Nineteenth Century, the
American [of] the last generation, in an off-hand and triumphant
strain, wafting him to paradise, spreading his fame by steam and
telegraph, recounting the number of wooden stopples he has whittled.
But who does not perceive that this is not a sincere or pertinent
account of any man’s or nation’s life? It is the hip-hip-hurrah
and mutual-admiration-society style. Cars go by, and we know their
substance as well as their shadow. They stop and we get into them. But
those sublime thoughts passing on high do not stop, and we never get
into them. Their conductor is not like one of us.

I feel that the man who, in his conversation with me about the life
of man in New England, lays much stress on railroads, telegraphs, and
such enterprises does not go below the surface of things. He treats the
shallow and transitory as if it were profound and enduring. In one of
the mind’s avatars, in the interval between sleeping and waking, aye,
even in one of the interstices of a Hindoo dynasty, perchance, such
things as the Nineteenth Century, with all its improvements, may come
and go again. Nothing makes a deep and lasting impression but what is
weighty.

Obey the law which reveals, and not the law revealed.

I wish my neighbors were wilder.

A wildness whose glance no civilization could endure.[149]

He who lives according to the highest law is in one sense lawless. That
is an unfortunate discovery, certainly, that of a law which binds us
where we did not know that we were bound. Live free, child of the mist!
He for whom the law is made, who does not obey the law but whom the
law obeys, reclines on pillows of down and is wafted at will whither
he pleases, for man is superior to all laws, both of heaven and earth,
when he takes his liberty.[150]

Wild as if we lived on the marrow of antelopes devoured raw.[151]

There would seem to be men in whose lives there have been no events of
importance, more than in the beetle’s which crawls in our path.


_March 19._ The ice in the pond is now soft and will not bear a heavy
stone thrown from the bank. It is melted for a rod from the shore. The
ground has been bare of snow for some weeks, but yesterday we had a
violent northeast snow-storm, which has drifted worse than any the past
winter. The spring birds—ducks and geese, etc.—had come, but now the
spring seems far off.

No good ever came of obeying a law which you had discovered.


_March 23._ For a week past the elm buds have been swollen. The willow
catkins have put out. The ice still remains in Walden, though it will
not bear. Mather Howard saw a large meadow near his house which had
risen up but was prevented from floating away by the bushes.


_March 27._ Walden is two-thirds broken up. It will probably be quite
open by to-morrow night.


_March 30._ Spring is already upon us. I see the tortoises, or rather
I hear them drop from the bank into the brooks at my approach. The
catkins of the alders have blossomed. The pads are springing at the
bottom of the water. The pewee is heard, and the lark.

       *       *       *       *       *

“It is only the squalid savages and degraded boschmen of creation that
have their feeble teeth and tiny stings steeped in venom, and so made
formidable,”—ants, centipedes, and mosquitoes, spiders, wasps, and
scorpions.—HUGH MILLER.

To attain to a true relation to one human creature is enough to make a
year memorable.

The man for whom law exists—the man of forms, the conservative—is a
tame man.


CARRYING OFF SIMS

A recent English writer (De Quincey),[152] endeavoring to account for
the atrocities of Caligula and Nero, their monstrous and anomalous
cruelties, and the general servility and corruption which they imply,
observes that it is difficult to believe that “the descendants of a
people so severe in their habits” as the Romans had been “could thus
rapidly” have degenerated and that, “in reality, the citizens of Rome
were at this time a new race, brought together from every quarter
of the world, but especially from Asia.” A vast “proportion of the
ancient citizens had been cut off by the sword,” and such multitudes
of emancipated slaves from Asia had been invested with the rights of
citizens “that, in a single generation, Rome became almost transmuted
into a baser metal.” As Juvenal complained, “the Orontes ... had
mingled its impure waters with those of the Tiber.” And “probably,
in the time of Nero, not one man in six was of pure Roman descent.”
Instead of such, says another, “came Syrians, Cappadocians, Phrygians,
and other enfranchised slaves.” “These in half a century had sunk so
low, that Tiberius pronounced her [Rome’s][153] very senators to be
_homines ad servitutem natos_, men born to be slaves.”[154]

So one would say, in the absence of particular genealogical evidence,
that the vast majority of the inhabitants of the city of Boston,
even those of senatorial dignity,—the Curtises, Lunts, Woodburys,
and others,—were not descendants of the men of the Revolution,—the
Hancocks, Adamses, Otises,—but some “Syrians, Cappadocians, and
Phrygians,” merely, _homines ad servitutem natos_, men born to be
slaves. But I would have done with comparing ourselves with our
ancestors, for on the whole I believe that even they, if somewhat
braver and less corrupt than we, were not men of so much principle and
generosity as to go to war in behalf of another race in their midst. I
do not believe that the North will soon come to blows with the South
on this question. It would be too bright a page to be written in the
history of the race at present.

       *       *       *       *       *

There is such an officer, if not such a man, as the Governor of
Massachusetts. What has he been about the last fortnight? He has
probably had as much as he could do to keep on the fence during this
moral earthquake. It seems to me that no such keen satire, no such
cutting insult, could be offered to that man, as the absence of all
inquiry after him in this crisis. It appears to [have] been forgotten
that there was such a man or such an office. Yet no doubt he has been
filling the gubernatorial chair all the while. One Mr. Boutwell,—so
named, perchance, because he goes about well to suit the prevailing
wind.[155]

In ’75 two or three hundred of the inhabitants of Concord assembled
at one of the bridges with arms in their hands to assert the right
of three millions to tax themselves, to have a voice in governing
themselves. About a week ago the authorities of Boston, having the
sympathy of many of the inhabitants of Concord, assembled in the gray
of the dawn, assisted by a still larger armed force, to send back a
perfectly innocent man, and one whom they knew to be innocent, into a
slavery as complete as the world ever knew. Of course it makes not the
least difference—I wish you to consider this—who the man was,—whether
he was Jesus Christ or another,—for inasmuch as ye did it unto the
least of these his brethren ye did it unto him. Do you think _he_ would
have stayed here in liberty and let the black man go into slavery in
his stead? They sent him back, I say, to live in slavery with other
three millions—mark that—whom the same slave power, or slavish power,
North and South, holds in that condition,—three millions who do not,
like the first mentioned, assert the right to govern themselves but
simply to run away and stay away from their prison.

Just a week afterward, those inhabitants of this town who especially
sympathize with the authorities of Boston in this their deed caused the
bells to be rung and the cannon to be fired to celebrate the courage
and the love of liberty of those men who assembled at the bridge. As if
_those_ three millions had fought for the right to be free themselves,
but to hold in slavery three million others. Why, gentlemen, even
consistency, though it is much abused, is sometimes a virtue. Every
humane and intelligent inhabitant of Concord, when he or she heard
those bells and those cannon, thought not so much of the events of the
19th of April, 1775, as of the event of the 12th of April, 1851.

I wish my townsmen to consider that, whatever the human law may be,
neither an individual nor a nation can ever deliberately commit the
least act of injustice without having to pay the penalty for it. A
government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it!—it
will become the laughing-stock of the world.

Much as has been said about American slavery, I think that commonly
we do not yet realize what slavery is. If I were seriously to propose
to Congress to make mankind into sausages, I have no doubt that most
would smile at my proposition and, if any believed me to be in earnest,
they would think that I proposed something much worse than Congress had
ever done. But, gentlemen, if any of you will tell me that to make a
man into a sausage would be much worse—would be any worse—than to make
him into a slave,—than it was then to enact the fugitive slave law,—I
shall here accuse him of foolishness, of intellectual incapacity, of
making a distinction without a difference. The one is just as sensible
a proposition as the other.[156]

When I read the account of the carrying back of the fugitive into
slavery, which was read last Sunday evening, and read also what was not
read here, that the man who made the prayer on the wharf was Daniel
Foster of _Concord_, I could not help feeling a slight degree of
pride because, of all the towns in the Commonwealth, Concord was the
only one distinctly named as being represented in that new tea-party,
and, as she had a place in the first, so would have a place in this,
the last and perhaps next most important chapter of the History of
Massachusetts. But my second feeling, when I reflected how short a
time that gentleman has resided in this town, was one of doubt and
shame, because the _men_ of Concord in recent times have done nothing
to entitle them to the honor of having their town named in such a
connection.

I hear a good deal said about trampling this law under foot. Why, one
need not go out of his way to do that. This law lies not at the level
of the head or the reason. Its natural habitat is in the dirt. It was
bred and has its life only in the dust and mire, on a level with the
feet; and he who walks with freedom, unless, with a sort of quibbling
and Hindoo mercy, he avoids treading on every venomous reptile, will
inevitably tread on it, and so trample it under foot.

It has come to this, that the friends of liberty, the friends of the
slave, have shuddered when they have understood that his fate has been
left to the legal tribunals, so-called, of the country to be decided.
The people have no faith that justice will be awarded in such a case.
The judge may decide this way or that; it is a kind of accident
at best. It is evident that he is not a competent authority in so
important a case. I would not trust the life of my friend to the judges
of all the Supreme Courts in the world put together, to be sacrificed
or saved by precedent. I would much rather trust to the sentiment of
the people, which would itself be a precedent to posterity. In their
vote you would get something worth having at any rate, but in the other
case only the trammelled judgment of an individual, of no significance,
be it which way it will.

I think that recent events will be valuable as a criticism on the
administration of justice in our midst, or rather as revealing what
are the true sources of justice in any community. It is to some extent
fatal to the courts when the people are compelled to go behind the
courts. They learn that the courts are made for fair weather and for
very civil cases.[157]

     [Two pages missing.]

let us entertain opinions of our own;[158] let us be a town and not
a suburb, as far from Boston in this sense as we were by the old road
which led through Lexington; a place where tyranny may ever be met with
firmness and driven back with defeat to its ships.

Concord has several more bridges left of the same sort, which she is
taxed to maintain. Can she not raise men to defend them?

       *       *       *       *       *

As for measures to be adopted, among others I would advise
abolitionists to make as earnest and vigorous and persevering an
assault on the press, as they have already made, and with effect too,
on the church. The church has decidedly improved within a year or
two, aye, even within a fortnight; but the press is, almost without
exception, corrupt. I believe that in this country the press exerts a
greater and a more pernicious influence than the church. We are not a
religious people, but we are a nation of politicians. We do not much
care for, we do not read, the Bible, but we do care for and we do read
the newspaper. It is a bible which we read every morning and every
afternoon, standing and sitting, riding and walking. It is a bible
which every man carries in his pocket, which lies on every table and
counter, which the mail and thousands of missionaries are continually
dispersing. It is the only book which America has printed, and is
capable of exerting an almost inconceivable influence for good or for
bad. The editor is [a] preacher whom you voluntarily support. Your tax
is commonly one cent, and it costs nothing for pew hire. But how many
of these preachers preach the truth? I repeat the testimony of many
an intelligent traveller, as well as my own convictions, when I say
that probably no country was ever ruled by so mean a class of tyrants
as are the editors of the periodical press in _this_ country. Almost
without exception the tone of the press is mercenary and servile. The
_Commonwealth_, and the _Liberator_, are the only papers, as far as
I know, which make themselves heard in condemnation of the cowardice
and meanness of the authorities of Boston as lately exhibited. The
other journals, almost without exception,—as the _Advertiser_, the
_Transcript_, the _Journal_, the _Times_, _Bee_, _Herald_, etc.,—by
their manner of referring to and speaking of the Fugitive Slave Law or
the carrying back of the slave, insult the common sense of the country.
And they do this for the most part, because they think so to secure the
approbation of their patrons, and also, one would think, because they
are not aware that a sounder sentiment prevails to any extent.

But, thank fortune, this preacher can be more easily reached by the
weapons of the reformer than could the recreant priest. The _free_ men
of New England have only to refrain from purchasing and reading these
sheets, have only to withhold their cents, to kill a score of them at
once.[159]

       *       *       *       *       *

Mahomet made his celestial journey in so short a time that “on his
return he was able to prevent the complete overturn of a vase of water,
which the angel Gabriel had struck with his wing on his departure.”

When he took refuge in a cave near Mecca, being on his flight
(Hegira) to Medina, “by the time that the Koreishites [who were close
behind][160] reached the mouth of the cavern, an acacia tree had sprung
up before it, in the spreading branches of which a pigeon had made
its nest, and laid its eggs, and over the whole a spider had woven its
web.”

He said of himself, “I am no king, but the son of a Koreishite woman,
who ate flesh dried in the sun.”

He exacted “a tithe of the productions of the earth, where it was
fertilized by brooks and rain; and a twentieth part where its fertility
was the result of irrigation.”


_April 22._ Had mouse-ear in blossom for a week. Observed the crowfoot
on the Cliffs in abundance, and the saxifrage. The wind last Wednesday,
April 16th, blew down a hundred pines on Fair Haven Hill.

Having treated my friend ill, I wished to apologize; but, not meeting
him, I made an apology to myself.

It is not the invitation which I hear, but which I feel, that I obey.


_April 26._ The judge whose words seal the fate of a man for the
longest time and furthest into eternity is not he who merely pronounces
the verdict of the law, but he, whoever he may be, who, from a love
of truth and unprejudiced by any custom or enactment of men, utters a
true opinion or _sentence_ concerning him. He it is that _sentences_
him.[161] More fatal, as affecting his good or ill fame, is the
utterance of the least inexpugnable truth concerning him, by the
humblest individual, than the sentence of the supremest court in the
land.

       *       *       *       *       *

Gathered the mayflower and cowslips yesterday, and saw the houstonia,
violets, etc. Saw a dandelion in blossom.

       *       *       *       *       *

Are they Americans, are they New-Englanders, are they inhabitants
of Concord,—Buttricks and Davises and Hosmers by name,—who read and
support the Boston _Herald_, _Advertiser_, _Traveller_, _Journal_,
_Transcript_, etc., etc., _Times_? Is that the _Flag of our Union_?

Could slavery suggest a more complete servility? Is there any dust
which such conduct does not lick and make fouler still with its slime?
Has not the Boston _Herald_ acted its part well, served its master
faithfully? How could it have gone lower on its belly? How can a man
stoop lower than he is low? do more than put his extremities in the
place of that head he has? than make his head his _lower_ extremity?
And when I say the Boston _Herald_ I mean the Boston press, with such
few and slight exceptions as need not be made. When I have taken up
this paper or the Boston _Times_, with my cuffs turned up, I have
heard the gurgling of the sewer through every column; I have felt
that I was handling a paper picked out of the public sewers, a leaf
from the gospel of the gambling-house, the groggery, and the brothel,
harmonizing with the gospel of the Merchants’ Exchange.[162]

I do not know but there are some who, if they were tied to the
whipping-post and could but get one hand free, would use it to ring
the bells and fire the cannon to celebrate their liberty. It reminded
me of the Roman Saturnalia, on which even the slaves were allowed to
take some liberty. So some of you took the liberty to ring and fire.
That was the extent of your freedom; and when the sound of the bells
died away, your liberty died away also, and when the powder was all
expended, your liberty went off with the smoke. Nowadays men wear a
fool’s-cap and call it a liberty-cap. The joke could be no broader
if the inmates of the prisons were to subscribe for all the powder to
be used in such salutes, and hire their jailors to do the firing and
ringing for them.[163]


_April 29._ Every man, perhaps, is inclined to think his own situation
singular in relation to friendship. Our thoughts would imply that other
men _have_ friends, though we have not. But I do not know of two whom
I can speak of as standing in this relation to one another. Each one
makes a standing offer to mankind, “On such and such terms I will give
myself to you;” but it is only by a miracle that his terms are ever
accepted.

We have to defend ourselves even against those who are nearest to
friendship with us.

What a difference it is!—to perform the pilgrimage of life in the
society of a mate, and not to have an acquaintance among all the tribes
of men!

What signifies the census—this periodical numbering of men—to one who
has no friend?

I distinguish between my _actual_ and my _real_ communication with
individuals. I _really_ communicate with my friends and congratulate
myself and them on our relation and rejoice in their presence and
society oftenest when they are personally absent. I remember that not
long ago, as I laid my head on my pillow for the night, I was visited
by an inexpressible joy that I was permitted to know and be related
to such mortals as I was then actually related to; and yet no special
event that I could think of had occurred to remind me of any with
whom I was connected, and by the next noon, perchance, those essences
that had caused me joy would have receded somewhat. I experienced a
remarkable gladness in the thought that they existed. Their existence
was then blessed to me. Yet such has never been my actual waking
relation to any.

Every one experiences that, while his relation to another actually may
be one of distrust and disappointment, he may still have relations to
him ideally and so really, in spite of both. He is faintly conscious of
a confidence and satisfaction somewhere, and all further intercourse is
based on this experience of success.

The very dogs and cats incline to affection in their relation to man.
It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog
than to any human being. What bond is it relates us to any animal we
keep in the house but the bond of affection? In a degree we grow to
love one another.


_April 30._ What is a chamber to which the sun does not rise in the
morning? What is a chamber to which the sun does not set at evening?
Such are often the chambers of the mind, for the most part.

Even the cat which lies on a rug all day commences to prowl about the
fields at night, resumes her ancient forest habits. The most tenderly
bred grimalkin steals forth at night,—watches some bird on its perch
for an hour in the furrow, like a gun at rest. She catches no cold;
it is her nature. Caressed by children and cherished with a saucer of
milk. Even she can erect her back and expand her tail and spit at her
enemies like the wild cat of the woods. Sweet Sylvia!

What is the singing of birds, or any natural sound, compared with the
voice of one we love?

To one we love we are related as to nature in the spring. Our dreams
are mutually intelligible. We take the census, and find that there is
one.

Love is a mutual confidence whose foundations no one knows. The one I
love surpasses all the laws of nature in sureness. Love is capable of
any wisdom.

     “He that hath love and judgment too
     Sees more than any other doe.”

By our very mutual attraction, and our attraction to all other spheres,
kept properly asunder. Two planets which are mutually attracted, being
at the same time attracted by the sun, preserve equipoise and harmony.

Does not the history of chivalry and knight-errantry suggest or point
to another relation to woman than leads to marriage, yet an elevating
and all-absorbing one, perchance transcending marriage? As yet men know
not one another, nor does man know woman.

I am sure that the design of my maker when he has brought me nearest
to woman was not the propagation, but rather the maturation, of the
species. Man is capable of a love of woman quite transcending marriage.

I observe that the _New York Herald_ advertises situations wanted by
“respectable young women” by the column, but never by respectable young
men, rather “intelligent” and “smart” ones; from which I infer that the
public opinion of New York does not require young men to be respectable
in the same sense in which it requires young women to be so.

May it consist with the health of some bodies to be impure?




IV

MAY, 1851

(ÆT. 33)


_May 1._ Observed the _Nuphar advena_, yellow water-lily, in blossom;
also the _Laurus Benzoin_, or fever-bush, spice-wood, near William
Wheeler’s in Lincoln, resembling the witch-hazel. It is remarkable that
this aromatic shrub, though it grows by the roadside and does not hide
itself, may be, as it were, effectually concealed, though it blossoms
every spring. It may be observed only once in many years.

The blossom-buds of the peach have expanded just enough to give a
slight peach tint to the orchards.

In regard to purity, I do not know whether I am much worse or better
than my acquaintances. If I confine my thought to myself, I appear,
whether by constitution or by education, irrevocably impure, as if
I should be shunned by my fellow-men if they knew me better, as if I
were of two inconsistent natures; but again, when I observe how the
mass of men speak of woman and of chastity,—with how little love and
reverence,—I feel that so far I am unaccountably better than they. I
think that none of my acquaintances has a greater love and admiration
for chastity than I have. Perhaps it is necessary that one should
actually stand low himself in order to reverence what is high in
others.

All distant landscapes seen from hilltops are veritable pictures,
which will be found to have no actual existence to him who travels
to them. “’T is distance lends enchantment to the view.” It is the
bare landscape without this depth of atmosphere to glass it. The
distant river-reach seen in the north from the Lincoln Hill, high in
the horizon, like the ocean stream flowing round Homer’s shield, the
rippling waves reflecting the light, is unlike the same seen near at
hand. Heaven intervenes between me and the object. By what license do
I call it Concord River. It redeems the character of rivers to see them
thus. They were worthy then of a place on Homer’s shield.

As I looked to-day from Mt. Tabor in Lincoln to the Waltham hill, I
saw the same deceptive slope, the near hill melting into the further
inseparably, indistinguishably; it was one gradual slope from the
base of the near hill to the summit of the further one, a succession
of copse-woods, but I knew that there intervened a valley two or
three miles wide, studded with houses and orchards and drained by a
considerable stream. When the shadow of a cloud passed over the nearer
hill, I could distinguish its shaded summit against the side of the
other.

       *       *       *       *       *

I had in my mind’s eye a silent gray tarn which I had seen the summer
before high up on the side of a mountain, Bald Mountain, where the
half-dead spruce trees stood far in the water draped with wreathy mist
as with usnea moss, made of dews, where the mountain spirit bathed;
whose bottom was high above the surface of other lakes. Spruces whose
dead limbs were more in harmony with the mists which draped them.

The forenoon that I moved to my house, a poor old lame fellow who had
formerly frozen his feet hobbled off the road, came and stood before my
door with one hand on each door-post, looking into the house, and asked
for a drink of water. I knew that rum or something like it was the only
drink he loved, but I gave him a dish of warm pond water, which was all
I had, nevertheless, which to my astonishment he drank, being used to
drinking.

Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like
insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them
memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is
individuals that populate the world.


THE SPIRIT OF LODIN

     “I look down from my height on nations,
     And they become ashes before me;
     Calm is my dwelling in the clouds;
     Pleasant are the great fields of my rest.”[164]

Man is as singular as God.

       *       *       *       *       *

There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such
questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food alone; and
to strike at the root of the matter at once, I am accustomed to answer
such, “Yes, I can live on board nails.” If they cannot understand that,
they cannot understand much that I have to say. That cuts the matter
short with them. For my own part, I am glad to hear of experiments of
this kind being tried; as that a young man tried for a fortnight to see
if he could live on hard, raw corn on the ear, using his tooth for his
only mortar. The squirrel tribe tried the same and succeeded. The human
race is interested in these experiments, though a few old women may be
alarmed, who own their thirds in mills.[165]

       *       *       *       *       *

Khaled would have his weary soldiers vigilant still; apprehending a
midnight sally from the enemy, “Let no man sleep,” said he. “We shall
have rest enough after death.” Would such an exhortation be understood
by Yankee soldiers?

       *       *       *       *       *

Omar answered the dying Abu Beker: “O successor to the apostle of God!
spare me from this burden. I have no need of the Caliphat.” “But the
Caliphat has need of you!” replied the dying Abu Beker.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Heraclius had heard of the mean attire of the Caliph Omar, and asked
why, having gained so much wealth by his conquests, he did not go
richly clad like other princes? They replied, that he cared not for
this world, but for the world to come, and sought favor in the eyes
of God alone. ‘In what kind of a palace does he reside?’ asked the
emperor. ‘In a house built of mud.’ ‘Who are his attendants?’ ‘Beggars
and the poor.’ ‘What tapestry does he sit upon?’ ‘Justice and equity.’
‘What is his throne?’ ‘Abstinence and true knowledge.’ ‘What is his
treasure?’ ‘Trust in God.’ ‘And who are his guard?’ ‘The bravest of the
Unitarians.’”

It was the custom of Ziyad, once governor of Bassora, “wherever he held
sway, to order the inhabitants to leave their doors open at night, with
merely a hurdle at the entrance to exclude cattle, engaging to replace
any thing that should be stolen: and so effective was his police, that
no robberies were committed.”

Abdallah was “so fixed and immovable in prayer, that a pigeon once
perched upon his head mistaking him for a statue.”


_May 6. Monday._ The Harivansa describes a “substance called
_Poroucha_, a spiritual substance known also under the name of Mahat,
spirit united to the five elements, soul of being, now enclosing
itself in a body like ours, now returning to the eternal body; it is
mysterious wisdom, the perpetual sacrifice made by the virtue of the
_Yoga_, the fire which animates animals, shines in the sun, and is
mingled with all bodies. Its nature is to be born and to die, to pass
from repose to movement. The spirit led astray by the senses, in the
midst of the creation of Brahma, engages itself in works and knows
birth, as well as death. The organs of the senses are its paths, and
its work manifests itself in this creation of Brahma. Thought tormented
by desires, is like the sea agitated by the wind. Brahma has said: the
heart filled with strange affections is to be here below purified by
wisdom. Here below even, clothed already as it were in a luminous form,
let the spirit, though clogged by the bonds of the body, prepare for
itself an abode sure and permanent.

“He who would obtain final emancipation must abstain from every
exterior action. The operation which conducts the pious and penitent
Brahman to the knowledge of the truth, is all interior, intellectual,
mental. They are not ordinary practices which can bring light into the
soul.

“The Mouni who desires his final emancipation will have care evening
and morning to subdue his senses, to fix his mind on the divine
essence, and to transport himself by the force of his soul to the
eternal abode of Vichnou. Although he may have engaged in works, he
does not wear the clog of them, because his soul is not attached to
them. A being returns to life in consequence of the affection which he
has borne for terrestrial things: he finds himself emancipated, when he
has felt only indifference for them.

“The Richis mingle with nature, which remains strange to their senses.
Luminous and brilliant they cover themselves with a humid vapor, under
which they seem no more to exist, although existing always, like the
thread which is lost and confounded in the woof.

“Free in this world, as the birds in the air, disengaged from every
kind of chain.

“Thus the Yogin, absorbed in contemplation, contributes for his part
to creation: he breathes a divine perfume, he hears wonderful things.
Divine forms traverse him without tearing him, and united to the
nature which is proper to him, he goes, he acts, as animating original
matter.”

Like some other preachers, I have added my texts—derived from the
Chinese and Hindoo scriptures—long after my discourse was written.

       *       *       *       *       *

A commentary on the Sankhya Karika says, “By external knowledge worldly
distinction is acquired; by internal knowledge, liberation.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The Sankhya Karika says, “By attainment of perfect knowledge, virtue
and the rest become causeless; yet soul remains awhile invested with
body, as the potter’s wheel continues whirling from the effect of the
impulse previously given to it.”

       *       *       *       *       *

I rejoice that horses and steers have to [be] _broken_ before they can
be made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats
still left to sow before they become submissive members of society.
Undoubtedly all men are not equally fit subjects for civilization,
and because the majority, like dogs and sheep, are tame by inherited
disposition, is no reason why the others should have their natures
broken, that they may be reduced to the same level. Men are in the
main alike, but they were made several in order that [they] might
be various. If a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly or
quite as well as another; if a high one, individual excellence is to
be regarded. Any man can stop a hole to keep the wind away, but no
other man can serve that use which the author of this illustration did.
Confucius says, “The skins of the tiger and the leopard when they are
tanned, are as the skins of the dog and the sheep tanned.” But it is
not the part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to
make sheep ferocious. It is evident, then, that tanning their skins for
shoes and the like is not the best use to which they can be put.[166]

       *       *       *       *       *

How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the
contemplation of natural phenomena to the preservation of moral and
intellectual health! The discipline of the schools or of business can
never impart such serenity to the mind. The philosopher contemplates
human affairs as calmly and from as great a remoteness as he does
natural phenomena. The ethical philosopher needs the discipline of
the natural philosopher. He approaches the study of mankind with great
advantages who is accustomed to the study of nature.

The Brahman Saradwata, says the Dharma Sacontala, was at first
confounded on entering the city, “but now,” says he, “I look on it as
the freeman on the captive, as a man just bathed in pure water on a man
smeared with oil and dust.”


_May 10._ Heard the snipe over the meadows this evening.


_May 12._ Heard the golden robin and the bobolink.

But where she has her seat,—whether in Westford or in Boxboro,—not
even the assessors know. Inquire perchance of that dusky family on
the cross-road, which is said to have Indian blood in their veins.
Or perchance where this old cellar-hole now grassed over is faintly
visible, Nature once had her dwelling. Ask the crazy old woman who
brings huckleberries to the village, but who lives nobody knows where.

       *       *       *       *       *

If I have got false teeth, I trust that I have not got a false
conscience. It is safer to employ the dentist than the priest to repair
the deficiencies of nature.

By taking the ether the other day I was convinced how far asunder a man
could be separated from his senses. You are told that it will make you
unconscious, but no one can imagine what it is to be unconscious—how
far removed from the state of consciousness and all that we call “this
world”—until he has experienced it. The value of the experiment is
that it does give you experience of an interval as between one life and
another,—a greater space than you ever travelled. You are a sane mind
without organs,—groping for organs,—which if it did not soon recover
its old senses would get new ones. You expand like a seed in the
ground. You exist in your roots, like a tree in the winter. If you have
an inclination to travel, take the ether; you go beyond the furthest
star.

It is not necessary for them to take ether, who in their sane and
waking hours are ever translated by a thought; nor for them to see with
their hindheads, who sometimes see from their foreheads; nor listen to
the spiritual knockings, who attend to the intimations of reason and
conscience.


_May 16._ Heard the whip-poor-will this evening. A splendid full moon
to-night. Walked from 6.30 to 10 P. M. Lay on a rock near a meadow,
which had absorbed and retained much heat, so that I could warm my back
on it, it being a cold night. I found that the side of the sand-hill
was cold on the surface, but warm two or three inches beneath.[167]

If there is a more splendid moonlight than usual, only the belated
traveller observes it. When I am outside, on the outskirts of the town,
enjoying the still majesty of the moon, I am wont to think that all men
are aware of this miracle, that they too are silently worshipping this
manifestation of divinity elsewhere. But when I go into the house I
am undeceived; they are absorbed in checkers or chess or novel, though
they may have been advertised of the brightness through the shutters.

In the moonlight night what intervals are created! The rising moon is
related to the near pine tree which rises above the forest, and we get
a juster notion of distance. The moon is only somewhat further off and
on one side. There may be only three objects,—myself, a pine tree, and
the moon, nearly equidistant.

Talk of demonstrating the rotation of the earth on its axis,—see the
moon rise, or the sun!

The moonlight reveals the beauty of trees. By day it is so light and in
this climate so _cold_ commonly, that we do not perceive their shade.
We do not know when we are beneath them.

       *       *       *       *       *

According to Michaux, the canoe birch (_Betula papyracea_) ceases
below the forty-third degree of latitude. Sections of the wood from
just below the first ramification are used to inlay mahogany, in these
parts. It is brought from Maine for fuel.

Common white birch (_B. populifolia_) not found south of Virginia.
Its epidermis incapable of being divided like the canoe birch and the
European white.

The common alder (_Alnus serrulata_) blooms in January.

The locust (_Robinia Pseudacacia_) was one of the earliest trees
introduced into Europe from America (by one Robin, about 1601); now
extensively propagated in England, France, and Germany. Used for
trunnels to the exclusion of all others in the Middle and Southern
States. Instead of decaying, acquire hardness with time.


_May 18. Sunday._ Lady’s-slipper almost fully blossomed. The log of
a canoe birch on Fair Haven, cut down the last winter, more than a
foot in diameter at the stump; one foot in diameter at ten feet from
the ground. I observed that all parts of the epidermis exposed to the
air and light were white, but the inner surfaces, freshly exposed,
were a buff or salmon-color. Sinclair says that in winter it is white
throughout. But this was cut before the sap flowed??! Was there any
sap in the log? I counted about fifty rings. The shrub oaks are now
blossoming. The scarlet tanagers are come. The oak leaves of all colors
are just expanding, and are more beautiful than most flowers. The
hickory buds are almost leaves. The landscape has a new life and light
infused into it. The deciduous trees are springing, to countenance
the pines, which are evergreen. It seems to take but one summer day
to fetch the summer in. The turning-point between winter and summer
is reached. The birds are in full blast. There is a peculiar freshness
about the landscape; you scent the fragrance of new leaves, of hickory
and sassafras, etc. And to the eye the forest presents the tenderest
green. The blooming of the apple trees is becoming general.

I think that I have made out two kinds of poplar,—the _Populus
tremuloides_, or American aspen, and the _P. grandidentata_, or large
American aspen, whose young leaves are downy.

       *       *       *       *       *

Michaux says that the locust begins to convert its sap into perfect
wood from the third year; which is not done by the oak, the chestnut,
the beech, and the elm till after the tenth or the fifteenth year.

He quotes the saying, “The foot of the owner is the best manure for
his land.” “He” is Augustus L. Hillhouse, who writes the account of the
olive at the request of Michaux.

The elder Michaux found the balsam poplar (_P. balsamifera_) very
abundant on Lake St. John and the Saguenay River, where it is eighty
feet high and three feet in diameter. This, however, is distinct
from the _P. candicans_, heart-leaved balsam poplar, which M. finds
hereabouts, though never in the woods, and does not know where it came
from.

He praises the Lombardy poplar because, its limbs being compressed
about the trunk, it does not interfere with the walls of a house nor
obstruct the windows.

No wood equal to our black ash for oars, so pliant and elastic
and strong, second only to hickory for handspikes; used also for
chair-bottoms and riddles.

The French call the nettle-tree _bois inconnu_.

Our white elm (_Ulmus Americana_) “the most magnificent vegetable of
the temperate zone.”

The _Pinus mitis_, yellow pine, or spruce pine, or short-leaved pine. A
two-leaved pine widely diffused, but not found northward beyond certain
districts of Connecticut and Massachusetts. In New Jersey fifty or
sixty feet high and fifteen to eighteen inches in diameter. Sometimes
three leaves on fresh shoots; smallest of pine cones; seeds cast first
year. Very excellent wood for houses, masts, decks, yards, beams, and
cabins, next in durability to the long-leaved pine. Called at Liverpool
New York pine. Its regular branches make it to be called spruce pine
sometimes.

_Pinus australis_, or long-leaved pine, an invaluable tree, called
yellow pine, pitch pine, and broom pine where it grows; in the North,
Southern pine and red pine; in England, Georgia pitch pine. First
appears at Norfolk, Virginia; thence stretches six hundred miles
southwest. Sixty or seventy feet high, by fifteen to eighteen inches;
leaves a foot long, three in a sheath; negroes use them for brooms.
Being stronger, more compact and durable, because the resin is equally
distributed, and also fine-grained and susceptible of a bright polish,
it is preferred to every other pine. In naval architecture, most
esteemed of all pines,—keels, beams, side-planks, trunnels, etc. For
decks preferred to yellow pine,—and flooring houses. Sold for more
at Liverpool than any other pine. Moreover it supplies nearly all the
resinous matter used and exported. Others which contain much pitch are
more dispersed. At present (1819) this business is confined to North
Carolina.

M. says the branches of resinous trees consist almost wholly of
_wood_, of which the organization is even more perfect than in the
body of the tree. They use dead wood for the tar, etc., in which it has
accumulated.

Says the vicinity of Brunswick, Me., and Burlington, Vt., are the most
northerly limits of the pitch pine or _P. rigida_. (I saw what I should
have called a pitch pine at Montmorency.)

White pine (_P. Strobus_) most abundant between forty-third and
forty-seventh degrees, one hundred and eighty feet by seven and
eight twelfths the largest. “The loftiest and most valuable” of the
productions of the New Hampshire forest.

The black spruce is called _épinette noire_ and _épinette à la bière_
in Canada. From its strength best substitute for oak and larch. Used
here for rafters and preferred to hemlock; tougher than white pine, but
more liable to crack.

The white spruce (_Abies alba_) called _épinette blanche_ in Canada.
Not so large as the last and wood inferior.

Hemlock spruce (_Abies Canadensis_) called _pérusse_ in Canada. In
Maine, Vermont, and upper New Hampshire, three fourths of the evergreen
woods, the rest being black spruce. Belongs to cold regions; begins
to appear about Hudson’s Bay. Its fibre makes the circuit of stocks
fifteen or twenty inches in diameter in ascending five or six feet.
Old trees have their circles separated, and the boards are _shaky_.
Decays rapidly when exposed to the air. It is firmer, though coarser,
than the white pine; affords tighter hold to nails. Used in Maine for
threshing-floors, resisting indentation. Most common use sheathing of
houses, to be covered with clapboards. Used for laths.

White cedar (_Cupressus thyoides_). “The perfect wood resists the
succession of dryness and moisture longer than that of any other
species;” hence for shingles.

Larch (_Larix Americana_); in Canada _épinette rouge_; _tamarack_ by
the Dutch. Male aments appear before the leaves. Wood superior to any
pine or spruce in strength and durability. Used in Maine for knees.

Cedar of Lebanon (_Larix cedrus_) largest and most majestic of resinous
trees of the Old World and one of the finest vegetable productions of
the globe.

Cedar Island in Lake Champlain northern limit of red cedar (_Juniperus
Virginiana_). Eastward, not beyond Wiscasset. Seeds mature at beginning
of fall and _sown at once_; shoot next spring. Gin made from them.

Arbor-vitæ (_Thuya occidentalis_), the only species of _Thuya_ in the
New World. Lake St. John in Canada its northern limit; abounds between
48° 50´ and 45°. The posts last thirty-five or forty years, and the
rails sixty, or three or four times as long as those of any other
species. In northern New England States the best for fences; last
longer in clay than sand.

The superiority of mahogany in the fineness of its grain and its
hardness, which make it susceptible of a brilliant polish. Native trees
in Northern States used in cabinet making are black, yellow, and canoe
birches, red-flowering curled maple, bird’s-eye maple, wild cherry, and
sumach.

The circle[s] of peck and other measures made at Hingham of black, red,
or gray oak are “always of a dull blue color, produced by the gallic
acid of the wood acting upon the iron vessel in which it is boiled.”

White ash used for sieve rims, rake heads and handles, scythe handles,
pulleys, etc. Rake teeth of the mockernut hickory.

In New York and Philadelphia “the price [of wood for fuel][168] nearly
equals and sometimes exceeds that of the best wood in Paris, though
this immense capital annually requires more than 300,000 cords, and is
surrounded to the distance of 300 miles by cultivated plains.” Said in
book of 1819.


_May 19._ Found the _Arum triphyllum_ and the nodding trillium, or
wake-robin, in Conant’s Swamp. An ash also in bloom there, and the
sassafras quite striking. Also the fringed polygala by Conantum wood.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sinclair says the hornbeam is called “swamp beech” in Vermont.


_May 20. Tuesday._ There is, no doubt, a perfect analogy between the
life of the human being and that of the vegetable, both of the body and
the mind. The botanist Gray says:—

“The organs of plants are of two sorts:—1. Those of _Vegetation_,
which are concerned in growth,—by which the plant takes in the aërial
and earthy matters on which it lives, and elaborates them into the
materials of its own organized substance; 2. Those of _Fructification_
or _Reproduction_, which are concerned with the propagation of the
species.”

So is it with the human being. I am concerned first to come to my
_Growth_, intellectually and morally (and physically, of course, as
a means to this, for the body is the symbol of the soul), and then to
bear my _Fruit_, do my _Work_, _propagate_ my kind, not only physically
but _morally_, not only in body but in mind.

“The organs of vegetation are the _Root_, _Stem_, and _Leaves_. The
_Stem_ is the axis and original basis of the plant.”

“The first point of the stem preëxists in the embryo (_i. e._ in the
rudimentary plantlet contained within the seed): it is here called the
radicle.” Such is the rudiment of mind, already partially developed,
more than a bud, but pale, having never been exposed to the light, and
slumbering coiled up, packed away in the seed, unfolded [_sic_].

Consider the still pale, rudimentary, infantine, radicle-like thoughts
of some students, which who knows what they might expand to, if they
should ever come to the light and air, if they do not become rancid and
perish in the seed. It is not every seed that will survive a thousand
years. Other thoughts further developed, but yet pale and languid, like
shoots grown in a cellar.

“The plant ... develops from the first in two opposite directions,
_viz._ upwards [to expand in the light and air] to produce and continue
the stem (or _ascending axis_), and downwards [avoiding the light][169]
to form the root (or _descending_ axis). The former is ordinarily or in
great part aërial, the latter subterranean.”

So the mind develops from the first in two opposite directions: upwards
to expand in the light and air; and downwards avoiding the light to
form the root. One half is aërial, the other subterranean. The mind
is not well balanced and firmly planted, like the oak, which has not
as much root as branch, whose roots like those of the white pine are
slight and near the surface. One half of the mind’s development must
still be root,—in the embryonic state, in the womb of nature, more
unborn than at first. For each successive new idea or bud, a new
rootlet in the earth. The growing man penetrates yet deeper by his
roots into the womb of things. The infant is comparatively near the
surface, just covered from the light; but the man sends down a tap-root
to the centre of things.

The mere logician, the mere reasoner, who weaves his arguments as
a tree its branches in the sky,—nothing equally developed in the
roots,—is overthrown by the first wind.

As with the roots of the plant, so with the roots of the mind, the
branches and branchlets of the root “are mere repetitions for the
purpose of multiplying the absorbing points, which are chiefly the
growing or newly formed extremities, sometimes termed _spongelets_. It
bears no other organs.”

So this organ of the mind’s development, the _Root_, bears no organs
but spongelets or absorbing points.

Annuals, which perish root and all the first season, especially have
slender and thread-like fibrous roots. But biennials are particularly
characterized by distended, fleshy roots containing starch, a stock
for future growth, to be consumed during their second or flowering
season,—as carrots, radishes, turnips. Perennials frequently have
many thickened roots clustered together, tuberous or palmate roots,
fasciculated or clustered as in the dahlia, pæony, etc.

Roots may spring from any part of the stem under favorable
circumstances; “that is to say in darkness and moisture, as when
covered by the soil or resting on its surface.”

That is, the most clear and ethereal ideas (Antæus-like) readily ally
themselves to the earth, to the primal womb of things. They put forth
roots as soon as branches; they are eager to be _soiled_. No thought
soars so high that it sunders these apron-strings of its mother.
The thought that comes to light, that pierces the empyrean on the
other side, is wombed and rooted in darkness, a moist and fertile
darkness,—its roots in Hades like the tree of life. No idea is so
soaring but it will readily put forth roots. Wherever there is an
air-and-light-seeking bud about to expand, it may become in the earth
a darkness-seeking root. Even swallows and birds-of-paradise _can_ walk
on the ground. To quote the sentence from Gray entire: “Roots not only
spring from the root-end of the primary stem in germination, but also
from any subsequent part of the stem under favorable circumstances,
that is to say, in darkness and moisture, as when covered by the soil
or resting on its surface.”

No thought but is connected as strictly as a flower, with the
earth. The mind flashes not so far on one side but its rootlets, its
spongelets, find their way instantly on the other side into a moist
darkness, uterine,—a low bottom in the heavens, even miasma-exhaling to
such immigrants as are not acclimated. A cloud is uplifted to sustain
its roots. Imbosomed in clouds as in a chariot, the mind drives through
the boundless fields of space. Even there is the dwelling of Indra.

I might here quote the following, with the last—of roots: “They may
even strike in the open air and light, as is seen in the copious aërial
rootlets by which the Ivy, the Poison Ivy, and the Trumpet Creeper
climb and adhere to the trunks of trees or other bodies; and also in
Epiphytes or Air-plants, of most warm regions, which have no connection
whatever with the soil, but germinate and grow high in air on the
trunks or branches of trees, etc.; as well as in some terrestrial
plants, such as the Banian and Mangrove, that send off aërial roots
from their trunks or branches, which finally reach the ground.”

So, if our light-and-air-seeking tendencies extend too widely for our
original root or stem, we must send downward new roots to ally us to
the earth.

Also there are parasitic plants which have their roots in the branches
or roots of other trees, as the mistletoe, the beech-drops, etc. There
are minds which so have their roots in other minds as in the womb of
nature,—if, indeed, most are not such?!


_May 21. Wednesday._ Yesterday I made out the black and the white
ashes. A double male white ash in Miles’s Swamp, and two black ashes
with sessile leaflets. A female white ash near railroad, in Stow’s
land. The white ashes by Mr. Pritchard’s have no blossoms, at least as
yet.

If I am right, the _black_ ash is improperly so called, from the color
of its bark being lighter than the white. Though it answers to the
description in other respects, even to the elder-like odor of the
leaves, I should like still to see a description of the yellow ash
which grows in made [_sic_].

The day before yesterday I found the male sassafras in abundance but no
female.

The leaves of my new pine on Merriam’s or Pine Hill are of intermediate
length between those of the yellow pine and the Norway pine. I can
find no cone to distinguish the tree by; but, as the leaves are
_semicylindrical_ and not _hollowed_ I think it must be the red
or Norway Pine, though it does not look very red, and is _spruce_!
answering perhaps to the description of the yellow pine, which is
sometimes called spruce pine.

To-day examined the flowers of the _Nemopanthes Canadensis_,—a genus of
a single species, says Emerson. It bears the beautiful crimson velvety
berry of the swamps, and is what I have heard called the cornel. Common
name wild holly.

       *       *       *       *       *

I have heard now within a few days that peculiar dreaming sound of the
frogs[170] which belongs to the summer,—their midsummer night’s dream.

Only that thought and that expression are good which are musical.

I think that we are not commonly aware that man is our
contemporary,—that in this strange, outlandish world, so barren, so
prosaic, fit not to live in but merely to pass through, that even here
so divine a creature as man does actually live. Man, the crowning fact,
the god we know. While the earth supports so rare an inhabitant, there
is somewhat to cheer us. Who shall say that there is no God, if there
is a _just_ man. It is only within a year that it has occurred to me
that there is such a being actually existing on the globe. Now that I
perceive that it is so, many questions assume a new aspect. We have not
only the idea and vision of the divine ourselves, but we have brothers,
it seems, who have this idea also. Methinks my neighbor is better than
I, and his thought is better than mine. There is a representative of
the divinity on earth, of [whom] all things fair and noble are to
be expected. We have the material of heaven here. I think that the
standing miracle to man is man. Behind the paling yonder, come rain
or shine, hope or doubt, there dwells a man, an actual being who can
sympathize with our sublimest thoughts.

The revelations of nature are infinitely glorious and cheering, hinting
to us of a remote future, of possibilities untold; but startlingly near
to us some day we find a fellow-man.

The frog had eyed the heavens from his marsh, until his mind was filled
with visions, and he saw more than belongs to this fenny earth. He
mistrusted that he was become a dreamer and visionary. Leaping across
the swamp to his fellow, what was his joy and consolation to find that
he too had seen the same sights in the heavens, he too had dreamed the
same dreams!

From nature we turn astonished to this _near_ but supernatural fact.

I think that the existence of man in nature is the divinest and most
startling of all facts. It is a fact which few have realized.

I can go to my neighbors and meet on ground as elevated as we could
expect to meet upon if we were now in heaven.

                             “And we live,
     We of this mortal mixture, in the same law
     As the pure colorless intelligence
     Which dwells in Heaven, and the dead Hadean shades.”

I do not think that man can understand the _importance_ of man’s
existence, its bearing on the other phenomena of life, until it shall
become a remembrance to him the survivor that such a being or such a
race once existed on the earth. Imagine yourself alone in the world,
a musing, wondering, reflecting spirit, _lost_ in thought, and imagine
thereafter the creation of man!—man made in the image of God!

Looking into a book on dentistry the other day, I observed a list of
authors who had written on this subject. There were Ran and Tan and
Yungerman, and I was impressed by the fact that there was nothing in
a name. It was as if they had been named by the child’s rigmarole of
_Iery [wiery] ichery van, tittle-tol-tan_, etc. I saw in my mind a herd
of wild creatures swarming over the earth, and to each one its own
herdsman had affixed some barbarous name, or sound, or syllables, in
his own dialect,—so in a thousand languages. Their names were seen to
be as meaningless exactly as Bose or Tray, the names of dogs.[171] Men
get named no better.

We seem to be distinct ourselves, never repeated, and yet we bear
no names which express a proportionate distinctness; they are quite
accidental. Take away their names, and you leave men a wild herd,
distinguished only by their individual qualities. It is as if you were
to give names in the Caffre dialect to the individuals in a herd of
spring-boks or gnus.

We have but few patronymics, but few Christian names, in proportion
to the number of us. Is it that men ceased to be original when genuine
and original names ceased to be given. Have we not enough character to
establish a new patronymic.

Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were _named_
merely in the gross, as they are known. It would only be necessary to
know the genus and, perchance, the species and variety, to know the
individual.

I will not allow _mere names_ to make distinctions for me, but still
see men in herds for all _them_. A familiar name cannot make a man less
strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his
own wild title earned in the woods. I see that the neighbor who wears
the familiar epithet of William or Edwin takes it off with his jacket.
It does not adhere to him when asleep or when in anger, or aroused by
any passion or inspiration. I seem to hear pronounced by some of his
kin at such a time his original wild name in some jaw-breaking or else
melodious tongue. As the names of the Poles and Russians are to us, so
are ours to them.

Our names are as cheap as the names given to dogs. We know what are
dogs’ names; we know what are men’s names. Sometimes it would be
significant and truer, it would lead to generalization, it would avoid
exaggeration, to say, “_There was a man_ who said or did—,” instead of
designating him by some familiar, but perchance delusive, name.

We hardly believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a name
of his own.[172]

It is interesting to see how the names of famous men are repeated,—even
of great poets and philosophers. The poet is not known to-day even by
his neighbors to be more than a common man. He is perchance the butt
of many. The proud farmer looks down [on] and boorishly ignores him,
or regards him as a loafer who treads down his grass, but perchance
in course of time the poet will have so succeeded that some of the
farmer’s posterity, though equally boorish with their ancestor, will
bear the poet’s name. The boor names his boy Homer, and so succumbs
unknowingly to the bard’s victorious fame. Anything so fine as poetic
genius he cannot more directly recognize. The unpoetic farmer names his
child Homer.

You have a wild savage in you, and a savage name is perchance somewhere
recorded as yours.[173]


_May 23. Friday._ And wilder still there grows elsewhere, I hear,
a native and aboriginal crab-apple, _Malus_ (as Michaux, or, as
Emerson has it, _Pyrus_) _coronaria_ in Southern States, and also
_angustifolia_ in the Middle States; whose young leaves “have a
bitter and slightly aromatic taste” (Michaux), whose beautiful flowers
perfume the air to a great distance. “The apples ... are small, green,
intensely acid, and very odoriferous. Some farmers make cider of them,
which is said to be excellent: they make very fine sweet-meats also,
by the addition of a large quantity of sugar” (Michaux). Celebrated
for “the beauty of its flowers, and for the sweetness of its perfume”
(Michaux).[174]

Michaux says that the wild apple of Europe has yielded to cultivation
nearly three hundred species in France alone. Emerson says, referring
to Loudon, “In 1836, the catalogue and the gardens of the London
Horticultural Society contained upwards of 1400 distinct sorts, and new
ones are every year added.”

But here are species which they have not in their catalogue, not to
mention the varieties which the crab might yield to cultivation.[175]

This genus, so kind to the human race, the _Malus_ or _Pyrus_;
_Rosaceæ_ the family, or others say _Pomaceæ_. Its flowers are perhaps
the most beautiful of any tree. I am frequently compelled to turn
and linger by some more than usually beautiful two-thirds-expanded
blossoms.[176] If such were not so common, its fame would be loud as
well as wide. Its most copious and delicious blossoms.

But our wild apple is wild perchance like myself, who belong not to
the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into the woods from the
cultivated stock,[177]—where the birds, where winged thoughts or
agents, have planted or are planting me. Even these at length furnish
hardy stocks for the orchard.

You might call one _Malus oculata_; another _M. Iridis_; _M. cum
parvuli dæmonis oculis_, or Imp-eyed; Blue-Jay Apple, or _M. corvi
cristati_; Wood-Dell Apple (_M. silvestri-vallis_); Field-Dell Apple
(_M. campestri-vallis_); Meadow Apple (_M. pratensis_); Rock Meadow
Apple (_saxopratensis_); Partridge or Grouse Apple or bud [_sic_];
Apple of the Hesperides (_Malus Hesperidum_); Woodside Apple;
Wood Apple (_M. silvatica_); the Truant’s Apple (_M. cessatoris_);
Saunterer’s Apple (_M. erronis vel vagabundi_); the Wayside Apple
(_M. trivialis_); Beauty of the Air (_decus aëris_); December-eating;
Frozen-thawed (_gelato-soluta_ or _gelata regelata_); the Concord Apple
(_M. Concordiensis_); the Brindled Apple; Wine of New England (_M.
vinosa_); the Chickaree Apple; the Green Apple (_M. viridis_); the
Dysentery or Cholera-morbus Apple.[178]

Distinctly related things are strangely near in _fact_, brush one
another with their jackets. Perchance this window-seat in which we sit
discoursing Transcendentalism, with only Germany and Greece stretching
behind our minds, was made so deep because this was a few years ago a
garrison-house, with thick log walls, bullet-proof, behind which men
sat to escape the wild red man’s bullet and the arrow and the tomahawk,
and bullets fired by Indians are now buried in its walls. Pythagoras
seems near compared with them.


_May 24. Saturday._ Our most glorious experiences are a kind of regret.
Our regret is so sublime that we may mistake it for triumph. It is
the painful, plaintively sad surprise of our Genius remembering our
past lives and contemplating what is possible. It is remarkable that
men commonly never refer to, never hint at, any crowning experiences
when the common laws of their being were unsettled and the divine and
eternal laws prevailed in them. Their lives are not revolutionary; they
never recognize any other than the local and temporal authorities. It
is a regret so divine and inspiring, so genuine, based on so true and
distinct a contrast, that it surpasses our proudest boasts and the
fairest expectations.

My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awaking in the
morning. I frequently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my
unremembered dreams had been divine, as if my spirit had journeyed to
its native place, and, in the act of reëntering its native body, had
diffused an elysian fragrance around.

The Genius says: “Ah! That is what you were! That is what you may yet
be!” It is glorious for us to be able to regret even such an existence.

A sane and growing man revolutionizes every day. What institutions of
man can survive a morning experience? A single night’s sleep, if we
have indeed slumbered and forgotten anything and grown in our sleep,
puts them behind us like the river Lethe. It is no unusual thing for
him to see the kingdoms of this world pass away.[179]

       *       *       *       *       *

It is an interesting inquiry to seek for the medicines which will
cure our ails in the plants which grow around us. At first we are not
disposed to believe that man and plants are so intimately related. Very
few plants have been medically examined. And yet this is the extent
of most men’s botany; and it is more extensive than would at first be
supposed. The botanist is startled by some countryman’s familiarity
with an obscure plant to him rare and strange. He, who has been an
observer for some years, knows not what it is, but the unobserving
countryman, who sees nothing but what is thrust upon him, or the old
woman who rarely goes out of the house, shows an easy familiarity with
it and can call it by name.

I am struck by the fact that, though any important individual
experience is rare, though it is so rare that the individual is
conscious of a relation to his maker transcending time and space and
earth, though any knowledge of, or communication from, “Providence”
is the rarest thing in the world, yet men very easily, regarding
themselves in the gross, speak of carrying out the designs of
Providence as nations. How often the Saxon man talks of carrying out
the designs of Providence, as if he had some knowledge of Providence
and His designs. Men allow themselves to associate Providence and
designs of Providence with their dull, prosaic, every-day thoughts
of things. That language is usurped by the stalest and deadest
prose, which can only report the most choice poetic experience. This
“Providence” is the stalest jest in the universe. The office-boy sweeps
out his office “by the leave of Providence.”


_May 25._ A fine, freshening air, a little hazy, that bathes and washes
everything, saving the day from extreme heat. Walked to the hills south
of Wayland by the road by Deacon Farrar’s. First vista just beyond
Merron’s (?), looking west down a valley, with a verdant-columned elm
at the extremity of the vale and the blue hills and horizon beyond.
These are the resting-places in a walk. We love to see any part of the
earth tinged with blue, cerulean, the color of the sky, the celestial
color. I wonder that houses are not oftener located mainly that they
may command particular rare prospects, every convenience yielding to
this. The farmer would never suspect what it was you were buying, and
such sites would be the cheapest of any. A site where you might avail
yourself of the art of Nature for three thousand years, which could
never be materially changed or taken from you, a noble inheritance
for your children. The true sites for human dwellings are unimproved.
They command no price in the market. Men will pay something to look
into a travelling showman’s box, but not to look upon the fairest
prospects on the earth. A vista where you have the near green horizon
contrasted with the distant blue one, terrestrial with celestial earth.
The prospect of a vast horizon must be accessible in our neighborhood.
Where men of enlarged views may be educated. An unchangeable kind of
wealth, a _real_ estate.

There we found the celandine in blossom and the _Ranunculus bulbosus_,
which we afterwards saw _double_ in Wayland, having nine petals.

The _Pyrus arbutifolia_, variety _melanocarpa_. Gray makes also the
variety _erythrocarpa_. Is this the late red choke-berry of the swamps?
and is the former the earlier black one of the swamps?

By Farrar’s the _Nepeta Glechoma_, a kind of mint. Linnæus calls it
_Glechoma hederacea_. Looks somewhat like catnep.

The marsh-marigold, _Caltha palustris_, improperly called cowslip.

The white oak, _Quercus alba_. And the commonest scrub oak, the bear or
black oak, _Q. ilicifolia_.

The chinquapin, or dwarf chestnut, oak, the smallest of our oaks, _Q.
prinoides_.

The _Cratægus coccinea_ (?), or scarlet-fruited thorn (?)

Another glorious vista with a wide horizon at the yellow Dutch house,
just over the Wayland line, by the black spruce, heavy and dark as
night, which we could see two or three miles as a landmark. Now at
least, before the deciduous trees have fully expanded their leaves, it
is remarkably black. It is more stoutly and irregularly branched than
Holbrook’s spruces—has a much darker foliage; but the cone scales of
both are slightly waved or notched. Are they, then, both black spruce?
The cones are enough like, and the thickness of the leaves; their
color enough unlike. Here is a view of the Jenkins house, the fish-pole
house, and Wachusett beyond.

Noticed what I think must be a young poison sumach[180] abundant by the
roadside in woods, with last year’s berries, with small greenish-yellow
flowers, but leaves not pinnatifid, three together; from one to two
feet high. What is it?

_Alnus serrulata_, the common alder, with a grayish stem, leaves smooth
on both sides.

_Alnus incana_, the speckled alder, downy on under side of leaves.

The hard-berried plant seems to be _Andromeda ligustrina_ (?) of Gray,
_A. paniculata_ of Bigelow, _Lyonia paniculata_ of Emerson.

Thyme-leaved veronica, little bluish-white, streak-petalled flower by
road sides. _Silene Pennsylvanica._

What is the orange-yellow aster-like flower of the meadows now in
blossom with a sweet-smelling stem when bruised?[181]

What the delicate pinkish and yellowish flower with hoary-green stem
and leaves, of rocky hills.[182]

Saw Bunker Hill Monument and Charlestown from the Wayland hills, and
across the valleys to Milton Hill.[183] Westward, or west by south,
an island in a pond or in the river (!which see!) A grand horizon.
Probably saw the elm between Wayland and Weston which is seen so far
in the horizon from the northwest part of Sudbury. A good, a rare place
this must be to view the Sudbury or Wayland meadows a little earlier.

Came back across lots to the black spruce.

Now, at 8.30 o’clock P. M., I hear the dreaming of the frogs.[184] So
it seems to me, and so significantly passes my life away. It is like
the dreaming of frogs in a summer evening.


_May 27._ I saw an organ-grinder this morning before a rich man’s
house, thrilling the street with harmony, loosening the very
paving-stones and tearing the routine of life to rags and tatters, when
the lady of the house shoved up a window and in a semiphilanthropic
tone inquired if he wanted anything to eat. But he, very properly it
seemed to me, kept on grinding and paid no attention to her question,
feeding her ears with melody unasked for. So the world shoves up its
window and interrogates the poet, and sets him to gauging ale casks in
return. It seemed to me that the music suggested that the recompense
should be as fine as the gift. It would be much nobler to enjoy the
music, though you paid no money for it, than to presume always a
beggarly relation. It is after all, perhaps, the best instrumental
music that we have.


_May 28._ The trees now begin to shade the streets. When the sun
gets high in the sky the trees give shade. With oppressive heats come
refreshing shadows.

The buttercups spot the churchyard.


_May 29._ It is evident that the virtues of plants are almost
completely unknown to us, and we esteem the few with which we are
better acquainted unreasonably above the many which are comparatively
unknown to us. Bigelow says: “It is a subject of some curiosity to
consider, if the knowledge of the present Materia Medica were by any
means to be lost, how many of the same articles would again rise
into notice and use. Doubtless a variety of new substances would
develop unexpected powers, while perhaps the poppy would be shunned
as a deleterious plant, and the cinchona might grow unmolested upon
the mountains of Quito.” Sawyer regards _Nux vomica_ among the most
valuable. B. says (1817): “We have yet to discover our anodynes and
our emetics, although we abound in bitters, astringents, aromatics,
and demulcents. In the present state of our knowledge we could not
well dispense with opium and ipecacuanha, yet a great number of foreign
drugs, such as gentian, columbo, chamomile, kino, catechu, cascarilla,
canella, etc., for which we pay a large annual tax to other countries,
might in all probability be superseded by the indigenous products of
our own. It is certainly better that our own country people should have
the benefit of collecting such articles, than that we should pay for
them to the Moors of Africa, or the Indians of Brazil.”

The thorn-apple (_Datura Stramonium_) (apple of Peru, devil’s-apple,
Jamestown-weed) “emigrates with great facility, and often springs
up in the ballast of ships, and in earth carried from one country to
another.” It secretes itself in the hold of vessels and migrates. It
is a sort of cosmopolitan weed, a roving weed. What adventures! What
historian knows when first it came into a country! He quotes Beverly’s
“History of Virginia” as saying that some soldiers in the days of
Bacon’s rebellion, having eaten some of this plant, which was boiled
for salad by mistake, were made natural fools and buffoons by it for
eleven days, without injury to their bodies (? ?).

The root of a biennial or perennial will accumulate the virtues of the
plant more than any other part.

B. says that Pursh states that the sweet-scented goldenrod (_Solidago
odora_) “has for some time [_i. e._ before 1817][185] been an article
of exportation to China, where it fetches a high price.” And yet it is
known to very few New-Englanders.

“No botanist,” says B., “even if in danger of starving in a wilderness,
would indulge his hunger on a root or fruit taken from an unknown
plant of the natural order _Luridæ_, of the _Multisiliquæ_, or the
_umbelliferous aquatics_. On the contrary he would not feel a moment’s
hesitation in regard to any of the _Gramina_, the fruit of the
_Pomaceæ_ and several other natural families of plants, which are known
to be uniformly innocent in their effects.”

The aromatic flavor of the checkerberry is also perceived in the
_Gaultheria hispidula_, in _Spiræa ulmaria_ and the root of _Spiræa
lobata_, and in the birches.

He says ginseng, spigelia, snake-root, etc., form considerable articles
of exportation.

The odor of skunk-cabbage is perceived in some North American currants,
as _Ribes rigens_ of Michaux on high mountains.

At one time the Indians about Quebec and Montreal were so taken up
with searching for ginseng that they could not be hired for any other
purpose. It is said that both the Chinese and the Indians named this
plant from its resemblance to the figure of a man.[186]

The Indians use the bark of _Dirca palustris_, or leather-wood,
for their cordage. It was after the long-continued search of many
generations that these qualities were discovered.

Of tobacco (_Nicotiana Tabacum_) B. says, after speaking of its
poisonous qualities: “Yet the first person who had courage and patience
enough to persevere in its use, until habit had overcome his original
disgust, eventually found in it a pleasing sedative, a soother of
care, and a material addition to the pleasures of life. Its use, which
originated among savages, has spread into every civilized country;
it has made its way against the declamations of the learned, and the
prohibitions of civil and religious authority, and it now gives rise
to an extensive branch of agriculture, or of commerce, in every part of
the globe.” Soon after its introduction into Europe, “the rich indulged
in it as a luxury of the highest kind; and the poor gave themselves
up to it, as a solace for the miseries of life.” Several varieties are
cultivated.

In return for many foreign weeds, we have sent abroad, says B., “the
_Erigeron Canadensis_ and the prolific families of _Ambrosia_ and
_Amaranthus_.”

“The Indians were acquainted with the medicinal properties of more than
one species of Euphorbia.”

I noticed the button-bush, May 25th, around an elevated pond or
mud-hole, its leaves just beginning to expand. This slight amount of
green contrasted with its dark, craggly [_sic_], naked-looking stem and
branches—as if subsiding waters had left them bare—looked Dantesque and
infernal. It is not a handsome bush at this season, it is so slow to
put out its leaves and hide its naked and unsightly stems.

The _Andromeda ligustrina_ is late to leave out.

_Malus excelsa_; _amara_; _florida_; _palustris_; _gratissima_;
_ramosa_; _spinosa_; _ferruginea_; _aromatica_; _aurea_; _rubiginosa_;
_odorata_; _tristis_; _officinalis!! herbacea_; _vulgaris_;
_æstivalis_; _autumnalis_; _riparia_; _versicolor_; _communis_;
_farinosa_; _super septa pendens_;[187] _Malus sepium_; _vinum
Novæ-Angliæ_; _succosa_; _sæpe formicis præoccupata_; _vermiculosa
aut verminosa aut a vermibus corrupta vel erosa_; _Malus semper
virens et viridis_; _cholera-morbifera_ or _dysenterifera_; _M.
sylvestripaludosa, excelsa et ramosa superne, difficilis conscendere_,
(_fructus difficillimus stringere, parvus et durus_); _Cortex picis
perforata_ or _perterebata_; _rupestris_; _agrestis_; _arvensis_;
_Assabettia_; Railroad Apple; _Musketaquidensis_; Dew Apple
(_rorifera_); the apple whose fruit we tasted in our youth which grows
_passim et nusquam_, (_Malus cujus fructum ineunte ætate gustavi quæ
passim et nusquam viget_); our own particular apple; _Malus numquam
legata vel stricta_; _cortice muscosâ_; _Malus viæ-ferreæ_; _sylvatica
in sylvis densissimis_.[188]


_May 30. Friday._ There was a Concord man once who had a foxhound named
Burgoyne. He called him Bug_īne_. A good name.[189]


_May 31._ _Pedestrium solatium in apricis locis; nodosa._[190]




V

JUNE, 1851

(ÆT. 33)


_June 3. Tuesday._ Lectured in Worcester last Saturday, and walked to
_As-_ or _Has_nebumskit Hill in Paxton the next day. Said to be the
highest land in Worcester County except Wachusett.

Met Mr. Blake, Brown, Chamberlin, Hinsdale, Miss Butman (?), Wyman,
Conant.

Returned to Boston yesterday. Conversed with John Downes, who is
connected with the Coast Survey, is printing tables for astronomical,
geodesic, and other uses. He tells me that he once saw the common
sucker in numbers piling up stones as big as his fist (like the piles
which I have seen), taking them up or moving them with their mouths.

Dr. Harris suggests that the mountain cranberry which I saw at Ktaadn
was the _Vaccinium Vitis-Idæa_, cow-berry, because it was edible and
not the _Uva-Ursi_, or bear-berry, which we have in Concord.

Saw the _Uvularia perfoliata_, perfoliate bellwort, in Worcester near
the hill; an abundance of mountain laurel on the hills, now budded to
blossom and the fresh lighter growth contrasting with the dark green;
an abundance of very large checkerberries, or partridge-berries, as
Bigelow calls them, on Hasnebumskit. Sugar maples about there. A very
extensive view, but the western view not so much wilder as I expected.
See Barre, about fifteen miles off, and Rutland, etc., etc. Not so much
forest as in our neighborhood; high, swelling hills, but less shade for
the walker. The hills are green, the soil springier; and it is written
that water is more easily obtained on the hill than in the valleys. Saw
a Scotch fir, the pine so valued for tar and naval uses in the north of
Europe.

Mr. Chamberlin told me that there was no corporation in Worcester
except the banks (which I suspect may not be literally true), and
hence their freedom and independence. I think it likely there is a gas
company to light the streets at least.

John Mactaggart finds the ice thickest not in the largest lakes in
Canada, nor in the smallest, where the surrounding forests melt it. He
says that the surveyor of the boundary-line between England and United
States on the Columbia River saw pine trees which would require sixteen
feet in the blade to a cross-cut saw to do anything with them.

I examined to-day a large swamp white oak in Hubbard’s meadow, which
was blown down by the same storm which destroyed the lighthouse.
At five feet from the ground it was nine and three fourths feet
in circumference; the first branch at eleven and a half feet from
ground; and it held its size up to twenty-three feet from the ground.
Its whole height, measured on the ground, was eighty feet, and its
breadth about sixty-six feet. The roots on one side were turned up
with the soil on them, making an object very conspicuous a great
distance off, the highest root being eighteen feet from the ground
and fourteen feet above centre of trunk. The roots, which were small
and thickly interlaced, were from three to nine inches beneath the
surface (in other trees I saw them level with the surface) and thence
extended fifteen to eighteen inches in depth (_i. e._ to this depth
they occupied the ground). They were broken off at about eleven feet
from the centre of the trunk and were there on an average one inch in
diameter, the largest being three inches in diameter. The longest root
was broken off at twenty feet from the centre, and was there three
quarters of an inch in diameter. The tree was rotten within. The lower
side of the soil (what was originally the lower), which clothed the
roots for nine feet from the centre of the tree, was white and clayey
to appearance, and a sparrow was sitting on three eggs within the mass.
Directly under where the massive trunk had stood, and within a foot of
the surface, you could apparently strike in a spade and meet with no
obstruction to a free cultivation. There was no taproot to be seen. The
roots were encircled with dark, nubby rings. The tree, which still had
a portion of its roots in the ground and held to them by a sliver on
the leeward side, was alive and had leaved out, though on many branches
the leaves were shrivelled again. _Quercus bicolor_ of Bigelow, _Q.
Prinus discolor_ Mx. f.

  [Illustration]

I observed the grass waving to-day for the first time,—the swift
Camilla on it. It might have been noticed before. You might have seen
it now for a week past on grain-fields.

Clover has blossomed.

I noticed the indigo-weed a week or two ago pushing up like asparagus.
Methinks it must be the small andromeda (?), that dull red mass of
leaves in the swamp, mixed perchance with the rhodora, with its dry
fruitlike appendages, as well as the _Andromeda paniculata_, else
called _ligustrina_, and the clethra. It was the golden senecio
(_Senecio aureus_) which I plucked a week ago in a meadow in Wayland.
The earliest, methinks, of the aster and autumnal-looking yellow
flowers. Its bruised stems enchanted me with their indescribable sweet
odor, like I cannot think what.

The _Phaseolus vulgaris_ includes several kinds of bush beans, of which
those I raised were one.


_June 6. Friday._ Gathered last night the strong, rank,
penetrating-scented angelica.

Under the head of the _Cicuta maculata_, or American hemlock,—“It
is a rule sanctioned by the observations of medical botanists, that
umbelliferous plants, which grow in or about the water, are of a
poisonous nature.”[191] He does not say that the angelica is poisonous,
but I suppose that it is. It has such a rank, offensive, and killing
odor as makes me think of the ingredients of the witches’ cauldron. It
did not leave my hands, which had carried it, long after I had washed
them. A strong, penetrating, lasting, and sickening odor.

Gathered to-night the _Cicuta maculata_, American hemlock, the veins of
the leaflets ending in the notches and the root fasciculated.

Bigelow says, “The leaves of the _Solidago odora_ have a delightfully
fragrant odor, partaking of that of anise and sassafras, but different
from either.”[192]


_June 7._ My practicalness is not to be trusted to the last. To be
sure, I go upon my legs for the most part, but, being hard-pushed and
dogged by a superficial common sense which is bound to near objects
by beaten paths, I am off the handle, as the phrase is,—I begin to be
transcendental and show where my heart is. I am like those guinea-fowl
which Charles Darwin saw at the Cape de Verd Islands. He says, “They
avoided us like partridges on a rainy day in September, running with
their heads cocked up; and if pursued, they readily took to the wing.”
Keep your distance, do not infringe on the interval between us, and I
will pick up lime and lay real terrestrial eggs for you, and let you
know by cackling when I have done it.

When I have been asked to speak at a temperance meeting, my answer has
been, “I am too transcendental to serve you in your way.” They would
fain confine me to the rum-sellers and rum-drinkers, of whom I am not
one, and whom I know little about.

It is a certain faeryland where we live. You may walk out in any
direction over the earth’s surface, lifting your horizon, and
everywhere your path, climbing the convexity of the globe, leads you
between heaven and earth, not away from the light of the sun and stars
and the habitations of men. I wonder that I ever get five miles on
my way, the walk is so crowded with events and phenomena. How many
questions there are which I have not put to the inhabitants!

But how far can you carry _your_ practicalness? How far does your
knowledge really extend? When I have read in deeds only a hundred years
old the words “to enjoy and possess, he and his assigns, _forever_,”
I have seen how short-sighted is the sense which conducts from day to
day. When I read the epitaphs of those who died a century ago, they
seem deader even than they expected. A day seems proportionally a long
part of your “forever and a day.”

There are few so temperate and chaste that they can afford to remind us
even at table that they have a palate and a stomach.

We believe that the possibility of the future far exceeds the
accomplishment of the past. We review the past with the common sense,
but we anticipate the future with transcendental senses. In our sanest
moments we find ourselves naturally expecting or prepared for far
greater changes than any which we have experienced within the period
of distinct memory, only to be paralleled by experiences which are
forgotten. Perchance there are revolutions which create an interval
impassable to the memory.

With reference to the near past, we all occupy the region of common
sense, but in the prospect of the future we are, by instinct,
transcendentalists.

We affirm that all things are possible, but only these things have
been to our knowledge. I do not even infer the future _from what I
know of the past_. I am hardly better acquainted with the past than
with the future. What is new to the individual may be familiar to the
experience of his race. It must be rare indeed that the experience
of the individual transcends that of his race. It will be perceived
that there are two kinds of change,—that of the race, and that of the
individual within the limits of the former.

       *       *       *       *       *

One of those gentle, straight-down rainy days, when the rain begins
by spotting the cultivated fields as if shaken from a pepper-box; a
fishing day, when I see one neighbor after another, having donned his
oil-cloth suit, walking or riding past with a fish-pole, having struck
work,—a day and an employment to make philosophers of them all.

       *       *       *       *       *

When introduced to high life I cannot help perceiving how it is as a
thing jumped at, and I find that I do not get on in my enjoyment of
the fine arts which adorn it, because my attention is wholly occupied
with the jump, remembering that the greatest genuine leap on record,
due to human muscles alone, is that of certain wandering Arabs who
cleared twenty-five feet on level ground. The first question which I
am tempted to put to the proprietor of such great impropriety is, “Who
boosts you?” Are you one of the ninety-nine who fail or the hundredth,
who succeeds?


_June 8. Sunday._ In F. A. Michaux’s, _i. e._ the younger Michaux’s,
“Voyage à l’ouest des Monts Alléghanys, 1802,” printed at Paris, 1808:—

He says the common inquiry in the newly settled West was, “‘From what
part of the world have you come?’ As if these vast and fertile regions
would naturally be the point of union (_réunion_, meeting) and the
common country of all the inhabitants of the globe.”[193]

The current of the Ohio is so swift in the spring that it is not
necessary to row. Indeed rowing would do more harm than good, since
it would tend to turn the ark out of the current on to some isle or
sand-bar, where it would be entangled amid floating trees. This has
determined the form of the bateaux, which are not the best calculated
for swiftness but to obey the current. They are from fifteen to fifty
feet long by ten to twelve and fifteen, with square ends, and roof of
boards like a house at one end. The sides are about four and a half
feet above the water. “I was alone on the shore of the Monongahela,
when I perceived, for the first time, in the distance, five or six of
these bateaux which were descending this river. I could not conceive
what those great square boxes were, which, abandoned to the current,
presented alternately their ends, their sides, and even (or also (?),
_et même_) their angles. As they came nearer, I heard a confused noise
but without distinguishing anything, on account of the elevation of the
sides. It was only on ascending the bank of the river that I perceived,
in these bateaux, many families carrying with them their horses, cows,
poultry, dismounted carts (_charrettes_), plows, harnesses, beds,
agricultural implements, in short all that constitute the movables of a
household (_ménage_) and the carrying on (_exploitation_) of a farm.”
But he was obliged to paddle his log canoe “_sans cesse_” because of
the sluggishness of the current of the Ohio in April, 1802.

A Vermonter told him that the expense of clearing land in his State
was always defrayed by the potash obtained from the ashes of the trees
which were burnt, and sometimes people took land to clear on condition
that they should have what potash they could make.

After travelling more than three thousand miles in North America, he
says that no part is to be compared for the “_force végétative des
forêts_” to the region of the Ohio between Wheeling and Marietta.
Thirty-six miles above the last place he measured a plane tree
on the bank of the Ohio which, at four feet from the ground, was
forty-seven in circumference. It is true it was “_renflé d’une manière
prodigieuse_.” Tulip and plane trees, his father had said, attained the
greatest diameter of North American trees.

Ginseng was then the only “territorial” production of Kentucky which
would pay the expense of transportation _by land_ to Philadelphia. They
collected it from spring to the first frosts. Even hunters carried
for this purpose, beside their guns, a bag and a little “_pioche_.”
From twenty-five to thirty “_milliers pesant_” were then transported
annually, and this commerce was on the increase. Some transported it
themselves from Kentucky to China, _i. e._ without selling it [to]
the merchants of the seaboard. Traders in Kentucky gave twenty to
twenty-four “sous” the pound for it.

They habituated their wild hogs to return to the house from time to
time by distributing corn for them once or twice a week. So I read that
in Buenos Ayres they collect the horses into the corral twice a week to
keep them tame in a degree.

       *       *       *       *       *

Gathered the first strawberries to-day.

Observed on Fair Haven a tall pitch pine, such as some call yellow
pine,—very smooth, yellowish, and destitute of branches to a great
height. The outer and darker-colored bark appeared to have scaled
off, leaving a fresh and smooth surface. At the ground, all round the
tree, I saw what appeared to be the edges of the old surface scales,
extending to two inches more in thickness. The bark was divided into
large, smooth plates, one to two feet long and four to six inches wide.

I noticed that the cellular portion of the bark of the canoe birch
log from which I stripped the epidermis a week or two ago was turned
a complete brick-red color very striking to behold and reminding
me of the red man and all strong, natural things,—the color of our
blood somewhat. Under the epidermis it was still a sort of buff. The
different colors of the various parts of this bark, at various times,
fresh or stale, are extremely agreeable to my eye.

I found the white-pine-top full of staminate blossom-buds not yet fully
grown or expanded, with a rich red tint like a tree full of fruit, but
I could find no pistillate blossom.

The fugacious-petalled cistus, and the pink, and the lupines of various
tints are seen together.

Our outside garments, which are often thin and fanciful and merely for
show, are our epidermis, hanging loose and fantastic like that of the
yellow birch, which may be cast off without harm, stripped off here and
there without fatal injury; sometimes called cuticle and false skin.
The vital principle wholly wanting in it; partakes not of the life of
the plant. Our thicker and more essential garments are our cellular
integument. When this is removed, the tree is said to be girdled and
dies. Our shirt is the cortex, liber, or true bark, beneath which
is found the alburnum or sap-wood, while the heart in old stocks is
commonly rotten or has disappeared. As if we grew like trees, and were
of the exogenous kind.


_June 9._ James Wood, Senior, told me to-day that Asa (?) Melvin’s
father told him that he had seen alewives caught (many of them) in the
meadow which we were crossing, on the west of Bateman’s Pond, where now
there is no stream, and though it is wet you can walk everywhere; also
one shad. He thinks that a great part of the meadow once belonged to
the pond.

Gathered the _Linnæa borealis_.


_June 11. Wednesday._ Last night a beautiful summer night, not too
warm, moon not quite full, after two or three rainy days. Walked to
Fair Haven by railroad, returning by Potter’s pasture and Sudbury
road. I feared at first that there would be too much white light,
like the pale remains of daylight, and not a yellow, gloomy, dreamier
light; that it would be like a candlelight by day; but when I got
away from the town and deeper into the night, it was better. I hear
whip-poor-wills, and see a few fireflies in the meadow.

I saw by the shadows cast by the inequalities of the clayey sand-bank
in the Deep Cut that it was necessary to see objects by moonlight
as well as sunlight, to get a complete notion of them. This bank had
looked much more flat by day, when the light was stronger, but now the
heavy shadows revealed its prominences. The prominences are light, made
more remarkable by the dark shadows which they cast.

When I rose out of the Deep Cut into the old pigeon-place field, I rose
into a warmer stratum of air, it being lighter. It told of the day, of
sunny noontide hours,—an air in which work had been done, which men had
breathed. It still remembered the sunny banks,—of the laborer wiping
his brow, of the bee humming amid flowers, the hum of insects. Here is
a puff of warmer air which has taken its station on the hills; which
has come up from the sultry plains of noon.[194]

I hear the nighthawks uttering their squeaking notes high in the air
now at nine o’clock P. M., and occasionally—what I do not remember to
have heard so late—their booming note. It sounds more as if under a
cope than by day. The sound is not so fugacious, going off to be lost
amid the spheres, but is echoed hollowly to earth, making the low roof
of heaven vibrate. Such a sound is more confused and dissipated by day.

The whip-poor-will suggests how wide asunder [are] the woods and the
town. Its note is very rarely heard by those who live on the street,
and then it is thought to be of ill omen. Only the dwellers on the
outskirts of the village hear it occasionally. It sometimes comes into
their yards. But go into the woods in a warm night at this season, and
it is the prevailing sound. I hear now five or six at once. It is no
more of ill omen therefore here than the night and the moonlight are.
It is a bird not only of the woods, but of the night side of the woods.

New beings have usurped the air we breathe, rounding Nature, filling
her crevices with sound. To sleep where you may hear the whip-poor-will
in your dreams!

I hear from this upland, from which I see Wachusett by day, a wagon
crossing one of the bridges. I have no doubt that in some places
to-night I should be sure to hear every carriage which crossed a bridge
over the river within the limits of Concord, for in such an hour and
atmosphere the sense of hearing is wonderfully assisted and asserts
a new dignity, and [we] become the Hearalls of the story. The late
traveller cannot drive his horse across the distant bridge, but this
still and resonant atmosphere tells the tale to my ear. Circumstances
are very favorable to the transmission of such a sound. In the first
place, planks so placed and struck like a bell swung near the earth
emit a very resonant and penetrating sound; add that the bell is, in
this instance, hung over water, and that the night air, not only on
account of its stillness, but perhaps on account of its density, is
more favorable to the transmission of sound. If the whole town were a
raised planked floor, what a din there would be!

I hear some whip-poor-wills on hills, others in thick wooded vales,
which ring hollow and cavernous, like an apartment or cellar, with
their note. As when I hear the working of some artisan from within an
apartment.

I now descend round the corner of the grain-field, through the pitch
pine wood into a lower field, more inclosed by woods, and find myself
in a colder, damp and misty atmosphere, with much dew on the grass. I
seem to be nearer to the origin of things. There is something creative
and primal in the cool mist. This dewy mist does not fail to suggest
music to me, unaccountably; fertility, the origin of things. An
atmosphere which has forgotten the sun, where the ancient principle of
moisture prevails. It is laden with the condensed fragrance of plants
and, as it were, distilled in dews.

The woodland paths are never seen to such advantage as in a moonlight
night, so embowered, still opening before you almost against
expectation as you walk; you are so completely in the woods, and yet
your feet meet no obstacles. It is as if it were not a path, but an
open, winding passage through the bushes, which your feet find.

Now I go by the spring, and when I have risen to the same level as
before, find myself in the warm stratum again.

The woods are about as destitute of inhabitants at night as the
streets. In both there will be some night-walkers. There are but few
wild creatures to seek their prey. The greater part of its inhabitants
have retired to rest.

Ah, that life that I have known! How hard it is to remember what is
most memorable! We remember how we itched, not how our hearts beat.
I can sometimes recall to mind the quality, the immortality, of my
youthful life, but in memory is the only relation to it.

The very cows have now left their pastures and are driven home to their
yards. I meet no creature in the fields.

I hear the night-warbler[195] breaking out as in his dreams, made so
from the first for some mysterious reason.

Our spiritual side takes a more distinct form, like our shadow which we
see accompanying us.

I do not know but I feel less vigor at night; my legs will not
carry me so far; as if the night were less favorable to muscular
exertion,—weakened us, somewhat as darkness turns plants pale. But
perhaps my experience is to be referred to being already exhausted by
the day, and I have never tried the experiment fairly. Yet sometimes
after a hard day’s work I have found myself unexpectedly vigorous. It
was so hot summer before last that the Irish laborers on the railroad
worked by night instead of day for a while, several of them having
been killed by the heat and cold water. I do not know but they did as
much work as ever by day. Yet methinks Nature would not smile on such
labors.

Only the Hunter’s and Harvest moons are famous, but I think that each
full moon deserves to be and has its own character well marked. One
might be called the Midsummer-Night Moon.

The wind and water are still awake. At night you are sure to hear
what wind there is stirring. The wind blows, the river flows, without
resting. There lies Fair Haven Lake, undistinguishable from fallen sky.
The pines seem forever foreign, at least to the civilized man,—not only
their aspect but their scent, and their turpentine.

So still and moderate is the night! No scream is heard, whether of fear
or joy. No great comedy nor tragedy is being enacted. The chirping of
crickets is the most universal, if not the loudest, sound. There is no
French Revolution in Nature, no excess. She is warmer or colder by a
degree or two.

By night no flowers, at least no variety of colors. The pinks are no
longer pink; they only shine faintly, reflecting more light. Instead of
flowers underfoot, stars overhead.

My shadow has the distinctness of a second person, a certain black
companion bordering on the imp, and I ask, “Who is this?” which I see
dodging behind me as I am about to sit down on a rock.

No one, to my knowledge, has observed the minute differences in the
seasons. Hardly two nights are alike. The rocks do not feel warm
to-night, for the air is warmest; nor does the sand particularly. A
book of the seasons, each page of which should be written in its own
season and out-of-doors, or in its own locality wherever it may be.

When you get into the road, though far from the town, and feel the sand
under your feet, it is as if you had reached your own gravel walk. You
no longer hear the whip-poor-will, nor regard your shadow, for here you
expect a fellow-traveller. You catch yourself walking merely. The road
leads your steps and thoughts alike to the town. You see only the path,
and your thoughts wander from the objects which are presented to your
senses. You are no longer in place. It is like conformity,—walking in
the ways of men.

In Charles Darwin’s “Voyage of a Naturalist round the World,” commenced
in 1831:—

He gave to Ehrenberg some of an impalpably fine dust which filled the
air at sea near the Cape de Verd Islands, and he found it to consist in
great part of “infusoria with siliceous shields, and of the siliceous
tissue of plants;” found in this sixty-seven different organic forms.
The infusoria with two exceptions inhabitants of fresh water. Vessels
have even run on shore owing to the obscurity. Is seen a thousand miles
from Africa. Darwin found particles of stone above a thousandth of an
inch square.

Speaking of St. Paul’s Rocks, Lat. 58´ N., Long. 29° 15´ W., “Not
a single plant, not even a lichen, grows on this islet; yet it is
inhabited by several insects and spiders. The following list completes,
I believe, the terrestrial fauna: a fly (Olfersia) living on the booby,
and a tick which must have come here as a parasite on the birds; a
small brown moth, belonging to a genus that feeds on feathers; a beetle
(Quedius), and a woodlouse from beneath the dung; and lastly numerous
spiders, which I suppose prey on these small attendants and scavengers
of the waterfowl. The often-repeated description of the stately palm
and other noble tropical plants, then birds, and lastly man, taking
possession of the coral islets as soon as formed, in the Pacific,
is probably not quite correct; I fear it destroys the poetry of this
story, that feather and dirt-feeding and parasitic insects and spiders
should be the first inhabitants of newly-formed oceanic land.”

At Bahia or San Salvador, Brazil, took shelter under a tree “so thick
that it would never have been penetrated by common English rain,” but
not so there.

Of a partridge near the mouth of the Plata, “A man on horseback,
by riding round and round in a circle, or rather in a spire, so as
to approach closer each time, may knock on the head as many as he
pleases.” Refers to Hearne’s Journey, page 383, for “In Arctic North
America the Indians catch the Varying Hare by walking spirally round
and round it, when on its form: the middle of the day is reckoned the
best time, when the sun is high, and the shadow of the hunter not very
long.”

In the same place, “General Rosas is also a perfect horseman—an
accomplishment of no small consequence in a country where an assembled
army elected its general by the following trial: A troop of unbroken
horses being driven into a corral, were let out through a gateway,
above which was a cross-bar: it was agreed whoever should drop from
the bar on one of these wild animals, as it rushed out, and should be
able, without saddle or bridle, not only to ride it, but also to bring
it back to the door of the corral, should be their general. The person
who succeeded was accordingly elected, and doubtless made a general fit
for such an army. This extraordinary feat has also been performed by
Rosas.”

Speaks of the Gaucho sharpening his knife on the back of the armadillo
before he kills him.

Alcide d’Orbigny, from 1825 to 1833 in South America, now (1846)
publishing the results on a scale which places him second to Humboldt
among South American travellers.

Hail in Buenos Ayres as large as small apples; killed thirteen deer,
beside ostriches, which last also it blinded, etc., etc. Dr. Malcomson
told him of hail in India, in 1831, which “much injured the cattle.”
Stones flat, one ten inches in circumference; passed through windows,
making round holes.

A difference in the country about Montevideo and somewhere else
attributed to the manuring and grazing of the cattle. Refers to Atwater
as saying that the same thing is observed in the prairies of North
America, “where coarse grass, between five and six feet high, when
grazed by cattle, changes into common pasture land.” (_Vide_ Atwater’s
words in Silliman’s _North American Journal_, vol. i, p. 117.)

I would like to read Azara’s Voyage.

Speaks[196] of the fennel and the cardoon (_Cynara cardunculus_),
introduced from Europe, now very common in those parts of South
America. The latter occurs now on both sides the Cordilleras across
the continent. In Banda Oriental alone “very many (probably several
hundred) square miles are covered by one mass of these prickly plants,
and are impenetrable by man or beast. Over the undulating plains, where
these great beds occur, nothing else can now live.... I doubt whether
any case is on record of an invasion on so grand a scale of one plant
over the aborigines.”

Horses first landed at the La Plata in 1535. Now these, with cattle
and sheep, have altered the whole aspect of the country,—vegetation,
etc. “The wild pig in some parts probably replaces the peccari; packs
of wild dogs may be heard howling on the wooded banks of the less
frequented streams; and the common cat, altered into a large and fierce
animal, inhabits rocky hills.”

At sea, eye being six feet above level, horizon is two and four fifths
miles distant. “In like manner, the more level the plain, the more
nearly does the horizon approach within these narrow limits; and this,
in my opinion, entirely destroys that grandeur which one would have
imagined that a vast level plain would have possessed.”

Darwin found a tooth of a _native horse_ contemporary with the
mastodon, on the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, though he says there is good
evidence against any horse living in America at the time of Columbus.
He speaks of their remains being common in North America. Owen has
found Darwin’s tooth similar to one Lyell brought from the United
States, but unlike any other, fossil or living, and named this American
horse _Equus curvidens_, from a slight but peculiar curvature in it.

The great table-land of southern Mexico makes the division between
North and South America with reference to the migration of animals.

Quotes Captain Owen’s “Surveying Voyage” for saying that, at the town
of Benguela on the west coast of Africa in a time of great drought,
a number of elephants entered in a body to possess themselves of
the wells. After a desperate conflict and the loss of one man, the
inhabitants—three thousand—drove them off. During a great drought in
India, says Dr. Malcomson, “a hare drank out of a vessel held by the
adjutant of the regiment.”

The guanacos (wild llama) and other animals of this genus have the
habit of dropping their dung from day to day in the same heap. The
Peruvian Indians use it for fuel, and are thus aided in collecting it.

Rowing up a stream which takes its rise in a mountain, you meet at
last with pebbles which have been washed down from it, when many miles
distant. I love to think of this kind of introduction to it.

The only quadruped native to the Falkland Islands is a large wolf-like
fox. As far as he is aware, “there is no other instance in any part of
the world of so small a mass of broken land, distant from a continent,
possessing so large an aboriginal quadruped peculiar to itself.”

In the Falkland Isles, where other fuel is scarce, they frequently cook
their beef with the bones from which the meat has been scraped. Also
they have “a green little bush about the size of common heath, which
has the useful property of burning while fresh and green.”

Saw a cormorant play with its fishy prey as a cat with a mouse,—eight
times let it go and dive after it again.

Seminal propagation produces a more original individual than that by
buds, layers, and grafts.

Some inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego having got some putrid whale’s
blubber in time of famine, “an old man cut off thin slices and
muttering over them, broiled them for a minute, and distributed them to
the famished party, who during this time preserved a profound silence.”
This was the only evidence of any religious worship among them. It
suggests that even the animals may have something divine in them and
akin to revelation,—some inspirations allying them to man as to God.

“Nor is it easy to teach them our superiority except by striking a
fatal blow. Like wild beasts, they do not appear to compare numbers;
for each individual, if attacked, instead of retiring, will endeavor
to dash your brains out with a stone, as certainly as a tiger under
similar circumstances would tear you.”

“We were well clothed, and though sitting close to the fire, were
far from too warm; yet these naked savages, though further off, were
observed, to our great surprise, to be streaming with perspiration at
undergoing such a roasting.”[197]

Ehrenberg examined some of the white paint with which the Fuegians
daub themselves, and found it to be composed of infusoria, including
fourteen polygastrica, and four phytolitharia, inhabitants of fresh
water, all old and known forms!!

Again of the Fuegians: “Simple circumstances—such as the beauty
of scarlet cloth or blue beads, the absence of women, our care in
washing ourselves—excited their admiration far more than any grand or
complicated object, such as our ship. Bougainville has well remarked
concerning these people, that they treat the ‘chef-d’œuvres de
l’industrie humaine, comme ils traitent les loix de la nature es ses
phénomènes.’”

He was informed of a tribe of foot Indians now changing into horse
Indians apparently in Patagonia.

“With the exception of a few berries, chiefly of a dwarf arbutus,
the natives [_i. e._ of Tierra del Fuego][198] eat no vegetable food
besides this fungus” (_Cyttaria Darwinii_). The “only country ... where
a cryptogamic plant affords a staple article of food.”

No reptiles in Tierra del Fuego nor in Falkland Islands.

Describes a species of kelp there,—_Macrocystis pyrifera_. “I know few
things more surprising than to see this plant growing and flourishing
amidst those great breakers of the Western Ocean, which no mass of
rock, let it be ever so hard, can long resist.... A few [stems][199]
taken together are sufficiently strong to support the weight of
the large loose stones to which, in the inland channels, they grow
attached; and yet some of these stones were so heavy that, when drawn
to the surface, they could scarcely be lifted into a boat by one
person.” Captain Cook thought that some of it grew to the length of
three hundred and sixty feet. “The beds of this sea-weed, even when
not of great breadth,” says D., “make excellent natural floating
breakwaters. It is quite curious to see, in an exposed harbor, how
soon the waves from the open sea, as they travel through the straggling
stems, sink in height, and pass into smooth water.”

Number of living creatures of all orders whose existence seems to
depend on the kelp; a volume might be written on them. If a forest were
destroyed anywhere, so many species would not perish as if this weed
were, and with the fish would go many birds and larger marine animals,
and hence the Fuegian himself perchance.

Tree ferns in Van Diemen’s Land (lat. 45°) six feet in circumference.

Missionaries encountered icebergs in Patagonia in latitude
corresponding to the Lake of Geneva, in a season corresponding to June
in Europe. In Europe, the most southern glacier which comes down to
the sea is on coast of Norway, latitude 67°,—20°, or 1230 [geographical
miles] nearer the pole.

Erratic boulders not observed in the intertropical parts of the world;
due to icebergs or glaciers.

Under soil perpetually frozen in North America in 56° at three feet; in
Siberia in 62° at twelve to fifteen feet.

In an excursion from Valparaiso to the base of the Andes: “We unsaddled
our horses near the spring, and prepared to pass the night. The evening
was fine, and the atmosphere so clear that the masts of the vessels
at anchor in the bay of Valparaiso, although no less than twenty-six
geographical miles distant, could be distinguished clearly as little
black streaks.” Anson had been surprised at the distance at which his
vessels were discovered from the coast without knowing the reason,—the
great height of the land and the transparency of the air.

Floating islands from four to six feet thick in Lake Tagua-tagua in
central Chile; blown about.


_June 12._ Listen to music religiously, as if it were the last strain
you might hear.[200]

There would be this advantage in travelling in your own country, even
in your own neighborhood, that you would be so thoroughly prepared to
understand what you saw you would make fewer travellers’ mistakes.

Is not he hospitable who entertains thoughts?


_June 13._ Walked to Walden last night (moon not quite full) by
railroad and upland wood-path, returning by Wayland road. Last full
moon the elms had not leaved out,—cast no heavy shadows,—and their
outlines were less striking and rich in the streets at night.

I noticed night before night before last from Fair Haven how valuable
was some water by moonlight, like the river and Fair Haven Pond, though
far away, reflecting the light with a faint glimmering sheen, as in the
spring of the year. The water shines with an inward light like a heaven
on earth. The silent depth and serenity and majesty of water! Strange
that men should distinguish gold and diamonds, when these precious
elements are so common. I saw a distant river by moonlight, making no
noise, yet flowing, as by day, still to the sea, like melted silver
reflecting the moonlight. Far away it lay encircling the earth. How far
away it may look in the night, and even from a low hill how miles away
down in the valley! As far off as paradise and the delectable country!
There is a certain glory attends on water by night. By it the heavens
are related to the earth, undistinguishable from a sky beneath you.
And I forgot to say that after I reached the road by Potter’s bars,—or
further, by Potter’s Brook,—I saw the moon suddenly reflected full from
a pool. A puddle from which you may see the moon reflected, and the
earth dissolved under your feet. The magical moon with attendant stars
suddenly looking up with mild lustre from a window in the dark earth.

I observed also the same night a halo about my shadow in the moonlight,
which I referred to the accidentally lighter color of the surrounding
surface; I transferred my shadow to the darkest patches of grass,
and saw the halo there equally. It serves to make the outlines of the
shadow more distinct.

But now for last night. A few fireflies in the meadow. Do they shine,
though invisibly, by day? Is their candle lighted by day? It is not
nightfall till the whip-poor-wills begin to sing.

As I entered the Deep Cut, I was affected by beholding the first faint
reflection of genuine and unmixed moonlight on the eastern sand-bank
while the horizon, yet red with day, was tingeing the western side.
What an interval between those two lights! The light of the moon,—in
what age of the world does that fall upon the earth? The moonlight was
as the earliest and dewy morning light, and the daylight tinge reminded
me much more of the night. There were the old and new dynasties
opposed, contrasted, and an interval between, which time could not
span. Then is night, when the daylight yields to the nightlight. It
suggested an interval, a distance not recognized in history. Nations
have flourished in that light.

When I had climbed the sand-bank on the left, I felt the warmer current
or stratum of air on my cheek, like a blast from a furnace.

The white stems of the pines, which reflected the weak light, standing
thick and close together while their lower branches were gone, reminded
me that the pines are only larger grasses which rise to a chaffy head,
and we the insects that crawl between them. They are particularly
grass-like.

How long do the gales retain the heat of the sun? I find them retreated
high up the sides of hills, especially on open fields or cleared
places. Does, perchance, any of this pregnant air survive the dews of
night? Can any of it be found remembering the sun of yesterday even in
the morning hours. Does, perchance, some puff, some blast, survive the
night on elevated clearings surrounded by the forest?

The bullfrog belongs to summer. The different frogs mark the
seasons pretty well,—the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog,[201] and
the bullfrog. I believe that all may be heard at last occasionally
together.

I heard partridges drumming to-night as late as 9 o’clock. What
singularly space penetrating and filling sound! Why am I never nearer
to its source?

We do not commonly live our life out and full; we do not fill all our
pores with our blood; we do not inspire and expire fully and entirely
enough, so that the wave, the comber, of each inspiration shall break
upon our extremest shores, rolling till it meets the sand which bounds
us, and the sound of the surf come back to us. Might not a bellows
assist us to breathe? That our breathing should create a wind in a
calm day! We live but a fraction of our life. Why do we not let on the
flood, raise the gates, and set all our wheels in motion? He that hath
ears to hear, let him hear. Employ your senses.

The newspapers tell us of news not to be named even with that in its
own kind which an observing man can pick up in a solitary walk, as if
it gained some importance and dignity by its publicness. Do we need to
be advertised each day that such is still the routine of life?[202]

The tree-toad’s, too, is a summer sound.

I hear, just as the night sets in, faint notes from time to time from
some sparrow (?) falling asleep,—a vesper hymn,—and later, in the
woods, the chuckling, rattling sound of some unseen bird on the near
trees. The nighthawk booms wide awake.

By moonlight we see not distinctly even the surface of the earth, but
our daylight experience supplies us with confidence.

As I approached the pond down Hubbard’s Path, after coming out of
the woods into a warmer air, I saw the shimmering of the moon on its
surface, and, in the near, now flooded cove, the water-bugs, darting,
circling about, made streaks or curves of light. The moon’s inverted
pyramid of shimmering light commenced about twenty rods off, like so
much micaceous sand. But I was startled to see midway in the dark water
a bright flamelike, more than phosphorescent light crowning the crests
of the wavelets, which at first I mistook for fireflies, and thought
even of cucullos.[203] It had the appearance of a pure, smokeless
flame a half-dozen inches long, issuing from the water and bending
flickeringly along its surface. I thought of St. Elmo’s lights and the
like. But, coming near to the shore of the pond itself, these flames
increased, and I saw that even this was so many broken reflections of
the moon’s disk, though one would have said they were of an intenser
light than the moon herself; from contrast with the surrounding water
they were. Standing up close to the shore and nearer the rippled
surface, I saw the reflections of the moon sliding down the watery
concave like so many lustrous burnished coins poured from a bag with
inexhaustible lavishness, and the lambent flames on the surface were
much multiplied, seeming to slide along a few inches with each wave
before they were extinguished; and I saw how farther and farther off
they gradually merged in the general sheen, which, in fact, was made
up of a myriad little mirrors reflecting the disk of the moon with
equal brightness to an eye rightly placed. The pyramid or sheaf of
light which we see springing from near where we stand only, in fact,
is the outline of that portion of the shimmering surface which an eye
takes in. To myriad eyes suitably placed, the whole surface of the pond
would be seen to shimmer, or rather it would be seen, as the waves
turned up their mirrors, to be covered with those bright flame-like
reflections of the moon’s disk, like a myriad candles everywhere
issuing from the waves; _i. e._ if there were as many eyes as angles
presented by the waves, the whole surface would appear as bright as
the moon; and these reflections are dispersed in all directions into
the atmosphere, flooding it with light. No wonder that water reveals
itself so far by night; even further in many states of the atmosphere
than by day. I thought at first it [was] some unusual phosphorescence.
In some positions these flames were star-like points, brighter than the
brightest stars. Suddenly a flame would show itself in a near and dark
space, precisely like some inflammable gas on the surface,—as if an
inflammable gas made its way up from the bottom.

I heard my old musical, simple-noted owl. The sound of the _dreaming_
frogs[204] prevails over the others. Occasionally a bullfrog near me
made an obscene noise, a sound like an eructation, near me. I think
they must be imbodied eructations. They suggest flatulency.

The pond is higher than ever, so as to hinder fishermen, and I could
hardly get to the true shore here on account of the bushes. I pushed
out in a boat a little and heard the chopping of the waves under its
bow. And on the bottom I saw the moving reflections of the shining
waves, faint streaks of light revealing the shadows of the waves or the
opaqueness of the water.

As I climbed the hill again toward my old bean-field, I listened to
the ancient, familiar, immortal, dear cricket sound under all others,
hearing at first some distinct chirps; but when these ceased I was
aware of the general earth-song, which my hearing had not heard, amid
which these were only taller flowers in a bed, and I wondered if behind
or beneath this there was not some other chant yet more universal. Why
do we not hear when this begins in the spring? and when it ceases in
the fall? Or is it too gradual?

After I have got into the road I have no thought to record all the way
home,—the walk is comparatively barren. The leafy elm sprays seem to
droop more by night (??).


_June 14. Saturday._ Full moon last night. Set out on a walk to
Conantum at 7 P. M. A serene evening, the sun going down behind clouds,
a few white or slightly shaded piles of clouds floating in the eastern
sky, but a broad, clear, mellow cope left for the moon to rise into.
An evening for poets to describe. Met a man driving home his cow from
pasture and stopping to chat with his neighbor; then a boy, who had
set down his pail in the road to stone a bird most perseveringly, whom
I heard afterward behind me telling his pail to be quiet in a tone of
assumed anger, because it squeaked under his arm. As I proceed along
the back road I hear the lark still singing in the meadow, and the
bobolink, and the gold robin on the elms, and the swallows twittering
about the barns. A small bird chasing a crow high in the air, who is
going home at night. All nature is in an expectant attitude. Before
Goodwin’s house, at the opening of the Sudbury road, the swallows
are diving at a tortoise-shell cat, who curvets and frisks rather
awkwardly, as if she did not know whether to be scared or not. And
now, having proceeded a little way down this road, the sun having
buried himself in the low cloud in the west and hung out his crimson
curtains,[205] I hear, while sitting by the wall, the sound of the
stake-driver at a distance,—like that made by a man pumping in a
neighboring farmyard, watering his cattle, or like chopping wood before
his door on a frosty morning,[206] and I can imagine like driving a
stake in a meadow. The pumper. I immediately went in search of the
bird, but, after going a third of a mile, it did not sound much nearer,
and the two parts of the sound did not appear to proceed from the same
place. What is the peculiarity of these sounds which penetrate so far
on the keynote of nature? At last I got near to the brook in the meadow
behind Hubbard’s wood, but I could not tell if [it] were further or
nearer than that. When I got within half a dozen rods of the brook, it
ceased, and I heard it no more. I suppose that I scared it. As before
I was further off than I thought, so now I was nearer than I thought.
It is not easy to understand how so small a creature can make so loud
a sound by merely sucking in or throwing out water with pump-like
lungs.[207] As yet no moon, but downy piles of cloud scattered here and
there in the expectant sky.

Saw a blue flag blossom in the meadow while waiting for the
stake-driver.

It was a sound as of gulping water.

Where my path crosses the brook in the meadow there is a singularly
sweet scent in the heavy air bathing the brakes, where the brakes
grow,—the fragrance of the earth, as if the dew were a distillation
of the fragrant essences of nature. When I reach the road, the farmer
going home from town invites me to ride in his high-set wagon, not
thinking why I walk, nor can I shortly explain. He remarks on the
coolness of the weather. The angelica is budded, a handsome luxuriant
plant. And now my senses are captivated again by a sweet fragrance as
I enter the embowered willow causeway, and I know not if it be from
a particular plant or all together,—sweet-scented vernal grass or
sweet-briar. Now the sun is fairly gone, I hear the dreaming frog,[208]
and the whip-poor-will from some _darker_ wood,—it is not far from
eight,—and the cuckoo. The song sparrows sing quite briskly among the
willows, as if it were spring again, and the blackbird’s harsher note
resounds over the meadows, and the veery’s comes up from the wood.
Fishes are dimpling the surface of the river, seizing the insects which
alight. A solitary fisherman in his boat inhabits the scene. As I rose
the hill beyond the bridge, I found myself in a cool, fragrant, dewy,
up-country, mountain morning air, a new region. (When I had issued from
the willows on to the bridge, it was like coming out of night into
twilight, the river reflected so much light.) The moon was now seen
rising over Fair Haven and at the same time reflected in the river,
pale and white like a silvery cloud, barred with a cloud, not promising
how it will shine anon. Now I meet an acquaintance coming from a remote
field in his hay-rigging, with a jag of wood; who reins up to show me
how large a woodchuck he has killed, which he found eating his clover.
But now he must drive on, for behind comes a boy taking up the whole
road with a huge roller drawn by a horse, which goes lumbering and
bouncing along, getting out of the way of night,—while the sun has gone
the other way,—and making such a noise as if it had the contents of
a tinker’s shop in its bowels, and rolls the whole road smooth like a
newly sown grain-field.

In Conant’s orchard I hear the faint cricket-like song of a sparrow
saying its vespers, as if it were a link between the cricket and the
bird. The robin sings now, though the moon shines silverly, and the
veery jingles its trill. I hear the fresh and refreshing sound of
falling water, as I have heard it in New Hampshire. It is a sound we do
not commonly hear. I see that the whiteweed is in blossom, which, as I
had not walked by day for some time, I had not seen before.

How moderate, deliberate, is Nature! How gradually the shades of night
gather and deepen, giving man ample leisure to bid farewell to-day,
conclude his day’s affairs, and prepare for slumber! The twilight seems
out of proportion to the length of the day. Perchance it saves our
eyes. Now for some hours the farmers have been getting home.

Since the alarm about mad dogs a couple of years ago there are
comparatively few left to bark at the traveller and bay the moon. All
nature is abandoned to me.

You feel yourself—your body, your legs,—more at night, for there
is less beside to be distinctly known, and hence perhaps you think
yourself more tired than you are. I see indistinctly oxen asleep in
the fields, silent in majestic slumber, like the sphinx,—statuesque,
Egyptian, reclining. What solid rest! How their heads are supported!
A sparrow or a cricket makes more noise. From Conant’s summit I hear
as many as fifteen whip-poor-wills—or whip-or-I-wills—at once, the
succeeding cluck sounding strangely foreign, like a hewer at work
elsewhere.

The moon is accumulating yellow light and triumphing over the clouds,
but still the west is suffused here and there with a slight red tinge,
marking the path of the day. Though inexperienced ones might call it
night, it is not yet. Dark, heavy clouds lie along the western horizon,
exhibiting the forms of animals and men, while the moon is behind
a cloud. Why do we detect these forms so readily?—whales or giants
reclining, busts of heroes, Michael-Angelic. There is the gallery of
statuary, the picture gallery of man,—not a board upon an Italian’s
head, but these dark figures along the horizon,—the board some Titan
carries on his head. What firm and heavy outlines for such soft and
light material!

How sweet and encouraging it is to hear the sound of some artificial
music from the midst of woods or from the top of a hill at night, borne
on the breeze from some distant farmhouse,—the human voice or a flute!
That is a civilization one can endure, worth having. I could go about
the world listening for the strains of music. Men use this gift but
sparingly, methinks. What should we think of a bird which had the gift
of song but used it only once in a dozen years, like the tree which
blossoms only once in a century?

Now the dorbug comes humming by, the first I have heard this year. In
three months it will be the Harvest Moon. I cannot easily believe it.
Why not call this the Traveller’s Moon? It would be as true to call
the last (the May) the Planter’s Moon as it is to call September’s the
Harvest Moon, for the farmers use one about as little as the other.
Perhaps this is the Whip-poor-will’s Moon. The bullfrog now, which I
have not heard before, this evening. It is nearly nine. They are much
less common and their note more intermittent than that of the dreamers.
I scared up a bird on a _low_ bush, perchance on its nest. It is rare
that you start them at night from such places.

Peabody says that the nighthawk retires to rest about the time the
whip-poor-will begins its song. The whip-poor-will begins now at
7.30. I hear the nighthawk after 9 o’clock. He says it flies low in
the evening, but it also flies high, as it must needs do to make the
booming sound.

I hear the lowing of cows occasionally, and the barking of dogs.
The pond by moonlight, which may make the object in a walk, suggests
little to be said. Where there was only one firefly in a dozen rods, I
hastily ran to one which had crawled up to the top of a grass-head and
exhibited its light, and instantly another sailed in to it, showing
its light also; but my presence made them extinguish their lights.
The latter retreated, and the former crawled slowly down the stem.
It appeared to me that the first was a female who thus revealed her
place to the male, who was also making known his neighborhood as he
hovered about, both showing their lights that they might come together.
It was like a mistress who had climbed to the turrets of her castle
and exhibited there a blazing taper for a signal, while her lover
had displayed his light on the plain. If perchance she might have any
lovers abroad.

Not much before 10 o’clock does the moonlight night begin. When man is
asleep and day fairly forgotten, then is the beauty of moonlight seen
over lonely pastures where cattle are silently feeding.[209] Then let
me walk in a diversified country, of hill and dale, with heavy woods
one side, and copses and scattered trees and bushes enough to give me
shadows. Returning, a mist is on the river. The river is taken into the
womb of Nature again.

Now is the clover month, but haying is not yet begun.

       *       *       *       *       *

Evening.—Went to Nawshawtuct by North Branch.

Overtaken by a slight shower. The same increased fragrance from the
ground—sweet-fern, etc.—as in the night, and for the like reason
probably. The houstonias still blossom freshly, as I believe they
continue to do all summer. The fever-root in blossom; pictured in
Bigelow’s “Medical Botany.” _Triosteum perfoliatum_, near the top of
Hill, under the wall, looks somewhat like a milkweed. The _Viburnum
dentatum_, very regularly toothed, just ready to blossom; sometimes
called arrow-wood.

Nature seems not [to] have designed that man should be much abroad by
night, and in the moon proportioned the light fitly. By the faintness
and rareness of the light compared with that of the sun, she expresses
her intention with regard to him.


_June 15. Sunday._ Darwin still:—

Finds runaway sailors on the Chonos Archipelago, who he thought “had
kept a very good reckoning of time,” having lost only four days in
fifteen months.

Near same place, on the islands of the archipelago, he found wild
potato, the tallest four feet high, tubers generally small but one two
inches in diameter; “resembled in every respect, and had the same smell
as English potatoes; but when boiled they shrunk much, and were watery
and insipid, without any bitter taste.”

Speaking of the surf on the coast of Chiloe, “I was assured that,
after a heavy gale, the roar can be heard at night even at Castro,
a distance of no less than twenty-one sea-miles, across a hilly and
wooded country.”

Subsidence and elevation of the west coast of South America and of the
Cordilleras. “Daily it is forced home on the mind of the geologist,
that nothing, not even the wind that blows, is so unstable as the level
of the crust of this earth.”

Would like to see Sir Francis Head’s travels in South America,—Pampas
perhaps.[210] Also Chambers’ “Sea Levels.” Also travels of Spix and Von
Martius.

It is said that hydrophobia was first known in South America in 1803.

At the Galapagos, the tortoises going to any place travel night and day
and so get there sooner than would be expected,—about eight miles in
two or three days. He rode on their backs.

The productions of the Galapagos Archipelago, from five to six hundred
miles from America, are still of the American type. “It was most
striking to be surrounded by new birds, new reptiles, new shells,
new insects, new plants, and yet, by innumerable trifling details of
structure, and even by the tones of voice and plumage of the birds,
to have the temperate plains of Patagonia, or the hot, dry deserts of
Northern Chile, vividly brought before my eyes.” What is most singular,
not only are the plants, etc., to a great extent peculiar to these
islands, but each for the most part has its own kinds, though they are
within sight of each other.

Birds so tame that they can be killed with a stick. _I_ would suggest
that, from having dealt so long with the inoffensive and slow-moulded
tortoise, they have not yet acquired an instinctive fear of man, who is
a new-comer. Methinks tortoises, lizards, etc., for wild creatures are
remarkable for the nearness to which man approaches them and handles
them, as logs,—cold-blooded, lumpish forms of life,—only taking care
not to step into their mouths. An alligator has been known to have come
out of the mud like a mud volcano where was now the floor of a native’s
hut.

“The common dock is ... widely disseminated, [in New Zealand][211] and
will, I fear, forever remain a proof of the rascality of an Englishman,
who sold the seeds for those of the tobacco plant.”

The New-Hollanders a little higher in the scale of civilization than
the Fuegians.

Puzzled by a “well rounded fragment of greenstone, rather larger than
a man’s head,” which a captain had found on a small coral circle or
atoll near Keeling Island, “where every other particle of matter is
calcareous,” about six hundred miles from Sumatra. D. agrees with
Kotzebue (_vide_ Kotzebue) who states that (Darwin’s words) “the
inhabitants of the Radack Archipelago, a group of lagoon-islands in the
midst of the Pacific, obtained stones for sharpening their instruments
by searching the roots of trees which are cast upon the beach,” and
“laws have been established that such stones belong to the chief, and
a punishment is inflicted on any one who attempts to steal them.” Let
geologists look out. “Some natives carried by Kotzebue to Kamtschatka
collected stones to take back to their country.”

Found no bottom at 7200 feet, and 2200 yards from shore of Keeling
Island, a coral isle.

His theory of the formation of coral isles by the subsidence of the
land appears probable. He concludes that “the great continents are,
for the most part, rising areas; and ... the central parts of the great
oceans are sinking areas.”

Not a _private_ person on the island of Ascension; the inhabitants are
paid and victualled by the British government. Springs, cisterns, etc.,
are managed by the same. “Indeed, the whole island may be compared to
a huge ship kept in first-rate order.”

_Vide_ “Circumnavigation of Globe up to Cook.”

_Vide_ “Voyages Round the World since Cook.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The author of the article on Orchids in the _Eclectic_ says that “a
single plant produced three different flowers of genera previously
supposed to be quite distinct.”

Saw the first wild rose to-day on the west side of the railroad
causeway. The whiteweed has suddenly appeared, and the clover gives
whole fields a rich and florid appearance,—the rich red and the
sweet-scented white. The fields are blushing with the red species as
the western sky at evening. The blue-eyed grass, well named, looks up
to heaven. And the yarrow, with its persistent dry stalks and heads,
is now ready to blossom again. The dry stems and heads of last year’s
tansy stand high above the new green leaves.

I sit in the shade of the pines to hear a wood thrush at noon. The
ground smells of dry leaves; the heat is oppressive. The bird begins
on a low strain, _i. e._ it first delivers a strain on a lower key,
then a moment after another a little higher, then another still varied
from the others,—no two successive strains alike, but either ascending
or descending. He confines himself to his few notes, in which he is
unrivalled, as if his kind had learned this and no more anciently.

I perceive, as formerly, a white froth dripping from the pitch pines,
just at the base of the new shoots. It has no taste. The pollywogs in
the pond are now full-tailed. The hickory leaves are blackened by a
recent frost, which reminds me that this is near their northern limit.

It is remarkable the rapidity with which the grass grows. The 25th of
May I walked to the hills in Wayland, and when I returned across lots
do not remember that I had much occasion to think of the grass, or to
go round any fields to avoid treading on it; but just a week afterward,
at Worcester, it was high and waving in the fields, and I was to
some extent confined to the road; and the same was the case here.
Apparently in one month you get from fields which you can cross without
hesitation, to haying time. It has grown you hardly know when, be the
weather what it may, sunshine or storm. I start up a solitary woodcock
in the shade, in some copse; goes off with a startled, rattling,
hurried note.

After walking by night several times I now walk by day, but I am not
aware of any crowning advantage in it. I see small objects better, but
it does not enlighten me any. The day is more trivial.

What a careful gardener Nature is! She does not let the sun come out
suddenly with all his intensity after rain and cloudy weather, but
graduates the change to suit the tenderness of plants.

I see the tall crowfoot now in the meadows (_Ranunculus acris_), with
a smooth stem. I do not notice the _bulbosus_, which was so common a
fortnight ago. The rose-colored flowers of the _Kalmia angustifolia_,
lambkill, just opened and opening. The _Convallaria bifolia_ growing
stale in the woods. The _Hieracium venosum_, veiny-leaved hawkweed,
with its yellow blossoms in the woodland path. The _Hypoxis erecta_,
yellow Bethlehem-star, where there is a thick, wiry grass in open
paths; should be called yellow-eyed grass, methinks. The _Pyrola
asarifolia_, with its pagoda-like stem of flowers, _i. e_. broad-leaved
wintergreen. The _Trientalis Americana_, like last, in the woods, with
its star-like white flower and pointed whorled leaves. The prunella too
is in blossom, and the rather delicate _Thesium umbellatum_, a white
flower. The Solomon’s-seal, with a greenish drooping raceme of flowers
at the top, I do not identify.

I notice to-day the same remarkable bushy growth on the fir (in
Wheildon’s garden) that I have noticed on the pines and cedars. The
leaves are not so thickly set and are much stiffer.

I find that I postpone all actual intercourse with my friends to
a certain real intercourse which takes place commonly when we are
actually at a distance from one another.


_June 22. Sunday._ Is the shrub with yellow blossoms which I found last
week near the Lincoln road while surveying for E. Hosmer and thought to
be _Xylosteum ciliatum_, or fly honeysuckle, the same with the yellow
diervilla which I find in Laurel Glen to-day?

The birch is the surveyor’s tree. It makes the best stakes to look
at through the sights of a compass, except when there is snow on the
ground. Their white bark was not made in vain. In surveying wood-lots
I have frequent occasion to say this is what they were made for.

I see that Dugan has trimmed off and peeled the limbs of the willows on
the Turnpike to sell at the Acton powder-mill. I believe they get eight
dollars a cord for this wood.

I. Hapgood of Acton got me last Friday to compare the level of
his cellar-bottom with his garden, for, as he says, when Robbins &
Wetherbee keep the water of Nashoba Brook back so as to flood his
garden, it comes into his cellar. I found that part of the garden five
inches lower than the cellar-bottom. Men are affected in various ways
by the actions of others. If a man far away builds a dam, I have water
in my cellar. He said that the water was sometimes a foot deep in the
garden.

We are enabled to criticise others only when we are different from, and
in a given particular superior to, them ourselves. By our aloofness
from men and their affairs we are enabled to overlook and criticise
them. There are but few men who stand on the hills by the roadside.
I am sane only when I have risen above my common sense, when I do
not take the foolish view of things which is commonly taken, when
I do not live for the low ends for which men commonly live. Wisdom
is not common. To what purpose have I senses, if I am thus absorbed
in affairs? My pulse must beat with Nature. After a hard day’s work
without a thought, turning my very brain into a mere tool, only in
the quiet of evening do I so far recover my senses as to hear the
cricket, which in fact has been chirping all day. In my better hours I
am conscious of the influx of a serene and unquestionable wisdom which
partly unfits, and if I yielded to it more rememberingly would wholly
unfit me, for what is called the active business of life, for that
furnishes nothing on which the eye of reason can rest. What is that
other kind of life to which I am thus continually allured? which alone
I love? Is it a life for this world? Can a man feed and clothe himself
gloriously who keeps only the truth steadily before him? who calls in
no evil to his aid? Are there duties which necessarily interfere with
the serene perception of truth? Are our serene moments mere foretastes
of heaven,—joys gratuitously vouchsafed to us as a consolation,—or
simply a transient realization of what might be the whole tenor of our
lives?

To be calm, to be serene! There is the calmness of the lake when there
is not a breath of wind; there is the calmness of a stagnant ditch.
So is it with us. Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily,
as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some
unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like
a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are
revealed to ourselves. All the world goes by us and is reflected in our
deeps. Such clarity! obtained by such pure means! by simple living, by
honesty of purpose. We live and rejoice. I awoke into a music which no
one about me heard. Whom shall I thank for it? The luxury of wisdom!
the luxury of virtue! Are there any intemperate in these things? I
feel my Maker blessing me. To the sane man the world is a musical
instrument. The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure.

As I walk the railroad causeway, I notice that the fields and meadows
have acquired various tinges as the season advances, the sun gradually
using all his paints. There is the rosaceous evening red tinge of red
clover,—like an evening sky gone down upon the grass,—the whiteweed
tinge, the white clover tinge, which reminds me how sweet it smells.
The tall buttercup stars the meadow on another side, telling of the
wealth of dairies. The blue-eyed grass, so beautiful near at hand,
imparts a kind of slate or clay blue tinge to the meads.

It is hot noon. The white pines are covered with froth at the base
of the new shoots, as I noticed the pitch pines were a week ago; as
if they perspired. I am threading an open pitch and white pine wood,
easily traversed, where the pine-needles redden all the ground, which
is as smooth as a carpet. Still the blackberries love to creep over
this floor, for it is not many years since this was a blackberry-field.
And I hear around me, but never in sight, the many wood thrushes
whetting their steel-like notes. Such keen singers! It takes a fiery
heat, many dry pine leaves added to the furnace of the sun, to temper
their strains! Always they are either rising or falling to a new
strain. After what a moderate pause they deliver themselves again!
saying ever a new thing, avoiding repetition, methinks answering one
another. While most other birds take their siesta, the wood thrush
discharges his song. It is delivered like a bolas, or a piece of
jingling steel.

The domestic ox has his horns tipped with brass. This and his shoes
are the badges of servitude which he wears; as if he would soon get to
jacket and trousers. I am singularly affected when I look over a herd
of reclining oxen in their pasture, and find that every one has these
brazen balls on his horns. They are partly humanized so. It is not pure
brute; there is art added. Where are these balls sold? Who is their
maker? The bull has a ring in his nose.

The _Lysimachia quadrifolia_ exhibits its small yellow blossoms now in
the wood-path. Butter-and-eggs has blossomed. The _Uvularia vulgaris_,
or bladderwort, a yellow pea-like flower, has blossomed in stagnant
pools.


_June 23._ It is a pleasant sound to me, the squeaking and the booming
of nighthawks flying over high open fields in the woods. They fly like
butterflies, not to avoid birds of prey but, apparently, to secure
their own insect prey. There is a particular part of the railroad just
below the shanty where they may be heard and seen in greatest numbers.
But often you must look a long while before you can detect the mote in
the sky from which the note proceeds.

The common cinquefoil (_Potentilla simplex_) greets me with its
simple and unobtrusive yellow flower in the grass. The _P. argentea_,
hoary cinquefoil, also is now in blossom. _P. sarmentosa_, running
cinquefoil, we had common enough in the spring.


_June 26. Thursday._ The slight reddish-topped grass (red-top?) now
gives a reddish tinge to some fields, like sorrel.

Visited a menagerie this afternoon. I am always surprised to see the
same spots and stripes on wild beasts from Africa and Asia and also
from South America,—on the Brazilian tiger and the African leopard,—and
their general similarity. All these wild animals—lions, tigers,
chetas, leopards, etc.—have one hue,—tawny and commonly spotted or
striped,—what you may call pard-color, a color and marking which I had
not associated with America. These are wild beasts. What constitutes
the difference between a wild beast and a tame one? How much more human
the one than the other! Growling, scratching, roaring, with whatever
beauty and gracefulness, still untamable, this royal Bengal tiger or
this leopard. They have the character and the importance of another
order of men. The majestic lion, the king of beasts,—he must retain his
title.

I was struck by the gem-like, changeable, greenish reflections from
the eyes of the grizzly bear, so glassy that you never saw the surface
of the eye. They [were] quite demonic. Its claws, though extremely
large and long, look weak and made for digging or pawing the earth and
leaves. It is unavoidable, the idea of transmigration; not merely a
fancy of the poets, but an instinct of the race.


_June 29._ There is a great deal of white clover this year. In many
fields where there has been no clover seed sown for many years at
least, it is more abundant than the red, and the heads are nearly as
large. Also pastures which are close cropped, and where I think there
was little or no clover last year, are spotted white with a humbler
growth. And everywhere, by roadsides, garden borders, etc., even
where the sward is trodden hard, the small white heads on short stems
are sprinkled everywhere. As this is the season for the swarming of
bees, and this clover is very attractive to them, it is probably the
more difficult to secure them; at any rate it is the more important
to secure their services now that they can make honey so fast. It is
an interesting inquiry why this year is so favorable to the growth of
clover!

I am interested to observe how old-country methods of farming resources
are introduced among us. The Irish laborer, for instance, seeing that
his employer is contemplating some agricultural enterprise, as ditching
or fencing, suggests some old-country mode with [which] he has been
familiar from a boy, which is often found to be cheaper as well as more
ornamental than the common; and Patrick is allowed to accomplish the
object his own way, and for once exhibits some skill and has not to
be shown, but, working with a will as well as with pride, does better
than ever in the old country. Even the Irishman exhibits what might be
mistaken for a Yankee knack, exercising a merely inbred skill derived
from the long teachings and practice of his ancestors.

I saw an Irishman building a bank of sod where his employer had
contemplated building a bank wall, piling up very neatly and solidly
with his spade and a line the sods taken from the rear, and coping the
face at a very small angle from the perpendicular, intermingling the
sods with bushes as they came to hand, which would grow and strengthen
the whole. It was much more agreeable to the eye, as well as less
expensive, than stone would have been, and he thought that it would be
equally effective as a fence and no less durable. But it is true only
experience will show when the same practice may be followed in this
climate and in Ireland,—whether our atmosphere is not too dry to admit
of it. At any rate it was wise in the farmer thus to avail himself of
any peculiar experience which his hired laborer possessed. That was
what he _should_ buy.

Also I noticed the other day where one who raises seeds, when his
ropes and poles failed, had used ropes twisted of straw to support
his plants,—a resource probably suggested and supplied by his foreign
laborers. It is only remarkable that so few improvements or resources
are or are to be adopted from the Old World.

I look down on rays of prunella by the roadsides now. The panicled or
privet andromeda with its fruit-like white flowers. Swamp-pink I see
for the first time this season.

The tree-primrose (scabish)[212] (_Œnother biennais_), a rather coarse
yellow flower with a long tubular calyx, naturalized extensively in
Europe. The clasping bellflower (_Campanula perfoliata_, from the
heart-shaped leaves clasping the stalk), an interesting flower.

The _Convolvulus sepium_, large bindweed, make a fresh morning
impression as of dews and purity. The adder’s-tongue arethusa, a
delicate pink flower.

How different is day from day! Yesterday the air was filled with a
thick fog-like haze, so that the sun did not once shine with ardor,
but everything was so tempered under this thin veil that it was a
luxury merely to be outdoors,—you were less out for it. The shadows of
the apple trees even early in the afternoon were remarkably distinct.
The landscape wore a classical smoothness. Every object was as in [a]
picture with a glass over it. I saw some hills on this side the river,
looking from Conantum, on which, the grass being of a yellow tinge,
though the sun did not shine out on them, they had the appearance
of being shone upon peculiarly. It was merely an unusual yellow tint
of the grass. The mere surface of water was an object for the eye to
linger on.

The panicled cornel, a low shrub, in blossom by wall-sides now.

I thought that one peculiarity of my “Week” was its _hypæthral_
character, to use an epithet applied to those Egyptian temples which
are open to the heavens above, _under the ether_. I thought that it had
little of the atmosphere of the house about it, but might wholly have
been written, as in fact it was to a considerable extent, out-of-doors.
It was only at a late period in writing it, as it happened, that I used
any phrases implying that I lived in a house or led a _domestic_ life.
I trust it does not smell [so much] of the study and library, even of
the poet’s attic, as of the fields and woods; that it is a hypæthral or
unroofed book, lying open under the ether and permeated by it, open to
all weathers, not easy to be kept on a shelf.

The potatoes are beginning to blossom.

Riding to survey a wood-lot yesterday, I observed that a dog
accompanied the wagon. Having tied the horse at the last house and
entered the woods, I saw no more of the dog while there; but when
riding back to the village, I saw the dog again running by the wagon,
and in answer to my inquiry was told that the horse and wagon were
hired and that the dog always accompanied the horse. I queried whether
it might happen that a dog would accompany the wagon if a strange horse
were put into it; whether he would ever attach himself to an inanimate
object. Methinks the driver, though a stranger, as it were added
intellect to the mere animality of the horse, and the dog, not making
very nice distinctions, yielded respect to the horse and equipage as if
it were human. If the horse were to trot off alone without a wagon or
driver, I think it doubtful if the dog would follow; if with the wagon,
then the chances of his following would be increased; but if with a
driver, though a stranger, I have found by experience that he would
follow.

At a distance in the meadow I hear still, at long intervals, the
hurried commencement of the bobolink’s strain, the bird just dashing
into song, which is as suddenly checked, as it were, by the warder
of the seasons, and the strain is left incomplete forever. Like human
beings they are inspired to sing only for a short season.[213]

That little roadside pea-like-blossomed blue flower[214] is interesting
to me. The mulleins are just blossoming.

The voice of the crickets, heard at noon from deep in the grass, allies
day to night. It is unaffected by sun and moon. It is a midnight sound
heard at noon, a midday sound heard at midnight.

I observed some mulleins growing on the western slope of the sandy
railroad embankment, in as warm a place as can easily be found, where
the heat was reflected from the sand oppressively at 3 o’clock P. M.
this hot day; yet the green and living leaves felt rather cool than
otherwise to the hand, but the dead ones at the root were quite warm.
The living plant thus preserves a cool temperature in the hottest
exposure, as if it kept a cellar below, from which cooling liquors were
drawn up.

Yarrow is now in full bloom, and elder, and a small many-headed white
daisy like a small whiteweed. The epilobium, too, is out.

The night-warbler sings the same strain at noon. The song sparrow still
occasionally reminds me of spring.

I observe that the high water in the ponds, which have been rising
for a year, has killed most of the pitch pines and alders which it had
planted and merely watered at its edge during the years of dryness. But
now it comes to undo its own work.

How awful is the least unquestionable meanness, when we cannot deny
that we have been guilty of it. There seem to be no bounds to our
unworthiness.


_June 30._ Haying has commenced. I see the farmers in distant fields
cocking their hay now at six o’clock. The day has been so oppressively
warm that some workmen have lain by at noon, and the haymakers are
mowing now in the early twilight.

The blue flag (_Iris versicolor_) enlivens the meadow. The lark sings
at sundown off in the meadow. It is a note which belongs to a New
England summer evening. Though so late, I hear the summer hum of a bee
in the grass, as I am on my way to the river behind Hubbard’s to bathe.
After hoeing in a dusty garden all this warm afternoon,—so warm that
the baker says he never knew the like and expects to find his horses
dead in the stable when he gets home,—it is very grateful to wend one’s
way at evening to some pure and cool stream and bathe therein.

The cranberry is now in blossom. Their fresh shoots have run a foot or
two over the surface.

I have noticed an abundance of poison sumach this season. It is now in
blossom. In some instances it has the size and form of a healthy peach
tree.

The cuckoo is faintly heard from a neighboring grove. Now that it
is beginning to be dark, as I am crossing a pasture I hear a happy,
cricket-like, shrill little lay from a sparrow, either in the grass
or else on that distant tree, as if it were the vibrations of a
watch-spring; its vespers. The tree-primrose, which was so abundant in
one field last Saturday, is now all gone. The cattle on Bear Garden
Hill, seen through the twilight, look monstrously large. I find
abounding in the meadows the adder’s-tongue arethusa and occasionally
with it the _Cymbidium tuberosum_ of the same tint. The obtuse galium
is a delicate vine-like plant with a minute white blossom in the same
places. The St. John’s-wort has blossomed. The (_Œnothera pumila_, or
dwarf tree-primrose, a neat yellow flower, abounds in the meadows;
which the careless would mistake at a distance for buttercups. The
white buds of the clethra (alder-leaved) rise above their recent
shoots. The narrow-leaved cotton-grass spots the meadow with white,
seeming like loose down, its stems are so slight. The carrot growing
wild which I observed by the railroad is now blossoming, with its
dishing blossom. I found by the railroad, a quarter of a mile from
the road, some common garden catch-fly, the pink flower, growing
wild. Angelica is now in blossom, with its large umbels. Swamp rose,
fugacious-petalled. The prinos, or winterberry, budded, with white
clustered berry-like flower-buds, is a pretty contrast to itself in
the winter,—wax-like. While bathing I plucked the common floating
plant like a small yellow lily, the yellow water ranunculus (_R.
multifidus_). What I suppose is the _Aster miser_, small-flowered
aster, like a small many-headed whiteweed, has now for a week been in
bloom; a humble weed, but one of the earliest of the asters.[215] The
umbelled thesium, a simple white flower, on the edge of the woods.
_Erysimum officinale_, hedge mustard, with its yellow flowers.

I first observed about ten days ago that the fresh shoots of the fir
balsam (_Abies balsamifera_), found under the tree wilted, or plucked
and kept in the pocket or in the house a few days, emit the fragrance
of strawberries, only it is somewhat more aromatic and spicy. It was to
me a very remarkable fragrance to be emitted by a pine. A very rich,
delicious, aromatic, spicy fragrance, which if the fresh and living
shoots emitted, they would be still more to be sought after.

Saw a brood of young partridges yesterday, a little larger than robins.




VI

JULY, 1851

(ÆT. 33-34)


_July 2._ It is a fresh, cool summer morning. From the road at N.
Barrett’s, on my way to P. Blood’s at 8.30 A. M., the Great Meadows
have a slight bluish misty tinge in part; elsewhere a sort of hoary
sheen like a fine downiness, inconceivably fine and silvery far
away,—the light reflected from the grass blades, a sea of grass hoary
with light, the counterpart of the frost in spring. As yet no mower
has profaned it; scarcely a footstep since the waters left it. Miles of
waving grass adorning the surface of the earth.

Last night, a sultry night which compelled to leave all windows open,
I heard two travellers talking aloud, was roused out of my sleep by
their loud, day-like, and somewhat unearthly discourse at perchance
one o’clock. From the country, whiling away the night with loud
discourse. I heard the words “Theodore Parker” and “Wendell Phillips”
loudly spoken, and so did half a dozen of my neighbors, who also were
awakened. Such is fame. It affected [me] like Dante talking of the men
of this world in the infernal regions. If the travellers had called my
own name I should equally have thought it an unearthly personage which
it would take me some hours into daylight to realize. O traveller,
haven’t you got any further than that? My genius hinted before I fairly
awoke, “Improve your time.” What is the night that a traveller’s voice
should sound so hollow in it? that a man speaking aloud in the night,
speaking in regions under the earth, should utter the words “Theodore
Parker”?

A traveller! I love his title. A traveller is to be reverenced as such.
His profession is the best symbol of our life. Going from —— toward
——; it is the history of every one of us. I am interested in those that
travel in the night.

It takes but little distance to make the hills and even the meadows
look blue to-day. That principle which gives the air an azure color is
more abundant.

To-day the milkweed is blossoming. Some of the raspberries are ripe,
the most innocent and simple of fruits, the purest and most ethereal.
Cherries are ripe. Strawberries in the gardens have passed their prime.

Many large trees, especially elms, about a house are a surer indication
of old family distinction and worth than any evidence of wealth. Any
evidence of care bestowed on these trees secures the traveller’s
respect as for a nobler husbandry than the raising of corn and
potatoes.

I passed a regular country dooryard this forenoon, the unpainted
one-story house, long and low with projecting stoop, a deep grass-plot
unfenced for yard, hens and chickens scratching amid the chip dirt
about the door,—this last the main feature, relics of wood-piles, sites
of the wooden towers.

The nightshade has bloomed and the prinos, or winterberry.


_July 5._ The vetch-like flower by the Marlborough road, the _Tephrosia
Virginica_, is in blossom, with mixed red and yellowish blossoms.
Also the white fine-flowered Jersey tea (_Ceanothus Americana_), and,
by the side of wood-paths, the humble cow-wheat (_Apocynum_, etc.).
The blue flower by the roadside, slender but pretty spike, is the
pale lobelia (_L. pallida_). The reddish blossoms of the umbelled
wintergreen (_Pyrola umbellata_) are now in perfection and are
exceedingly beautiful. Also the white sweet-scented flowers of the _P.
rotundifolia_.

It is a remarkably cool, clear, breezy atmosphere to-day. One would
say there were fewer flowers just now than there have been and are to
be; _i. e._ we do not look so much for the blossoming of new flowers.
The earliest small fruits are just beginning to be ripe,—the raspberry,
thimble-berry, blueberry, etc. We have no longer the blossoms of those
which must ripen their fruits in early autumn.

I am interested in those fields in the woods where the potato is
cultivated, growing in the light, dry, sandy soil, free from weeds; now
in blossom, the slight vine not crowded in the hill. I think they do
not promise many potatoes, though mealy and wholesome like nuts. Many
fields have now received their last hoeing, and the farmers’ work seems
to be soon over with them. What a pleasant interview he must have had
with them! What a liberal education with these professors! Better than
a university. It is pleasing to consider man’s cultivating this plant
thus assiduously, without reference to any crop it may yield him, as if
he were to cultivate johnswort in like manner. What influences does he
receive from this long intercourse.

The flowers of the umbelled pyrola, or common wintergreen, are
really very handsome now, dangling red from their little umbels like
jewelry,—especially the unexpanded buds with their red calyx-leaves
against the white globe of petals.

There is a handsome wood-path on the east side of White Pond. The
shadows of the pine stems and branches falling across the path, which
is perfectly red with pine-needles, make a very handsome carpet. Here
is a small road running north and south along the edge of the wood,
which would be a good place to walk by moonlight.

The calamint grows by the lane beyond Seven-Star Lane; now in blossom.

As we come over Hubbard’s Bridge between 5 and 6 P. M., the sun
getting low, a cool wind blowing up the valley, we sit awhile on the
rails which are destined for the new railing. The light on the Indian
hill is very soft and glorious, giving the idea of the most wonderful
fertility. The most barren hills are gilded like waving grain-fields.
What a paradise to sail by! The cliffs and woods up the stream are
nearer and have more shadow and actuality about them. This retired
bridge is a favorite spot with me. I have witnessed many a fair sunset
from it.


_July 6. Sunday._ I walked by night last moon, and saw its disk
reflected in Walden Pond, the broken disk, now here, now there, a
pure and memorable flame unearthly bright, like a cucullo[216] of a
water-bug. Ah! but that first faint tinge of moonlight on the gap!
(seen some time ago),[217]—a silvery light from the east before day had
departed in the west. What an immeasurable interval there is between
the first tinge of moonlight which we detect, lighting with mysterious,
silvery, poetic light the western slopes, like a paler grass, and the
last wave of daylight on the eastern slopes! It is wonderful how our
senses ever span so vast an interval, how from being aware of the one
we become aware of the other. And now the night wind blows,—from where?
What gave it birth? It suggests an interval equal to that between
the most distant periods recorded in history. The silver age is not
more distant from the golden than moonlight is from sunlight. I am
looking into the west, where the red clouds still indicate the course
of departing day. I turn and see the silent, spiritual, contemplative
moonlight shedding the softest imaginable light on the western slopes
of the hills, as if, after a thousand years of polishing, their
surfaces were just beginning to be bright,—a pale whitish lustre.
Already the crickets chirp to the moon a different strain, and the
night wind rustles the leaves of the wood. A different dynasty has
commenced. Yet moonlight, like daylight, is more valuable for what
it suggests than for what it actually is. It is a long past season of
which I dream. And the reason is perchance because it is a more sacred
and glorious season, to which I instantly refer all glorious actions in
past time. Let a nobler landscape present itself, let a purer air blow,
and I locate all the worthies of the world. Ah, there is the mysterious
light which for some hours has illustrated Asia and the scene of
Alexander’s victories, now at length, after two or three hours spent
in surmounting the billows of the Atlantic, come to shine on America.
There, on that illustrated sand-bank, was revealed an antiquity beside
which Nineveh is young. Such a light as sufficed for the earliest ages.
From what star has it arrived on this planet? Yet even at midday I
see the full moon shining in the sky. What if, in some vales, only its
light is reflected? What if there are some spirits which walk in its
light alone still? who separate the moonlight from the sunlight, and
are shined on by the former only? I passed from dynasty to dynasty,
from one age of the world to another age of the world, from Jove
perchance back to Saturn. What river of Lethe was there to run between?
I bade farewell to that light setting in the west and turned to salute
the new light rising in the east.

There is some advantage in being the humblest, cheapest, least
dignified man in the village, so that the very stable boys shall damn
you. Methinks I enjoy that advantage to an unusual extent. There is
many a coarsely well-meaning fellow, who knows only the skin of me, who
addresses me familiarly by my Christian name. I get the whole good of
him and lose nothing myself. There is “Sam,” the jailer,—whom I never
call Sam, however,—who exclaimed last evening: “Thoreau, are you going
up the street pretty soon? Well, just take a couple of these handbills
along and drop one in at Hoar’s piazza and one at Holbrook’s, and
I’ll do as much for you another time.” I am not above being used, aye
abused, sometimes.

The red clover heads are now turned black. They no longer impart that
rosaceous tinge to the meadows and fertile fields. It is but a short
time that their rich bloom lasts. The white is black or withering
also. Whiteweed still looks white in the fields. Blue-eyed grass is
now rarely seen. The grass in the fields and meadows is not so fresh
and fair as it was a fortnight ago. It is dryer and riper and ready for
the mowers. Now June is past. June is the month for grass and flowers.
Now grass is turning to hay, and flowers to fruits. Already I gather
ripe blueberries on the hills. The red-topped grass is in its prime,
tingeing the fields with red.

It is a free, flowing wind, with wet clouds in the sky, though the
sun shines. The distant hills look unusually near in this atmosphere.
Acton meeting-houses seen to stand on the side of some hills, Nagog or
Nashoba, beyond, as never before. Nobscot looks like a high pasture in
the sunlight not far off. From time to time I hear a few drops of rain
falling on the leaves, but none is felt and the sun does not cease to
shine. All serious showers go round me and get out of my way.

The clasping harebell is certainly a pretty flower, and so is the
tephrosia. The poke has blossomed and the indigo-weed.


_July 7._ The intimations of the night are divine, methinks. Men
might meet in the morning and report the news of the night,—what
divine suggestions have been made to them. I find that I carry with
me into the day often some such hint derived from the gods,—such
impulses to purity, to heroism, to literary effort even, as are never
day-born.[218]

One of those mornings which usher in no day, but rather an endless
morning, a protracted auroral season, for clouds prolong the twilight
the livelong day.

And now that there is an interregnum in the blossoming of the flowers,
so is there in the singing of the birds. The golden robin is rarely
heard, and the bobolink, etc.

I rejoice when in a dream I have loved virtue and nobleness.

Where is Grecian history? It is when in the morning I recall the
intimations of the night.

       *       *       *       *       *

The moon is now more than half full. When I come through the village
at 10 o’clock this cold night, cold as in May, the heavy shadows of
the elms covering the ground with their rich tracery impress me as
if men had got so much more than they had bargained for, not only
trees to stand in the air, but to checker the ground with their
shadows. At night they lie along the earth. They tower, they arch,
they droop over the streets like chandeliers of darkness. In my walk
the other afternoon, I saw the sun shining into the depths of a thick
pine wood, checkering the ground like moonlight and illuminating the
lichen-covered bark of a large white pine, from which it was reflected
through the surrounding thicket as from another sun. This was so deep
in the woods that you would have said no sun could penetrate thither.

I have been to-night with Anthony Wright to look through Perez Blood’s
telescope a second time. A dozen of Blood’s neighbors were swept along
in the stream of our curiosity. One who lived half a mile this side
said that Blood had been down that way within a day or two with his
terrestrial, or day, glass, looking into the eastern horizon [at]
the hills of Billerica, Burlington, and Woburn. I was amused to see
what sort of respect this man with a telescope had obtained from his
neighbors, something akin to that which savages award to civilized men,
though in this case the interval between the parties was very slight.
Mr. Blood, with his skull-cap on, his short figure, his north European
figure, made me think of Tycho Brahe. He did not invite us into his
house this cool evening,—men nor women,—nor did he ever before to my
knowledge. I am still contented to see the stars with my naked eye. Mr.
Wright asked him what his instrument cost. He answered, “Well, that
is something I don’t like to tell.” (Stuttering or hesitating in his
speech a little as usual.) “It is a very proper question, however.”
“Yes,” said I, “and you think that you have given a very proper
answer.”

Returning, my companion, Wright, the sexton, told me how dusty he
found it digging a grave that afternoon,—for one who had been a pupil
of mine. For two feet, he said, notwithstanding the rain, he found the
soil as dry as ashes.

With a certain wariness, but not without a slight shudder at the
danger oftentimes, I perceive how near I had come to admitting into
my mind the details of some trivial affair, as a case at court; and
I am astonished to observe how willing men are to lumber their minds
with such rubbish,—to permit idle rumors, tales, incidents, even of an
insignificant kind, to intrude upon what should be the sacred ground of
the thoughts. Shall the temple of our thought be a public arena where
the most trivial affairs of the market and the gossip of the tea-table
is discussed,—a dusty, noisy, trivial place? Or shall it be a quarter
of heaven itself, a place consecrated to the service of the gods, a
hypæthral temple? I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts
which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my mind with
the most insignificant, which only a divine mind could illustrate.
Such is, for the most part, the news,—in newspapers and conversation.
It is important to preserve the mind’s chastity in this respect. Think
of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into
the mind, to stalk profanely through its very _sanctum sanctorum_
for an hour, aye, for many hours! to make a very bar-room of your
mind’s inmost apartment, as if for a moment the dust of the street
had occupied you, aye, the very street itself, with all its travel,
passed through your very mind of minds, your thoughts’ shrine, with
all its filth and bustle! Would it not be an intellectual suicide? By
all manner of boards and traps, threatening the extreme penalty of the
divine law, excluding trespassers from these grounds, it behooves us
to preserve the purity and sanctity of the mind.[219] It is so hard
to forget what it is worse than useless to remember. If I am to be a
channel or thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain springs,
and not the town sewers,—the Parnassian streams. There is inspiration,
the divine gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from
the courts of heaven; there is the profane and stale revelation of the
bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both
communications. Only the character of the individual determines to
which source chiefly it shall be open and to which closed. I believe
that the mind can be profaned by the habit of attending to trivial
things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality. They
shall be dusty as stones in the street. Our very minds shall be paved
and macadamized, as it were, their foundation broken into fragments
for the wheels of travel to roll over. If we have thus desecrated
ourselves, the remedy will be, by circumspection and wariness, by our
aspiration and devotion, to consecrate ourselves, to make a fane of the
mind. I think that we should treat our minds as innocent and ingenuous
children whose guardians we are,—be careful what objects and what
subjects we thrust on their attention. Even the facts of science may
dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each
morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living
truth. Every thought that passes through the mind helps to wear and
tear it, and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets of Pompeii,
evince how much it has been used. How many things there are concerning
which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them![220]
Routine, conventionality, manners, etc., etc.,—how insensibly an undue
attention to these dissipates and impoverishes the mind, robs it of its
simplicity and strength, emasculates it!

Knowledge does not come to us by details but by _lieferungs_ from the
gods. What else is it to wash and purify ourselves? Conventionalities
are as bad as impurities.[221] Only thought which is expressed by
the mind in repose—as it were, lying on its back and contemplating
the heavens—is adequately and fully expressed. What are sidelong,
transient, passing half-views? The writer expressing his thought must
be as well seated as the astronomer contemplating the heavens; he must
not occupy a constrained position. The facts, the experience, we are
well poised upon! which secures our whole attention!

The senses of children are unprofaned. Their whole body is one sense;
they take a physical pleasure in riding on a rail, they love to
teeter. So does the unviolated, the unsophisticated mind derive an
inexpressible pleasure from the simplest exercise of thoughts.

I can express adequately only the thought which I _love_ to express.
All the faculties in repose but the one you are using, the whole energy
concentrated in that. Be ever so little distracted, your thoughts
so little confused, your engagements so few, your attention so free,
your existence so mundane, that in all places and in all hours you can
hear the sound of crickets in those seasons when they are to be heard.
It is a mark of serenity and health of mind when a person hears this
sound much,—in streets of cities as well as in fields. Some ears never
hear this sound; are called deaf. Is it not because they have so long
attended to other sounds?


_July 8. Tuesday._ Walked along the Clamshell bank after sundown. A
cloudy sky. The heads of the grass in the pasture behind Dennis’s have
a reddish cast, but another grass, with a lighter-colored stem and
leaves, on the higher parts of the field gives a yellowish tinge to
those parts, as if they reflected a misty sunlight. Even much later in
the night these light spots were distinguishable. I am struck by the
cool, juicy, pickled-cucumber green of the potato-fields now. How lusty
these vines look! The pasture naturally exhibits at this season no such
living green as the cultivated fields. I perceive that flower of the
lowlands now, with a peculiar leaf and conspicuous white umbels.[222]

  [Illustration]

Here are mulleins covering a field (the Clamshell field) where three
years [ago] were none noticeable, but a smooth uninterrupted pasture
sod. Two years ago it was plowed for the first time for many years,
and millet and corn and potatoes planted, and now _where the millet
grew_ these mulleins have sprung up. Who can write the history of
these fields? The millet does not perpetuate itself, but the few seeds
of the mullein, which perchance were brought here with it, are still
multiplying the race.

The thick heads of the yellow dock warn me of the lapse of time.

Here are some rich rye-fields waving over all the land, their heads
nodding in the evening breeze with an apparently alternating motion;
_i. e._ they do not all bend at once by ranks, but separately, and
hence this agreeable alternation. How rich a sight this cereal fruit,
now yellow for the cradle,—_flavus_! It is an impenetrable phalanx.
I walk for half a mile beside these Macedonians, looking in vain for
an opening. There is no Arnold Winkelried to gather these spear-heads
upon his breast and make an opening for me. This is food for man.
The earth labors not in vain; it is bearing its burden. The yellow,
waving, rustling rye extends far up and over the hills on either side,
a kind of pinafore to nature, leaving only a narrow and dark passage
at the bottom of a deep ravine. How rankly it has grown! How it hastes
to maturity! I discover that there is such a goddess as Ceres. These
long grain-fields which you must respect,—must go round,—occupying
the ground like an army. The small trees and shrubs seen dimly in
its midst are overwhelmed by the grain as by an inundation. They are
seen only as indistinct forms of bushes and green leaves mixed with
the yellow stalks. There are certain crops which give me the idea
of bounty, of the _Alma Natura_.[223] They are the grains. Potatoes
do not so fill the lap of earth. This rye excludes everything else
and takes possession of the soil. The farmer says, “Next year I will
raise a crop of rye;” and he proceeds to clear away the brush, and
either plows it, or, if it is too uneven or stony, burns and harrows
it only, and scatters the seed with faith. And all winter the earth
keeps his secret,—unless it did leak out somewhat in the fall,—and in
the spring this early green on the hillsides betrays him. When I see
this luxuriant crop spreading far and wide in spite of rock and bushes
and unevenness of ground, I cannot help thinking that it must have
been unexpected by the farmer himself, and regarded by him as a lucky
accident for which to thank fortune. This, to reward a transient faith,
the gods had given. As if he must have forgotten that he did it, until
he saw the waving grain inviting his sickle.


_July 9._ When I got out of the cars at Porter’s, Cambridge, this
morning, I was pleased to see the handsome blue flowers of the succory
or endive (_Cichorium Intybus_), which reminded me that within the hour
I had been whirled into a new botanical region. They must be extremely
rare, if they occur at all, in Concord. This weed is handsomer than
most garden flowers. Saw there also the _Cucubalus Behen_, or bladder
campion, also the autumnal dandelion (_Apargia autumnalis_).

Visited the Observatory. Bond said they were cataloguing the stars
at Washington (?), or trying to. They do not at Cambridge; of no
use with their force. Have not force enough now to make mag[netic]
obs[ervations]. When I asked if an observer with the small telescope
could find employment, he said, Oh yes, there was employment enough for
observation with the naked eye, observing the changes in the brilliancy
of stars, etc., etc., if they could only get some good observers. One
is glad to hear that the naked eye still retains some importance in the
estimation of astronomers.

Coming out of town,—willingly as usual,—when I saw that reach of
Charles River just above the depot, the fair, still water this cloudy
evening suggesting the way to eternal peace and beauty, whence it
flows, the placid, lake-like fresh water, so unlike the salt brine,
affected me not a little. I was reminded of the way in which Wordsworth
so coldly speaks of some natural visions or scenes “giving him
pleasure.” This is perhaps the first vision of elysium on this route
from Boston. And just then I saw an encampment of Penobscots, their
wigwams appearing above the railroad fence, they, too, looking up the
river as they sat on the ground, and enjoying the scene. What can be
more impressive than to look up a noble river just at evening,—one,
perchance, which you have never explored,—and behold its placid waters,
reflecting the woods and sky, lapsing inaudibly toward the ocean; to
behold as a lake, but know it as a river, tempting the beholder to
explore it and his own destiny at once? Haunt of waterfowl. This was
above the factories,—all that I saw. That water could never have flowed
under a factory. How _then_ could it have reflected the sky?


_July 10._ A gorgeous sunset after rain, with horizontal bars of
clouds, red sashes to the western window, barry clouds hanging like
a curtain over the window of the west, damask. First there is a
low arch of the storm clouds in the west, under which is seen the
clearer, fairer, serener sky and more distant sunset clouds, and under
all, on the horizon’s edge, heavier, massive dark clouds, not to be
distinguished from the mountains. How many times I have seen this kind
of sunset,—the most gorgeous sight in nature! From the hill behind
Minott’s I see the birds flying against this red sky, the sun having
set; one looks like a bat. Now between two stupendous mountains of the
low stratum under the evening red, clothed in slightly rosaceous amber
light, through a magnificent gorge, far, far away, as perchance may
occur in pictures of the Spanish coast viewed from the Mediterranean,
I see a city, the eternal city of the west, the phantom city, in whose
streets no traveller has trod, over whose pavements the horses of the
sun have already hurried, some Salamanca of the imagination. But it
lasts only for a moment, for now the changing light has wrought such
changes in it that I see the resemblance no longer.

A softer amber sky than in any picture. The swallows are improving
this short day, twittering as they fly, and the huckleberry-bird[224]
repeats his jingling strain, and the song sparrow, more honest than
most.

I am always struck by the centrality of the observer’s position. He
always stands fronting the middle of the arch, and does not suspect at
first that a thousand observers on a thousand hills behold the sunset
sky from equally favorable positions.

And now I turn and observe the dark masses of the trees in the east,
not green but black. While the sun was setting in the west, the trees
were rising in the east.

I perceive that the low stratum of dark clouds under the red sky all
dips one way, and to a remarkable degree presents the appearance of the
butt ends of cannons slanted toward the sky, thus:—

  [Illustration]

Such uniformity on a large scale is unexpected and pleasant to detect,
evincing the simplicity of the laws of their formation. Uniformity in
the shapes of clouds of a single stratum is always to be detected, the
same wind shaping clouds of the like consistency and in like positions.
No doubt an experienced observer could discover the states of the upper
atmosphere by studying the forms and characters of the clouds. I traced
the distinct form of the cannon in seven instances, stretching over the
whole length of the cloud, many a mile in the horizon.

And the nighthawk dashes past in the twilight with mottled (?) wing,
within a rod of me.


_July 11. Friday._ At 7.15 P. M. with W. E. C. go forth to see the
moon, the glimpses of the moon. We think she is not quite full; we
can detect a little flatness on the eastern side. Shall we wear thick
coats? The day has been warm enough, but how cool will the night be?
It is not sultry, as the last night. As a general rule, it is best to
wear your thickest coat even in a July night. Which way shall we walk?
Northwest, that we may see the moon returning? But on that side the
river prevents our walking in the fields, and on other accounts that
direction is not so attractive. We go toward Bear Garden Hill. The sun
is setting. The meadow-sweet has bloomed. These dry hills and pastures
are the places to walk by moonlight. The moon is silvery still, not
yet inaugurated. The tree-tops are seen against the amber west. I seem
to see the outlines of one spruce among them, distinguishable afar.
My thoughts expand and flourish most on this barren hill, where in
the twilight I see the moss spreading in rings and prevailing over the
short, thin grass, carpeting the earth, adding a few inches of green to
its circle annually while it dies within.

As we round the sandy promontory, we try the sand and rocks with our
hands. The sand is cool on the surface but warmer a few inches beneath,
though the contrast is not so great as it was in May. The larger
rocks are perceptibly warm. I pluck the blossom of the milkweed in the
twilight and find how sweet it smells. The white blossoms of the Jersey
tea dot the hillside, with the yarrow everywhere. Some woods are black
as clouds; if we knew not they were green by day, they would appear
blacker still. When we sit, we hear the mosquitoes hum. The woodland
paths are not the same by night as by day; if they are a little grown
up, the eye cannot find them, but must give the reins to the feet, as
the traveller to his horse. So we went through the aspens at the base
of the Cliffs, their round leaves reflecting the lingering twilight on
the one side, the waxing moonlight on the other. Always the path was
unexpectedly open.

Now we are getting into moonlight. We see it reflected from particular
stumps in the depths of the darkest woods, and from the stems of
trees, as if it selected what to shine on,[225]—a silvery light. It
is a light, of course, which we have had all day, but which we have
not appreciated, and proves how remarkable a lesser light can be when
a greater has departed. How simply and naturally the moon presides!
’T is true she was eclipsed by the sun, but now she acquires an
almost equal respect and worship by reflecting and representing him,
with some new quality, perchance, added to his light, showing how
original the disciple may be who still in midday is seen, though pale
and cloud-like, beside his master. Such is a worthy disciple. In his
master’s presence he still is seen and preserves a distinct existence;
and in his absence he reflects and represents him, not without adding
some new quality to his light, not servile and never rival. As the
master withdraws himself, the disciple, who was a pale cloud before,
begins to emit a silvery light, acquiring at last a tinge of golden
as the darkness deepens, but not enough to scorch the seeds which have
been planted or to dry up the fertilizing dews which are falling.

Passing now near Well Meadow Head toward Baker’s orchard. The
sweet-fern and indigo-weed fill the path up to one’s middle, wetting
us with dews so high. The leaves are shining and flowing.[226] We
wade through the luxuriant vegetation, seeing no bottom. Looking back
toward the Cliffs, some dead trees in the horizon, high on the rocks,
make a wild New Hampshire prospect. There is the faintest possible
mist over the pond-holes, where the frogs are eructating, like the
falling of huge drops, the bursting of mephitic air-bubbles rising from
the bottom, a sort of blubbering,—such conversation as I _have_ heard
between men, a belching conversation, expressing a sympathy of stomachs
and abdomens. The peculiar appearance of the indigo-weed, its misty
massiveness, is striking. In Baker’s orchard the thick grass looks like
a sea of mowing in this weird moonlight, a bottomless sea of grass.
Our feet must be imaginative, must know the earth in imagination only,
as well as our heads. We sit on the fence, and, where it is broken
and interrupted, the fallen and slanting rails are lost in the grass
(really thin and wiry) as in water. We even see our tracks a long way
behind, where we have brushed off the dew. The clouds are peculiarly
wispy to-night, somewhat like fine flames, not massed and dark nor
downy, not thick, but slight, thin wisps of mist.

I hear the sound of Heywood’s Brook falling into Fair Haven Pond,
inexpressibly refreshing to my senses. It seems to flow through my
very bones. I hear it with insatiable thirst. It allays some sandy heat
in me. It affects my circulations; methinks my arteries have sympathy
with it. What is it I hear but the pure waterfalls within me, in the
circulation of my blood, the streams that fall into my heart? What
mists do I ever see but such as hang over and rise from my blood? The
sound of this gurgling water, running thus by night as by day, falls
on all my dashes, fills all my buckets, overflows my float-boards,
turns all the machinery of my nature, makes me a flume, a sluice-way,
to the springs of nature. Thus I am washed; thus I drink and quench my
thirst.[227] Where the streams fall into the lake, if they are only a
few inches more elevated, all walkers may hear.

On the high path through Baker’s wood I see, or rather feel, the
tephrosia. Now we come out into the open pasture. And under those woods
of elm and buttonwood, where still no light is seen, repose a family
of human beings. By night there is less to distinguish this locality
from the woods and meadows we have threaded. We might go very near to
farmhouses covered with ornamental trees and standing on a highroad,
thinking that [we] were in the most retired woods and fields still.
Having yielded to sleep, man is a less obtrusive inhabitant of nature.
Now, having reached the dry pastures again, we are surrounded by a
flood of moonlight. The dim cart-path over the sward curves gracefully
through the pitch pines, ever to some more fairy-like spot. The rails
in the fences shine like silver. We know not whether we are sitting on
the ruins of a wall, or the materials which are to compose a new one.
I see, half a mile off, a phosphorescent arc on the hillside, where
Bartlett’s Cliff reflects the moonlight. Going by the shanty, I smell
the excrements of its inhabitants, which I had never smelt before.

And now, at half-past 10 o’clock, I hear the cockerels crow in
Hubbard’s barns, and morning is already anticipated. It is the
feathered, wakeful thought in us that anticipates the following day.
This sound is wonderfully exhilarating at all times. These birds are
worth far more to me for their crowing and cackling than for their
drumsticks and eggs.[228] How singular the connection of the hen with
man,—that she leaves her eggs in his barns always! She is a domestic
fowl, though still a little shyish of him. I cannot [help] looking at
the whole as an experiment still and wondering that in each case it
succeeds. There is no doubt at last but hens may be kept. They will put
their eggs in your barn by a tacit agreement. They will not wander far
from your yard.


_July 12._ 8 P. M.—Now at least the moon is full, and I walk alone,
which is best by night, if not by day always. Your companion must
sympathize with the present mood. The conversation must be located
where the walkers are, and vary exactly with the scene and events and
the contour of the ground. Farewell to those who will talk of nature
unnaturally, whose presence is an interruption. I know but one with
whom I can walk. I might as well be sitting in a bar-room with them as
walk and talk with most. We are never side by side in our thoughts, and
we cannot hear each other’s silence. Indeed, we cannot be silent. We
are forever breaking silence, that is all, and mending nothing. How can
they keep together who are going different ways!

I start a sparrow from her three eggs in the grass, where she had
settled for the night. The earliest corn is beginning to show its
tassels now, and I scent it as I walk,—its peculiar dry scent.[229]
(This afternoon I gathered ripe blackberries, and felt as if the autumn
had commenced.) Now perchance many sounds and sights only remind
me that they once said something to me, and are so by association
interesting. I go forth to be reminded of a previous state of
existence, if perchance any memento of it is to be met with hereabouts.
I have no doubt that Nature preserves her integrity. Nature is in as
rude health as when Homer sang. We may at last by our sympathies be
well. I see a skunk on Bear Garden Hill stealing noiselessly away from
me, while the moon shines over the pitch pines, which send long shadows
down the hill. Now, looking back, I see it shining on the south side
of farmhouses and barns with a weird light, for I pass here half an
hour later than last night. I smell the huckleberry bushes. I hear
a human voice,—some laborer singing after his day’s toil,—which I do
not often hear. Loud it must be, for it is far away. Methinks I should
know it for a white man’s voice. Some strains have the melody of an
instrument. Now I hear the sound of a bugle in the “Corner,” reminding
me of poetic wars; a few flourishes and the bugler has gone to rest.
At the foot of the Cliff hill I hear the sound of the clock striking
nine, as distinctly as within a quarter of a mile usually, though there
is no wind. The moonlight is more perfect than last night; hardly a
cloud in the sky,—only a few fleecy ones. There is more serenity and
more light. I hear that sort of throttled or chuckling note as of a
bird flying high, now from this side, then from that.[230] Methinks
when I turn my head I see Wachusett from the side of the hill. I smell
the butter-and-eggs as I walk. I am startled by the rapid transit of
some wild animal across my path, a rabbit or a fox,—or you hardly know
if it be not a bird. Looking down from the cliffs, the leaves of the
tree-tops shine more than ever by day. Here and there a lightning-bug
shows his greenish light over the tops of the trees.

As I return through the orchard, a foolish robin bursts away from
his perch unnaturally, with the habits of man. The air is remarkably
still and unobjectionable on the hilltop, and the whole world below
is covered as with a gossamer blanket of moonlight. It is just about
as yellow as a blanket. It is a great dimly burnished shield with
darker blotches on its surface. You have lost some light, it is true,
but you have got this simple and magnificent stillness, brooding like
genius.[231]


_July 13._ Observed yesterday, while surveying near Gordon’s, a bittern
flying over near Gordon’s, with moderate flight and outstretched neck,
its breast-bone sticking out sharp like the bone in the throats of
some persons, its anatomy exposed. The evergreen is very handsome in
the woods now, rising somewhat spirally in a round tower of five or
six stories, surmounted by a long bud. Looking across the river to
Conantum from the open plains, I think how the history of the hills
would read, since they have been pastured by cows, if every plowing
and mowing and sowing and chopping were recorded. I hear, 4 P. M., a
pigeon woodpecker on a dead pine near by, uttering a harsh and scolding
scream, spying me. The chewink jingles on the tops of the bushes, and
the rush sparrow,[232] the vireo, and oven-bird at a distance; and a
robin sings, superior to all; and a barking dog has started something
on the opposite side of the river; and now the wood thrush surpasses
them all. These plains are covered with shrub oaks, birches, aspens,
hickories, mingled with sweet-fern and brakes and huckleberry bushes
and epilobium, now in bloom, and much fine grass. The hellebore by the
brooksides has now fallen over, though it is not broken off. The cows
now repose and chew the cud under the shadow of a tree, or crop the
grass in the shade along the side of the woods, and when you approach
to observe them they mind you just enough. I turn up the _Juniperus
repens_, and see the lighter color of its leaves on the under sides,
and its berries with three petal-like divisions in one end. The
sweet-scented life-everlasting is budded.

This might be called the Hayer’s or Haymaker’s Moon, for I perceive
that when the day has been oppressively warm the haymakers rest at noon
and resume their mowing after sunset, sometimes quite into evening.


_July 14._ Passing over the Great Fields (where I have been surveying
a road) this forenoon, where were some early turnips, the county
commissioners plucked and pared them with their knives and ate them.
I, too, tried hard to chew a mouthful of raw turnip and realize the
life of cows and oxen, for it might be a useful habit in extremities.
These things occur as the seasons revolve. These are things which
travellers will do. How many men have tasted a raw turnip! How few have
eaten a whole one! Some bovine appetites, which find some fodder in
every field. For like reasons we sometimes eat sorrel and say we love
it, that we may return the hospitality of Nature by exhibiting a good
appetite.

The citizen looks sharp to see if there is any dogwood or poison sumach
in the swamp before he enters.

If I take the same walk by moonlight an hour later or earlier in the
evening, it is as good as a different one. I love the night for its
novelty; it is less prophaned than the day.[233]

The creaking of the crickets seems at the very foundation of all sound.
At last I cannot tell it from a ringing in my ears. It is a sound from
within, not without. You cannot dispose of it by listening to it. In
proportion as I am stilled I hear it. It reminds me that I am a denizen
of the earth.


_July 16. Wednesday._ Methinks my present experience is nothing; my
past experience is all in all. I think that no experience which I
have to-day comes up to, or is comparable with, the experiences of my
boyhood. And not only this is true, but as far back as I can remember
I have unconsciously referred to the experiences of a previous state of
existence. “For life is a forgetting,” etc. Formerly, methought, nature
developed as I developed, and grew up with me. My life was ecstasy.
In youth, before I lost any of my senses, I can remember that I was
all alive, and inhabited my body with inexpressible satisfaction; both
its weariness and its refreshment were sweet to me. This earth was the
most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains. To
have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the
breezes! I can remember how I was astonished. I said to myself,—I said
to others,—“There comes into my mind such an indescribable, infinite,
all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and
expansion, and [I] have had nought to do with it. I perceive that
I am dealt with by superior powers.[234] This is a pleasure, a joy,
an existence which I have not procured myself. I speak as a witness
on the stand, and tell what I have perceived.” The morning and the
evening were sweet to me, and I led a life aloof from society of men.
I wondered if a mortal had ever known what I knew. I looked in books
for some recognition of a kindred experience, but, strange to say, I
found none. Indeed, I was slow to discover that other men had had this
experience, for it had been possible to read books and to associate
with men on other grounds. The maker of me was improving me. When I
detected this interference I was profoundly moved. For years I marched
as to a music in comparison with which the military music of the
streets is noise and discord. I was daily intoxicated, and yet no man
could call me intemperate. With all your science can you tell how it
is, and whence it is, that light comes into the soul?

Set out at 3 P. M. for Nine-Acre Corner Bridge _via_ Hubbard’s Bridge
and Conantum, returning _via_ Dashing Brook, rear of Baker’s, and
railroad at 6.30 P. M.

The song sparrow, the most familiar and New England bird, is heard
in fields and pastures, setting this midsummer day to music, as if
it were the music of a mossy rail or fence post; a little stream of
song, cooling, rippling through the noon,—the usually unseen songster
usually unheard like the cricket, it is so common,—like the poet’s
song, unheard by most men, whose ears are stopped with business, though
perchance it sang on the fence before the farmer’s house this morning
for an hour. There are little strains of poetry in our animals.

Berries are just beginning to ripen, and children are planning
expeditions after them. They are important as introducing children
to the fields and woods, and as wild fruits of which much account
is made. During the berry season the schools have a vacation, and
many little fingers are busy picking these small fruits. It is ever
a pastime, not a drudgery. I remember how glad I was when I was kept
from school a half a day to pick huckleberries on a neighboring hill
all by myself to make a pudding for the family dinner. Ah, they got
nothing but the pudding, but I got invaluable experience beside! A half
a day of liberty like that was like the promise of life eternal. It was
emancipation in New England. O, what a day was there, my countrymen!

I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and
on the flowers of the milkweed (_Asclepias pulchra_) by the roadside,
a really handsome flower; also the smaller butterfly, with reddish
wings, and a larger, black or steel-blue, with wings spotted red on
edge, and one of equal size, reddish copper-colored. Now you may see a
boy stealing after one, hat in hand. The earliest corn begins to tassel
out, and my neighbor has put his hand in the hill some days ago and
abstracted some new potatoes as big as nuts, then covered up again.
Now they will need—or will get—no more weeding. The lark sings in the
meadow; the very essence of the afternoon is in his strain. This is a
New England sound, but the cricket is heard under all sounds. Still
the cars come and go with the regularity of nature, of the sun and
moon. (If a hen puts her eggs elsewhere than in the barns,—in woods
or among rocks,—she is said to _steal_ her nest!) The twittering of
swallows is in the air, reminding me of water. The meadow-sweet is now
in bloom, and the yarrow prevails by all roadsides. I see the hardhack
too, homely but dear plant, just opening its red clustered flowers.
The small aster, too, now abounds (_Aster miser_),[235] and the tall
buttercup still. After wading through a swamp the other day with my
shoes in my hand, I wiped my feet with sassafras leaves, which reminded
me of some Arabian practices, the bruised leaves perfuming the air and
by their softness being adapted to this purpose. The tree-primrose,
or scabish, still is seen over the fence. The red-wings and crow
blackbirds are heard chattering on the trees, and the cow troopials are
accompanying the cows in the pastures for the sake of the insects they
scare up. Oftentimes the thoughtless sportsman has lodged his charge of
shot in the cow’s legs or body in his eagerness to obtain the birds.
St. John’s-wort, one of the first of yellow flowers, begins to shine
along the roadside. The mullein for some time past. I see a farmer
cradling his rye, John Potter. Fields are partly mown,—some English
grass on the higher parts of the meadow next to the road. The farmer’s
work comes not all at once. In haying time there is a cessation from
other labors to a considerable extent. Planting is done, and hoeing
mainly; only some turnip seed is to be scattered amid the corn. I hear
the kingbird twittering or chattering like a stout-chested swallow.
The prunella sends back a blue ray from under my feet as I walk; the
pale lobelia too. The plaintive, spring-restoring peep of a bluebird
is occasionally heard. I met loads of hay on the road, which the oxen
draw indifferently, swaggering in their gait, as if it were not fodder
for them. Methinks they should testify sometimes that they are working
for themselves. The whiteweed is turning black. Grapes are half grown
and lead the mind forward to autumn. It is an air this afternoon
that makes you indifferent to all things,—perfect summer, but with
a comfortable breeziness. You know not heat nor cold. What season of
the year is this? The balls of the button-bush are half formed, with
its fine, glossy, red-stemmed leaf atoning for its nakedness in the
spring. My eye ranges over green fields of oats, for which there is a
demand then somewhere. The wild rose peeps from amid the alders and
other shrubs by the roadside. The elder-blow fills the air with its
scent. The angelica, with its large umbels, is gone to seed. On it I
find one of those slow-moving green worms, with rings spotted black and
yellow, like an East Indian production. What if these grew as large
as elephants? The honest and truly fair is more modestly colored.
Notwithstanding the drifting clouds, you fear no rain to-day. As you
walk, you smell some sweet herbage, but detect not what it is. Hay is
sticking to the willows and the alders on the causeway, and the bridge
is sprinkled with it. The hemlock (_Cicuta Americana_) displays its
white umbels now. The yellow lilies reign in the river. The painted
tortoises drop off the willow stumps as you go over the bridge. The
river is now so low that you can see its bottom, shined on by the
sun, and travellers stop to look at fishes as they go over, leaning on
the rails. The pickerel-weed sends up its heavenly blue. The color of
the cows on Fair Haven Hill, how fair a contrast to the hillside! How
striking and wholesome their clean brick-red! When were they painted?
How carelessly the eye rests on them, or passes them by as things of
course! The tansy is budded. The devil’s-needles seem to rest in air
over the water. There is nothing New-English about them.

Now, at 4 P. M., I hear the pewee in the woods, and the cuckoo reminds
me of some silence among the birds I had not noticed. The vireo
(red-eyed?) sings like a robin at even, incessantly,—for I have now
turned into Conant’s woods. The oven-bird helps fill some pauses. The
poison sumach shows its green berries, now unconscious of guilt. The
heart-leaved loosestrife (_Lysimachia ciliata_) is seen in low open
woods. The breeze displays the white under sides of the oak leaves and
gives a fresh and flowing look to the woods. The river is a dark-blue
winding stripe amid the green of the meadow. What is the color of the
world? Green mixed with yellowish and reddish for hills and ripe grass,
and darker green for trees and forests; blue spotted with dark and
white for sky and clouds, and dark blue for water. Beyond the old house
I hear the squirrel chirp in the wall like a sparrow; so Nature merges
her creations into one. I am refreshed by the view of Nobscot and the
southwestern vales, from Conantum, seething with the blue element.
Here comes a small bird with a ricochet flight and a faint twittering
note like a messenger from Elysium. The rush sparrow jingles her small
change, pure silver, on the counter of the pasture. From far I see the
rye stacked up. A few dead trees impart the effect of wildness to the
landscape, though it is a feature rare in an old settled country.

Methinks this is the first of dog-days. The air in the distance has
a peculiar blue mistiness, or furnace-like look, though, as I have
said, it is not sultry yet. It is not the season for distant views.
Mountains are not _clearly_ blue now. The air is the opposite to what
it is in October and November. You are not inclined to travel. It is
a world of orchards and small-fruits now, and you can stay at home if
the well has cool water in it. The black thimble-berry is an honest,
homely berry, now drying up as usual. I used to have a pleasant time
stringing them on herd’s-grass stems, tracing the wall-sides for them.
It is pleasant to walk through these elevated fields, terraced upon
the side of the hill so that the eye of the walker looks off into the
blue cauldron of the air at his own level. Here the haymakers have just
gone to tea,—at 5 o’clock, the farmer’s hour, before the afternoon is
ended, while he still thinks much work may still be done before night.
He does not wait till he is strongly reminded of the night. In the
distance some burdened fields are black with haycocks. Some thoughtless
and cruel sportsman has killed twenty-two young partridges not much
bigger than robins, against the laws of Massachusetts and humanity. At
the Corner Bridge the white lilies are budded. Green apples are now so
large as to remind me of coddling and the autumn again.[236] The season
of fruits is arrived. The dog’s-bane has a pretty, delicate bell-like
flower. The Jersey tea abounds. I see the marks of the scythes in the
fields, showing the breadth of each swath the mowers cut. Cool springs
are now a desideratum. The geranium still hangs on. Even the creeping
vines love the brooks, and I see where one slender one has struggled
down and dangles into the current, which rocks it to and fro. Filberts
are formed, and you may get the berry stains out of your hands with
their husks, if you have any. Nightshade is in blossom. Came through
the pine plains behind James Baker’s, where late was open pasture,
now open pitch pine woods, only here and there the grass has given
place to a carpet of pine-needles. These are among our pleasantest
woods,—open, level, with blackberry vines interspersed and flowers,
as lady’s-slippers, earlier, and pinks on the outskirts. Each tree has
room enough. And now I hear the wood thrush from the shade, who loves
these pine woods as well as I. I pass by Walden’s scalloped shore.
The epilobium reflects a pink gleam up the vales and down the hills.
The chewink jingles on a bush’s top. Why will the Irishman drink of a
puddle by the railroad instead of digging a well? How shiftless! What
death in life! He cannot be said to live who does not get pure water.

The milkweeds, or silkweeds, are rich flowers, now in blossom. The
_Asclepias syriaca_, or common milkweed; its buds fly open at a touch.
But handsomer much is _Asclepias pulchra_, or water silkweed. The thin
green bark of this last, and indeed of the other, is so strong that a
man cannot break a small strip of it by pulling. It contains a mass
of fine silken fibres, arranged side by side like the strings of a
fiddle-bow, and may be bent short without weakening it.

       *       *       *       *       *

What more glorious condition of being can we imagine than from impure
to be becoming pure? It is almost desirable to be impure that we may
be the subject of this improvement. That I am innocent to myself!
That I love and reverence my life! That I am better fitted for a lofty
society to-day than I was yesterday! To make my life a sacrament! What
is nature without this lofty tumbling? May I treat myself with more
and more respect and tenderness. May I not forget that I am impure
and vicious. May I not cease to love purity. May I go to my slumbers
as expecting to arise to a new and more perfect day. May I so live
and refine my life as fitting myself for a society ever higher than I
actually enjoy. May I treat myself tenderly as I would treat the most
innocent child whom I love; may I treat children and my friends as my
newly discovered self. Let me forever go in search of myself; never for
a moment think that I have found myself; be as a stranger to myself,
never a familiar, seeking acquaintance still. May I be to myself as one
is to me whom I love, a dear and cherished object. What temple, what
fane, what sacred place can there be but the innermost part of my own
being? The possibility of my own improvement, that is to be cherished.
As I regard myself, so I am. O my dear friends, I have not forgotten
you. I will know you to-morrow. I associate you with my ideal self.
I had ceased to have faith in myself. I thought I was grown up and
become what I was intended to be, but it is earliest spring with me.
In relation to virtue and innocence the oldest man is in the beginning
spring and vernal season of life. It is the love of virtue makes us
young ever. That is the fountain of youth, the very aspiration after
the perfect. I love and worship myself with a love which absorbs my
love for the world. The lecturer suggested to me that I might become
better than I am. Was it not a good lecture, then? May I dream not that
I shunned vice; may I dream that I loved and practiced virtue.


_July 18._ It is a test question affecting the youth of a person,—Have
you knowledge of the morning? Do you sympathize with that season of
nature? Are you abroad early, brushing the dews aside? If the sun rises
on you slumbering, if you do not hear the morning cock-crow, if you
do not witness the blushes of Aurora, if you are not acquainted with
Venus as the morning star, what relation have you to wisdom and purity?
You have then forgotten your Creator in the days of your youth! Your
shutters were darkened till noon! You rose with a sick headache! In the
morning sing, as do the birds. What of those birds which should slumber
on their perches till the sun was an hour high? What kind of fowl would
they be and new kind of bats and owls,—hedge sparrows or larks? then
took a dish of tea or hot coffee before they began to sing?

I might have added to the list of July 16th the _Aralia hispida_,
bristling aralia; the heart-leaved loosestrife (_Lysimachia ciliata_);
also the upright loosestrife (_L. racemosa_), with a rounded terminal
raceme; the tufted vetch (_Vicia cracca_). Sweet-gale fruit now green.

I first heard the locust sing, so dry and piercing, by the side of the
pine woods in the heat of the day.


_July 19._ Here I am thirty-four years old,[237] and yet my life is
almost wholly unexpanded. How much is in the germ! There is such an
interval between my ideal and the actual in many instances that I may
say I am unborn. There is the instinct for society, but no society.
Life is not long enough for one success. Within another thirty-four
years that miracle can hardly take place. Methinks my seasons revolve
more slowly than those of nature; I am differently timed. I am
contented. This rapid revolution of nature, even of nature in me, why
should it hurry me? Let a man step to the music which he hears, however
measured. Is it important that I should mature as soon as an apple
tree? aye, as soon as an oak? May not my life in nature, in proportion
as it is supernatural, be only the spring and infantile portion of my
spirit’s life? Shall I turn my spring to summer? May I not sacrifice a
hasty and petty completeness here to entireness there? If my curve is
large, why bend it to a smaller circle? My spirit’s unfolding observes
not the pace of nature. The society which I was made for is not here.
Shall I, then, substitute for the anticipation of that this poor
reality? I would [rather] have the unmixed expectation of that than
this reality. If life is a waiting, so be it. I will not be shipwrecked
on a vain reality. What were any reality which I can substitute? Shall
I with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over myself, though when it
is done I shall be sure to gaze still on the true ethereal heaven far
above, as if the former were not,—that still distant sky o’er-arching
that blue expressive eye of heaven?[238] I am enamored of the blue-eyed
arch of heaven.

_I_ did not _make_ this demand for a more thorough sympathy. This is
not my idiosyncrasy or disease. He that made the demand will answer the
demand.

My blood flows as slowly as the waves of my native Musketaquid; yet
they reach the ocean sooner, perchance, than those of the Nashua.

Already the goldenrod is budded, but I can make no haste for that.


2 P. M.—The weather is warm and dry, and many leaves curl. There is
a threatening cloud in the southwest. The farmers dare not spread
their hay. It remains cocked in the fields. As you walk in the woods
nowadays, the flies striking against your hat sound like rain-drops.
The stump or root fences on the Corner road remind me of fossil remains
of mastodons, etc., exhumed and bleached in sun and rain. To-day I met
with the first orange flower of autumn. What means this doubly torrid,
this Bengal, tint? Yellow took sun enough, but this is the fruit of
a dog-day sun. The year has but just produced it. Here is the Canada
thistle in bloom, visited by butterflies and bees. The butterflies
have swarmed within these few days, especially about the milkweeds.
The swamp-pink still fills the air with its perfume in swamps and by
the causeways, though it is far gone. The wild rose still scatters its
petals over the leaves of neighboring plants. The wild morning-glory
or bindweed, with its delicate red and white blossoms. I remember it
ever as a goblet full of purest morning air and sparkling with dew,
showing the dew-point, winding round itself for want of other support.
It grows by the Hubbard Bridge causeway, near the angelica. The
cherry-birds are making their _seringo_ sound as they flit past. They
soon find out the locality of the cherry trees. And beyond the bridge
there is a goldenrod partially blossomed. Yesterday it was spring, and
to-morrow it will be autumn. Where is the summer then? First came the
St. John’s-wort and now the goldenrod to admonish us. I hear, too, a
cricket amid these stones under the blackberry vines, singing as in the
fall. Ripe blackberries are multiplying. I see the red-spotted berries
of the small Solomon’s-seal in my path. I notice, in the decayed end of
an oak post, that the silver grain is not decayed, but remains sound in
thin flakes, alternating with the decayed portions and giving the whole
a honeycombed look. Such an object supramundane, as even a swallow may
descend to light on, a dry mullein stalk for instance. I see that hens,
too, follow the cows feeding near the house, like the cow troopial,
and for the same object. They cannot so well scare up insects for
themselves. This is the dog the cowbird uses to start up its insect
game. I see yellow butterflies in pairs, pursuing each other a rod or
two into the air, and now, as he had bethought himself of the danger
of being devoured by a passing bird, he descends with a zigzag flight
to the earth, and the other follows. The black huckleberries are now so
thick among the green ones that they no longer incur suspicion of being
worm-eaten.

When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for a living,
some sad experience in conforming to the wishes of friends being
fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often and seriously of
picking huckleberries; that surely I could do, and its small profits
might suffice, so little capital it required, so little distraction
from my wonted thoughts, I foolishly thought. While my acquaintances
went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I thought of this
occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills all summer to pick
the berries which came in my way, which I might carelessly dispose of;
so to keep the flocks of King Admetus. My greatest skill has been to
want but little. I also dreamed that I might gather the wild herbs, or
carry evergreens to such villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods
and so find my living got. But I have since learned that trade curses
everything it handles; and though you _trade_ in messages from heaven,
the whole curse of trade attaches to the business.[239]

The wind rises more and more. The river and the pond are blacker
than the threatening cloud in the south. The thunder mutters in the
distance. The surface of the water is slightly rippled. Where the
pads grow is a light green border. The woods roar. Small white clouds
are hurrying across the dark-blue ground of the storm, which rests
on all the woods of the south horizon. But still no rain now for some
hours, as if the clouds were dissipated as fast as they reached this
atmosphere.

The barberry’s fruit hangs yellowish-green. What pretty covers the
thick bush makes, so large and wide and drooping! The _Fringilla
juncorum_ sings still, in spite of the coming tempest, which,
perchance, only threatens.

The woodchuck is a good native of the soil. The distant hillside and
the grain-fields and pastures are spotted yellow or white with his
recent burrows, and the small mounds remain for many years. Here where
the clover has lately been cut, see what a yellow mound is brought to
light!

  [Illustration]

Heavily hangs the common yellow lily (_Lilium Canadense_) in the
meadows. In the thick alder copses by the causeway-side I find
the _Lysimachia hybrida_. Here is the _Lactuca sanguinea_ with
its runcinate leaves, tall stem, and pale-crimson ray. And that
green-stemmed one higher than my head, resembling the last in its
leaves, is perchance the “tall lettuce,” or fireweed. Can that fine
white-flowered meadow-plant with the leaf be a thalictrum?


_July 20. Sunday morning._ A thunder-shower in the night. Thunder near
at hand, though louder, is a more trivial and earthly sound than at a
distance; likened to sounds of men. The clap which waked me last night
was as if some one was moving lumber in an upper apartment, some vast
hollow hall, tumbling it down and dragging it over the floor; and ever
and anon the lightning filled the damp air with light, like some vast
glow-worm in the fields of ether opening its wings.

The river, too, steadily yields its crop. In louring days it is
remarkable how many villagers resort to it. It is of more worth than
many gardens. I meet one, late in the afternoon, going to the river
with his basket on his arm and his pole in hand, not ambitious to catch
pickerel this time, but he thinks he may perhaps get a mess of small
fish. These [_sic_] kind of values are real and important, though but
little appreciated, and he is not a wise legislator who underrates them
and allows the bridges to be built low so as to prevent the passage of
small boats. The town is but little conscious how much interest it has
in the river, and might vote it away any day thoughtlessly. There is
always to be seen either some unshaven wading man, an old mower of the
river meadows, familiar with water, vibrating his long pole over the
lagoons of the off-shore pads, or else some solitary fisher, in a boat
behind the willows, like a mote in the sunbeams reflecting the light;
and who can tell how many a mess of river fish is daily cooked in the
town? They are an important article of food to many a poor family.

Some are poets, some are not,—as in relation to getting a living, so
to getting a wife. As their ideals of life vary, so do their ideals of
love.


4 P. M. Annursnack.—The under sides of the leaves, exposed by the
breeze, give a light bluish tinge to the woods as I look down on them.
Looking at the woods west of this hill, there is a grateful dark shade
under their eastern sides, where they meet the meadows, their cool
night side,—a triangular segment of night, to which the sun has set.
The mountains look like waves on a blue ocean tossed up by a stiff
gale. The _Rhexia Virginica_ is in bloom.


_July 21._ 8 A. M.—The forenoon is fuller of light. The butterflies on
the flowers look like other and frequently larger flowers themselves.
Now I yearn for one of those old, meandering, dry, uninhabited roads,
which lead away from towns, which lead us away from temptation, which
conduct to the outside of earth, over its uppermost crust; where you
may forget in what country you are travelling; where no farmer can
complain that you are treading down his grass, no gentleman who has
recently constructed a seat in the country that you are trespassing;
on which you can go off at half-cock and wave adieu to the village;
along which you may travel like a pilgrim, going nowhither; where
travellers are not too often to be met; where my spirit is free; where
the walls and fences are not cared for; where your head is more in
heaven than your feet are on earth; which have long reaches where you
can see the approaching traveller half a mile off and be prepared for
him; not so luxuriant a soil as to attract men; some root and stump
fences which do not need attention; where travellers have no occasion
to stop, but pass along and leave you to your thoughts; where it
makes no odds which way you face, whether you are going or coming,
whether it is morning or evening, mid-noon or midnight; where earth
is cheap enough by being public; where you can walk and think with
least obstruction, there being nothing to measure progress by; where
you can pace when your breast is full, and cherish your moodiness;
where you are not in false relations with men, are not dining nor
conversing with them; by which you may go to the uttermost parts of
the earth. It is wide enough, wide as the thoughts it allows to visit
you. Sometimes it is some particular half-dozen rods which I wish to
find myself pacing over, as where certain airs blow; then my life will
come to me, methinks; like a hunter I walk in wait for it. When I am
against this bare promontory of a huckleberry hill, then forsooth my
thoughts will expand. Is it some influence, as a vapor which exhales
from the ground, or something in the gales which blow there, or in
all things there brought together agreeably to my spirit? The walls
must not be too high, imprisoning me, but low, with numerous gaps. The
trees must not be too numerous, nor the hills too near, bounding the
view, nor the soil too rich, attracting the attention to the earth.
It must simply be the way and the life,—a way that was never known
to be repaired, nor to need repair, within the memory of the oldest
inhabitant. I cannot walk habitually in those ways that are liable to
be mended; for sure it was the devil only that wore them. Never by the
heel of thinkers (of thought) were they worn; the zephyrs could repair
that damage. The saunterer wears out no road, even though he travel on
it, and therefore should pay no highway, or rather _low_ way, tax. He
may be taxed to construct a higher way than men travel. A way which no
geese defile, nor hiss along it, but only sometimes their wild brethren
fly far overhead; which the kingbird and the swallow twitter over, and
the song sparrow sings on its rails; where the small red butterfly is
at home on the yarrow, and no boys threaten it with imprisoning hat.
There I can walk and stalk and pace and plod. Which nobody but Jonas
Potter travels beside me; where no cow but his is tempted to linger for
the herbage by its side; where the guide-board is fallen, and now the
hand points to heaven significantly,—to a Sudbury and Marlborough in
the skies. That’s a road I can travel, that the particular Sudbury I
am bound for, six miles an hour, or two, as you please; and few there
be that enter thereon. There I can walk, and recover the lost child
that I am without any ringing of a bell; where there was nothing ever
discovered to detain a traveller, but all went through about their
business; where I never passed the time of day with any,—indifferent
to me were the arbitrary divisions of time; where Tullus Hostilius
might have disappeared,—at any rate has never been seen. The road
to the Corner! the ninety and nine acres that you go through to get
there! I would rather see it again, though I saw it this morning,
than Gray’s churchyard. The road whence you may hear a stake-driver,
a whip-poor-will, a quail in a midsummer day, a—yes, a quail comes
nearest to the _gum-c_[240] bird heard there; where it would not be
sport for a sportsman to go. And the mayweed looks up in my face,—not
there; the pale lobelia, the Canada snapdragon, rather. A little
hardhack and meadowsweet peep over the fence,—nothing more serious to
obstruct the view,—and thimble-berries are the food of thought, before
the drought, along by the walls.[241]

It is they who go to Brighton and to market that wear out the roads,
and they should pay all the tax. The deliberate pace of a thinker never
made a road the worse for travelling on.

There I have freedom in my thought, and in my soul am free. Excepting
the omnipresent butcher with his calf-cart, followed by a distracted
and anxious cow.[242]

Be it known that in Concord, where the first forcible resistance to
British aggression was made in the year 1775, they chop up the young
calves and give them to the hens to make them lay, it being considered
the cheapest and most profitable food for them, and they sell the milk
to Boston.

On the promenade deck of the world, an outside passenger. The
inattentive, ever strange baker, whom no weather detains, that does not
bake his bread in this hemisphere,—and therefore it is dry before it
gets here. Ah! there is a road where you might advertise to fly, and
make no preparations till the time comes; where your wings will sprout
if anywhere, where your feet are not confined to earth. An airy head
makes light walking.

Where I am not confined and balked by the sight of distant farmhouses
which I have not gone past. In roads the obstructions are not under
my feet,—I care not for rough ground or wet even,—but they are in my
vision and in the thoughts or associations which I am compelled to
entertain. I must be fancy-free; I must feel that, wet or dry, high
or low, it is the genuine surface of the planet, and not a little
chip-dirt or a compost-heap, or made land or redeemed. Where I can
sit by the wall-side and not be peered at by any old ladies going
a-shopping, not have to bow to one whom I may have seen in my youth,—at
least, not more than once. I am engaged and cannot be polite. Did
you ever hear of such a thing as a man sitting in the road, and then
have four eyes levelled at you? Have we any more right sometimes to
look at one than to point a revolver at him; it might go off; and
so, perchance, we might _see_ him,—though there is not so much danger
of _that_,—which would be equally fatal, if it _should_ ever happen,
though perhaps it never has.

A thinker’s weight is in his thought, not in his tread; when he thinks
freely, his body weighs nothing. He cannot tread down your grass,
farmers.[243]

I thought to walk this forenoon instead of this afternoon, for I have
not been in the fields and woods much of late except when surveying,
but the least affair of that kind is as if you had [a] black veil
drawn over your face which shut out nature, as that eccentric and
melancholy minister whom I have heard of.[244] It may be the fairest
day in all the year and you shall not know it. One little chore to do,
one little commission to fulfill, one message to carry, would spoil
heaven itself. Talk about a lover being engaged! He is the only man in
all the world who is free. And all you get is your dollars. To go forth
before the heat is intolerable, and see what is the difference between
forenoon and afternoon. It seems there is a little more coolness in
the air; there is still some dew, even on this short grass in the
shade of the walls and woods; and a feeling of vigor the walker has.
There are few sounds but the slight twittering of swallows, and the
_springy_ note of the sparrow in the grass or trees, and a lark in the
meadow (now at 8 A. M.), and the cricket under all to ally the hour
to night. Day is, in fact, about as still as night. Draw the veil of
night over this landscape, and these sounds would not disturb nor be
inconsistent for their loudness with the night. It is a difference
of white and black. Nature is in a white sleep. It threatens to be a
hot day, and the haymakers are whetting their scythes in the fields,
where they have been out since 4 o’clock. When I have seen them in
the twilight commencing their labors, I have been impressed as if
it were last night. There is something ghastly about such very early
labor. I cannot detect the whole and characteristic difference between
this and afternoon, though it is positive and decided enough, as my
instincts know. By 2 o’clock it will be warmer and hazier, obscuring
the mountains, and the leaves will curl, and the dust will rise more
readily. Every herb is fresher now, has recovered from yesterday’s
drought. The cooler air of night still lingers in the fields, as by
night the warm air of day. The noon is perchance the time to stay in
the house.

There is no glory so bright but the veil of business can hide it
effectually. With most men life is postponed to some trivial business,
and so therefore is heaven. Men think foolishly they may abuse and
misspend life as they please and when they get to heaven turn over a
new leaf.

I see the track of a bare human foot in the dusty road, the toes
and muscles all faithfully imprinted. Such a sight is so rare that
it affects me with surprise, as the footprint on the shore of Juan
Fernandez did Crusoe. It is equally rare here. I am affected as
if some Indian or South-Sea-Islander had been along, some man who
had a foot. I am slow to be convinced that any of my neighbors—the
judge on the bench, the parson in the pulpit—might have made that or
something like it, however irregular. It is pleasant as it is to see
the tracks of cows and deer and birds. I am brought so much nearer to
the tracker—when again I think of the sole of my own foot—than when I
behold that of his shoe merely, or am introduced to him and converse
with him in the usual way. I am disposed to say to the judge whom I
meet, “Make tracks.”

Men are very generally spoiled by being so civil and well-disposed.
You can have no profitable conversation with them, they are so
conciliatory, determined to agree with you. They exhibit such
long-suffering and kindness in a short interview. I would meet with
some provoking strangeness, so that we may be guest and host and
refresh one another. It is possible for a man wholly to disappear and
be merged in his manners. The thousand and one gentlemen whom I meet,
I meet despairingly and but to part from them, for I am not cheered
by the hope of any rudeness from them. A cross man, a coarse man, an
eccentric man, a silent, a man who does not drill well,—of him there
is some hope. Your gentlemen, they are all alike. They utter their
opinions as if it was not a man that uttered them. It is “just as you
please;” they are indifferent to everything. They will talk with you
for nothing. The interesting man will rather avoid [you], and it is
a rare chance if you get so far as talk with him. The laborers whom
I know, the loafers, fishers, and hunters, I can spin yarns with
profitably, for it is hands off; they are they and I am I still;
they do not come to me and quarter themselves on me for a day or an
hour to be treated politely, they do not cast themselves on me for
entertainment, they do not approach me with a flag of truce. They
do not go out of themselves to meet me. I am never electrified by my
gentleman; he is not an electric eel, but one of the common kind that
slip through your hands, however hard you clutch them, and leave them
covered with slime. He is a man, every inch of him; is worth a groom.

To eat berries on the dry pastures of Conantum, as if they were the
food of thought, dry as itself! Berries are now thick enough to pick.

       *       *       *       *       *

9 A. M. On Conantum.—A quarter of a mile is distance enough to make the
atmosphere look blue now. This is never the case in spring or early
summer. It was fit that I should see an indigo-bird here, concerned
about its young, a perfect embodiment of the darkest blue that ever
fills the valleys at this season. The meadow-grass reflecting the light
has a bluish cast also.

Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth; _i. e._, lay up a store
of natural influences. Sing while you may, before the evil days come.
He that hath ears, let him hear. See, hear, smell, taste, etc., while
these senses are fresh and pure.

There is always a kind of fine æolian harp music to be heard in the
air. I hear now, as it were, the mellow sound of distant horns in the
hollow mansions of the upper air, a sound to make all men divinely
insane that hear it, far away overhead, subsiding into my ear. To
ears that are expanded what a harp this world is! The occupied ear
thinks that beyond the cricket no sound can be heard, but there is an
immortal melody that may be heard morning, noon, and night, by ears
that can attend, and from time to time this man or that hears it,
having ears that were made for music. To hear this the hardhack and the
meadow-sweet _aspire_. They are thus beautifully painted, because they
are tinged in the lower stratum of that melody.

I eat these berries as simply and naturally as thoughts come to my
mind.

Never yet did I chance to sit in a house, except my own house in the
woods, and hear a wood thrush sing. Would it not be well to sit in such
a chamber within sound of the finest songster of the grove?

The quail, invisible, whistles, and who attends?

10 A. M.—The white lily has opened. How could it stand these heats?
It has pantingly opened, and now lies stretched out by its too long
stem on the surface of the shrunken river. The air grows more and more
blue, making pretty effects when one wood is seen from another through
a little interval. Some pigeons here are resting in the thickest of
the white pines during the heat of the day, migrating, no doubt. They
are unwilling to move for me. Flies buzz and rain about my hat, and the
dead twigs and leaves of the white pine, which the choppers have left
here, exhale a dry and almost sickening scent. A cuckoo chuckles, half
throttled, on a neighboring tree, and now, flying into the pine, scares
out a pigeon, which flies with its handsome tail spread, dashes this
side and that between the trees helplessly, like a ship carrying too
much sail in midst of a small creek, some great amiral; having no room
to manœuvre,—a fluttering flight.

The mountains can scarcely be seen for the blue haze,—only Wachusett
and the near ones. The thorny apple bush on Conantum has lately sent up
branches from its top, resolved to become a tree; and these spreading
(and bearing fruit), the whole has the form of a vast hour-glass. The
lower part being the most dense by far, you would say the sand had run
out.[245]

I now return through Conant’s leafy woods by the spring, whose floor is
sprinkled with sunlight,—low trees which yet effectually shade you.

The dusty mayweed now blooms by the roadside, one of the humblest
flowers. The rough hawkweed, too, by the damp roadside, resembling
in its flower the autumnal dandelion. That was probably the _Verbena
hastata_, or common blue vervain, which I found the other day by Walden
Pond.

The _Antirrhinum Canadense_, Canada snapdragon, in the Corner road; and
the ragged orchis on Conantum.

       *       *       *       *       *

8.30 P. M.—The streets of the village are much more interesting to
me at this hour of a summer evening than by day. Neighbors, and also
farmers, come a-shopping after their day’s haying, are chatting in
the streets, and I hear the sound of many musical instruments and of
singing from various houses. For a short hour or two the inhabitants
are sensibly employed. The evening is devoted to poetry, such as the
villagers can appreciate.

How rare to meet with a farmer who is a man of sentiment! Yet there
was one, Gen. Joshua Buttrick, who died the other day, who is said to
have lived in his sentiments. He used to say that the smell of burning
powder excited him.

It is said that Mirabeau took to highway robbery “to ascertain what
degree of resolution was necessary in order to place one’s self in
formal opposition to the most sacred laws of society.” He declared
that “a soldier who fights in the ranks does not require half so much
courage as a foot-pad.” “Honor and religion have never stood in the way
of a well-considered and a firm resolve.[246] Tell me, Du Saillant,
when you lead your regiment into the heat of battle, to conquer a
province to which he whom you call your master has no right whatever,
do you consider that you are performing a better action than mine, in
stopping your friend on the king’s highway, and demanding his purse?”

“I obey without reasoning,” replied the count.

“And I reason without obeying, when obedience appears to me to be
contrary to reason,” rejoined Mirabeau.[247]

This was good and manly, as the world goes; and yet it was desperate.
A saner man would have found opportunities enough to put himself in
formal opposition to the most sacred laws of society, and so test his
resolution, in the natural course of events, without violating the
laws of his own nature. It is not for a man to _put himself_ in such an
attitude to society, but to _maintain_ himself in whatever attitude he
finds himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will
never be one of opposition to a just government.[248] Cut the leather
only where the shoe pinches. Let us not have a rabid virtue that will
be revenged on society,—that falls on it, not like the morning dew, but
like the fervid noonday sun, to wither it.


_July 22._ The season of morning fogs has arrived. I think it is
connected with dog-days. Perhaps it is owing to the greater contrast
between the night and the day, the nights being nearly as cold, while
the days are warmer? Before I rise from my couch, I see the ambrosial
fog stretched over the river, draping the trees. It is the summer’s
vapor bath. What purity in the color! It is almost musical; it is
positively fragrant. How faery-like it has visited our fields. I am
struck by its firm outlines, as distinct as a pillow’s edge, about the
height of my house. A great crescent over the course of the river from
southwest to northeast. Already, 5.30 A. M., some parts of the river
are bare. It goes off in a body down the river, before this air, and
does not rise into the heavens. It retreats, and I do not see how it
is dissipated. This slight, thin vapor which is left to curl over the
surface of the still, dark water, still as glass, seems not [to] be the
same thing,—of a different quality. I hear the cockerels crow through
it, and the rich crow of young roosters, that sound indicative of the
bravest, rudest health, hoarse without cold, hoarse with rude health.
That crow is all-nature-compelling; famine and pestilence flee before
it. These are our fairest days, which are born in a fog.

I saw the tall lettuce yesterday (_Lactuca elongata_), whose top or
main shoot had been broken off, and it had put up various stems, with
entire and lanceolate, not runcinate leaves as usual, thus making what
some botanists have called a variety, _β. linearis_. So I have met
with some geniuses who, having met with some such accident maiming
them, have been developed in some such _monstrous_ and partial, though
original, way. They were original in being less than themselves.

Yes, your leaf is peculiar, and some would make of you a distinct
variety, but to me you appear like the puny result of an accident and
misfortune, for you have lost your main shoot, and the leaves which
would have grown runcinate are small and lanceolate.

The last Sunday afternoon I smelled the clear pork frying for a
farmer’s supper thirty rods off (what a Sunday supper!), the windows
being open, and could imagine the _clear_ tea without milk which
usually accompanies it.

Now the cat-o’-nine-tails are seen in the impenetrable meadows, and
the tall green rush is perfecting its tufts. The spotted polygonum (_P.
Persicaria_) by the roadside.

I scare up a woodcock from some moist place at midday.

The pewee and kingbird are killing bees, perched on a post or a dead
twig.

I bathe me in the river. I lie down where it is shallow, amid the
weeds over its sandy bottom; but it seems shrunken and parched; I
find it difficult to get _wet_ through. I would fain be the channel
of a mountain brook. I bathe, and in a few hours I bathe again, not
remembering that I was wetted before. When I come to the river, I take
off my clothes and carry them over, then bathe and wash off the mud and
continue my walk. I would fain take rivers in my walks endwise.

There was a singular charm for me in those French names,—more than
in the things themselves. The names of Italian and Grecian cities,
villages, and natural features are not more poetic to me than the
names of those humble Canadian villages. To be told by a habitant,
when I asked the name of a village in sight, that is St. Féréol or St.
Anne’s! But I was quite taken off my feet when, running back to inquire
what river we were crossing, and thinking for a long time he said _la
rivière d’océan_, it flashed upon me at last that it was _La Rivière du
Chien_.[249]

       *       *       *       *       *

There was so much grace and sentiment and refinement in the names, how
could they be coarse who took them so often on their lips,—St. Anne’s,
St. Joseph’s; the holy Anne’s, the holy Joseph’s! Next to the Indian,
the French missionary and voyageur and Catholic habitant have named the
natural features of the land. The _prairie_, the _voyageur_! Or does
every man think his neighbor is the richer and more fortunate man, his
neighbor’s fields the richest?

It needed only a little outlandishness in the names, a little foreign
accent, a few more vowels in the words, to make me locate all my ideals
at once. How prepared we are for another world than this! We are no
sooner over the line of the States than we expect to see men leading
poetic lives,—nothing so natural, that is the presumption. The names
of the mountains, and the streams, and the villages reel with the
intoxication of poetry—Longueuil, Chambly, Barthillon (?), Montilly
(?).[250]

Where there were books only, to find realities. Of course we assign to
the place the idea which the written history or poem suggested. Quebec,
of course, is never seen for what it simply is to practical eyes, but
as the local habitation of those thoughts and visions which we have
derived from reading of Wolfe and Montcalm, Montgomery and Arnold. It
is hard to make me attend to the geology of Cape Diamond or the botany
of the Plains of Abraham.[251] How glad we are to find that there is
another race of men! for they may be more successful and fortunate than
we.

Canada is not a place for railroads to terminate in, or for criminals
to run to.[252]


_July 23. Wednesday._ I remember the last moon, shining through a
creamy atmosphere, with a tear in the eye of Nature and her tresses
dishevelled and drooping, sliding up the sky, the glistening air,
the leaves shining with dew, pulsating upward; an atmosphere unworn,
unprophaned by day. What self-healing in Nature!—swept by the dews.

For some weeks past the roadsides and the dry and trivial fields have
been covered with the field trefoil (_Trifolium arvense_), now in
bloom.

       *       *       *       *       *

8 A. M.—A comfortable breeze blowing. Methinks I can write better
in the afternoon, for the novelty of it, if I should go abroad this
morning. My genius makes distinctions which my understanding cannot,
and which my senses do not report. If I should reverse the usual,—go
forth and saunter in the fields all the forenoon, then sit down in my
chamber in the afternoon, which it is so unusual for me to do,—it would
be like a new season to me, and the novelty of it [would] inspire me.
The wind has fairly blown me outdoors; the elements were so lively and
active, and I so sympathized with them, that I could not sit while the
wind went by. And I am reminded that we should especially improve the
summer to live out-of-doors. When we may so easily, it behooves us to
break up this custom of sitting in the house, for it is but a custom,
and I am not sure that it has the sanction of common sense. A man no
sooner gets up than he sits down again. Fowls leave their perch in the
morning, and beasts their lairs, unless they are such as go abroad only
by night. The cockerel does not take up a new perch _in the barn_, and
he is the embodiment of health and common sense. Is the literary man to
live always or chiefly sitting in a chamber through which nature enters
by a window only? What is the use of the summer?

You must walk so gently as to hear the finest sounds, the faculties
being in repose. Your mind must not perspire. True, out of doors my
thought is commonly drowned, as it were, and shrunken, pressed down
by stupendous piles of light ethereal influences, for the pressure
of the atmosphere is still fifteen pounds to a square inch. I can do
little more than preserve the equilibrium and resist the pressure of
the atmosphere. I can only nod like the rye-heads in the breeze. I
expand more surely in my chamber, as far as expression goes, as if that
pressure were taken off; but here outdoors is the place to store up
influences.

The swallow’s twitter is the sound of the lapsing waves of the air, or
when they break and burst, as his wings represent the ripple. He has
more air in his bones than other birds; his feet are defective. The
fish of the air. His note is the voice of the air. As fishes may hear
the sound of waves lapsing on the surface and see the outlines of the
ripples, so we hear the note and see the flight of swallows.

The influences which make for one walk more than another, and one
day more than another, are much more ethereal than terrestrial. It is
the quality of the air much more than the quality of the ground that
concerns the walker,—cheers or depresses him. What he may find in the
air, not what he may find on the ground.

On such a road (the Corner) I walk securely, seeing far and wide on
both sides, as if I were flanked by light infantry on the hills, to
rout the provincials, as the British marched into Concord, while my
grenadier thoughts keep the main road. That is, my light-armed and
wandering thoughts scour the neighboring fields, and so I know if the
coast is clear. With what a breadth of van I advance! I am not bounded
by the walls. I think more than the road full. (Going southwesterly.)

While I am abroad, the ovipositors plant their seeds in me; I am
fly-blown with thought, and go home to hatch and brood over them.

I was too discursive and rambling in my thought for the chamber, and
must go where the wind blows on me walking.

A little brook crossing the road (the Corner road), a few inches’ depth
of transparent water rippling over yellow sand and pebbles, the pure
blood of nature. How miraculously crystal-like, how exquisite, fine,
and subtle, and liquid this element, which an imperceptible inclination
in the channel causes to flow thus surely and swiftly! How obedient
to its instinct, to the faintest suggestion of the hills! If inclined
but a hair’s breadth, it is in a torrent haste to obey. And all the
revolutions of the planet—nature is so exquisitely adjusted—and the
attraction of the stars do not disturb this equipoise, but the rills
still flow the same way, and the water levels are not disturbed.

We are not so much like debauchees as in the afternoon.

The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the
earth. Pay not too much heed to them. Let not the traveller stop for
them. They consist with the fairest weather. By the mood of my mind, I
suddenly felt dissuaded from continuing my walk, but I observed at the
same instant that the shadow of a cloud was passing over [the] spot
on which I stood, though it was of small extent, which, if it had no
connection with my mood, at any rate suggested how transient and little
to be regarded that mood was. I kept on, and in a moment the sun shone
on my walk within and without.

The button-bush in blossom. The tobacco-pipe in damp woods. Certain
localities only a few rods square in the fields and on the hills,
sometimes the other side of a wall, attract me as if they had been the
scene of pleasure in another state of existence.

But this habit of close observation,—in Humboldt, Darwin, and others.
Is it to be kept up long, this science? Do not tread on the heels of
your experience. Be impressed without making a minute of it. Poetry
puts an interval between the impression and the expression,—waits till
the seed germinates naturally.


_July 24._ 5 A. M.—The street and fields betray the drought and look
more parched than at noon; they look as I feel,—languid and thin and
feeling my nerves. The potatoes and the elms and the herbage by the
roadside, though there is a slight dew, seem to rise out of an arid and
thirsty soil into the atmosphere of a furnace slightly cooled down. The
leaves of the elms are yellow. Ah! now I see what the noon was and what
it may be again. The effects of drought are never more apparent than
at dawn. Nature is like a hen panting with open mouth, in the grass, as
the morning after a debauch.


_July 25. Friday._ Started for Clark’s Island at 7 A. M.

At 9 A. M. took the Hingham boat and was landed at Hull. There was
a pleasure party on board, apparently boys and girls belonging to
the South End, going to Hingham. There was a large proportion of
ill-dressed and ill-mannered boys of Irish extraction. A sad sight to
behold! Little boys of twelve years, prematurely old, sucking cigars! I
felt that if I were their mothers I should whip them and send them to
bed. Such children should be dealt with as for stealing or impurity.
The opening of this valve for the safety of the city! Oh, what a
wretched resource! What right have parents to beget, to bring up, and
attempt to _educate_ children in a city? I thought of infanticide among
the Orientals with complacency. I seemed to hear infant voices lisp,
“Give us a fair chance, parents.” There is no such squalidness in the
country. You would have said that they must all have come from the
house of correction and the farm-school, but such a company do the boys
in Boston streets make. The birds have more care for their young,—where
they place their nests. What are a city’s charities? She cannot be
charitable any more than the old philosopher could move the earth,
unless she has a resting-place without herself. A true culture is more
possible to the savage than to the boy of average intellect, born of
average parents, in a great city. I believe that they perish miserably.
How can they be kept clean, physically or morally? It is folly to
attempt to educate children within a city; the first step must be to
remove them out of it. It seemed a groping and helpless philanthropy
that I heard of.

I heard a boy telling the story of Nix’s Mate to some girls, as we
passed that spot, how “he said, ‘If I am guilty, this island will
remain; but if I am innocent, it will be washed away,’ and now it
is all washed away.”[253] This was a simple and strong expression of
feeling suitable to the occasion, by which he committed the evidence
of his innocence to the dumb isle, such as the boy could appreciate, a
proper sailor’s legend; and I was reminded that it is the illiterate
and unimaginative class that seizes on and transmits the legends in
which the more cultivated delight. No fastidious poet dwelling in
Boston had tampered with it,—no narrow poet, but broad mankind, sailors
from all ports sailing by. They, sitting on the deck, were the literary
academy that sat upon its periods.

On the beach at Hull, and afterwards all along the shore to Plymouth,
I saw the datura, the variety (red-stemmed), methinks, which some call
_Tatula_ instead of _Stramonium_. I felt as if I was on the highway of
the world, at sight of this cosmopolite and veteran traveller. It told
of commerce and sailors’ yarns without end. It grows luxuriantly in
sand and gravel. This Captain Cook among plants, this Norseman or sea
pirate, viking or king of the bays, the beaches. It is not an innocent
plant; it suggests commerce, with its attendant vices.[254]

Saw a public house where I landed at Hull, made like some barns which
I have seen, of boards with a cleat nailed over the cracks, without
clapboards or paint, evidently very simple and cheap, yet neat and
convenient as well as airy. It interested me, as the New House at Long
Island did not, as it brought the luxury and comfort of the seashore
within reach of the less wealthy. It was such an exhibition of good
sense as I was not prepared for and do not remember to have seen
before. Ascended to the top of the hill, where is the old French fort,
with the well said to be ninety feet deep, now covered.[255] I saw some
horses standing on the very top of the ramparts, the highest part of
Hull, where there was hardly room to turn round, for the sake of the
breeze.[256] It was excessively warm, and their instincts, or their
experience perchance, guided them as surely to the summit as it did
me. Here is the telegraph, nine miles from Boston, whose State-House
was just visible,—movable signs on a pole with holes in them for the
passage of the wind. A man about the telegraph station thought it the
highest point in the harbor; said they could tell the kind of vessel
thirty miles off, the number at masthead ten or twelve miles, name on
hull six or seven miles. They can see furthest in the fall. There is
a mist summer and winter, when the contrast between the temperature
of the sea and the air is greatest. I did not see why this hill should
not be fortified as well as George’s Island, it being higher and also
commanding the main channel. However, an enemy could go by all the
forts in the dark, as Wolfe did at Quebec.[257] They are bungling
contrivances.

  [Illustrations]

Here the bank is rapidly washing away. On every side, in Boston Harbor,
the evidences of the wasting away of the islands are so obvious and
striking that they appear to be wasting faster than they are. You
will sometimes see a springing hill, showing by the interrupted arch
of its surface against the sky how much space [it] must have occupied
where there is now water, as at Point Allerton,—what botanists call
premorse. Hull looks as if it had been two islands, since connected
by a beach. I was struck by the gracefully curving and fantastic shore
of a small island (Hog Island) inside of Hull, where everything seemed
to be gently lapsing into futurity, as if the inhabitants should bear
a ripple for device on their coat-of-arms, a wave passing over them,
with the datura growing on their shores. The wrecks of isles fancifully
arranged into a new shore. To see the sea nibbling thus voraciously
at the continents![258] A man at the telegraph told me of a white oak
pole a foot and a half in diameter, forty feet high, and four feet or
more in the rock at Minot’s Ledge, with four guys, which stood only one
year. Stone piled up cob-fashion near same place stood eight years.

Hull pretty good land, but bare of trees—only a few cherries for the
most part—and mostly uncultivated, being owned by few. I heard the
voices of men shouting aboard a vessel half a mile from the shore,
which sounded as if they were in a barn in the country, they being
between the sails. It was not a sea sound. It was a purely rural
sound.[259]

Man needs to know but little more than a lobster in order to catch him
in his traps. Here were many lobster traps on the shore. The beds of
dry seaweed or eel-grass on the beach remind me of narrow shavings. On
the farther hill in Hull, I saw a field full of Canada thistles close
up to the fences on all sides, while beyond them there was none. So
much for these fields having been subjected to different culture. So a
different culture in the case of men brings in different weeds. As are
the virtues, so are the vices. Weeds come in with the seeds, though
perhaps much more in the manure. Each kind of culture will introduce
its own weeds.

I am bothered to walk with those who wish to keep step with me. It is
not necessary to keep step with your companion, as some endeavor to do.

They told me at Hull that they burned the _stem_ of the kelp chiefly
for potash. Chemistry is not a splitting hairs when you have got half
a dozen raw Irishmen in the laboratory.

As I walked on the beach (Nantasket), panting with thirst, a man
pointed to a white spot on the side of a distant hill (Strawberry
Hill he called it) which rose from the gravelly beach, and said that
there was a pure and cold and unfailing spring; and I could not help
admiring that in this town of Hull, of which I had heard, but now for
the first time saw, a single spring should appear to me and should be
of so much value. I found Hull indeed, but there was also a spring on
that parched, unsheltered shore; the spring, though I did not visit it,
made the deepest impression on my mind. Hull, the place of the spring
and of the well. This is what the traveller would remember. All that he
remembered of Rome was a spring on the Capitoline Hill![260]

       *       *       *       *       *

It is the most perfect seashore I have seen.[261] The rockweed falls
over you like the _tresses_ of mermaids, and you see the propriety of
that epithet. You cannot swim among these weeds and pull yourself up by
them without thinking of mermen and mermaids.

The barnacles on the rocks, which make a whitish strip a few feet in
width just above the weeds, remind me of some vegetable growth which I
have seen,—surrounded by a circle of calyx-like or petal-like shells
like some buds or seed-vessels. They, too, clinging to the rocks
like the weeds; lying along the seams of the rock like buttons on a
waistcoat.

I saw in Cohasset, separated from the sea only by a narrow beach, a
very large and handsome but shallow lake, of at least four hundred
acres, with five rocky islets in it; which the sea had tossed over the
beach in the great storm in the spring, and, after the alewives had
passed into it, stopped up its outlet; and now the alewives were dying
by thousands, and the inhabitants apprehended a pestilence as the water
evaporated. The water was very foul.[262]

The rockweed is considered the best for manure. I saw them drying
the Irish moss in quantities at Jerusalem Village in Cohasset. It is
said to be used for sizing calico. Finding myself on the edge of a
thunder-storm, I stopped a few moments at the Rock House in Cohasset,
close to the shore. There was scarcely rain enough to wet one, and no
wind. I was therefore surprised to hear afterward, through a young man
who had just returned from Liverpool, that there was a severe squall at
quarantine ground, only seven or eight miles northwest of me, such as
he had not experienced for three years, which sunk several boats and
caused some vessels to drag their anchors and come near going ashore;
proving that the gust which struck the water there must have been of
very limited breadth, for I was or might have been overlooking the spot
and felt no wind. This rocky shore is called Pleasant Cove on large
maps; on the map of Cohasset alone, the name seems to be confined to
the cove where I first saw the wreck of the St. John alone.[263]

Brush Island, opposite this, with a hut on it, not permanently
inhabited. It takes but little soil to tempt men to inhabit such
places. I saw here the American holly (_Ilex opaca_), which is not
found further north than Massachusetts, but south and west. The yellow
gerardia in the woods.


_July 26._ At Cohasset.—Called on Captain Snow, who remembered hearing
fishermen say that they “fitted out at Thoreau’s;” remembered him. He
had commanded a packet between Boston or New York and England. Spoke
of the wave which he sometimes met on the Atlantic coming against the
wind, and which indicated that the wind was blowing from an opposite
quarter at a distance, the undulation travelling faster than the wind.
They see Cape Cod loom here. Thought the Bay between here and Cape
Ann thirty fathoms deep; between here and Cape Cod, sixty or seventy
fathoms. The “Annual of Scientific Discovery” for 1851 says, quoting a
Mr. A. G. Findley, “Waves travel very great distances, and are often
raised by distant hurricanes, having been felt simultaneously at St.
Helena and Ascension, though 600 miles apart, and it is probable that
ground swells often originate at the Cape of Good Hope, 3000 miles
distant.” Sailors tell of tide-rips. Some are thought to be occasioned
by earthquakes.

The ocean at Cohasset did not look as if any were ever shipwrecked in
it. Not a vestige of a wreck left. It was not grand and sublime now,
but beautiful. The water held in the little hollows of the rocks, on
the receding of the tide, is so crystal-pure that you cannot believe it
salt, but wish to drink it.[264]

The architect of a Minot Rock lighthouse might profitably spend a day
studying the worn rocks of Cohasset shore, and learn the power of the
waves, see what kind of sand the sea is using to grind them down.

A fine delicate seaweed, which some properly enough call sea-green. Saw
here the staghorn, or velvet, sumach (_Rhus typhina_), so called from
form of young branches, a size larger than the _Rhus glabra_ common
with us. The _Plantago maritima_, or sea plantain, properly named.
I guessed its name before I knew what it was called by botanists.
The American sea-rocket (_Bunias edentula_) I suppose it was that I
saw,—the succulent plant with much cut leaves and small pinkish (?)
flowers.


_July 27. Sunday._ Walked from Cohasset to Duxbury and sailed thence to
Clark’s Island.

Visited the large tupelo tree (_Nyssa multiflora_) in Scituate, whose
rounded and open top, like some umbelliferous plant’s, I could see from
Mr. Sewal’s, the tree which George Emerson went twenty-five miles to
see, called sometimes snag-tree and swamp hornbeam, also pepperidge
and gum-tree. Hard to split. We have it in Concord. Cardinal-flower in
bloom. Scituate meeting-houses on very high ground; the principal one
a landmark for sailors. Saw the buckthorn, which is naturalized. One of
Marshfield meeting-houses on the height of land on my road. The country
generally descends westerly toward the sources of Taunton River.

After taking the road by Webster’s beyond South Marshfield, I walked
a long way at noon, hot and thirsty, before I could find a suitable
place to sit and eat my dinner,—a place where the shade and the sward
pleased me. At length I was obliged to put up with a small shade close
to the ruts, where the only stream I had seen for some time crossed
the road. Here, also, numerous robins came to cool and wash themselves
and to drink. They stood in the water up to their bellies, from time
to time wetting their wings and tails and also ducking their heads and
sprinkling the water over themselves; then they sat on a fence near by
to dry. Then a goldfinch came and did the same, accompanied by the less
brilliant female. These birds evidently enjoyed their bath greatly, and
it seemed indispensable to them.

A neighbor of Webster’s told me that he had hard on to sixteen hundred
acres and was still buying more,—a farm and factory within the year;
cultivated a hundred and fifty acres. I saw twelve acres of potatoes
together, the same of rye and wheat, and more methinks of buckwheat.
Fifteen or sixteen men, Irish mostly, at ten dollars a month, doing the
work of fifty, with a Yankee overseer, long a resident of Marshfield,
named Wright. Would eat only the produce of his farm during the few
weeks he was at home,—brown bread and butter and milk,—and sent out for
a pig’s cheek to eat with his greens. Ate only what grew on his farm,
but drank more than ran on his farm.

Took refuge from the rain at a Mr. Stetson’s in Duxbury.

I forgot to say that I passed the Winslow House, now belonging to
Webster. This land was granted to the family in 1637.

Sailed with tavern-keeper Winsor, who was going out mackereling. Seven
men, stripping up their clothes, each bearing an armful of wood and
one some new potatoes, walked to the boats, then shoved them out a
dozen rods over the mud, then rowed half a mile to the schooner of
forty-three tons. They expected [to] be gone about a week, and to begin
to fish perhaps the next morning. Fresh mackerel which they carried
to Boston. Had four dories, and commonly fished from them. Else they
fished on the starboard side aft, where their lines hung ready with the
old baits on, two to a man. I had the experience of going on a mackerel
cruise.

They went aboard their schooner in a leisurely way this Sunday evening,
with a fair but very slight wind, the sun now setting clear and shining
on the vessel after several thunder-showers. I was struck by the small
quantity of supplies which they appeared to take. We climbed aboard,
and there we were in a mackerel schooner. The baits were not dry on
the hooks. Winsor cast overboard the foul juice of mackerels mixed
with rain-water which remained in his trough. There was the mill in
which to grind up the mackerel for bait, and the trough to hold it, and
the long-handled dipper to cast it overboard with; and already in the
harbor we saw the surface rippled with schools of small mackerel. They
proceeded leisurely to weigh anchor, and then to raise their two sails.
There was one passenger, going for health or amusement, who had been
to California. I had the experience of going a-mackereling, though I
was landed on an island before we got out of the harbor. They expected
to commence fishing the next morning. It had been a very warm day with
frequent thunder-showers. I had walked from Cohasset to Duxbury, and
had walked about the latter town to find a passage to Clark’s Island,
about three miles distant, but no boat could stir, they said, at that
state of the tide.[265] The tide was down, and boats were left high
and dry. At length I was directed to Winsor’s tavern, where perchance I
might find some mackerel-fishers, who were going to sail that night to
be ready for fishing in the morning, and, as they would pass near the
island, they would take me. I found it so. Winsor himself was going.
I told him he was the very man for me; but I must wait an hour. So
I ate supper with them. Then one after another of his crew was seen
straggling to the shore, for the most part in high boots,—some made of
india-rubber,—some with their pants stripped up. There were seven for
this schooner, beside a passenger and myself. The leisurely manner in
which they proceeded struck me. I had taken off my shoes and stockings
and prepared to wade. Each of the seven took an armful of pine wood and
walked with it to the two boats, which lay at high-water mark in the
mud; then they resolved that each should bring one more armful and that
would be enough. They had already got a barrel of water and had some
more in the schooner, also a bucket of new potatoes. Then, dividing
into two parties, we pulled and shoved the boats a dozen rods over
the mud and water till they floated, then rowed half a mile or more
over the shallow water to the little schooner and climbed aboard. Many
seals had their heads out. We gathered about the helmsman and talked
about the compass, which was affected by the iron in the vessel, etc.,
etc.[266]

       *       *       *       *       *

  [Illustration]

Clark’s Island, Sunday night.—On Friday night December 8th, O. S.,
the Pilgrims, exploring in the shallop, landed on Clark’s Island (so
called from the master’s mate of the May-Flower), where they spent
three nights and kept their first Sabbath. On Monday, or the 11th,
O. S., they landed on the Rock. This island contains about eighty-six
acres and was once covered with red cedars which were sold at Boston
for gate-posts. I saw a few left, one, two feet in diameter at the
ground, which was probably standing when the Pilgrims came. Ed. Watson,
who could remember them nearly fifty years, had observed but little
change in them. Hutchinson calls this one of the best islands in
Massachusetts Bay. The town kept it at first as a sacred place, but
finally sold it in 1690 to Samuel Lucas, Elkanah Watson, and George
Morton. Saw a stag’s-horn sumach five or six inches in diameter and
eighteen feet high. Here was the marsh goldenrod (_Solidago lævigata_)
not yet in blossom; a small bluish flower in the marshes, which they
called rosemary; a kind of chenopodium which appeared distinct from the
common; and a short oval-leaved, set-looking plant which I suppose is
_Glaux maritima_, sea milkwort, or saltwort. Skates’ eggs, called in
England skate-barrows from their form, on the sand. The old cedars were
flat-topped, spreading, the stratum of the wind drawn out.


_July 28. Monday morning._ Sailed [to] the Gurnet, which runs down
seven miles into the bay from Marshfield. Heard the _peep_ of the
_beach-bird_. Saw some ring-necks in company with peeps. They told of
eagles which had flown low over the island lately. Went by Saquish.
Gathered a basketful of Irish moss bleached on the beach. Saw a
field full of pink-blossomed potatoes at the lighthouse, remarkably
luxuriant and full of blossoms; also some French barley. Old fort and
barracks by lighthouse. Visited lobster houses or huts there, where
they use lobsters to catch bait for lobsters. Saw on the shanties signs
from ships, as “Justice Story” and “Margueritta.” To obtain bait is
sometimes the main thing. Samphire (_Salicornia_), which they pickle;
also a kind of prickly samphire, which I suppose is saltwort, or
_Salsola Caroliniana_. Well at Clark’s Island twenty-seven and three
quarters feet deep. Cut the rockweed on the rocks at low tide once in
two or three years. Very valuable; more than they have time to save.

Uncle Ned told of a man who went off fishing from back of Wellfleet in
calm weather, and with great difficulty got ashore through the surf.
Those in the other boat, who had landed, were unwilling to take the
responsibility of telling them when to pull for shore; the one who had
the helm was inexperienced. They were swamped at once. So treacherous
is this shore. Before the wind comes, perchance, the sea may run so as
to upset and drown you on the shore. At first they thought to pull for
Provincetown, but night was coming on, and that was distant many a long
mile. Their case was a desperate one. When they came near the shore
and saw the terrific breakers that intervened, they were deterred. They
were thoroughly frightened.[267]

  [Illustrations]

Were troubled with skunks on this island; they must have come over on
the ice. Foxes they had seen; had killed one woodchuck; even a large
_mud turtle_, which they _conjectured some bird must have dropped_.
Muskrats they had seen, and killed two raccoons once. I went a-clamming
just before night. This the clam-digger, borrowed of Uncle Bill
(Watson) in his schooner home. The clams nearly a foot deep, but I
broke many in digging. Said not to be good now, but we found them good
eaten fresh. No sale for them now; fetch twenty-five cents a bucket in
their season. Barry caught squids as bait for bass. We found many dead
clams,—their shells full of sand,—called sand clams.[268] By a new clam
law any one can dig clams here. Brown’s Island, so called, a shoal off
the Gurnet, thought to have been an isle once, a dangerous place. Saw
here fences, the posts set in cross sleepers, made to be removed in
winter.

The finest music in a menagerie, its wildest strains, have something
in them akin to the cries of the tigers and leopards heard in their
native forests. Those strains are not unfitted to the assemblage
of wild beasts. They express to my ear what the tiger’s stripes and
the leopard’s spots express to my eye; and they appear to grin with
satisfaction at the sound. That nature has any place at all for music
is very good.


_July 29. Tuesday._ A northeast wind with rain, but the sea is the
wilder for it. I heard the surf roar on the Gurnet [in] the night,
which, as Uncle Ned and Freeman said, showed that the wind would work
round east and we should have rainy weather. It was the wave reaching
the shore before the wind. The ocean was heaped up somewhere to the
eastward, and this roar was occasioned by its effort to preserve its
equilibrium. The rut of the sea.[269] In the afternoon I sailed to
Plymouth, three miles, notwithstanding the drizzling rain, or “drisk,”
as Uncle Ned called it. We passed round the head of Plymouth beach,
which is three miles long. I did not know till afterward that I had
landed where the Pilgrims did and passed over the Rock on Hedge’s
Wharf. Returning, we had more wind and tacking to do.

Saw many seals together on a flat. Singular that these strange animals
should be so abundant here and yet the man who lives a few miles inland
never hear of them. To him there is no report of the sea, though he may
read the Plymouth paper. The Boston papers do not tell us that they
have seals in the Harbor. The inhabitants of Plymouth do not seem to
be aware of it. I always think of seals in connection with Esquimaux or
some other outlandish people, not in connection with those who live on
the shores of Boston and Plymouth harbors. Yet from their windows they
may daily see a family [of] seals, the real _Phoca vitulina_, collected
on a flat or sporting in the waves. I saw one dashing through the waves
just ahead of our boat, going to join his companions on the bar,—as
strange to me as the merman. No less wild, essentially, than when the
Pilgrims came is this harbor.

  [Illustrations]

It being low tide, we landed on a flat which makes out from Clark’s
Island, to while away the time, not being able to get quite up yet.
I found numerous _large_ holes of the sea clam in this sand (no small
clams), and dug them out easily and rapidly with my hands. Could have
got a large quantity in a short time; but here they do not eat them;
think they will make you sick. They were not so deep in the sand, not
more than five or six inches. I saw where one had squirted full ten
feet before the wind, as appeared by the marks of the drops on the
sand. Some small ones I found not more than a quarter of an inch in
length. Le Baron brought me [a] round clam or quahog alive, with a
very thick shell, and not so nearly an isosceles triangle as the sea
clam,—more like this: with a protuberance on the back. The sea clam: A
small, narrow clam which they called the bank clam; also crab-cases,
handsomely spotted. Small crab always in a cockle-shell if not in a
case of his own. A cockle as large as my fist. Mussels, small ones,
empty shells; an extensive bank where they had died. Occasionally a
large deep-sea mussel, which some kelp had brought up. We caught some
sand eels seven or eight inches long,—_Ammodytes tobianus_, according
to Storer, and not the _A. lancea_ of Yarrell, though the size of the
last comes nearer. They were in the shallow pools left on the sand (the
flat was here pure naked yellowish sand), and quickly buried themselves
when pursued. They are used as bait for bass. Found some sand-circles
or sandpaper, like top of a stone jug cut off, with a large nose; said
to be made by the foot of the large cockle, which has some glutinous
matter on it.[270] A circle of sand about as thick as thick pasteboard.
It reminded me of the caddis-worm cases, skate-barrows, etc., etc. I
observed the shell of a sea clam one valve of which was filled exactly
even full with sand,—evenly as if it had been heaped and then scraped
off, as when men measure by the peck. This was a fresher one of the
myriad sand-clams, and it suggested to me how the stone clams which I
had seen on Cape Cod might have been formed. Perchance a clamshell was
the mould in which they were cast, and a slight hardening of the level
surface, before the whole is turned to stone, causes them to split in
two. The sand was full of stone clams in the mould.[271] I saw the kelp
attached to stones half as big as my head, which it had transported. I
do not think I ever saw the kelp _in situ_. Also attached to a deep-sea
mussel. The kelp is like a broad ruffled belt. The middle portion is
thicker and flat, the edges for two or three inches thinner and fuller,
so that it is fulled or ruffled, as if the edges had been hammered. The
extremity is generally worn and ragged from the lashing of the waves.
It is the prototype of a fringed belt. Uncle Ned said that the cows
ate it.[272] We saw in the shallow water a long, _round_ green grass,
six or eight feet long, clogging up the channel. Round grass, I think
they called it. We caught a lobster, as you might catch a mud turtle in
the country, in the shallow water, pushing him ashore with the paddle,
taking hold of his tail to avoid being bitten. They are obliged to put
wooden plugs or wedges beside their claws to prevent their tearing each
other to pieces. All weeds are bleached on the beach.

This sailing on salt water was something new to me. The boat is such
a living creature, even this clumsy one sailing within five points of
the wind. The sailboat is an admirable invention, by which you compel
the wind to transport you even against itself. It is easier to guide
than a horse; the slightest pressure on the tiller suffices. I think
the inventor must have been greatly surprised, as well as delighted,
at the success of his experiment. It is so contrary to expectation, as
if the elements were disposed to favor you. This deep, unfordable sea!
but this wind ever blowing over it to transport you! At 10 P. M. it was
perfectly fair and bright starlight.


_July 30. Wednesday._ The house here stands within a grove of
balm-of-Gileads, horse-chestnuts, cherries, apples, and plums, etc.
Uncle Bill, who lives in his schooner,—not turned up Numidian fashion,
but anchored in the mud,—whom I meant to call on yesterday morn, lo!
had run over to “the Pines” last evening, fearing an easterly storm.
He outrode the great gale in the spring alone in the harbor, dashing
about. He goes after rockweed, lighters vessels, and saves wrecks.
Now I see him lying in the mud over at the Pines in the horizon, which
place he cannot leave if he will, till flood-tide; but he will not, it
seems. This waiting for the tide is a singular feature in the life by
the shore. In leaving your boat to-day you must always have reference
to what you are going to do the next day. A frequent answer is, “Well,
you can’t start for two hours yet.” It is something new to a landsman,
and at first he is not disposed to wait.[273] I saw some heaps of
shells left by the Indians near the northern end of the island. They
were a rod in diameter and a foot or more high in the middle, and
covered with a shorter and greener grass than the surrounding field.
Found one imperfect arrowhead.

At 10 A. M. sailed to Webster’s, past Powder Point in Duxbury. We
could see his land from the island. I was steersman and learned the
meaning of some nautical phrases,—“luff,” to keep the boat close to
the wind till the sails begin to flap; “bear away,” to put the sail
more at right angles with the wind; a “close haul,” when the sails are
brought and belayed nearly or quite in a line with the vessel. On the
marshes we saw patches of a “_black_ grass.” A large field of wheat at
Webster’s,—half a dozen acres at least,—many apple trees, three-thorned
acacias, tulip-trees; cranberry experiment; seaweed spread under his
tomatoes. Wild geese with black and gray heads and necks, not so heavy
and clumsy as the tame Bremens. Large, noisy Hongkong geese. Handsome
calves. Three thousand (?) acres of marsh.

Talked with Webster’s nearest neighbor, Captain Hewit, whose small
farm he surrounds and endeavors in vain to buy. A fair specimen of
a retired Yankee sea-captain turned farmer. Proud of the quantity of
carrots he had raised on a small patch. It was better husbandry than
Webster’s. He told a story of his buying a cargo for his owners at
St. Petersburg just as peace was declared in the last war. These men
are not so remarkable for anything as the quality of hardness. The
very fixedness and rigidity of their jaws and necks express a sort of
adamantine hardness. This is what they have learned by contact with the
elements. The man who does not grow rigid with years and experience!
Where is he? What avails it to grow hard merely? The harder you are,
the more brittle really, like the bones of the old. How much rarer and
better to grow mellow! A sort of stone fruit the man bears commonly; a
bare stone it is, without any sweet and mellow pericarp around it. It
is like the peach which has dried to the stone as the season advanced;
it is dwindled to a dry stone with its almond. In presence of one of
these hard men I think: “How brittle! How easily you would crack! What
a poor and lame conclusion!” I can think of nothing but a stone in his
head. Truly genial men do not grow [hard]. It is the result of despair,
this attitude of resistance. They behave like men already driven to the
wall. Notwithstanding that the speaker trembles with infirmity while
he speaks,—his hand on the spade,—it is such a trembling as betrays a
stony nature. His hand trembles so that the full glass of cider which
he prizes to a drop will have lost half its contents before it reaches
his lips, as if a tempest had arisen in it. Hopelessly hard. But there
is another view of him. He is somebody. He has an opinion to express,
if you will wait to hear him. A certain manliness and refreshing
resistance is in him. He generally makes Webster a call, but Webster
does not want to see you more than twenty minutes. It does not take him
long to say all he has got to say. He had not seen him to speak to him
since he had come home this time. He had sent him over a couple of fine
cod the night before. Such a man as Hewit sees not finely but coarsely.

The eagle given by Lawrence on the hill in the buckwheat field.


_July 31. Thursday._ Those same round shells (_Scutella parma_
(_placenta_) ?) on the sand as at Cape Cod, the live ones reddish, the
dead white. Went off early this morning with Uncle Ned to catch bass
with the small fish I had found on the sand the night before. Two of
his neighbor Albert Watson’s boys were there,—not James, the oldest,
but Edward, the sailor, and Mortimer (or Mort),—in their boat. They
killed some striped bass (_Labrax lineatus_) with paddles in a shallow
creek in the sand, and caught some lobsters. I remarked that the
seashore was singularly clean, for, notwithstanding the spattering of
the water and mud and squirting of the clams and wading to and fro the
boat, my best black pants retained no stains nor dirt, as they would
acquire from walking in the country. I caught a bass with a young—haik?
(perchance), trailing thirty feet behind while Uncle Ned paddled.
They catch them in England with a “trawl-net.” Sometimes they weigh
seventy-five pounds here.

At 11 A. M. set sail to Plymouth. We went somewhat out of a direct
course, to take advantage of the tide, which was coming in. Saw the
site of the first house, which was burned, on Leyden Street. Walked
up the same, parallel with the Town Brook. Hill from which Billington
Sea was discovered hardly a mile from the shore, on Watson’s grounds.
Watson’s Hill, where treaty was made across brook south of Burying
Hill. At Watson’s,[274] the oriental plane, _Abies Douglasii_,
ginkgo tree (_q. v._ on Common), a foreign hardhack, English oak
(dark-colored, small leaf), Spanish chestnut, Chinese arbor-vitæ,
Norway spruce (like our fir balsam), a new kind of fir balsam. Black
eagle one of the good cherries. Fuchsias in hothouse. Earth bank
covered with cement.

Mr. Thomas Russell, who cannot be seventy, at whose house on Leyden
Street I took tea and spent the evening, told me that he remembered to
have seen Ebenezer Cobb, a native of Plymouth, who died in Kingston in
1801, aged one hundred and seven, who remembered to have had personal
knowledge of Peregrine White, saw him an old man riding on horseback
(he lived to be eighty-three). White was born at Cape Cod Harbor before
the Pilgrims got to Plymouth. C. Sturgis’s mother told me the same
of herself at the same time. She remembered Cobb sitting in an arm
chair like the one she herself occupied, with his silver locks falling
about his shoulders, twirling one thumb over the other. Lyell in first
volume, “Second Visit,” page 97, published 1849,[275] says: “Colonel
Perkins, of Boston, ... informed me, in 1846, that there was but one
link wanting in the chain of personal communication between him and
Peregrine White, the first white child born in Massachusetts, a few
days after the Pilgrims landed. White lived to an advanced age, and was
known to a man of the name of Cobb, whom Colonel Perkins visited, in
1807, with some friends who yet survive. Cobb died in 1808, the year
after Colonel Perkins saw him.”

  [Illustration: _Town Brook, Plymouth_]

Russell told me that he once bought some _primitive_ woodland in
Plymouth which was sold at auction—the biggest pitch pines two feet
diameter—for _eight shillings_ an acre. If he had bought enough, it
would have been a fortune. There is still forest in this town which
the axe has not touched, says George Bradford. According to Thatcher’s
History of Plymouth, there were 11,662 acres of woodland in 1831, or
twenty square miles. Pilgrims first saw Billington Sea about January
1st; visited it January 8th. The oldest stone in the Plymouth Burying
Ground, 1681. (Coles (?) Hill, where those who died the first winter
were buried, is said to have been levelled and sown to conceal loss
from Indians.) Oldest on our hill, 1677. In Mrs. Plympton’s garden on
Leyden Street, running down to Town Brook, saw an abundance of pears,
gathered excellent June-eating apples, saw a large lilac about eight
inches diameter. Methinks a soil may improve when at length it has
shaded itself with vegetation.

William S. Russell, the registrar at the court-house, showed the oldest
town records, for all are preserved. On first page a plan of Leyden
Street dated December, 1620, with names of settlers. They have a great
many folios. The writing plain. Saw the charter granted by the Plymouth
Company to the Pilgrims, signed by Warwick, dated 1629, and the box in
which it was brought over, with the seal.

  [Illustrations]

Pilgrim Hall. They used to crack off pieces of the Forefathers’ Rock
for visitors with a cold chisel, till the town forbade it. The stone
remaining at wharf is about seven feet square. Saw two old armchairs
that came over in the Mayflower, the large picture by Sargent,
Standish’s sword, gun-barrel with which Philip was killed, mug and
pocket-book of Clark the mate, iron pot of Standish, old pipe-tongs.
Indian relics: a flayer; a pot or mortar of a kind of fire-proof stone,
very hard, only seven or eight inches long. A commission from Cromwell
to Winslow (?), his signature torn off. They talk of a monument on the
Rock. The Burying Hill 165 feet high. Manomet 394 feet high by State
map. Saw more pears at Washburn’s garden. No graves of Pilgrims.

Seaweed generally used along shore. Saw the _Prinos glabra_, ink-berry,
at Billington Sea. Sandy plain with oaks of various kinds cut in less
than twenty years. No communication with Sandwich. Plymouth end of
world; fifty miles thither by railroad. Old Colony road poor property.
Nothing saves Plymouth but the Rock. Fern-leaved beach.

Saw the king crab (_Limulus polyphemus_), horseshoe and saucepan
fish, at the Island, covered with sea-green and buried in the sand for
concealment.

In Plymouth the _Convolvulus arvensis_, small bindweed.




VII

AUGUST, 1851

(ÆT. 34)


Left [Plymouth] at 9 A. M., August 1st. After Kingston came Plympton,
Halifax, and Hanson, all level with frequent cedar swamps, especially
the last,—also in Weymouth.

Desor and Cabot think the jellyfish _Oceania tubulosa_ are buds from
a polyp of genus _Syncoryne_. Desor, accounting for suspended moisture
or fogs over sandbanks (or shoals), says, the heat being abstracted by
radiation, the moisture is condensed in form of fog.

Lieutenant Walsh lost his lead and wire when 34,200 [feet], or more
than six statute miles, had run out perpendicularly.

       *       *       *       *       *

I could make a list of things ill-managed. We Yankees do not deserve
our fame. _Viz._ [_sic_]:—

I went to a menagerie the other day, advertised by a flaming show-bill
as big as a barn-door. The proprietors had taken wonderful pains to
collect rare and interesting animals from all parts of the world,
and then placed by them a few stupid and ignorant fellows, coachmen
or stablers, who knew little or nothing about the animals and were
unwilling even to communicate the little they knew. You catch a rare
creature, interesting to all mankind, and then place the first biped
that comes along, with but a grain more reason in him, to exhibit and
describe the former. At the expense of millions, this rare quadruped
from the sun [_sic_] is obtained, and then Jack Halyard or Tom
Coach-whip is hired to explain it. Why all this pains taken to catch
in Africa, and no pains taken to exhibit in America? Not a cage was
labelled. There was nobody to tell us how or where the animals were
caught, or what they were. Probably the proprietors themselves do
not know,—or what their habits are. They told me that a hyena came
from South America. But hardly had we been ushered into the presence
of this choice, this admirable collection, than a ring was formed
for Master Jack and the pony! Were they _animals_, then, who had
caught and exhibited these, and who had come to see these? Would it
not be worth the while to learn something? to have some information
imparted? The absurdity of importing the behemoth, and then, instead
of somebody appearing [to] tell which it is, to have to _while away
the time_,—though your curiosity is growing desperate to learn one
fact about the creature,—to have Jack and the pony introduced!!! Why,
I expected to see some descendant of Cuvier there, to improve this
opportunity for a lecture on natural history!

That is what they should do,—make this an occasion for communicating
some solid information. That would be fun alive! that would be a sunny
day, a sun day, in one’s existence, not a secular day of Shetland
ponies. Not Jack and his pony and a tintamarre of musical instruments,
and a man with his head in the lion’s mouth. First let him prove
that he has got a head on his shoulders. I go not there to see a man
hug a lion or fondle a tiger, but to learn how he is related to the
wild beast. There’ll be All-Fools’ days enough without our creating
any intentionally. The presumption is that men wish to behave like
reasonable creatures; that they do not need, and are not seeking,
relaxation; that they are not dissipated. Let it be a travelling
zoölogical garden, with a travelling professor to accompany it. At
present, foolishly, the professor goes alone with his poor painted
illustrations of animals, while the menagerie takes another road,
without its professor,—only its keepers, stupid coachmen.

I. M. June [?] & Co., or Van Amburgh & Co., are engaged in a pecuniary
speculation in which certain wild beasts are used as the counters.
Cuvier & Co. are engaged in giving a course of lectures on Natural
History. Now why could they not put head and means together for the
benefit of mankind, and still get their living? The present institution
is imperfect precisely because its object is to enrich Van Amburgh
& Co., and their low aim unfits them for rendering any more valuable
service; but no doubt the most valuable course would also be the most
valuable in a pecuniary sense. No doubt a low self-interest is a better
motive force to these enterprises than no interest at all; but a high
self-interest, which consists with the greatest advantage of all, would
be a better still.

Item 2nd: Why have we not a decent pocket-map of the State of
Massachusetts? There is the large map. Why is it not cut into half a
dozen sheets and folded into a small cover for the pocket? Are there no
travellers to use it? Well, to tell the truth, there are but few, and
that’s the reason why. Men go by railroad, and State maps hanging in
bar-rooms are small enough. The State has been admirably surveyed at a
great cost, and yet Dearborn’s Pocket-Map is the best one we have!


_Aug. 4._ Now the hardhack and meadow-sweet reign, the former one
of our handsomest flowers, I think. The mayweed, too, dusty by the
roadside, and in the fields I scent the sweet-scented life-everlasting,
which is half expanded. The grass is withered by the drought. The
potatoes begin generally to flat down. The corn is tasselled out; its
crosses show in all fields above the blades. The turnips are growing in
its midst.

As my eye rested on the blossom of the meadowsweet in a hedge, I heard
the note of an autumnal cricket, and was penetrated with the sense
of autumn. Was it sound? or was it form? or was it scent? or was it
flavor? It is now the royal month of August. When I hear this sound,
I am as dry as the rye which is everywhere cut and housed, though I am
drunk with the season’s wine.

The farmer is the most inoffensive of men, with his barns and cattle
and poultry and grain and grass. I like the smell of his hay well
enough, though as grass it may be in my way.

The yellow Bethlehem-star still, and the yellow gerardia, and a bluish
“savory-leaved aster.”


_Aug. 5._ 7.30 P. M.—Moon half full. I sit beside Hubbard’s Grove. A
few level red bars above the horizon; a dark, irregular bank beneath
them, with a streak of red sky below, on the horizon’s edge. This
will describe many a sunset. It is 8 o’clock. The farmer has driven
in his cows, and is cutting an armful of green corn fodder for them.
Another is still patching the roof of his barn, making his hammer heard
afar in the twilight, as if he took a satisfaction in his elevated
work,—sitting astride the ridge,—which he wished to prolong. The robin
utters a sort of cackling note, as if he had learned the ways of man.
The air is still. I hear the voices of loud-talking boys in the early
twilight, it must be a mile off. The swallows go over with a watery
twittering.

When the moon is on the increase and half full, it is already in
mid-heavens at sunset, so that there is no marked twilight intervening.
I hear the whip-poor-will at a distance, but they are few of late.

It is almost dark. I hear the voices of berry-pickers coming homeward
from Bear Garden. Why do they go home, as it were defeated by the
approaching night? Did it never occur to them to stay overnight? The
wind now rising from over Bear Garden Hill falls gently on my ear and
delivers its message, the same that I have so often heard passing over
bare and stony mountain-tops, so uncontaminated and untamed is the
wind. The air that has swept over Caucasus and the sands of Arabia
comes to breathe on New England fields. The dogs bark; they are not
as much stiller as man. They are on the alert, suspecting the approach
of foes. The darkness perchance affects them, makes them mad and wild.
The mosquitoes hum about me. I distinguish the modest moonlight on my
paper.

As the twilight deepens and the moonlight is more and more bright, I
begin to distinguish myself, who I am and where; as my walls contract,
I become more collected and composed, and sensible of my own existence,
as when a lamp is brought into a dark apartment and I see who the
company are. With the coolness and the mild silvery light, I recover
some sanity, my thoughts are more distinct, moderated, and tempered.
Reflection is more possible while the day goes by. The intense light
of the sun unfits me for meditation, makes me wander in my thought;
my life is too diffuse and dissipated; routine succeeds and prevails
over us; the trivial has greater power then, and most at noonday, the
most trivial hour of the twenty-four. I am sobered by the moonlight.
I bethink myself. It is like a cup of cold water to a thirsty man. The
moonlight is more favorable to meditation than sunlight.

The sun lights this world from without, shines in at a window, but the
moon is like a lamp within an apartment. It shines for us. The stars
themselves make a more visible, and hence a nearer and more domestic,
roof at night. Nature broods us, and has not left our germs of thought
to be hatched by the sun. We feel her heat and see her body darkening
over us. Our thoughts are not dissipated, but come back to us like an
echo.

The different kinds of moonlight are infinite. This is not a night for
contrasts of light and shade, but a faint diffused light in which there
is light enough to travel, and that is all.

A road (the Corner road) that passes over the height of land between
earth and heaven, separating those streams which flow earthward from
those which flow heavenward.

Ah, what a poor, dry compilation is the “Annual of Scientific
Discovery!” I trust that observations are made during the year which
are not chronicled there,—that some mortal may have caught a glimpse of
Nature in some corner of the earth during the year 1851. One sentence
of perennial poetry would make me forget, would atone for, volumes of
mere science. The astronomer is as blind to the significant phenomena,
or the significance of phenomena, as the wood-sawyer who wears glasses
to defend his eyes from sawdust. The question is not what you look at,
but what you see.

I hear now from Bear Garden Hill—I rarely walk by moonlight without
hearing—the sound of a flute, or a horn, or a human voice. It is a
performer I never see by day; should not recognize him if pointed
out; but you may hear his performance in every horizon. He plays but
one strain and goes to bed early, but I know by the character of that
single strain that he is deeply dissatisfied with the manner in which
he spends his day. He is a slave who is purchasing his freedom. He is
Apollo watching the flocks of Admetus on every hill, and this strain
he plays every evening to remind him of his heavenly descent. It is all
that saves him,—his one redeeming trait. It is a reminiscence; he loves
to remember his youth. He is sprung of a noble family. He is highly
related, I have no doubt; was tenderly nurtured in his infancy, poor
hind as he is. That noble strain he utters, instead of any jewel on his
finger, or precious locket fastened to his breast, or purple garments
that came with him. The elements recognize him, and echo his strain.
All the dogs know him their master, though lords and ladies, rich men
and learned, know him not. He is the son of a rich man, of a famous
man who served his country well. He has heard his sire’s stories. I
thought of the time when he would discover his parentage, obtain his
inheritance and sing a strain suited to the morning hour. He cherishes
hopes. I never see the man by day who plays that clarionet.

The distant lamps in the farmhouse look like fires. The trees and
clouds are seen at a distance reflected in the river as by day. I see
Fair Haven Pond from the Cliffs, as it were through a slight mist.
It is the wildest scenery imaginable,—a Lake of the Woods. I just
remembered the wildness of St. Anne’s. That’s the Ultima Thule of
wildness to me.

What an entertainment for the traveller, this incessant motion
apparently of the moon traversing the clouds! Whether you sit or stand,
it is always preparing new developments for you. It is event enough
for simple minds. You all alone, the moon all alone, overcoming with
incessant victory whole squadrons of clouds above the forests and the
lakes and rivers and the mountains. You cannot always calculate which
one the moon will undertake next.[276]

I see a solitary firefly over the woods.

The moon wading through clouds; though she is eclipsed by this one,
I see her shining on a more distant but lower one. The entrance into
Hubbard’s Wood above the spring, coming from the hill, is like the
entrance to a cave; but when you are within, there are some streaks of
light on the edge of the path.

All these leaves so still, none whispering, no birds in motion,—how can
I be else than still and thoughtful?


_Aug. 6._ The motions of circus horses are not so expressive of music,
do not harmonize so well with a strain of music, as those of animals
of the cat kind. An Italian has just carried a hand-organ through
the village. I hear it even at Walden Wood. It is as if a cheeta had
skulked, howling, through the streets of the village, with knotted
tail, and left its perfume there.

Neglected gardens are full of fleabane (?) now, not yet in blossom.
Thoroughwort has opened, and goldenrod is gradually opening. The smooth
sumach shows its red fruit. The berries of the bristly aralia are
turning dark. The wild holly’s scarlet fruit is seen and the red cherry
(_Cerasus_). After how few steps, how little exertion, the student
stands in pine woods above the Solomon’s-seal and the cow-wheat,
in a place still unaccountably strange and wild to him, and to all
civilization! This so easy and so common, though our literature implies
that it is rare! We in the country make no report of the seals and
sharks in our neighborhood to those in the city. We send them only our
huckleberries, not free wild thoughts.

Why does not man sleep all day as well as all night, it seems so very
natural and easy? For what is he awake?

A man must generally get away some hundreds or thousands of miles
from home before he can be said to begin his travels. Why not
begin his travels at home? Would he have to go far or look very
closely to discover novelties? The traveller who, in this sense,
pursues his travels at home, has the advantage at any rate of a
long residence in the country to make his observations correct and
profitable. Now the American goes to England, while the Englishman
comes to America, in order to describe the country. No doubt there
[are] some advantages in this kind of mutual criticism. But might
there not be invented a better way of coming at the truth than this
scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours method? Would not the American,
for instance, who had himself, perchance, travelled in England and
elsewhere make the most profitable and accurate traveller in his
own country? How often it happens that the traveller’s principal
distinction is that he is one who knows less about a country than a
native! Now if he should begin with all the knowledge of a native, and
add thereto the knowledge of a traveller, both natives and foreigners
would be obliged to read his book; and the world would be absolutely
benefited. It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in
his native village; to make any progress between his door and his gate.
But such a traveller will make the distances which Hanno and Marco
Polo and Cook and Ledyard went over ridiculous. So worthy a traveller
as William Bartram heads his first chapter with the words, “The author
sets sail from Philadelphia, and arrives at Charleston, from whence he
begins his travels.”

I am, perchance, most and most profitably interested in the things
which I already know a little about; a mere and utter novelty is a mere
monstrosity to me. I am interested to see the yellow pine, which we
have not in Concord, though Michaux says it grows in Massachusetts; or
the Oriental plane, having often heard of it and being well acquainted
with its sister, the Occidental plane; or the English oak, having heard
of the royal oak and having oaks ourselves; but the new Chinese flower,
whose cousin I do not happen to know, I pass by with indifference. I do
not know that I am very fond of novelty. I wish to get a clearer notion
of what I have already some inkling.

These Italian boys with their hand-organs remind me of the keepers of
wild beasts in menageries, whose whole art consists in stirring up
their beasts from time to time with a pole. I am reminded of bright
flowers and glancing birds and striped pards of the jungle; these
delicious harmonies tear me to pieces while they charm me. The tiger’s
musical smile.

How some inventions have spread! Some, brought to perfection by the
most enlightened nations, have been surely and rapidly communicated to
the most savage. The gun, for instance. How soon after the settlement
of America were comparatively remote Indian tribes, most of whose
members had never seen a white man, supplied with guns! The gun is
invented by the civilized man, and the savage in remote wildernesses on
the other side of the globe throws away his bow and arrows and takes up
this arm. Bartram, travelling in the Southern States between 1770 and
1780, describes the warriors as so many gun-men.

Ah, yes, even here in Concord horizon Apollo is at work for King
Admetus! Who is King Admetus? It is Business, with his four prime
ministers Trade and Commerce and Manufactures and Agriculture. And this
is what makes mythology true and interesting to us.


_Aug. 8._ 7.30 P. M.—To Conantum.

The moon has not yet quite filled her horns. I perceive why we so often
remark a dark cloud in the west at and after sunset. It is because
it is almost directly between us and the sun, and hence we see the
dark side, and moreover it is much darker than it otherwise would be,
because of the little light reflected from the earth at that hour. The
same cloud at midday and overhead might not attract attention. There
is a pure amber sky beneath the present bank, thus framed off from the
rest of the heavens, which, with the outlines of small dead elms seen
against it,—I hardly know if far or near,—make picture enough. Men
will travel far to see less interesting sights than this. Turning away
from the sun, we get this enchanting view, as when a man looks at the
landscape with inverted head. Under shadow of the dark cloud which I
have described, the cricket begins his strain, his ubiquitous strain.
Is there a fall cricket distinct from the species we hear in spring and
summer? I smell the corn-field over the brook a dozen rods off, and it
reminds me of the green-corn feasts of the Indians. The evening train
comes rolling in, but none of the passengers jumping out in such haste
attend to the beautiful, fresh picture which Nature has unrolled in the
west and surmounted with that dark frame. The circular platter of the
carrot’s blossom is now perfect.

Might not this be called the Invalid’s Moon, on account of the warmth
of the nights? The principal employment of the farmers now seems to be
getting their meadow-hay and cradling some oats, etc.

The light from the western sky is stronger still than that of the moon,
and when I hold up my hand, the west side is lighted while the side
toward the moon is comparatively dark. But now that I have put this
dark wood (Hubbard’s) between me and the west, I see the moonlight
plainly on my paper; I am even startled by it. One star, too,—is it
Venus?—I see in the west. Starlight! that would be a good way to mark
the hour, if we were precise. Hubbard’s Brook. How much the beauty of
the moon is enhanced by being seen shining between two trees, or even
by the neighborhood of clouds! I hear the clock striking eight faintly.
I smell the late shorn meadows.

One will lose no music by not attending the oratorios and operas. The
really inspiring melodies are cheap and universal, and are as audible
to the poor man’s son as to the rich man’s. Listening to the harmonies
of the universe is not allied to dissipation. My neighbors have gone
to the vestry to hear “Ned Kendal,” the bugler, to-night, but I am
come forth to the hills to hear my bugler in the horizon. I can forego
the seeming advantages of cities without misgiving. No heavenly strain
is lost to the ear that is fitted to hear it, for want of money or
opportunity. I am convinced that for instrumental music all Vienna
cannot serve me more than the Italian boy who seeks my door with his
organ.

And now I strike the road at the causeway. It is hard, and I hear
the sound of my steps, a sound which should never be heard, for it
draws down my thoughts. It is more like the treadmill exercise. The
fireflies are not so numerous as they have been. There is no dew
as yet. The planks and railing of Hubbard’s Bridge are removed. I
walk over on the string-pieces, resting in the middle until the moon
comes out of a cloud, that I may see my path, for between the next
piers the string-pieces also are removed and there is only a rather
narrow plank, let down three or four feet. I essay to cross it, but
it springs a little and I mistrust myself, whether I shall not plunge
into the river. Some demonic genius seems to be warning me. Attempt
not the passage; you will surely be drowned. It is very real that I am
thus affected. Yet I am fully aware of the absurdity of minding such
suggestions. I put out my foot, but I am checked, as if that power had
laid a hand on my breast and chilled me back. Nevertheless, I cross,
stooping at first, and gain the other side. (I make the most of it on
account of the admonition, but it was nothing to remark on. I returned
the same way two hours later and made nothing of it.) It is easy to see
how, by yielding to such feelings as this, men would reëstablish all
the superstitions of antiquity. It is best that reason should govern
us, and not these blind intimations, in which we exalt our fears into
a genius.

On Conantum I sit awhile in the shade of the woods and look out on the
moonlit fields. White rocks are more remarkable than by day.[277]

The air is warmer than the rocks now. It is perfectly warm and I am
tempted to stay out all night and observe each phenomenon of the night
until day dawns. But if I should do so, I should not wonder if the town
were raised to hunt me up. I could lie out here on this pinnacle rock
all night without cold. To lie here on your back with nothing between
your eye and the stars,—nothing but space,—they your nearest neighbors
on that side, be they strange or be they tame, be they other worlds
or merely ornaments to this, who could ever go to sleep under these
circumstances? Sitting on the door-step of Conant house at 9 o’clock, I
hear a pear drop. How few of all the apples that fall do we hear fall!
I hear a horse _sneeze_ (?) from time to time in his pasture. He sees
me and knows me to be a man, though I do not see him. I hear the nine
o’clock bell ringing in Bedford. An unexpectedly musical sound that
of a bell in the horizon always is. Pleasantly sounds the voice of
one village to another. It is sweet as it is rare. Since I sat here a
bright star has gone behind the stem of a tree, proving that my machine
is moving,—proving it better for me than a rotating pendulum. I hear a
solitary whip-poor-will, and a bullfrog on the river,—fewer sounds than
in spring. The gray cliffs across the river are plain to be seen.

And now the star appears on the other side of the tree, and I must go.
Still no dew up here. I see three scythes hanging on an apple tree.
There is the wild apple tree where hangs the forgotten scythe,[278]—the
rock where the shoe was left. The woods and the separate trees cast
longer shadows than by day, for the moon goes lower in her course
at this season. Some dew at last in the meadow. As I recross the
string-pieces of the bridge, I see the water-bugs swimming briskly in
the moonlight. I scent the Roman wormwood in the potato-fields.


_Aug. 9. Saturday._ Tansy now in bloom and the fresh white clethra.
Among the pines and birches I hear the invisible locust. As I am going
to the pond to bathe, I see a black cloud in the northern horizon and
hear the muttering of thunder, and make haste. Before I have bathed
and dressed, the gusts which precede the tempest are heard roaring in
the woods, and the first black, gusty clouds have reached my zenith.
Hastening toward town, I meet the rain at the edge of the wood, and
take refuge under the thickest leaves, where not a drop reaches me,
and, at the end of half an hour, the renewed singing of the birds alone
advertises me that the rain has ceased, and it is only the dripping
from the leaves which I hear in the woods. It was a splendid sunset
that day, a celestial light on all the land, so that all people went to
their doors and windows to look on the grass and leaves and buildings
and the sky, and it was equally glorious in whatever quarter you
looked; a sort of fulgor as of stereotyped lightning filled the air.
Of which this is my solution. We were in the westernmost edge of the
shower at the moment the sun was setting, and its rays shone through
the cloud and the falling rain. We were, in fact, in a rainbow and it
was here its arch rested on the earth. At a little distance we should
have seen all the colors.

The _Œnothera biennis_ along the railroad now. Do the cars disperse
seeds? The _Trichostema dichotomum_ is quite beautiful now in the cool
of the morning. The epilobium in the woods still. Now the earliest
apples begin to be ripe, but none are so good to eat as some to
smell. Some knurly apple which I pick up in the road reminds me by its
fragrance of all the wealth of Pomona.[279]


_Aug. 12. Tuesday._ 1.30 A. M.—Full moon. Arose and went to the river
and bathed, stepping very carefully not to disturb the household,
and still carefully in the street not to disturb the neighbors. I did
not walk naturally and freely till I had got over the wall. Then to
Hubbard’s Bridge at 2 A. M. There was a whip-poor-will in the road
just beyond Goodwin’s, which flew up and lighted on the fence and kept
alighting on the fence within a rod of me and circling round me with
a slight squeak as if inquisitive about me. I do not remember what I
observed or thought in coming hither.

The traveller’s whole employment is to calculate what cloud will
obscure the moon and what she will triumph over. In the after-midnight
hours the traveller’s sole companion is the moon. All his thoughts
are centred in her. She is waging continual war with the clouds in his
behalf. What cloud will enter the lists with her next, this employs his
thoughts; and when she enters on a clear field of great extent in the
heavens, and shines unobstructedly, he is glad. And when she has fought
her way through all the squadrons of her foes, and rides majestic in a
clear sky, he cheerfully and confidently pursues his way, and rejoices
in his heart. But if he sees that she has many new clouds to contend
with, he pursues his way moodily, as one disappointed and aggrieved; he
resents it as an injury to himself. It is his employment to watch the
moon, the companion and guide of his journey, wading through clouds,
and calculate what one is destined to shut out her cheering light. He
traces her course, now almost completely obscured, through the ranks
of her foes, and calculates where she will issue from them.[280] He
is disappointed and saddened when he sees that she has many clouds to
contend with.

Sitting on the sleepers of Hubbard’s Bridge, which is being repaired,
now, 3 o’clock A. M., I hear a cock crow. How admirably adapted to the
dawn is that sound! as if made by the first rays of light rending the
darkness, the creaking of the sun’s axle heard already over the eastern
hills.

Though man’s life is trivial and handselled, Nature is holy and heroic.
With what infinite faith and promise and moderation begins each new
day! It is only a little after 3 o’clock, and already there is evidence
of morning in the sky.

He rejoices when the moon comes forth from the squadrons of the
clouds unscathed and there are no more any obstructions in her path,
and the cricket also seems to express joy in his song. It does not
concern men who are asleep in their beds, but it is very important to
the traveller, whether the moon shines bright and unobstructed or is
obscured by clouds. It is not easy to realize the serene joy of all the
earth when the moon commences to shine unobstructedly, unless you have
often been a traveller by night.[281]

The traveller also resents it if the wind rises and rustles the leaves
or ripples the water and increases the coolness at such an hour.

A solitary horse in his pasture was scared by the sudden sight of me,
an apparition to him, standing still in the moonlight, and moved about,
inspecting with alarm, but I spoke and he heard the sound of my voice;
he was at once reassured and expressed his pleasure by wagging his
stump of a tail, though still half a dozen rods off. How wholesome the
taste of huckleberries, when now by moonlight I feel for them amid the
bushes!

And now the first signs of morning attract the traveller’s attention,
and he cannot help rejoicing, and the moon begins gradually to fade
from his recollection. The wind rises and rustles the copses. The sand
is cool on the surface but warm two or three inches beneath, and the
rocks are quite warm to the hand, so that he sits on them or leans
against them for warmth, though indeed it is not cold elsewhere.[282]
As I walk along the side of Fair Haven Hill, I see a ripple on the
river, and now the moon has gone behind a large and black mass of
clouds, and I realize that I may not see her again in her glory this
night, that perchance ere she rises from this obscurity, the sun
will have risen, and she will appear but as a cloud herself, and
sink unnoticed into the west (being a little after full (a day?)).
As yet no sounds of awakening men; only the more frequent crowing
of cocks, still standing on their perches in the barns. The milkmen
are the earliest risers,—though I see no lanthorns carried to their
barns in the distance,—preparing to carry the milk of cows in their
tin cans for men’s breakfasts, even for those who dwell in distant
cities. In the twilight now, by the light of the stars alone, the moon
being concealed, they are pressing the bounteous streams from full
udders into their milk-pails, and the sound of the streaming milk is
all that breaks the sacred stillness of the dawn; distributing their
milk to such as have no cows. I perceive no mosquitoes now. Are they
vespertinal, like the singing of the whip-poor-will? I see the light
of the obscured moon reflected from the river brightly. With what mild
emphasis Nature marks the spot!—so bright and serene a sheen that does
not more contrast with the night.

4 A. M.—It adds a charm, a dignity, a glory, to the earth to see the
light of the moon reflected from her streams. There are but us three,
the moon, the earth which wears this jewel (the moon’s reflection) in
her crown, and myself. Now there has come round the Cliff (on which I
sit), which faces the west, all unobserved and mingled with the dusky
sky of night, a lighter and more ethereal living blue, whispering of
the sun still far, far away, behind the horizon. From the summit of our
atmosphere, perchance, he may already be seen by soaring spirits that
inhabit those thin upper regions, and they communicate the glorious
intelligence to us lower ones. The real _divine_, the heavenly, blue,
the Jove-containing air, it is, I see through this dusky lower stratum.
The sun gilding the summits of the air. The broad artery of light flows
over all the sky. Yet not without sadness and compassion I reflect that
I shall not see the moon again in her glory. (Not far from four, still
in the night, I heard a nighthawk squeak and _boom_, high in the air,
as I sat on the Cliff. What is said about this being less of a night
bird than the whip-poor-will is perhaps to be questioned. For neither
do I remember to have heard the whip-poor-will _sing_ at 12 o’clock,
though I met one sitting and flying between two and three this morning.
I believe that both may be heard at midnight, though very rarely.)
Now at _very earliest_ dawn the nighthawk booms and the whip-poor-will
sings. Returning down the hill by the path to where the woods [are] cut
off, I see the signs of the day, the morning red. There is the lurid
morning star, soon to be blotted out by a cloud.

There is an early redness in the east which I was not prepared for,
changing to amber or saffron, with clouds beneath in the horizon and
also above this clear streak.

The birds utter a few languid and yawning notes, as if they had not
left their perches, so sensible to light to wake so soon,—a faint
peeping sound from I know not what kind, a slight, innocent, half-awake
sound, like the sounds which a quiet housewife makes in the earliest
dawn. Nature preserves her innocence like a beautiful child. I hear
a wood thrush even now, long before sunrise, as in the heat of the
day. And the pewee and the catbird and the vireo, red-eyed? I do not
hear—or do not mind, perchance—the crickets now. Now whip-poor-wills
commence to sing in earnest, considerably _after_ the wood thrush. The
wood thrush, that beautiful singer, inviting the day once more to enter
his pine woods. (So you may hear the wood thrush and whip-poor-will
at the same time.) Now go by two whip-poor-wills, in haste seeking
some coverts from the eye of day. And the bats are flying about on the
edge of the wood, improving the last moments of their day in catching
insects. The moon appears at length, not yet as a cloud, but with a
frozen light, ominous of her fate. The early cars sound like a wind in
the woods. The chewinks make a business now of waking each other up
with their low _yorrick_ in the neighboring low copse. The sun would
have shown before but for the cloud. Now, on his rising, not the clear
sky, but the cheeks of the clouds high and wide, are tinged with red,
which, like the sky before, turns gradually to saffron and then to the
white light of day.

The nettle-leaved vervain (_Verbena urticifolia_) by roadside at
Emerson’s. What we have called hemp answers best to _Urtica dioica_,
large stinging nettle? Now the great sunflower’s golden disk is seen.

The days for some time have been sensibly shorter; there is time for
music in the evening.

I see polygonums in blossom by roadside, white and red.

A eupatorium from Hubbard’s Bridge causeway answers to _E. purpureum_,
except in these doubtful points, that the former has four leaves
in a whorl, is unequally serrate, the stem is _nearly_ filled with
a thin pith, the corymb is not merely terminal, florets eight and
nine. Differs from _verticillatum_ in the stem being not solid, and I
perceive no difference between calyx and corolla in color, if I know
what the two are. It may be one of the intermediate varieties referred
to.


_Aug. 15. Friday._ _Hypericum Canadense_, Canadian St. John’s-wort,
distinguished by its red capsules. The petals shine under the
microscope, as if they had a golden dew on them.

_Cnicus pumilus_, pasture thistle. How many insects a single one
attracts! While you sit by it, bee after bee will visit it, and busy
himself probing for honey and loading himself with pollen, regardless
of your overshadowing presence. He sees its purple flower from afar,
and that use there is in its color.

_Oxalis stricta_, upright wood-sorrel, the little yellow ternate-leaved
flower in pastures and corn-fields.

_Sagittaria sagittifolia_, or arrowhead. It has very little root that
I can find to eat.

_Campanula crinoides_, var. 2nd, slender bellflower, vine-like like a
galium, by brook-side in Depot Field.

Impatiens, noli-me-tangere, or touch-me-not, with its dangling yellow
pitchers or horns of plenty, which I have seen for a month by damp
causeway thickets, but the whole plant was so tender and drooped so
soon I could not get it home.

May I love and revere myself above all the gods that men have ever
invented. May I never let the vestal fire go out in my recesses.


_Aug. 16._ _Agrimonia Eupatoria_, small-flowered (yellow) plant with
hispid fruit, two or three feet high, Turnpike, at Tuttle’s peat
meadow. Hemp (_Cannabis sativa_), said by Gray to have been introduced;
not named by Bigelow. Is it not a native?

It is true man can and does live by preying on other animals, but this
is a miserable way of sustaining himself, and he will be regarded
as a benefactor of his race, along with Prometheus and Christ, who
shall teach men to live on a more innocent and wholesome diet. Is it
not already acknowledged to be a reproach that man is a carnivorous
animal?[283]


_Aug. 17._ For a day or two it has been quite cool, a coolness that
was felt even when sitting by an open window in a thin coat on the
west side of the house in the morning, and you naturally sought the
sun at that hour. The coolness concentrated your thought, however.
As I could not command a sunny window, I went abroad on the morning
of the 15th and lay in the sun in the fields in my thin coat, though
it was rather cool even there. I feel as if this coolness would do me
good. If it only makes my life more pensive! Why should pensiveness be
akin to sadness? There is a certain fertile sadness which I would not
avoid, but rather earnestly seek. It is positively joyful to me. It
saves my life from being trivial. My life flows with a deeper current,
no longer as a shallow and brawling stream, parched and shrunken by
the summer heats. This coolness comes to condense the dews and clear
the atmosphere. The stillness seems more deep and significant. Each
sound seems to come from out a greater thoughtfulness in nature, as if
nature had acquired some character and mind. The cricket, the gurgling
stream, the rushing wind amid the trees, all speak to me soberly yet
encouragingly of the steady onward progress of the universe. My heart
leaps into my mouth at the sound of the wind in the woods. I, whose
life was but yesterday so desultory and shallow, suddenly recover
my spirits, my spirituality, through my hearing. I see a goldfinch
go twittering through the still, louring day, and am reminded of the
peeping flocks which will soon herald the thoughtful season. Ah! if I
could so live that there should be no desultory moment in all my life!
that in the trivial season, when small fruits are ripe, my fruits might
be ripe also! that I could match nature always with my moods! that
in each season when some part of nature especially flourishes, then a
corresponding part of me may not fail to flourish! Ah, I would walk,
I would sit and sleep, with natural piety! What if I could pray aloud
or to myself as I went along by the brooksides a cheerful prayer like
the birds! For joy I could embrace the earth; I shall delight to be
buried in it. And then to think of those I love among men, who will
know that I love them though I tell them not! I sometimes feel as if I
were rewarded merely for expecting better hours. I did not despair of
worthier moods, and now I have occasion to be grateful for the flood
of life that is flowing over me. I am not so poor: I can smell the
ripening apples; the very rills are deep; the autumnal flowers, the
_Trichostema dichotomum_,—not only its bright blue flower above the
sand, but its strong wormwood scent which belongs to the season,—feed
my spirit, endear the earth to me, make me value myself and rejoice;
the quivering of pigeons’ wings reminds me of the tough fibre of the
air which they rend. I thank you, God. I do not deserve anything, I am
unworthy of the least regard; and yet I am made to rejoice. I am impure
and worthless, and yet the world is gilded for my delight and holidays
are prepared for me, and my path is strewn with flowers. But I cannot
thank the Giver; I cannot even whisper my thanks to those human friends
I have. It seems to me that I am more rewarded for my expectations
than for anything I do or can do. Ah, I would not tread on a cricket
in whose song is such a revelation, so soothing and cheering to my
ear! Oh, keep my senses pure! And why should I speak to my friends?
for how rarely is it that I am I; and are they, then, they? We will
meet, then, far away. The seeds of the summer are getting dry and
falling from a thousand nodding heads. If I did not know you through
thick and thin, how should I know you at all? Ah, the very brooks seem
fuller of reflections than they were! Ah, such provoking sibylline
sentences they are! The shallowest is all at once unfathomable. How
can that depth be fathomed where a man may see himself reflected? The
rill I stopped to drink at I drink in more than I expected. I satisfy
and still provoke the thirst of thirsts. Nut Meadow Brook where it
crosses the road beyond Jenny Dugan’s that was. I do not drink in vain.
I mark that brook as if I had swallowed a water snake that would live
in my stomach. I have swallowed something worth the while. The day
is not what it was before I stooped to drink. Ah, I shall hear from
that draught! It is not in vain that I have drunk. I have drunk an
arrowhead. It flows from where all fountains rise.

How many ova have I swallowed? Who knows what will be hatched within
me? There were some seeds of thought, methinks, floating in that water,
which are expanding in me. The man must not drink of the running
streams, the living waters, who is not prepared to have all nature
reborn in him,—to suckle monsters. The snake in my stomach lifts his
head to my mouth at the sound of running water. When was it that I
swallowed a snake? I have got rid of the snake in my stomach. I drank
of stagnant waters once. That accounts for it. I caught him by the
throat and drew him out, and had a well day after all. Is there not
such a thing as getting rid of the snake which you have swallowed when
young, when thoughtless you stooped and drank at stagnant waters, which
has worried you in your waking hours and in your sleep ever since,
and appropriated the life that was yours? Will he not ascend into your
mouth at the sound of running water? Then catch him boldly by the head
and draw him out, though you may think his tail be curled about your
vitals.

The farmers are just finishing their meadow-haying. (To-day is Sunday.)
Those who have early potatoes may be digging them, or doing any other
job which the haying has obliged them to postpone. For six weeks or
more this has been the farmer’s work, to shave the surface of the
fields and meadows clean. This is done all over the country. The
razor is passed over these parts of nature’s face the country over. A
thirteenth labor which methinks would have broken the back of Hercules,
would have given him a memorable sweat, accomplished with what sweating
of scythes and early and late! I chance [to] know one young man who
has lost his life in this season’s campaign, by overdoing. In haying
time some men take double wages, and they are engaged long before in
the spring. To shave all the fields and meadows of New England clean!
If men did this but once, and not every year, we should never hear the
last of that labor; it would be more famous in each farmer’s case than
Buonaparte’s road over the Simplon. It has no other bulletin but the
truthful “Farmer’s Almanac.” Ask them where scythe-snaths are made and
sold, and rifles too, if it is not a real labor. In its very weapons
and its passes it has the semblance of war. Mexico was won with less
exertion and less true valor than are required to do one season’s
haying in New England. The former work was done by those who played
truant and ran away from the latter. Those Mexicans were mown down
more easily than the summer’s crop of grass in many a farmer’s fields.
Is there not some work in New England men? This haying is no work for
marines, nor for deserters; nor for United States troops, so called,
nor for West Point cadets. It would wilt them, and they would desert.
Have they not deserted? and run off to West Point? Every field is a
battle-field to the mower,—a pitched battle too,—and whole winrows
of dead have covered it in the course of the season. Early and late
the farmer has gone forth with his formidable scythe, weapon of time,
Time’s weapon, and fought the ground inch by inch. It is the summer’s
enterprise. And if we were a more poetic people, horns would be blown
to celebrate its completion. There might be a Haymakers’ Day. New
England’s peaceful battles. At Bunker Hill there were some who stood at
the rail-fence and behind the winrows of new-mown hay.[284] They have
not yet quitted the field. They stand there still; they alone have not
retreated.

The _Polygala sanguinea_, caducous polygala, in damp ground, with red
or purple heads. The dandelion still blossoms, and the lupine still,
belated.

I have been to Tarbell’s Swamp by the Second Division this afternoon,
and to the Marlborough road.

It has promised rain all day; cloudy and still and rather cool; from
time to time a few drops gently spitting, but no shower. The landscape
wears a sober autumnal look. I hear a drop or two on my hat. I wear a
thick coat. The birds seem to know that it will not rain just yet. The
swallows skim low over the pastures, twittering as they fly near me
with forked tail, dashing near me as if I scared up insects for them.
I see where a squirrel has been eating hazelnuts on a stump.

Tarbell’s Swamp is mainly composed of low and even but dense beds
of _Andromeda calyculata_, or dwarf andromeda, which bears the early
flower in the spring. Here and there, mingled with it, is the water (?)
andromeda; also pitch pines, birches, hardhack, and the common alder
(_Alnus serrulata_), and, in separate and lower beds, the cranberry;
and probably the _Rhodora Canadensis_ might be found.

The lead-colored berries of the _Viburnum dentatum_ now. Cow-wheat
and indigo-weed still in bloom by the dry wood-path-side, and Norway
cinquefoil. I detected a wild apple on the Marlborough road by its
fragrance, in the thick woods; small stems, four inches in diameter,
falling over or leaning like rays on every side; a clean white fruit,
the ripest yellowish, a pleasant acid. The fruit covered the ground. It
is unusual to meet with an early apple thus wild in the thickest woods.
It seemed admirable to me. One of the noblest of fruits. With green
specks under the skin.

_Prenanthes alba_, white-flowering prenanthes, with its strange halbert
and variously shaped leaves; neottia; and hypericum.

I hear the rain (11 P. M.) distilling upon the ground, wetting the
grass and leaves. The melons needed it. Their leaves were curled and
their fruit stinted.

I am less somnolent for the cool season. I wake to a perennial day.

The hayer’s work is done, but I hear no boasting, no firing of guns
nor ringing of bells. He celebrates it by going about the work he had
postponed “till after haying”! If all this steadiness and valor were
spent upon some still worthier enterprise!!

All men’s employments, all trades and professions, in some of their
aspects are attractive. Hence the boy I knew, having sucked cider at
a minister’s cider-mill, resolved to be a minister and make cider,
not thinking, boy as he was, how little fun there was in being a
minister, willing to purchase that pleasure at any price. When I saw
the carpenters the other day repairing Hubbard’s Bridge, their bench on
the new planking they had laid over the water in the sun and air, with
no railing yet to obstruct the view, I was almost ready to resolve that
I would be a carpenter and work on bridges, to secure a pleasant place
to work. One of the men had a fish-line cast round a sleeper, which he
looked at from time to time.

John Potter told me that those root fences on the Corner road were at
least sixty or seventy years old.[285] I see a solitary goldfinch now
and then.

_Hieracium Marianum_ or _scabrum_; _H. Kalmii_ or _Canadense_;
Marlborough road. _Leontodon autumnale_ passim.


_Aug. 18._ It plainly makes men sad to think. Hence _pensiveness_ is
akin to sadness.

Some dogs, I have noticed, have a propensity to worry cows. They go off
by themselves to distant pastures, and ever and anon, like four-legged
devils, they worry the cows,—literally full of the devil. They are so
full of the devil they know not what to do. I come to interfere between
the cows and their tormentors. Ah, I grieve to see the devils escape
so easily by their swift limbs, imps of mischief! They are the dog
state of those boys who pull down hand-bills in the streets. Their next
migration perchance will be into such dogs as these, ignoble fate! The
dog, whose office it should be to guard the herd, turned its tormentor.
Some courageous cow endeavoring in vain to toss the nimble devil.

Those soldiers in the Champ de Mars[286] at Montreal convinced me that
I had arrived in a foreign country under a different government, where
many are under the control of one. Such perfect drill could never be
in a republic. Yet it had the effect on us as when the keeper shows his
animals’ claws. It was the English leopard showing his claws. The royal
something or other.[287] I have no doubt that soldiers well drilled, as
a class, are peculiarly destitute of originality and independence. The
men were dressed above their condition; had the bearing of gentlemen
without a corresponding intellectual culture.[288]

The Irish was a familiar element, but the Scotch a novel one. The
St. Andrew’s Church was prominent, and sometimes I was reminded of
Edinburgh,—indeed, much more than of London.

Warburton remarked, soon after landing at Quebec, that everything
was cheap in that country but men. My thought, when observing how
the wooden pavements were sawed by hand in the streets, instead of by
machinery, because labor was cheap, how cheap men are here![289]

It is evident that a private man is not worth so much in Canada as
in the United States, and if that is the bulk of a man’s property,
_i. e._ the being private and peculiar, he had better stay here. An
Englishman, methinks, not to speak of other nations, habitually regards
himself merely as a constituent part of the English nation; he holds
a recognized place as such; he is a member of the royal regiment of
Englishmen. And he is proud of his nation. But an American cares very
little about such, and greater freedom and independence are possible
to him. He is nearer to the primitive condition of man. Government lets
him alone, and he lets government alone.[290]

I often thought of the Tories and refugees who settled in Canada at
[the time of] the Revolution. These English were to a considerable
extent their descendants.

Quebec began to be fortified in a more regular manner in 1690.

The most modern fortifications have an air of antiquity about them;
they have the aspect of ruins in better or worse repair,—ruins kept
in repair from the day they were built, though they were completed
yesterday,—because they are not in a true sense the work of this
age. I couple them with the dismantled Spanish forts to be found in
so many parts of the world. They carry me back to the Middle Ages,
and the siege of Jerusalem, and St. Jean d’Acre, and the days of the
Bucaniers. Such works are not consistent with the development of the
intellect. Huge stone structures of all kinds, both by their creation
and their influence, rather oppress the intellect than set it free.
A little thought will dismantle them as fast as they are built. They
are a bungling contrivance. It is an institution as rotten as the
church. The sentinel with his musket beside a man with his umbrella is
spectral. There is not sufficient reason for his existence. My friend
there, with a bullet resting on half an ounce of powder, does he think
that he needs that argument in conversing with me? Of what use this
fortification, to look at it from the soldier’s point of view? General
Wolfe sailed by it with impunity, and took the town of Quebec without
experiencing any hindrance from its fortifications. How often do we
have to read that the enemy occupied a position which commanded the
old, and so the fort was evacuated![291]

How impossible it is to give that soldier a good education, without
first making him virtually a deserter.[292]

It is as if I were to come to a country village surrounded with
palisadoes in the old Indian style,—interesting as a relic of antiquity
and barbarism. A fortified town is a man cased in the heavy armor of
antiquity, and a horse-load of broadswords and small-arms slung to him,
endeavoring to go about his business.

The idea seemed to be that some time the inhabitants of Canada might
wish to govern themselves, and this was to hinder. But the inhabitants
of California succeed well without any such establishment.[293] There
would be the same sense in a man’s wearing a breastplate all his days
for fear somebody should fire a bullet at his vitals. The English in
Canada seem to be everywhere prepared and preparing for war. In the
United States they are prepared for anything; they may even be the
aggressors. This is a ruin kept in a remarkably good repair. There are
some eight hundred or a thousand men there to exhibit it. One regiment
goes bare-legged to increase the attraction. If you wish to study the
muscles of the leg about the knee, repair to Quebec.[294]


_Aug. 19._ _Clematis Virginiana_; calamint; _Lycopus Europeus_, water
horehound.

This is a world where there are flowers. Now, at 5 A. M., the fog,
which in the west looks like a wreath of hard-rolled cotton-batting,
is rapidly dispersing. The echo of the railroad whistle is heard
the horizon round; the gravel train is starting out. The farmers are
cradling oats in some places. For some days past I have noticed a _red_
maple or two about the pond, though we have had no frost. The grass is
very wet with dew this morning.

The way in which men cling to old institutions after the life has
departed out of them, and out of themselves, reminds me of those
monkeys which cling by their tails,—aye, whose tails contract about
the limbs, even the dead limbs, of the forest, and they hang suspended
beyond the hunter’s reach long after they are dead. It is of no use
to argue with such men. They have not an apprehensive intellect, but
merely, as it were, a prehensile tail. Their intellect possesses merely
the quality of a prehensile tail. The tail itself contracts around the
dead limb even after they themselves are dead, and not till sensible
corruption takes place do they fall. The black howling monkey, or
caraya. According to Azara, it is extremely difficult to get at them,
for “when mortally wounded they coil the tail round a branch, and hang
by it with the head downwards for days after death, and until, in fact,
decomposition begins to take effect.” The commenting naturalist says,
“A singular peculiarity of this organ is to contract at its extremity
of its own accord as soon as it is extended to its full length.” I
relinquish argument, I wait for decomposition to take place, for the
subject is dead; as I value the hide for the museum. They say, “Though
you’ve got my soul, you sha’n’t have my carcass.”

       *       *       *       *       *

P. M.—To Marlborough Road _via_ Clamshell Hill, Jenny Dugan’s, Round
Pond, Canoe Birch Road (Deacon Dakin’s), and White Pond.

How many things concur to keep a man at home, to prevent his yielding
to his inclination to wander! If I would extend my walk a hundred
miles, I must carry a tent on my back for shelter at night or in the
rain, or at least I must carry a thick coat to be prepared for a change
in the weather. So that it requires some resolution, as well as energy
and foresight, to undertake the simplest journey. Man does not travel
as easily as the birds migrate. He is not everywhere at home, like
flies. When I think how many things I can conveniently carry, I am
wont to think it most convenient to stay at home. My home, then, to a
certain extent is the place where I keep my thick coat and my tent and
some books which I cannot carry; where, next, I can depend upon meeting
some friends; and where, finally, I, even I, have established myself in
business. But this last in my case is the least important qualification
of a home.

The poet must be continually watching the moods of his mind, as the
astronomer watches the aspects of the heavens. What might we not
expect from a long life faithfully spent in this wise? The humblest
observer would see some stars shoot. A faithful description as by a
disinterested person of the thoughts which visited a certain mind
in threescore years and ten, as when one reports the number and
character of the vehicles which pass a particular point. As travellers
go round the world and report natural objects and phenomena, so
faithfully let another stay at home and report the phenomena of his
own life,—catalogue stars, those thoughts whose orbits are as rarely
calculated as comets. It matters not whether they visit my mind or
yours,—whether the meteor falls in my field or in yours,—only that it
come from heaven. (I am not concerned to express that kind of truth
which Nature has expressed. Who knows but I may suggest some things to
her? Time was when she was indebted to such suggestions from another
quarter, as her present advancement shows. I deal with the truths
that recommend themselves to me,—please me,—not those merely which any
system has voted to accept.) A meteorological journal of the mind. You
shall observe what occurs in your latitude, I in mine.

Some institutions—most institutions, indeed—have had a divine origin.
But of most that we see prevailing in society nothing but the form,
the shell, is left; the life is extinct, and there is nothing divine
in them. Then the reformer arises inspired to reinstitute life, and
whatever he does or causes to be done is a reëstablishment of that same
or a similar divineness. But some, who never knew the significance
of these instincts, are, by a sort of false instinct, found clinging
to the shells. Those who have no knowledge of the divine appoint
themselves defenders of the divine, as champions of the church, etc. I
have been astonished to observe how long some audiences can endure to
hear a man speak on a subject which he knows nothing about, as religion
for instance, when one who has no ear for music might with the same
propriety take up the time of a musical assembly with putting through
his opinions on music. This young man who is the main pillar of some
divine institution,—does he know what he has undertaken? If the saints
were to come again on earth, would they be likely to stay at his house?
would they meet with his approbation even? _Ne sutor ultra crepidam._
They who merely have a talent for affairs are forward to express their
opinions. A Roman soldier sits there to decide upon the righteousness
of Christ. The world does not long endure such blunders, though they
are made every day. The weak-brained and pusillanimous farmers would
fain abide by the institutions of their fathers. Their argument is
they have not long to live, and for that little space let them not be
disturbed in their slumbers; blessed are the peacemakers; let this cup
pass from me, etc.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to
live! Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts
begin to flow, as if I had given vent to the stream at the lower end
and consequently new fountains flowed into it at the upper. A thousand
rills which have their rise in the sources of thought burst forth and
fertilize my brain. You need to increase the draught below, as the
owners of meadows on Concord River say of the Billerica Dam. Only while
we are in action is the circulation perfect. The writing which consists
with habitual sitting is mechanical, wooden, dull to read.

The grass in the high pastures is almost as dry as hay. The seasons
do not cease a moment to revolve, and therefore Nature rests no longer
at her culminating point than at any other. If you are not out at the
right instant, the summer may go by and you not see it. How much of the
year is spring and fall! how little can be called summer! The grass
is no sooner grown than it begins to wither. How much Nature herself
suffers from drought! It seems quite as much as she can do to produce
these crops.

The most inattentive walker can see how the science of geology took its
rise. The inland hills and promontories betray the action of water on
their rounded sides as plainly as if the work were completed yesterday.
He sees it with but half an eye as he walks, and forgets his thought
again. Also the level plains and more recent meadows and marine shells
found on the tops of hills. The geologist painfully and elaborately
follows out these suggestions, and hence his fine-spun theories.

The goldfinch, though solitary, is now one of the commonest birds in
the air.

What if a man were earnestly and wisely to set about recollecting and
preserving the thoughts which he has had! How many perchance are now
irrecoverable! Calling in his neighbors to aid him.

I do not like to hear the name of particular States given to birds
and flowers which are found in all equally,—as Maryland yellow-throat,
etc., etc. The _Canadenses_ and _Virginicas_ may be suffered to pass
for the most part, for there is historical as well as natural reason at
least for them. Canada is the peculiar country of some and the northern
limit of many more plants. And Virginia, which was originally the name
for all the Atlantic shore, has some right to stand for the South.

The fruit of the sweet-gale by Nut Meadow Brook is of a yellowish green
now and has not yet its greasy feel.

The little red-streaked and dotted excrescences on the shrub oaks I
find as yet no name for.

Now for the pretty red capsules or pods of the _Hypericum Canadense_.

White goldenrod is budded along the Marlborough road.

Chickadees and jays never fail. The cricket’s is a note which does not
attract you to itself. It is not easy to find one.

I fear that the character of my knowledge is from year to year becoming
more distinct and scientific; that, in exchange for views as wide as
heaven’s cope, I am being narrowed down to the field of the microscope.
I see details, not wholes nor the shadow of the whole. I count some
parts, and say, “I know.” The cricket’s chirp now fills the air in dry
fields near pine woods.

Gathered our first watermelon to-day. By the Marlborough road I notice
the richly veined leaves of the _Neottia pubescens_, or veined neottia,
rattlesnake-plantain. I like this last name very well, though it might
not be easy to convince a quibbler or proser of its fitness. We want
some name to express the mystic wildness of its rich leaves. Such
work as men imitate in their embroidery, unaccountably agreeable to
the eye, as if it answered its end only when it met the eye of man; a
reticulated leaf, visible only on one side; little things which make
one pause in the woods, take captive the eye.

Here is a bees’ or wasps’ nest in the sandy, mouldering bank by the
roadside, four inches in diameter, as if made of scales of striped
brown paper. It is singular if indeed man first made paper and then
discovered its resemblance to the work of the wasps, and did not derive
the hint from them.

Canoe birches by road to Dakin’s. Cuticle stripped off; inner bark dead
and scaling off; new (inner) bark formed.

The Solomon’s-seals are fruited now, with finely red-dotted berries.

There was one original name well given, _Buster_ Kendal.[295] The
fragrance of the clethra fills the air by watersides. In the hollows
where in winter is a pond, the grass is short, thick, and green still,
and here and there are tufts pulled up as if by the mouth of cows.

Small rough sunflower by side of road between canoe birch and White
Pond,—_Helianthus divaricatus_.

_Lespedeza capitata_, shrubby lespedeza, White Pond road and
Marlborough road.

_L. polystachya_, hairy lespedeza, Corner road beyond Hubbard’s Bridge.


_Aug. 20._ 2 P. M.—To Lee’s Bridge _via_ Hubbard’s Wood, Potter’s
field, Conantum, returning by Abel Minott’s house, Clematis Brook,
Baker’s pine plain, and railroad.

I hear a cricket in the Depot Field, walk a rod or two, and find the
note proceeds from near a rock. Partly under a rock, between it and the
roots of the grass, he lies concealed,—for I pull away the withered
grass with my hands,—uttering his night-like creak, with a vibratory
motion of his wings, and flattering himself that it is night, because
he has shut out the day. He was a black fellow nearly an inch long,
with two long, slender feelers. They plainly avoid the light and hide
their heads in the grass. At any rate they regard this as the evening
of the year. They are remarkably secret and unobserved, considering
how much noise they make. Every milkman has heard them all his life; it
is the sound that fills his ears as he drives along. But what one has
ever got off his cart to go in search of one? I see smaller ones moving
stealthily about, whose note I do not know. Who ever distinguished
their various notes, which fill the crevices in each other’s song? It
would be a curious ear, indeed, that distinguished the species of the
crickets which it heard, and traced even the earth-song home, each part
to its particular performer. I am afraid to be so knowing. They are shy
as birds, these little bodies. Those nearest me continually cease their
song as I walk, so that the singers are always a rod distant, and I
cannot easily detect one. It is difficult, moreover, to judge correctly
whence the sound proceeds. Perhaps this wariness is necessary to save
them from insectivorous birds, which would otherwise speedily find out
so loud a singer. They are somewhat protected by the universalness
of the sound, each one’s song being merged and lost in the general
concert, as if it were the creaking of earth’s axle. They are very
numerous in oats and other grain, which conceals them and yet affords
a clear passage. I never knew any drought or sickness so to prevail as
to quench the song of the crickets; it fails not in its season, night
or day.

The _Lobelia inflata_, Indian-tobacco, meets me at every turn. At first
I suspect some new bluish flower in the grass, but stooping see the
inflated pods. Tasting one such herb convinces me that there are such
things as drugs which may either kill or cure.[296]

The _Rhexia Virginica_ is a showy flower at present.

How copious and precise the botanical language to describe the leaves,
as well as the other parts of a plant! Botany is worth studying if
only for the precision of its terms,—to learn the value of words and
of system. It is wonderful how much pains has been taken to describe
a flower’s leaf, compared for instance with the care that is taken in
describing a psychological fact. Suppose as much ingenuity (perhaps it
would be needless) in making a language to express the sentiments! We
are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf in the field,
or at least to distinguish it from each other, but not to describe a
human character. With equally wonderful indistinctness and confusion
we describe men. The precision and copiousness of botanical language
applied to the description of moral qualities!

The neottia, or ladies’-tresses, behind Garfield’s house. The golden
robin is now a rare bird to see. Here are the small, lively-tasting
blackberries, so small they are not commonly eaten. The grasshoppers
seem no drier than the grass. In Lee’s field are two kinds of plantain.
Is the common one found there?

The willow reach by Lee’s Bridge has been stripped for powder.
None escapes. This morning, hearing a cart, I looked out and saw
George Dugan going by with a horse-load of his willow toward Acton
powder-mills, which I had seen in piles by the turnpike. Every
traveller has just as particular an errand which I might likewise
chance to be privy to.

Now that I am at the extremity of my walk, I see a threatening cloud
blowing up from the south, which however, methinks, will not compel me
to make haste.

_Apios tuberosa_, or _Glycine Apios_, ground-nut. The prenanthes now
takes the place of the lactucas, which are gone to seed.

In the dry ditch, near Abel Minott’s house that was, I see
cardinal-flowers, with their red artillery, reminding me of
soldiers,—red men, war, and bloodshed. Some are four and a half feet
high. Thy sins shall be as scarlet. Is it my sins that I see? It shows
how far a little color can go; for the flower is not large, yet it
makes itself seen from afar, and so answers the purpose for which it
was colored completely. It is remarkable for its intensely brilliant
scarlet color. You are slow to concede to it a high rank among flowers,
but ever and anon, as you turn your eyes away, it dazzles you and you
pluck it. _Scutellaria lateriflora_, side-flowering skullcap, here.
This brook deserves to be called Clematis Brook (though that name is
too often applied), for the clematis is very abundant, running over the
alders and other bushes on its brink. Where the brook issues from the
pond, the nightshade grows profusely, spreading five or six feet each
way, with its red berries now ripe. It grows, too, at the upper end of
the pond. But if it is the button-bush that grows in the now low water,
it should rather be called the Button-Bush Pond. Now the tall rush is
in its prime on the shore here, and the clematis abounds by this pond
also.

I came out by the leafy-columned elm under Mt. Misery, where the trees
stood up one above another, higher and higher, immeasurably far to my
imagination, as on the side of a New Hampshire mountain.

On the pitch pine plain, at first the pines are far apart, with a
wiry grass between, and goldenrod and hardhack and St. John’s-wort and
blackberry vines, each tree merely keeping down the grass for a space
about itself, meditating to make a forest floor; and here and there
younger pines are springing up. Further in, you come to moss-covered
patches, dry, deep white moss, or almost bare mould, half covered with
pine needles. Thus begins the future forest floor.

The sites of the shanties that once stood by the railroad in Lincoln
when the Irish built it, the still remaining hollow square mounds of
earth which formed their embankments, are to me instead of barrows and
druidical monuments and other ruins. It is a sufficient antiquity to
me since they were built, their material being earth. Now the Canada
thistle and the mullein crown their tops. I see the stones which made
their simple chimneys still left one upon another at one end, which
were surmounted with barrels to eke them out; and clean boiled beef
bones and old shoes are strewn about. Otherwise it is a clean ruin, and
nothing is left but a mound, as in the graveyard.

_Sium lineare_, a kind of water-parsnip, whose blossom resembles the
_Cicuta maculata_. The flowers of the blue vervain have now nearly
reached the summit of their spikes.

A traveller who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the
oldest inhabitant has not observed.


_Aug. 21._ To a great extent the feudal system still prevails there
(in Canada), and I saw that I should be a bad citizen, that any man who
thought for himself and was only reasonably independent would naturally
be a rebel. You could not read or hear of their laws without seeing
that it was a legislating for a few and not for all. That certainly
is the best government where the inhabitants are least often reminded
of the government. (Where a man cannot be a poet even without danger
of being made poet-laureate! Where he cannot be healthily neglected,
and grow up a man, and not an Englishman merely!) Where it is the most
natural thing in the world for a government that does not understand
you, to let you alone. Oh, what a government were there, my countrymen!
It is a government, that English one,—and most other European
ones,—that cannot afford to be forgotten, as you would naturally forget
them, that cannot let you go alone, having learned to walk. It appears
to me that a true Englishman can only speculate within bounds; he has
to pay his respects to so many things that before he knows it he has
paid all he is worth. The principal respect in which our government is
more tolerable is in the fact that there is so much less of government
with us. In the States it is only once in a dog’s age that a man need
remember his government, but here he is reminded of it every day.
Government parades itself before you. It is in no sense the servant but
the master.[297]

What a faculty must that be which can paint the most barren landscape
and humblest life in glorious colors! It is pure and invigorated senses
reacting on a sound and strong imagination. Is not that the poet’s
case? The intellect of most men is barren. They neither fertilize nor
are fertilized. It is the marriage of the soul with Nature that makes
the intellect fruitful, that gives birth to imagination. When we were
dead and dry as the highway, some sense which has been healthily fed
will put us in relation with Nature, in sympathy with her; some grains
of fertilizing pollen, floating in the air, fall on us, and suddenly
the sky is all one rainbow, is full of music and fragrance and flavor.
The man of intellect only, the prosaic man, is a barren, staminiferous
flower; the poet is a fertile and perfect flower. Men are such
confirmed arithmeticians and slaves of business that I cannot easily
find a blank-book that has not a red line or a blue one for the dollars
and cents, or some such purpose.[298]

As is a man’s intellectual character, is not such his physical after
all? Can you not infer from knowing the intellectual characters of two
which is most tenacious of life, which would die the hardest and will
live the longest, which is the toughest, which has most brute strength,
which the most passive endurance? Methinks I could to some extent infer
these things.

       *       *       *       *       *

1 P. M.—Round Flint’s Pond _via_ railroad, my old field, Goose Pond,
Wharf Rock, Cedar Hill, Smith’s, and so back.

Bigelow, speaking of the spikes of the blue vervain (_Verbena
hastata_), says, “The flowering commences at their base and is long
in reaching their summit.” I perceive that only one circle of buds,
about half a dozen, blossoms at a time,—and there are about thirty
circles in the space of three inches,—while the next circle of buds
above at the same time shows the blue. Thus this triumphant blossoming
circle travels upward, driving the remaining buds off into space.[299]
I think it was the 16th of July when I first noticed them (on another
plant), and now they are all within about half an inch of the top of
the spikes. Yet the blossoms have got no nearer the top on long [_sic_]
spikes, which had many buds, than on short ones only an inch long.
Perhaps the blossoming commenced enough earlier on the long ones to
make up for the difference in length. It is very pleasant to measure
the progress of the season by this and similar clocks. So you get,
not the absolute time, but the true time of the season.[300] But I
can measure the progress of the seasons only by observing a particular
plant, for I notice that they are by no means equally advanced.

The prevailing conspicuous flowers at present are: The early
goldenrods, tansy, the life-everlastings, flea-bane (though not for its
flower), yarrow (rather dry), hardhack and meadow-sweet (both getting
dry, also mayweed), _Eupatorium purpureum_, scabish, clethra (really
a fine, sweet-scented, and this year particularly fair and fresh,
flower, some unexpanded buds at top tinged with red), Rhexia Virginica,
thoroughwort, _Polygala sanguinea_, prunella, and dog’s-bane (getting
stale), etc., etc. Touch-me-not (less observed), Canada snapdragon
by roadside (not conspicuous). The purple gerardia now, horsemint, or
_Mentha borealis_, _Veronica scutellata_ (marsh speedwell), _Ranunculus
acris_ (tall crowfoot) still. Mowing to some extent improves the
landscape to the eye of the walker. The aftermath, so fresh and green,
begins now to recall the spring to my mind. In some fields fresh
clover heads appear. This is certainly better than fields of lodged
and withered grass. I find ground-nuts by the railroad causeway three
quarters of an inch long by a third of an inch. The epilobium still.
Cow-wheat (_Melampyrum Americanum_) still flourishes as much if not
more than ever, and, shrubby-looking, helps cover the ground where the
wood has recently been cut off, like huckleberry bushes.

There is some advantage, intellectually and spiritually, in taking wide
views with the bodily eye and not pursuing an occupation which holds
the body prone. There is some advantage, perhaps, in attending to the
general features of the landscape over studying the particular plants
and animals which inhabit it. A man may walk abroad and no more see the
sky than if he walked under a shed. The poet is more in the air than
the naturalist, though they may walk side by side. Granted that you
are out-of-doors; but what if the outer door _is_ open, if the inner
door is shut! You must walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying nor
inquisitive, not bent upon seeing things. Throw away a whole day for a
single expansion, a single inspiration of air.

Any anomaly in vegetation makes Nature seem more real and present in
her working, as the various red and yellow excrescences on young oaks.
I am affected as if it were a different Nature that produced them. As
if a poet were born who had designs in his head.[301]

It is remarkable that animals are often obviously, manifestly, related
to the plants which they feed upon or live among,—as caterpillars,
butterflies, tree-toads, partridges, chewinks,—and this afternoon I
noticed a yellow spider on a goldenrod; as if every condition might
have its expression in some form of animated being.[302]

Spear-leaved goldenrod in path to northeast of Flint’s Pond. _Hieracium
paniculatum_, a very delicate and slender hawkweed. I have now found
all the hawkweeds. Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly
related yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a natural
_history_ in a new sense.[303]

At Wharf Rock found water lobelia in blossom. I saw some smilax vines
in the swamp, which were connected with trees ten feet above the ground
whereon they grew and four or five feet above the surrounding bushes.
This slender vine, which cannot stand erect, how did it establish that
connection? Have the trees and shrubs by which it once climbed been
cut down? Or perchance do the young and flexible shoots blow up in
high winds and fix themselves?[304] On Cedar Hill, south side pond, I
still hear the locust, though it has been so much colder for the last
week. It is quite hazy in the west, though comparatively clear in other
directions. The barberry bushes, with their drooping wreaths of fruit
now turning red, bushed up with some other shrub or tree.


_Aug. 22._ I found last winter that it was expected by my townsmen
that I would give some account of Canada because I had _visited_
it, and because many of them had, and so felt interested in the
subject,—visited it as the bullet visits the wall at which it is fired,
and from which it rebounds as quickly, and flattened (somewhat damaged,
perchance)! Yes, a certain man contracted to take fifteen hundred live
Yankees through Canada, at a certain rate and within a certain time.
It did not matter to him what the commodity was, if only it would pack
well and were delivered to him according to agreement at the right
place and time and rightly ticketed, so much in bulk, wet or dry,
on deck or in the hold, at the option of the carrier how to stow the
cargo and not always right side up. In the meanwhile, it was understood
that the freight was not to be willfully and intentionally debarred
from seeing the country if it had eyes. It was understood that there
would be a country to be seen on either side, though that was a secret
advantage which the contractors seemed not to be aware of. I fear that
I have not got much to say, not having seen much, for the very rapidity
of the motion had a tendency to keep my eyelids closed. What I _got_ by
going to Canada was a cold, and not till I get a fever, which I never
had, shall I know how to appreciate it.[305]

It is the fault of some excellent writers—De Quincey’s first
impressions on seeing London suggest it to me—that they express
themselves with too great fullness and detail. They give the most
faithful, natural, and lifelike account of their sensations, mental
and physical, but they lack moderation and sententiousness. They do
not affect us by an ineffectual earnestness and a reserve of meaning,
like a stutterer; they say all they mean. Their sentences are not
concentrated and nutty. Sentences which suggest far more than they say,
which have an atmosphere about them, which do not merely report an old,
but make a new, impression; sentences which suggest as many things and
are as durable as a Roman aqueduct; to frame these, that is the art of
writing. Sentences which are expensive, towards which so many volumes,
so much life, went; which lie like boulders on the page, up and down or
across; which contain the seed of other sentences, not mere repetition,
but creation; which a man might sell his grounds and castles to build.
If De Quincey had suggested each of his pages in a sentence and passed
on, it would have been far more excellent writing. His style is nowhere
kinked and knotted up into something hard and significant, which you
could swallow like a diamond, without digesting.[306]


_Aug. 23. Saturday._ To Walden to bathe at 5.30 A. M. Traces of the
heavy rains in the night. The sand and gravel are beaten hard by them.
Three or four showers in succession. But the grass is not so wet as
after an ordinary dew. The _Verbena hastata_ at the pond has reached
the top of its spike, a little in advance of what I noticed yesterday;
only one or two flowers are adhering. At the commencement of my walk I
saw no traces of fog, but after detected fogs over particular meadows
and high up some brooks’ valleys, and far in the Deep Cut the wood fog.
First muskmelon this morning.

I rarely pass the shanty in the woods, where human beings are lodged,
literally, no better than pigs in a sty,—little children, a grown
man and his wife, and an aged grandmother living this squalid life,
squatting on the ground,—but I wonder if it can be indeed true that
little Julia Riordan calls this place home, comes here to rest at night
and for her daily food,—in whom ladies and gentlemen in the village
take an interest. Of what significance are charity and almshouses?
That there they live unmolested! in one sense so many degrees below the
almshouse! beneath charity! It is admirable,—Nature against almshouses.
A certain wealth of nature, not poverty, it suggests. Not to identify
health and contentment, aye, and independence, with the possession of
this world’s goods! It is not wise to waste compassion on them.

As I go through the Deep Cut, I hear one or two early humblebees, come
out on the damp sandy bank, whose low hum sounds like distant horns
from far in the horizon over the woods. It was long before I detected
the bees that made it, so far away and musical it sounded, like the
shepherds in some distant eastern vale greeting the king of day.[307]

The farmers now carry—those who have got them—their early potatoes and
onions to market, starting away early in the morning or at midnight. I
see them returning in the afternoon with the empty barrels.

Perchance the copious rain of last night will trouble those who had not
been so provident as to get their hay from the Great Meadows, where it
is often lost.

       *       *       *       *       *

P. M.—Walk to Annursnack and back over stone bridge.

I sometimes reproach myself because I do not find anything attractive
in certain mere trivial employments of men,—that I skip men so
commonly, and their affairs,—the professions and the trades,—do not
elevate them at least in my thought and get some material for poetry
out of them directly. I will not avoid, then, to go by where these men
are repairing the stone bridge,—see if I cannot see poetry in that,
if that will not yield me a reflection. It is narrow to be confined
to woods and fields and grand aspects of nature only. The greatest
and wisest will still be related to men. Why not see men standing in
the sun and casting a shadow, even as trees? May not some light be
reflected from them as from the stems of trees? I will try to enjoy
them as animals, at least. They are perhaps better animals than men.
Do not neglect to speak of men’s low life and affairs with sympathy,
though you ever so speak as to suggest a contrast between them and the
ideal and divine. You may be excused if you are always pathetic, but do
not refuse to recognize.

Resolve to read no book, to take no walk, to undertake no enterprise,
but such as you can endure to give an account of to yourself. Live thus
deliberately for the most part.

When I stopped to gather some blueberries by the roadside this
afternoon, I heard the shrilling of a cricket or a grasshopper close to
me, quite clear, almost like a bell, a stridulous sound, a clear ring,
incessant, not intermittent, like the song of the black fellow I caught
the other day, and not suggesting the night, but belonging to day. It
was long before I could find him, though all the while within a foot or
two. I did not know whether to search amid the grass and stones or amid
the leaves. At last, by accident I saw him, he shrilling all the while
under an alder leaf two feet from the ground,—a slender green fellow
with long feelers and transparent wings. When he shrilled, his wings,
which opened on each other in the form of a heart perpendicularly to
his body like the wings of fairies, vibrated swiftly on each other. The
apparently wingless female, as I thought, was near.

We experience pleasure when an elevated field or even road in which we
may be walking holds its level toward the horizon at a tangent to the
earth, is not convex with the earth’s surface, but an absolute level.

On or under east side of Annursnack, _Epilobium coloratum_,
colored willow-herb, near the spring. Also _Polygonum sagittatum_,
scratch-grass.

The Price Farm road, one of those everlasting roads which the sun
delights to shine along in an August afternoon, playing truant; which
seem to stretch themselves with terrene jest as the weary traveller
journeys on; where there are three white sandy furrows (_liræ_), two
for the wheels and one between them for the horse, with endless green
grass borders between and room on each side for huckleberries and
birches; where the walls indulge in freaks, not always parallel to
the ruts, and goldenrod yellows all the path; which some elms began to
border and shade once, but left off in despair, it was so long; from
no point on which can you be said to be at any definite distance from
a town.

I associate the beauty of Quebec with the steel-like and flashing
air.[308]

Our little river reaches are not to be forgotten. I noticed that seen
northward on the Assabet from the Causeway Bridge near the second stone
bridge. There was [a] man in a boat in the sun, just disappearing in
the distance round a bend, lifting high his arms and dipping his paddle
as if he were a vision bound to land of the blessed,—far off, as in
picture. When I see Concord to purpose, I see it as if it were not real
but painted, and what wonder if I do not speak to _thee_? I saw a snake
by the roadside and touched him with my foot to see if he were alive.
He had a toad in his jaws, which he was preparing to swallow with his
jaws distended to three times his width, but he relinquished his prey
in haste and fled; and I thought, as the toad jumped leisurely away
with his slime-covered hind-quarters glistening in the sun, as if I,
his deliverer, wished to interrupt his meditations,—without a shriek or
fainting,—I thought what a healthy indifference he manifested. Is not
this the broad earth still? he said.[309]


_Aug. 24._ _Mollugo verticillata_, carpet-weed, flat, whorl-leaved weed
in gardens, with small white flowers. _Portulaca oleracea_, purslane,
with its yellow blossoms. _Chelone glabra._ I have seen the small
mulleins as big as a ninepence in the fields for a day or two.[310]

The weather is warmer again after a week or more of cool days. There is
greater average warmth, but not such intolerable heats as in July. The
nights especially are more equably warm now, even when the day has been
comparatively rather cool. There are few days now, fewer than in July,
when you cannot lie at your length on the grass. You have now forgotten
winter and its fashions, and have learned new summer fashions. Your
life may be out-of-doors now mainly.

  [Illustration]

Rattlesnake grass is ripe. The pods of the _Asclepias pulchra_ stand
up pointedly like slender vases on a salver,— an open salver truly!
Those of the _Asclepias Syriaca_ hang down. The interregnum in the
blossoming of flowers being _well_ over, many small flowers blossom
now in the low grounds, having just reached their summer. It is now dry
enough, and they feel the heat their tenderness required. The autumnal
flowers,—goldenrods, asters, and johnswort,—though they have made
demonstrations, have not yet commenced to reign. The tansy is already
getting stale; it is perhaps the first conspicuous yellow flower that
passes from the stage.[311]

In Hubbard’s Swamp, where the blueberries, dangleberries, and
especially the pyrus or choke-berries were so abundant last summer,
there is now perhaps not one (unless a blueberry) to be found. Where
the choke-berries held on all last winter, the black and the red.

The common skullcap (_Scutellaria galericulata_), quite a handsome and
middling-large blue flower. _Lobelia pallida_ still. Pointed cleavers
or clivers (_Galium asprellum_). Is that the naked viburnum, so common,
with its white, red, then purple berries, in Hubbard’s meadow?[312]

Did I find the dwarf tree-primrose in Hubbard’s meadow to-day? _Stachys
aspera_, hedge-nettle or woundwort, a rather handsome purplish flower.
The capsules of the _Iris versicolor_, or blue flag, are now ready for
humming [?]. Elderberries are ripe.


_Aug. 25. Monday._ What the little regular, rounded, light-blue flower
in Heywood Brook which I make Class V, Order 1? Also the small purplish
flower growing on the mud in Hubbard’s meadow, perchance C. XIV, with
one pistil? What the bean vine in the garden, Class VIII, Order 1? I
do not find the name of the large white polygonum of the river. Was it
the filiform ranunculus which I found on Hubbard’s shore? _Hypericum
Virginicum_, mixed yellow and purple. The black rough fruit of the
skunk-cabbage, though green within, barely rising above the level of
the ground; you see where it has been cut in two by the mowers in the
meadows. _Polygonum amphibium_, red, in river. _Lysimachia hybrida_
still. Checkerberry in bloom. Blue-eyed grass still. _Rhus copallina_,
mountain or dwarf sumach. I now know all of the _Rhus_ genus in
Bigelow. We have all but the staghorn in Concord. What a miserable name
has the _Gratiola aurea_, hedge hyssop! Whose hedge does it grow by,
pray, in this part of the world?[313]


_Aug. 26._ A cool and even piercing wind blows to-day, making all
shrubs to bow and trees to wave; such as we could not have had in
July. I speak not of its coolness but its strength and steadiness. The
wind and the coldness increased as the day advanced, and finally the
wind went down with the sun. I was compelled to put on an extra coat
for my walk. The ground is strewn with windfalls, and much fruit will
consequently be lost.

The wind roars amid the pines like the surf. You can hardly hear
the crickets for the din, or the cars. I think the last must be
considerably delayed when their course is against it. Indeed it is
difficult to enjoy a quiet thought. You sympathize too much with
the commotion and restlessness of the elements. Such a blowing,
stirring, bustling day,—what does it mean? All light things decamp;
straws and loose leaves change their places. Such a blowing day is
no doubt indispensable in the economy of nature. The whole country is
a seashore, and the wind is the surf that breaks on it. It shows the
white and silvery under sides of the leaves. Do plants and trees need
to be thus tried and twisted? Is it a first intimation to the sap to
cease to ascend, to thicken their stems? The _Gerardia pedicularia_,
bushy gerardia, I find on the White Pond road.

I perceive that some farmers are cutting turf now. They require
the driest season of the year. There is something agreeable to my
thoughts in thus burning a part of the earth, the stock of fuel is so
inexhaustible. Nature looks not mean and niggardly, but like an ample
loaf. Is not he a rich man who owns a peat meadow? It is to enjoy the
luxury of wealth. It must be a luxury to sit around the fire in winter
days and nights and burn these dry slices of the meadow which contain
roots of all herbs. You dry and burn the very earth itself. It is a
fact kindred with salt-licks. The meadow is strewn with the fresh bars,
bearing the marks of the fork, and the turf-cutter is wheeling them out
with his barrow. To sit and see the world aglow and try to imagine how
it would seem to have it so destroyed!

Woodchucks are seen tumbling into their holes on all sides.


_Aug. 27._ I see the volumes of smoke—not quite the blaze—from burning
brush, as I suppose, far in the western horizon. I believe it is at
this season of the year chiefly that you see this sight. It is always
a question with some whether it is not a fire in the woods, or some
building. It is an interesting feature in the scenery at this season.
The farmer’s simple enterprises.

The vervain which I examined by the railroad the other day has still
a quarter of an inch to the top of its spikes. Hawkweed groundsel
(_Senecio hieracifolius_) (fireweed). _Rubus sempervirens_, evergreen
raspberry, the small low blackberry, is now in fruit. The _Medeola
Virginica_, cucumber-root, the whorl-leaved plant, is now in green
fruit. _Polygala cruciata_, cross-leaved polygala, in the meadow
between Trillium Woods and railroad. This is rare and new to me.
It has a very sweet, but as it were intermittent, fragrance, as of
checkerberry and mayflowers combined. The handsome calyx-leaves.[314]


_Aug. 28._ The pretty little blue flower in the Heywood Brook, Class
V, Order 1. Corolla about one sixth of an inch in diameter, with five
rounded segments; stamens and pistil shorter than corolla; calyx with
five acute segments and acute sinuses; leaves not opposite, lanceolate,
spatulate, blunt, somewhat hairy on upper side with a midrib only,
sessile; flowers in a loose raceme on rather long pedicels. Whole
plant decumbent, curving upward. Wet ground. Said to be like the
forget-me-not.

_Raphanus Raphanistrum_, or wild radish, in meadows.

I find three or four ordinary laborers to-day putting up the necessary
outdoor fixtures for a magnetic telegraph from Boston to Burlington.
They carry along a basket full of simple implements, like travelling
tinkers, and, with a little rude soldering, and twisting, and
straightening of wires, the work is done. It is a work which seems to
admit of the greatest latitude of ignorance and bungling, and as if you
might set your hired man with the poorest head and hands to building
a magnetic telegraph. All great inventions stoop thus low to succeed,
for the understanding is but little above the feet. They preserve so
low a tone; they are simple almost to coarseness and commonplaceness.
Somebody had told them what he wanted, and sent them forth with a coil
of wire to make a magnetic telegraph. It seems not so wonderful an
invention as a common cart or a plow.

       *       *       *       *       *

Evening.—A new moon visible in the east [_sic_]. How unexpectedly
it always appears! You easily lose it in the sky. The whip-poor-will
sings, but not so commonly as in spring. The bats are active.

The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet
comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.

I omit the unusual—the hurricanes and earthquakes—and describe the
common. This has the greatest charm and is the true theme of poetry.
You may have the extraordinary for your province, if you will let me
have the ordinary. Give me the obscure life, the cottage of the poor
and humble, the workdays of the world, the barren fields, the smallest
share of all things but poetic perception. Give me but the eyes to see
the things which you possess.[315]


_Aug. 29._ Though it is early, my neighbor’s hens have strayed far into
the fog toward the river. I find a wasp in my window, which already
appears to be taking refuge from winter and unspeakable fate.

Those who first built it, coming from old France, with the memory
and tradition of feudal days and customs weighing on them, were
unquestionably behind their age, and those who now inhabit it and
repair it are behind their ancestors. It is as if the inhabitants of
Boston should go down to Fort Independence, or the inhabitants of New
York should go over to Castle William, to live. I rubbed my eyes to be
sure that I was in the Nineteenth Century. That would be a good place
to read Froissart’s Chronicles, I thought. It is a specimen of the Old
World in the New. It is such a reminiscence of the Middle Ages as one
of Scott’s novels. Those old chevaliers thought they could transplant
the feudal system to America. It has been set out, but it has not
thriven.[316]

Might I not walk a little further, till I hear new crickets, till their
creak has acquired some novelty, as if they were a new species whose
habitat I had reached?[317]

The air is filled with mist, yet a transparent mist, a principle in it
you might call _flavor_, which ripens fruits. This haziness seems to
confine and concentrate the sunlight, as if you lived in a halo. It is
August.

A flock of forty-four young turkeys with their old [_sic_], half a mile
from a house on Conantum by the river, the old faintly gobbling, the
half-grown young peeping. Turkey-men!

_Gerardia glauca_ (_quercifolia_, says one), tall gerardia, one flower
only left; also _Corydalis glauca_.


_Aug. 30. Saturday._ I perceive in the Norway cinquefoil (_Potentilla
Norvegica_), now nearly out of blossom, that the alternate five leaves
of the calyx are closing over the seeds to protect them. This evidence
of forethought, this simple _reflection_ in a double sense of the
term, in this flower, is affecting to me, as if it said to me: “Even
I am doing my appointed work in this world faithfully. Not even do I,
however obscurely I may grow among the other loftier and more famous
plants, shirk my work, humble weed as I am. Not even when I have
blossomed, and have lost my painted petals and am preparing to die down
to my root, do I forget to fall with my arms around my babe, faithful
to the last, that the infant may be found preserved in the arms of
the frozen mother.” That thus all the Norway cinquefoils in the world
had curled back their calyx leaves, their warm cloaks, when now their
flowering season was past, over their progeny, from the time they were
created! There is one door closed, of the closing year. Nature ordered
this bending back of the calyx leaves, and every year since this plant
was created her order has been faithfully obeyed, and this plant acts
not an obscure, but essential, part in the revolution of the seasons.
I am not ashamed to be contemporary with the Norway cinquefoil. May
I perform my part as well![318] There is so much done toward closing
up the year’s accounts. It is as good as if I saw the great globe go
round. It is as if I saw the Janus doors of the year closing. The fall
of each humblest flower marks the annual period of some phase of human
life, experience. I can be said to note the flower’s fall only when I
see in it the symbol of my own change. When I experience this, then the
flower appears to me.

_Drosera rotundifolia_ in Moore’s new field ditch. The _Viola pedata_
and the houstonia now. What is the peculiarity of these flowers that
_they_ blossom again? Is it merely because they blossomed so early in
the spring, and now are ready for a new spring? They impress me as so
much more native or naturalized here.

We love to see Nature fruitful in whatever kind. It assures us of
her vigor and that she may equally bring forth the fruits which we
prize. I love to see the acorns plenty, even on the shrub oaks, aye,
and the nightshade berries. I love to see the potato balls numerous
and large, as I go through a low field, poisonous though they look,
the plant thus, as it were, bearing fruit at both ends, saying ever
and anon, “Not only these tubers I offer you for the present, but if
you will have new varieties,—if these do not satisfy you,—plant these
seeds.”[319] What abundance! what luxuriance! what bounty! The potato
balls, which are worthless to the farmer, combine to make the general
impression of the year’s fruitfulness. It is as cheering to me as the
rapid increase of the population of New York.


_Aug. 31._ _Proserpinaca palustris_, spear-leaved proserpinaca,
mermaid-weed. (This in Hubbard’s Grove on my way to Conantum.)
A hornets’ (?) nest in a rather tall huckleberry bush, the stems
projecting through it, the leaves spreading over it. How these fellows
avail themselves of the vegetables! They kept arriving, the great
fellows, but I never saw whence they came, but only heard the buzz
just at the entrance. (With whitish abdomens.) At length, after I have
stood before the nest five minutes, during which time they had taken no
notice of me, two seemed to be consulting at the entrance, and then one
made a threatening dash at me and returned to the nest. I took the hint
and retired. They spoke as plainly as man could have done.[320]

I see that the farmers have begun to top their corn.

Examined my old friend the green locust (?), shrilling on an alder leaf.

What relation does the fall dandelion bear to the spring dandelion?
There is a rank scent of tansy now on some roads, disagreeable to many
people from being associated in their minds with funerals, where it is
sometimes put into the coffin and about the corpse. I have not observed
much St. John’s-wort yet. _Galium triflorum_, three-flowered cleavers,
in Conant’s Spring Swamp; also fever-bush there, now budded for next
year. Tobacco-pipe (_Monotropa uniflora_) in Spring Swamp Path. I came
out of the thick, dark, swampy wood as from night into day. Having
forgotten the daylight, I was surprised to see how bright it was. I
had light enough, methought, and here was an afternoon sun illumining
all the landscape. It was a surprise to me to see how much brighter an
ordinary afternoon is than the light which penetrates a thick wood.

One of these drooping clusters of potato balls would be as good a
symbol, emblem, of the year’s fertility as anything,—better surely than
a bunch of grapes. Fruit of the strong soil, containing potash (?). The
vintage is come; the olive is ripe.

     “I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude;
     And with forc’d fingers rude,
     Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year;”

Why not for my coat-of-arms, for device, a drooping cluster of potato
balls,—in a _potato_ field?[321]

What right has a New England poet to sing of wine, who never saw a
vineyard, who obtains his liquor from the grocer, who would not dare,
if he could, tell him what it is composed of. A Yankee singing in
praise of wine! It is not sour grapes in this case, it is sweet grapes;
the more inaccessible they are the sweeter they are. It seemed to me
that the year had nothing so much to brag of as these potato balls.
Do they not concern New-Englanders a thousand times more than all her
grapes? In Moore’s new field they grow, cultivated with the bog hoe,
manured with ashes and sphagnum. How they take to the virgin soil![322]
Shannon tells me that he took a piece of bog land of Augustus Hayden,
cleared, turned up the stumps and roots and burned it over, making a
coat of ashes six inches deep, then planted potatoes. He never put a
hoe to it till he went to dig them; then between 8 o’clock A. M. and 5
P. M. he and another man dug and housed seventy-five bushels apiece!!

Cohush now in fruit, ivory-white berries tipped _now_ with black on
stout red pedicels,—_Actæa alba_. _Collinsonia Canadensis_, horseweed.
I had discovered this singular flower there new to me, and, having a
botany by me, looked it out. What a surprise and disappointment, what
an insult and impertinence to my curiosity and expectation, to have
given me the name “horseweed!”

Cohush Swamp is about twenty rods by three or four. Among rarer
plants it contains the basswood, the black (as well as white) ash,
the fever-bush, the cohush, the collinsonia, not to mention sassafras,
poison sumach, ivy, agrimony, _Arum triphyllum_, (sweet viburnum (?)
in hedges near by), ground-nut, touch-me-not (as high as your head),
and _Eupatorium purpureum_ (eight feet, eight inches high, with a large
convex corymb (hemispherical) of many stories, fourteen inches wide;
width of plant from tip of leaf to tip of leaf two feet, diameter of
stalk one inch at ground, leaves seven in a whorl). Rare plants seem to
love certain localities. As if the original Conant had been a botanist
and endeavored to form an arboretum. A natural arboretum?

The handsome sweet viburnum berries, now red on one cheek.

It was the filiform crowfoot (_Ranunculus filiformis_) that I saw by
the riverside the other day and to-day. The season advances apace.
The flowers of the nettle-leaved vervain are now near the ends of the
spike, like the blue. _Utricularia inflata_, whorled bladderwort,
floating on the water at same place. _Gentiana Saponaria_ budded.
_Gerardia flava_ at Conant’s Grove.

Half an hour before sunset I was at Tupelo Cliff, when, looking up from
my botanizing (I had been examining the _Ranunculus filiformis_, the
_Sium latifolium_ (? ?), and the obtuse galium on the muddy shore), I
saw the seal of evening on the river. There was a quiet beauty in the
landscape at that hour which my senses were prepared to appreciate. The
sun going down on the west side, that hand being already in shadow for
the most part, but his rays lighting up the water and the willows and
pads even more than before. His rays then fell at right angles on their
stems. I sitting on the old brown geologic rocks, their feet submerged
and covered with weedy moss (utricularia roots?). Sometimes their tops
are submerged. The cardinal-flowers standing by me. The trivialness
of the day is past. The greater stillness, the _serenity_ of the air,
its coolness and transparency, the mistiness being condensed, are
favorable to thought. (The pensive eve.) The coolness of evening comes
to condense the haze of noon and make the air transparent and the
outline of objects firm and distinct, and chaste (chaste eve); even as
I am made more vigorous by my bath, am more _continent_ of thought.
After bathing, even at noonday, a man realizes a morning or evening
life.[323] The evening air is such a bath for both mind and body. When
I have walked all day in vain under the torrid sun, and the world has
been all trivial,—as well field and wood as highway,—then at eve the
sun goes down westward, and the wind goes down with it, and the dews
begin to purify the air and make it transparent, and the lakes and
rivers acquire a glassy stillness, reflecting the skies, the reflex of
the day. I too am at the top of my condition for perceiving beauty.
Thus, long after feeding, the diviner faculties begin to be fed, to
feel their oats, their nutriment, and are not oppressed by the belly’s
load. It is abstinence from loading the belly anew until the brain
and divine faculties have felt their vigor. Not till some hours does
my food invigorate my brain,—ascendeth into the brain. We practice at
this hour an involuntary abstinence. We are comparatively chaste and
temperate as Eve herself; the nutriment is just reaching the brain.
Every sound is music now. The grating of some distant boat which a man
is launching on the rocky bottom,—though here is no man nor inhabited
house, nor even cultivated field, in sight,—this is heard with such
distinctness that I listen with pleasure as if it was [_sic_] music.
The attractive point is that line where the water meets the land, not
distinct, but known to exist. The willows are not the less interesting
because of their nakedness below. How rich, like what we love to read
of South American primitive forests, is the scenery of this river!
What luxuriance of weeds, what depth of mud along its sides! These old
antehistoric, geologic, antediluvian rocks, which only primitive wading
birds, still lingering among us, are worthy to tread. The season which
we seem to _live_ in anticipation of is arrived. The water, indeed,
reflects heaven because my mind does; such is its own serenity, its
transparency and stillness.

With what sober joy I stand to let the water drip from me and feel my
fresh vigor, who have been bathing in the same tub which the muskrat
uses! Such a medicated bath as only nature furnishes. A fish leaps, and
the dimple he makes is observed now. How ample and generous was nature!
My inheritance is not narrow.[324] Here is no other this evening. Those
resorts which I most love and frequent, numerous and vast as they are,
are as it were given up to me, as much as if I were an autocrat or
owner of the world, and by my edicts excluded men from my territories.
Perchance there is some advantage here not enjoyed in older countries.
There are said to be two thousand inhabitants in Concord, and yet I
find such ample space and verge, even miles of walking every day in
which I do not meet nor see a human being, and often not very recent
traces of them. So much of man as there is in your mind, there will be
in your eye. Methinks that for a great part of the time, as much as it
is possible, I walk as one possessing the advantages of human culture,
fresh from society of men, but turned loose into the woods, the only
man in nature, walking and meditating to a great extent as if man and
his customs and institutions were not. The catbird, or the jay, is sure
of the whole of your ear now. Each noise is like a stain on pure glass.
The rivers now, these great blue subterranean heavens, reflecting the
supernal skies and red-tinted clouds.

A fly (or gnat?) will often buzz round you and persecute you like an
imp. How much of imp-like, pestering character they express! (I hear
a boy driving home his cows.) What unanimity between the water and the
sky!—one only a little denser element than the other. The grossest part
of heaven. Think of a mirror on so large a scale! Standing on distant
hills, you see the heavens reflected, the evening sky, in some low lake
or river in the valley, as perfectly as in any mirror they could be.
Does it not prove how intimate heaven is with earth?

We commonly sacrifice to supper this serene and sacred hour. Our
customs turn the hour of sunset to a trivial time, as at the meeting of
two roads, one coming from the noon, the other leading to the night.
It might be [well] if our repasts were taken out-of-doors, in view of
the sunset and the rising stars; if there were two persons whose pulses
beat together, if men cared for the κόσμος, or _beauty_ of the world;
if men were _social_ in a high and rare sense; if they associated on
high levels; if we took in with our tea a draught of the transparent,
dew-freighted evening air; if, with our bread and butter, we took a
slice of the red western sky; if the smoking, steaming urn were the
vapor on a thousand lakes and rivers and meads.

The air of the valleys at this hour is the distilled essence of all
those fragrances which during the day have been filling and have been
dispersed in the atmosphere. The fine fragrances, perchance, which have
floated in the upper atmospheres have settled to these low vales!

I talked of buying Conantum once, but for want of money we did not come
to terms. But I have farmed it in my own fashion every year since.

I have no objection to giving the names of some naturalists, men of
flowers, to plants, if by their lives they have identified themselves
with them. There may be a few Kalmias. But it must be done very
sparingly, or, rather, discriminatingly, and no man’s name be used who
has not been such a lover of flowers that the flowers themselves may be
supposed thus to reciprocate his love.




VIII

SEPTEMBER, 1851

(ÆT. 34)


_Sept. 1._ _Mikania scandens_, with its purplish white flowers, now
covering the button-bushes and willows by the side of the stream.
_Bidens chrysanthemoides_, large-flowered bidens, edge of river.
Various-colored polygonums standing high among the bushes and weeds by
riverside,—white and reddish and red.

Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating
on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and
tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly
to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has
company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.

The fruit of the trilliums is very handsome. I found some a month ago,
a singular _red_, angular-cased pulp, drooping, with the old anthers
surrounding it three quarters of an inch in diameter; and now there
is another kind, a dense crowded cluster of many ovoid berries turning
from green to scarlet or bright brick-color. Then there is the mottled
fruit of the clustered Solomon’s-seal, and also the greenish (with blue
meat) fruit of the _Convallaria multiflora_ dangling from the axils of
the leaves.


_Sept. 2._ The dense fog came into my chamber early this morning,
freighted with light, and woke me. It was, no doubt, lighter at that
hour than if there had been no fog.

Not till after several months does an infant find its hands, and it
may be seen looking at them with astonishment, holding them up to the
light; and so also it finds its toes. How many faculties there are
which we have never found![325] Some men, methinks, have found only
their hands and feet. At least I have seen some who appeared never to
have found their heads, but used them only instinctively, as the negro
who butts with his,[326] or the water-carrier who makes a pack-horse of
his. They have but partially found their heads.

We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto. The body,
the senses, must conspire with the mind. Expression is the act of the
whole man, that our speech may be vascular. The intellect is powerless
to express thought without the aid of the heart and liver and of every
member. Often I feel that my head stands out too dry, when it should
be immersed. A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he
is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing. It is always
essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart.
The maturity of the mind, however, may perchance consist with a certain
dryness.

There are flowers of thought, and there are leaves of thought; most of
our thoughts are merely leaves, to which the thread of thought is the
stem.

What affinity is it brings the goldfinch to the sunflower—both
yellow—to pick its seeds? Whatever things I perceive with my entire
man, those let me record, and it will be poetry. The sounds which
I hear with the consent and coincidence of all my senses, these are
significant and musical; at least, they only are heard.[327]

In a day or two the first message will be conveyed or transmitted over
the magnetic telegraph through this town, as a thought traverses space,
and no citizen of the town shall be aware of it. The atmosphere is full
of telegraphs equally unobserved. We are not confined to Morse’s or
House’s or Bain’s line.

Raise some sunflowers to attract the goldfinches, to feed them as well
as your hens. What a broad and loaded, bounteously filled platter of
food is presented this _bon-vivant_!

Here is one of those thick fogs which last well into the day. While the
farmer is concerned about the crops which his fields bear, I will be
concerned about the fertility of my human farm. I will watch the winds
and the rains as they affect the crop of thought,—the crop of crops,
ripe thoughts, which glow and rustle and fill the air with fragrance
for centuries. Is it a drought? How long since we had a rain? What is
the state of the springs? Are the low springs high?

I now begin to pluck wild apples.

The difference is not great between some fruits in which the worm is
always present and those gall fruits which were produced by the insect.

Old Cato says well, “_Patremfamilias vendacem, non emacem, esse
oportet_.” These Latin terminations express better than any English
that I know the greediness, as it were, and tenacity of purpose with
which the husbandman and householder is required to be a seller and not
a buyer,—with mastiff-like tenacity,—these _lipped_ words, which, like
the lips of moose and browsing creatures, gather in the herbage and
twigs with a certain greed. This termination _cious_ adds force to a
word, like the lips of browsing creatures, which greedily collect what
the jaw holds; as in the word “tenacious” the first half represents
the kind of jaw which holds, the last the lips which collect. It can
only be pronounced by a certain opening and protruding of the lips;
so “avaricious”. These words express the sense of their simple roots
with the addition, as it were, of a certain lip greediness. Hence
“capacious” and “capacity,” “emacity.” When these expressive words are
used, the hearer gets something to chew upon. To be a seller with the
tenacity and firmness and steadiness of the jaws which hold and the
greediness of the lips which collect. The audacious man not only dares,
but he greedily collects more danger to dare. The avaricious man not
only desires and satisfies his desire, but he collects ever new browse
in anticipation of his ever-springing desires. What is _luscious_ is
especially enjoyed by the lips. The mastiff-mouthed are tenacious. To
be a seller with mastiff-mouthed tenacity of purpose, with moose-lipped
greediness,—ability to browse! To be edacious and voracious is to be
not nibbling and swallowing merely, but eating and swallowing while the
lips are greedily collecting more food.

There is a reptile in the throat of the greedy man always thirsting
and famishing. It is not his own natural hunger and thirst which he
satisfies.

The more we know about the ancients, the more we find that they were
like the moderns. When I read Marcus Cato De Re Rustica, a small
treatise or Farmer’s Manual of those days, fresh from the field
of Roman life, all reeking with and redolent of the life of those
days, containing more indirect history than any of the histories of
Rome of direct,—all of that time but that time,—_here_ is a simple,
direct, pertinent word addressed to the Romans. And where are _the
Romans_? Rome and the Romans are commonly a piece of rhetoric. As
if New England had disappeared poetically and there were left Buel’s
“Farmer’s Companion,” or the letters of Solon Robinson, or a volume
of extracts from the _New England Farmer_. Though the Romans are no
more but a fable and an ornament of rhetoric, we have here their _New
England Farmer_, the very manual those Roman farmers read, speaking as
if they were to hear it, its voice not silenced, as if Rome were still
the mistress of the world,—as fresh as a dripping dish-cloth from a
Roman kitchen.[328] As when you overhaul the correspondence of a man
who died fifty years ago, with like surprise and feelings you overhaul
the manuscripts of the Roman nation. There exist certain old papers,
manuscripts, either the originals or faithful and trustworthy old
copies of the originals, which were left by the Roman people. They have
gone their way, but these old papers of all sorts remain. Among them
there are some farm journals, or farm books; just such a collection of
diary and memorandum—as when the cow calved, and the dimensions, with
a plan, of the barn, and how much paid to Joe Farrar for work done on
the farm, etc., etc.—as you might find in an old farmer’s pocket-book
to-day.

Indeed the farmer’s was pretty much the same routine then as now.
Cato says: “Sterquilinium magnum stude ut habeas. Stercus sedulo
conserva, cum exportabis purgato et comminuito. Per autumnum evehito.”
(Study to have a great dungheap. Carefully preserve your dung, when
you carry it out, make clean work of it and break it up fine. Carry
it out during the autumn.) Just such directions as you find in the
“Farmer’s Almanack” to-day. It reminds me of what I see going on in our
fields every autumn. As if the farmers of Concord were obeying Cato’s
directions. And Cato but repeated the maxims of a remote antiquity.
Nothing can be more homely and suggestive of the every-day life of the
Roman agriculturalists, thus supplying the very deficiencies in what is
commonly called Roman history, _i. e._ revealing to us the actual life
of the Romans, the how they got their living and what they did from day
to day.[329]

They planted _rapa_, _raphanos_, _milium_, and _panicum_ in low foggy
land, _ager nebulosus_.

I see the farmer now—_i. e._ I shall in autumn—on every side carting
out his manure and sedulously making his compost-heap, or scattering
it over his grass ground and breaking it up with a mallet; and it
reminds me of Cato’s advice. He died one hundred and fifty years before
Christ.[330] Before Christianity was heard of, this was done. A Roman
family appears to have had a great supply of tubs and kettles.

A fire in the sitting-room to-day. Walk in the afternoon by Walden road
and railroad to Minn’s place, and round it to railroad and home. The
first coolness is welcome, so serious and fertile of thought. My skin
contracts, and I become more continent. Carried umbrellas, it mizzling.
As in the night, now in the rain, I smell the fragrance of the woods.
The prunella leaves have turned a delicate claret or lake color by the
roadside. I am interested in these revolutions as much as in those of
kingdoms. Is there not tragedy enough in the autumn? Walden seems to
be going down at last. The pines are dead and leaning, red and half
upset, about its shore. Thus, by its rising once in twenty-five years,
perchance, it keeps an open shore, as if the ice had heaved them over.
Found the succory at Minn’s Bridge on railroad and beyond. Query: May
not this and the tree-primrose and other plants be distributed from
Boston on the rays of the railroads, the seeds mixing with the grains
and all kinds of dirt and being blown from the passing freight-cars?
The feathery-tailed fruit of the fertile flowers of the clematis
conspicuous now.

The shorn meadows looked of a living green as we came home at eve,
even greener than in spring. The _faenum cordum_, the aftermath,
_sicilimenta de prato_, the second mowings of the meadow, this reminds
me of, in Cato.[331]


_Sept. 3._ Why was there never a poem on the cricket? Its creak
seems to me to be one of the most prominent and obvious facts in the
world, and the least heeded. In the report of a man’s contemplations
I look to see somewhat answering to this sound.[332] When I sat on
Lee’s Cliff the other day (August 29th), I saw a man working with a
horse in a field by the river, carting dirt; and the horse and his
relation to him struck me as very remarkable. There was the horse, a
mere animated machine,—though his tail was brushing off the flies,—his
whole existence subordinated to the man’s, with no tradition, perhaps
no instinct, in him of independence and freedom, of a time when he was
wild and free,—completely humanized. No compact made with him that he
should have the Saturday afternoons, or the Sundays, or any holidays.
His independence never recognized, it being now quite forgotten both
by men and by horses that the horse was ever free. For I am not aware
that there are any wild horses known surely not to be descended from
tame ones. Assisting that man to pull down that bank and spread it over
the meadow; only keeping off the flies with his tail, and stamping,
and catching a mouthful of grass or leaves from time to time, on his
own account,—all the rest for man. It seemed hardly worth while that
he should be _animated_ for this. It was plain that the man was not
educating the horse; not trying to develop his nature, but merely
getting work out of him. That mass of animated matter seemed more
completely the servant of man than any inanimate. For slaves have their
holidays; a heaven is conceded to them, but to the horse none. Now
and forever he is man’s slave. The more I considered, the more the man
seemed akin to the horse; only his was the stronger will of the two.
For a little further on I saw an Irishman shovelling, who evidently was
as much tamed as the horse. He had stipulated that to a certain extent
his independence be recognized, and yet really he was but little more
independent. I had always instinctively regarded the horse as a free
people somewhere, living wild. Whatever has not come under the sway of
man is wild. In this sense original and independent men are wild,—not
tamed and broken by society. Now for my part I have such a respect for
the horse’s nature as would tempt me to let him alone; not to interfere
with him,—his walks, his diet, his loves. But by mankind he is treated
simply as if he were an engine which must have rest and is sensible
of pain. Suppose that every squirrel were made to turn a coffee-mill!
Suppose that the gazelles were made to draw milk-carts!

There he was with his tail cut off, because it was in the way, or to
suit the taste of his owner; his mane trimmed, and his feet shod with
iron that he might wear longer. What is a horse but an animal that has
lost its liberty? What is it but a system of slavery? and do you not
thus by _insensible_ and unimportant degrees come to human slavery?
Has lost its liberty!—and has man got any more liberty himself for
having robbed the horse, or has he lost just as much of his own, and
become more like the horse he has robbed? Is not the other end of the
bridle in this case, too, coiled round his own neck? Hence stable-boys,
jockeys, all that class that is daily transported by fast horses. There
he stood with his oblong square figure (his tail being cut off) seen
against the water, brushing off the flies with his tail and stamping,
braced back while the man was filling the cart.[333]

It is a very remarkable and significant fact that, though no man is
quite well or healthy, yet every one believes practically that health
is the rule and disease the exception, and each invalid is wont to
think himself in a minority, and to postpone somewhat of endeavor to
another state of existence. But it may be some encouragement to men to
know that in this respect they stand on the same platform, that disease
is, in fact, the _rule_ of our terrestrial life and the prophecy of a
_celestial_ life. Where is the coward who despairs because he is sick?
Every one may live either the life of Achilles or of Nestor. Seen in
this light, our life with all its diseases will look healthy, and in
one sense the more healthy as it is the more diseased. Disease is not
the accident of the individual, nor even of the generation, but of
life itself. In some form, and to some degree or other, it is one of
the permanent conditions of life. It is, nevertheless, a cheering fact
that men affirm health unanimously, and esteem themselves miserable
failures. Here was no blunder. They gave us life on exactly these
conditions, and methinks we shall live it with more heart when we
perceive clearly that these are the terms on which we have it. Life
is a warfare, a struggle, and the diseases of the body answer to the
troubles and defeats of the spirit. Man begins by quarrelling with the
animal in him, and the result is immediate disease. In proportion as
the spirit is the more ambitious and persevering, the more obstacles
it will meet with. It is as a seer that man asserts his disease to be
exceptional.[334]

       *       *       *       *       *

2 P. M.—To Hubbard’s Swimming-Place and Grove in rain.

As I went under the new telegraph-wire, I heard it vibrating like a
harp high overhead. It was as the sound of a far-off glorious life, a
supernal life, which came down to us, and vibrated the lattice-work of
this life of ours.[335]

The melons and the apples seem at once to feed my brain.

Here comes a laborer from his dinner to resume his work at clearing
out a ditch notwithstanding the rain, remembering as Cato says, _per
ferias potuisse fossas veteres tergeri_, that in the holidays old
ditches might have been cleared out. One would think that I were the
paterfamilias come to see if the steward of my farm has done his duty.

The ivy leaves are turning red. Fall dandelions stand thick in the
meadows.

How much the Roman must have been indebted to his agriculture, dealing
with the earth, its clods and stubble, its dust and mire. Their farmer
consuls were their glory, and they well knew the farm to be the nursery
of soldiers. Read Cato to see what kind of legs the Romans stood on.

The leaves of the hardhack are somewhat appressed, clothing the stem
and showing their downy under sides like white, waving wands. Is it
peculiar to the season, or the rain,—or the plant?

Walk often in drizzly weather, for then the small weeds (especially
if they stand on bare ground), covered with rain-drops like beads,
appear more beautiful than ever,—the hypericums, for instance. They
are equally beautiful when covered with dew, fresh and adorned, almost
spirited away, in a robe of dewdrops.[336]

Some farmers have begun to thresh and winnow their oats.

Identified spotted spurge (_Euphorbia maculata_), apparently out of
blossom. Shepherd’s-purse and chickweed.

As for walking, the inhabitants of large English towns are confined
almost exclusively to their parks and to the highways. The few
footpaths in their vicinities “are gradually vanishing,” says
Wilkinson, “under the encroachments of the proprietors.” He proposes
that the people’s right to them be asserted and defended and that
they be kept in a passable state at the public expense. “This,”
says he, “would be easily done by means of asphalt laid upon a good
foundation”!!! So much for walking, and the prospects of walking, in
the neighborhood of English large towns.

Think of a man—he may be a genius of some kind—being confined to
a highway and a park for his world to range in! I should die from
mere nervousness at the thought of such confinement. I should
hesitate before I were born, if those terms could be made known to me
beforehand. Fenced in forever by those green barriers of fields, where
gentlemen are seated! Can they be said to be inhabitants of this globe?
Will they be content to inhabit heaven thus partially?


_Sept. 4._ 8 A. M.—A clear and pleasant day after the rain. Start
for Boon’s Pond in Stow with C. Every sight and sound was the more
interesting for the clear atmosphere. When you are starting away,
leaving your more familiar fields, for a little adventure like a
walk, you look at every object with a traveller’s, or at least with
historical, eyes; you pause on the first bridge, where an ordinary walk
hardly commences, and begin to observe and moralize like a traveller.
It is worth the while to see your native village thus sometimes, as if
you were a traveller passing through it, commenting on your neighbors
as strangers.[337] We stood thus on Wood’s Bridge, the first bridge,
in the capacity of pilgrims and strangers to its familiarity, giving
it one more chance with us, though our townsmen who passed may not have
perceived it.

There was a pretty good-sized pickerel poised over the sandy bottom
close to the shore and motionless as a shadow. It is wonderful how they
resist the slight current of our river and remain thus stationary for
hours. He, no doubt, saw us plainly on the bridge,—in the sunny water,
his whole form distinct and his shadow,—motionless as the steel trap
which does not spring till the fox’s foot has touched it.

—— ——’s dog sprang up, ran out, and growled at us, and in his eye I
seemed to see the eye of his master. I have no doubt but that, as is
the master, such in course of time tend to become his herds and flocks
as well as dogs. One man’s oxen will be clever and solid, another’s
mischievous, another’s mangy,—in each case like their respective
owners. No doubt man impresses his own character on the beasts which
he tames and employs; they are not only humanized, but they acquire
his particular human nature.[338] How much oxen are like farmers
generally, and cows like farmers’ wives! and young steers and heifers
like farmers’ boys and girls! The farmer acts on the ox, and the ox
reacts on the farmer. They do not meet half-way, it is true, but they
do meet at a distance from the centre of each proportionate to each
one’s intellectual power.[339] The farmer is ox-like in his thought, in
his walk, in his strength, in his trustworthiness, in his taste.[340]

Hosmer’s man was cutting his millet, and his buckwheat already lay in
_red_ piles in the field.

The first picture we noticed was where the road turned among the pitch
pines and showed the Hadley house, with the high wooded hill behind
with dew and sun on it, the gracefully winding road path, and a more
distant horizon on the right of the house. Just beyond, on the left,
it was pleasant walking where the road was shaded by a high hill, as
it can be only in the morning. Even in the morning that additional
coolness and early-dawn-like feeling of a more sacred and earlier
season are agreeable.

The lane in front of Tarbell’s house, which is but little worn and
appears to lead nowhere, though it has so wide and all-engulfing an
opening, suggested that such things might be contrived for effect in
laying out grounds. (Only those things are sure to have the greatest
and best effect, which like this were not contrived for the sake of
effect.) An open path which would suggest walking and adventuring on
it, the going to some place strange and far away. It would make you
think of or imagine distant places and spaces greater than the estate.

It was pleasant, looking back just beyond, to see a heavy shadow (made
by some high birches) reaching quite across the road. Light and shadow
are sufficient contrast and furnish sufficient excitement when we are
well.

Now we were passing the vale of Brown and Tarbell, a sunshiny mead
pastured by cattle and sparkling with dew, the sound of crows and
swallows heard in the air, and leafy-columned elms seen here and there
shining with dew. The morning freshness and unworldliness of that
domain![341] The vale of Tempe and of Arcady is not farther off than
are the conscious lives of men from their opportunities. Our life is
as far from corresponding to its scenery as we are distant from Tempe
and Arcadia; that is to say, they are far away because we are far from
living natural lives. How absurd it would be to insist on the vale of
Tempe in particular when we have such vales as we have!

In the Marlborough road, in the woods, I saw a purple streak like
a stain on the red pine leaves and sand under my feet, which I was
surprised to find was made by a dense mass of purple fleas, somewhat
like snow-fleas,—a faint purple stain as if some purple dye had been
spilt. What is that slender pink flower that I find in the Marlborough
road,—smaller than a snapdragon? The slender stems of grass which hang
over the ruts and horses’ path in this little-frequented road are so
laden with dew that I am compelled to hold a bush before me to shake it
off. The jays scream on the right and left and are seen flying further
off as we go by.

We drink in the meadow at Second Division Brook, then sit awhile to
watch its yellowish pebbles and the cress (?) in it and other weeds.
The ripples cover its surface like a network and are faithfully
reflected on the bottom. In some places, the sun reflected from ripples
on a flat stone looks like a golden comb. The whole brook seems as
busy as a loom: it is a woof and warp of ripples; fairy fingers are
throwing the shuttle at every step, and the long, waving brook is the
fine product. The water is wonderfully clear.

To have a hut here, and a footpath to the brook! For roads, I think
that a poet cannot tolerate more than a footpath through the fields;
that is wide enough, and for purposes of winged poesy suffices. It
is not for the muse to speak of cart-paths. I would fain travel by a
footpath round the world.[342] I do not ask the railroads of commerce,
not even the cart-paths of the farmer. Pray, what other path would you
have than a footpath? What else should wear a path? This is the track
of man alone. What more suggestive to the pensive walker?[343] One
walks in a wheel-track with less emotion; he is at a greater distance
from man; but this footpath was, perchance, worn by the bare feet of
human beings, and he cannot but think with interest of them.

The grapes, though their leaves are withering and falling, are yet too
sour to eat.

In the summer we lay up a stock of experiences for the winter, as the
squirrel of nuts,—something for conversation in winter evenings. I love
to think then of the more distant walks I took in summer.[344]

At the powder-mills the carbonic acid gas in the road from the building
where they were making charcoal made us cough for twenty or thirty
rods.

Saw some gray squirrels whirling their cylinder by the roadside. How
fitted that cylinder to this animal! “A squirrel is easily taught to
turn his cylinder” might be a saying frequently applicable. And as
they turned, one leaped over or dodged under another most gracefully
and unexpectedly, with interweaving motions. It was the circus and
menagerie combined. So human they were, exhibiting themselves.

In the Marlborough road, I forgot to say, we brushed the _Polygonum
articulatum_ with its spikes of reddish-white flowers, a slender and
tender plant which loves the middle of dry and sandy not-much-travelled
roads. To find that the very atoms bloom, that there are flowers we
rudely brush against which only the microscope reveals!

It is wise to write on many subjects, to try many themes, that so
you may find the right and inspiring one. Be greedy of occasions
to express your thought. Improve the opportunity to draw analogies.
There are innumerable avenues to a perception of the truth. Improve
the suggestion of each object however humble, however slight and
transient the provocation. What else is there to be improved? Who knows
what opportunities he may neglect? It is not in vain that the mind
turns aside this way or that: follow its leading; apply it whither it
inclines to go. Probe the universe in a myriad points. Be avaricious
of these impulses. You must try a thousand themes before you find the
right one, as nature makes a thousand acorns to get one oak. He is a
wise man and experienced who has taken many views; to whom stones and
plants and animals and a myriad objects have each suggested something,
contributed something.[345]

And now, methinks, this wider wood-path[346] is not bad, for it admits
of society more conveniently. Two can walk side by side in it in the
ruts, aye, and one more in the horse-track.[347] The Indian walked in
single file, more solitary,—not side by side, chatting as he went. The
woodman’s cart and sled make just the path two walkers want through the
wood.

Beyond the powder-mills we watched some fat oxen, elephantine,
behemoths,—one Rufus-Hosmer-eyed, with the long lash and projecting
eye-ball.

Now past the paper-mills, by the westernmost road east of the river,
the first new ground we’ve reached.

Not only the prunella turns _lake_, but the _Hypericum Virginicum_ in
the hollows by the roadside,—a handsome blush. A part of the autumnal
tints, ripe leaves. Leaves acquire red blood. Red colors touch our
blood, and excite us as well as cows and geese.

And now we leave the road and go through the woods and swamps toward
Boon’s Pond, crossing two or three roads and by Potter’s house in Stow;
still on east of river. The fruit of the _Pyrola rotundifolia_ in the
damp woods. Larch trees in Stow about the houses. Beyond Potter’s we
struck into the extensive wooded plain where the ponds are found in
Stow, Sudbury, and Marlborough. Part of it called Boon’s Plain.[348]
Boon said to have lived on or under Bailey’s Hill at west of pond.
Killed by Indians between Boon[’s Pond] and White’s Pond as he was
driving his ox-cart. The oxen ran off to Marlborough garrison-house.
His remains have been searched for. A sandy plain, a large level tract.
The pond shores handsome enough, but water shallow and muddy looking.
Well-wooded shores. The maples begin to show red about it. Much fished.

Saw a load of sunflowers in a farmers [_sic_]. Such is the destiny of
this large, coarse flower; the farmers gather it like pumpkins.

Returned by railroad down the Assabet. A potato-field yellow with
wild radish. But no good place to bathe for three miles, Knight’s
new dam has so raised the river. A permanent freshet, as it were, the
fluviatile trees standing dead for fish hawk perches, and the water
stagnant for weeds to grow in. You have only to dam up a running stream
to give it the aspect of a dead stream, and to some degree restore its
primitive wild appearance. Tracts made inaccessible to man and at the
same time more fertile. Some speculator comes and dams up the stream
below, and lo! the water stands over all meadows, making impassable
morasses and dead trees for fish hawks,—a wild, stagnant, fenny
country, the last gasp of wildness before it yields to the civilization
of the factory,—to cheer the eyes of the factory people and educate
them. It makes a little wilderness above the factories.

The woodbine now begins to hang red about the maples and other trees.

As I looked back up the stream from near the bridge (I suppose on the
road from Potter’s house to Stow), I on the railroad, I saw the ripples
sparkling in the sun, reminding me of the sparkling icy fleets which
I saw last winter; and I saw how one corresponded to the other, ice
waves to water ones; the erect ice-flakes were the waves stereotyped.
It was the same sight, the reflection of the sun sparkling from a
myriad slanting surfaces at a distance, a rippled water surface or a
crystallized frozen one.

  [Illustration]

Here crossed the river and climbed the high hills on the west side.
The walnut trees conformed in their branches to the slope of the hill,
being just as high from the ground on the upper side as on the lower.

On all sides now I see and smell the withering leaves of brush that has
been cut to clear the land. I see some blackened tracts which have been
burnt over. It is remarkable, for it is rare to see the surface of the
earth black. And in the horizon I can see the smokes of several fires.
The farmers improve this season, which is the driest, their haying
being done and their harvest not begun, to do these jobs,—burn brush,
build walls, dig ditches, cut turf. This is what I find them doing all
over the country now; also topping corn and digging potatoes.

Saw quite a flock, for the first time, of goldfinches.

On the high, round hills in the east and southeast of Stow,—perchance
they are called the Assabet Hills,—rising directly from the river. They
are the highest I know rising thus. The rounded hills of Stow. A hill
and valley country. Very different from Concord.

It had been a warm day, especially warm to the head. I do not perspire
as in the early summer, but am sensible of the ripening heat, more as
if by contact. Suddenly the wind changed to east, and the atmosphere
grew more and more hazy and thick on that side, obstructing the view,
while it was yet clear in the west. I thought it was the result of the
cooler air from over the sea meeting and condensing the vapor in the
warm air of the land. That was the haze, or thin, dry fog which some
call smoke. It gradually moved westward and affected the prospect on
that side somewhat. It was a very thin fog invading all the east. I
felt the cool air from the ocean, and it was very refreshing. I opened
my bosom and my mouth to inhale it. Very delicious and invigorating.

We sat on the top of those hills looking down on the new brick
ice-house. Where there are several hills near together, you cannot
determine at once which is the highest, whether the one you are on or
the next. So, when great men are assembled, each yields an uncertain
respect to the other, as if it were not certain whose crown rose
highest.

Under the nut trees on these hills, the grass is short and green as if
grazed close by cattle who had stood there for shade, making a distinct
circular yard. Yet, as there is no dung and the form corresponds so
closely to the tree, I doubt if that can be the cause.

On hillside north of river above powder-mills the _Pycnanthemum
incanum_ (mountain mint, calamint) and the _Lespedeza violacea_.

Saw what I thought a small red dog in the road, which cantered along
over the bridge this side the powder-mills and then turned into the
woods. This decided me—this turning into the woods—that it was a fox.
The dog of the woods, the dog that is more at home in the woods than in
the roads and fields. I do not often see a dog turning into the woods.

Some large white (?) oak acorns this side the last-named bridge. A
few oaks stand in the pastures still, great ornaments. I do not see
any young ones springing up to supply their places. Will there be any
a hundred years hence? These are the remnants of the primitive wood,
methinks. We are a young people and have not learned by experience the
consequence of cutting off the forest. One day they will be planted,
methinks, and nature reinstated to some extent.

I love to see the yellow knots and their lengthened stain on the dry,
unpainted pitch[?]-pine boards on barns and other buildings,—the Dugan
house, for instance. The indestructible yellow fat! it fats my eyes to
see it; worthy for art to imitate, telling of branches in the forest
once.


_Sept 5._ No doubt, like plants, we are fed through the atmosphere,
and the varying atmospheres of various seasons of the year feed us
variously. How often we are sensible of being thus fed and invigorated!
And all nature contributes to this aerial diet its food of finest
quality. Methinks that in the fragrance of the fruits I get a finer
flavor, and in beauty (which is appreciated by sight—the taste and
smell of the eye) a finer still. As Wilkinson says, “the physical man
himself is the builded aroma of the world. This then, at least, is the
office of the lungs—to drink the atmosphere with the planet dissolved
in it.” “What is the import of _change of air_, and how each pair of
lungs has a _native air_ under some one dome of the sky.”

Wilkinson’s book to some extent realizes what I have dreamed of,—a
return to the primitive analogical and derivative senses of words.
His ability to trace analogies often leads him to a truer word than
more remarkable writers have found; as when, in his chapter on the
human skin, he describes the papillary cutis as “an encampment of
small conical tents coextensive with the surface of the body.” The
faith he puts in old and current expressions as having sprung from an
instinct wiser than science, and safely to be trusted if they can be
interpreted. The man of science discovers no world for the mind of man
with all its faculties to inhabit. Wilkinson finds a _home_ for the
imagination, and it is no longer outcast and homeless. All perception
of truth is the detection of an analogy; we reason from our hands to
our head.

It is remarkable that Kalm says in 1748 (being in Philadelphia): “Coals
have not yet been found in Pennsylvania; but people pretend to have
seen them higher up in the country among the natives. Many people
however agree that they are met with in great quantity more to the
north, near Cape Breton.”

       *       *       *       *       *

As we grow old we live more coarsely, we relax a little in our
disciplines, and, to some extent, cease to obey our finest instincts.
We are more careless about our diet and our chastity. But we should be
fastidious to the extreme of sanity.[349] All wisdom is the reward of
a discipline, conscious or unconscious.

By moonlight at Potter’s Field toward Bear Garden Hill, 8 P. M. The
whip-poor-wills sing.

Cultivate reverence. It is as if you were so much more respectable
yourself. By the quality of a man’s writing, by the elevation of its
tone, you may measure his self-respect. How shall a man continue his
culture after manhood?

Moonlight on Fair Haven Pond seen from the Cliffs. A sheeny lake in
the midst of a boundless forest, the windy surf sounding freshly and
wildly in the single pine behind you; the silence of hushed wolves in
the wilderness, and, as you fancy, moose looking off from the shore
of the lake. The stars of poetry and history and unexplored nature
looking down on the scene. This is my world now, with a dull whitish
mark curving northward through the forest marking the outlet to the
lake. Fair Haven by moonlight lies there like a lake in the Maine
wilderness in the midst of a primitive forest untrodden by man. This
light and this hour take the civilization all out of the landscape.
Even in villages dogs bay the moon; in forests like this we listen to
hear wolves howl to Cynthia.

Even at this hour in the evening the crickets chirp, the small birds
peep, the wind roars in the wood, as if it were just before dawn. The
moonlight seems to linger as if it were giving way to the light of
coming day.

The landscape seen from the slightest elevation by moonlight is seen
remotely, and flattened, as it were, into mere light and shade, open
field and forest, like the surface of the earth seen from the top of a
mountain.

How much excited we are, how much recruited, by a great many particular
fragrances! A field of ripening corn, now at night, that has been
topped, with the stalks stacked up to dry,—an inexpressibly dry,
rich, sweet, ripening scent.[350] I feel as if I were an ear of
ripening corn myself. Is not the whole air then a compound of such
odors undistinguishable? Drying corn-stalks in a field; what an
herb-garden![351]


_Sept. 6._ The other afternoon I met Sam H—— walking on the railroad
between the depot and the back road. It was something quite novel to
see him there, though the railroad there is only a short thoroughfare
to the public road. It then occurred to me that I had never met Mr.
H. on the railroad, though he walks every day, and moreover that it
would be quite impossible for him to walk on the railroad, such a
formalist as he is, such strait-jackets we weave for ourselves. He
could do nothing that was not sanctioned by the longest use of men,
and as men had voted in all their assemblies from the first to travel
on the public way, he would confine himself to that. It would no doubt
seem to him very improper, not to say undignified, to walk on the
railroad; and then, is it not forbidden by the railroad corporations?
I was sure he could not keep the railroad, but was merely using the
thoroughfare here which a thousand pioneers had prepared for him. I
stood to see what he would do. He turned off the rails directly on to
the back road and pursued his walk. A passing train will never meet him
on the railroad causeway. How much of the life of certain men _goes_ to
sustain, to make respected, the institutions of society. They are the
ones who pay the heaviest tax. Here are certain valuable institutions
which can only be sustained by a wonderful strain which appears all to
come upon certain Spartans who volunteer. Certain men are always to be
found—especially the children of our present institutions—who are born
with an instinct to perceive them. They are, in effect, supported by
a fund which society possesses for that end, or they receive a pension
and their life _seems_ to be a sinecure,—but it is not. The unwritten
laws are the most stringent. They are required to wear a certain
dress. What an array of gentlemen whose sole employment—and it is no
sinecure—is to support their dignity, and with it the dignity of so
many indispensable institutions!

The use of many vegetables—wild plants—for food, which botanists
relate, such as Kalm at Cap aux Oyes on the St. Lawrence, _viz._ the
sea plantain, sea-rocket, sweet-gale, etc., etc., making us feel the
poorer at first because we never use them, really advertises us of our
superior riches, and shows to what extremities men have been driven in
times of scarcity. No people that fare as well as we will grub these
weeds out of the seashore.

       *       *       *       *       *

2 P. M.—To Hapgood’s in Acton direct, returning _via_ Strawberry Hill
and Smith’s Road.

The ripening grapes begin to fill the air with their fragrance. The
vervain will hardly do for a clock, for I perceive that some later
and smaller specimens have not much more than begun to blossom, while
most have done. Saw a tall pear tree by the roadside beyond Harris’s
in front of Hapgood’s. Saw the lambkill (_Kalmia angustifolia_) in
blossom—a few fresh blossoms at _the ends_ of the fresh twigs—on
Strawberry Hill, beautiful bright flowers. Apparently a new spring with
it, while seed vessels, apparently of this year, hung dry below.

From Strawberry Hill the first, but a very slight, glimpse of Nagog
Pond by standing up on the wall. That is enough to relate of a hill,
methinks, that its elevation gives you the first sight of some distant
lake. The horizon is remarkably blue with mist this afternoon. Looking
from this hill over Acton, successive valleys filled with blue mist
appear, and divided by darker lines of wooded hills. The shadows of the
elms are deepened, as if the whole atmosphere were permeated by floods
of ether. Annursnack never looked so well as now seen from this hill.
The ether gives a velvet softness to the whole landscape. The hills
float in it. A blue veil is drawn over the earth.

The elecampane (_Inula Helenium_), with its broad leaves wrinkled
underneath and the remains of sunflower-like blossoms, in front of
Nathan Brooks’s, Acton, and near J. H. Wheeler’s. _Prenanthes alba_;
this Gray calls _Nabalus albus_, white lettuce or rattlesnake-root.
Also I _seem_ (?) to have found _Nabalus Fraseri_, or lion’s-foot.

Every morning for a week there has been a fog which all disappeared by
seven or eight o’clock.

A large field of sunflowers for hens now in full bloom at Temple’s,
surrounding the house, and now, at 6 o’clock P. M., facing the east.

The larches in the front yards, both Scotch and American, have turned
red. Their fall has come.


_Sept. 7._ We sometimes experience a mere fullness of life, which
does not find any channels to flow into. We are stimulated, but to
no obvious purpose. I feel myself uncommonly prepared for _some_
literary work, but I can select no work. I am prepared not so much for
contemplation, as for forceful expression. I am braced both physically
and intellectually. It is not so much the music as the marching to
the music that I feel. I feel that the juices of the fruits which I
have eaten, the melons and apples, have ascended to my brain and are
stimulating it. They give me a heady force. Now I can write nervously.
Carlyle’s writing is for the most part of this character.

Miss Martineau’s last book is not so bad as the timidity which fears
its influence. As if the popularity of this or that book would be so
fatal, and man would not still be man in the world. Nothing is so much
to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God
himself.[352]

What shall we say of these timid folk who carry the principle of
thinking nothing and doing nothing and being nothing to such an
extreme? As if, in the absence of thought, that vast yearning of their
natures for something to fill the vacuum made the least traditionary
expression and shadow of a thought to be clung to with instinctive
tenacity. They atone for their producing nothing by a brutish respect
for something. They are as simple as oxen, and as guiltless of thought
and reflection. Their reflections are reflected from other minds. The
creature of institutions, bigoted and a conservatist, can say nothing
hearty. He cannot meet life with life, but only with words. He rebuts
you by avoiding you. He is shocked like a woman.

Our ecstatic states, which appear to yield so little fruit, have this
value at least: though in the seasons when our genius reigns we may be
powerless for expression, yet, in calmer seasons, when our talent is
active, the memory of those rarer moods comes to color our picture and
is the permanent paint-pot, as it were, into which we dip our brush.
Thus no life or experience goes unreported at last; but if it be not
solid gold it is gold-leaf, which gilds the furniture of the mind.
It is an experience of infinite beauty on which we unfailingly draw,
which enables us to exaggerate ever truly. Our moments of inspiration
are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for
those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever
and anon reminded of them. Their truth subsides, and in cooler moments
we can use them as paint to gild and adorn our prose. When I despair
to sing them, I will remember that they will furnish me with paint
with which to adorn and preserve the works of talent one day. They are
like a pot of pure ether. They lend the writer when the moment comes
a certain superfluity of wealth, making his expression to overrun and
float itself. It is the difference between our river, now parched and
dried up, exposing its unsightly and weedy bottom, and the same when,
in the spring, it covers all the meads with a chain of placid lakes,
reflecting the forests and the skies.

We are receiving our portion of the infinite. The art of life! Was
there ever anything memorable written upon it? By what disciplines
to secure the most life, with what care to watch our thoughts. To
observe what transpires, not in the street, but in the mind and heart
of me! I do not remember any page which will tell me how to spend this
afternoon. I do not so much wish to know how to economize time as how
to spend it, by what means to grow rich, that the day may not have been
in vain.

What if one moon has come and gone with its world of poetry, its weird
teachings, its oracular suggestions? So divine a creature, freighted
with hints for me, and I not use her! One moon gone by unnoticed!!
Suppose you attend to the hints, to the suggestions, which the moon
makes for one month,—commonly in vain,—will they not be very different
from anything in literature or religion or philosophy?[353]

The scenery, when it is truly seen, reacts on the life of the seer.
How to live. How to get the most life. As if you were to teach the
young hunter how to entrap his game. How to extract its honey from the
flower of the world. That is my every-day business. I am as busy as a
bee about it. I ramble over all fields on that errand, and am never
so happy as when I feel myself heavy with honey and wax. I am like
a bee searching the livelong day for the sweets of nature. Do I not
impregnate and intermix the flowers, produce rare and finer varieties
by transferring my eyes from one to another? I do as naturally and as
joyfully, with my own humming music, seek honey all the day. With what
honeyed thought any experience yields me I take a bee line to my cell.
It is with flowers I would deal. Where is the flower, there is the
honey,—which is perchance the nectareous portion of the fruit,—there
is to be the fruit, and no doubt flowers are thus colored and painted
to attract and guide the bee. So by the dawning or radiance of beauty
are we advertised where is the honey and the fruit of thought, of
discourse, and of action. We are first attracted by the beauty of the
flower, before we discover the honey which is a foretaste of the future
fruit. Did not the young Achilles (?) spend his youth learning how
to hunt? The art of spending a day. If it is possible that we may be
addressed, it behooves us to be attentive. If by watching all day and
all night I may detect some trace of the Ineffable, then will it not
be worth the while to watch? Watch and pray without ceasing, but not
necessarily in sadness. Be of good cheer. Those Jews were too sad: to
another people a still deeper revelation may suggest only joy. Don’t I
know what gladness is? Is it but the reflex of sadness, its back side?
In the Hebrew gladness, I hear but too distinctly still the sound of
sadness retreating. Give me a gladness which has never given place to
sadness.

I am convinced that men are not well employed, that this is not the
way to spend a day. If by patience, if by watching, I can secure one
new ray of light, can feel myself elevated for an instant upon Pisgah,
the world which was dead prose to me become living and divine, shall I
not watch ever? shall I not be a watchman henceforth? If by watching
a whole year on the city’s walls I may obtain a communication from
heaven, shall I not do well to shut up my shop and turn a watchman?
Can a youth, a man, do more wisely than to go where his life is to [be]
found? As if I had suffered that to be rumor which may be verified. We
are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery. May we not probe it, pry
into it, employ ourselves about it, a little? To devote your life to
the discovery of the divinity in nature or to the eating of oysters,
would they not be attended with very different results?

I cannot _easily_ buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are all
ruled for dollars and cents.[354]

If the wine, the water, which will nourish me grows on the surface of
the moon, I will do the best I can to go to the moon for it.

The discoveries which we make abroad are special and particular; those
which we make at home are general and significant. The further off, the
nearer the surface. The nearer home, the deeper. Go in search of the
springs of life, and you will get exercise enough. Think of a man’s
swinging dumb-bells for his health, when those springs are bubbling
in far-off pastures unsought by him! The seeming necessity of swinging
dumb-bells proves that he has lost his way.[355]

To watch for, describe, all the divine features which I detect in
Nature.

My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to
know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas, in
nature.

The mind may perchance be persuaded to act, to energize, by the action
and energy of the body. Any kind of liquid will fetch the pump.

We all have our states of fullness and of emptiness, but we overflow
at different points. One overflows through the sensual outlets, another
through his heart, another through his head, and another perchance only
through the higher part of his head, or his poetic faculty. It depends
on where each is tight and open. We can, perchance, then direct our
nutriment to those organs we specially use.

How happens it that there are few men so well employed,—so much to
their mind,—but that a little money or fame would buy them off from
their present pursuits?

To Conantum _via_ fields, Hubbard’s Grove, and grain-field, to Tupelo
Cliff and Conantum and returning over peak same way. 6 P. M.

I hear no larks sing at evening as in the spring, nor robins; only a
few distressed notes from the robin. In Hubbard’s grain-field beyond
the brook, now the sun is down. The air is very still. There is a fine
sound of crickets, not loud. The woods and single trees are heavier
masses in the landscape than in the spring. Night has more allies.
The heavy shadows of woods and trees are remarkable now. The meadows
are green with their second crop. I hear only a tree-toad or song
sparrow singing as in spring, at long intervals. The Roman wormwood is
beginning to yellow-green my shoes,—intermingled with the blue-curls
over the sand in this grain-field. Perchance some poet likened this
yellow dust to the ambrosia of the gods. The birds are remarkably
silent. At the bridge perceive the bats are out. And the yet silvery
moon, not quite full, is reflected in the water. The water is perfectly
still, and there is a red tinge from the evening sky in it.

The sky is singularly marked this evening. There are bars or rays of
nebulous light springing from the western horizon where the sun has
disappeared, and alternating with beautiful blue rays, more blue by
far than any other portion of the sky. These continue to diverge till
they have reached the middle, and then converge to the eastern horizon,
making a symmetrical figure like the divisions of a muskmelon, not very
bright, yet distinct, though growing less and less bright toward the
east. It was a quite remarkable phenomenon encompassing the heavens,
as if you were to behold the divisions of a muskmelon thus alternately
colored from within it. A proper vision, a colored mist. The most
beautiful thing in nature is the sun reflected from a tearful cloud.
These white and blue ribs embraced the earth. The two outer blues much
the brightest and matching one another.

You hear the hum of mosquitoes.

Going up the road. The sound of the crickets is now much more universal
and loud. Now in the fields I see the white streak of the neottia in
the twilight. The whip-poor-wills sing far off. I smell burnt land
somewhere. At Tupelo Cliff I hear the sound of singers on the river,
young men and women,—which is unusual here,—returning from their row.
Man’s voice, thus uttered, fits well the spaces. It fills nature. And,
after all, the singing of men is something far grander than any natural
sound. It is wonderful that men do not oftener sing in the fields,
by day and night. I bathe at the north side the Cliff, while the moon
shines round the end of the rock. The opposite Cliff is reflected in
the water. Then sit on the south side of the Cliff in the woods. One
or two fireflies. Could it be a glow-worm? I thought I saw one or two
in the air. That is all in this walk. I hear a whip-poor-will uttering
a cluck of suspicion in my rear. He is suspicious and inquisitive.
The river stretches off southward from me. I see the sheeny portions
of its western shore interruptedly for a quarter of a mile, where
the moonlight is reflected from the pads, a strong, gleaming light
while the water is lost in the obscurity. I hear the sound from time
to time of a leaping fish, or a frog, or a muskrat, or turtle. It is
even warmer, _methinks_, than it was in August, and it is perfectly
clear,—the air. I know not how it is that this universal crickets’
creak should sound thus regularly intermittent, as if for the most part
they fell in with one another and creaked in time, making a certain
pulsing sound, a sort of breathing or panting of all nature. You sit
twenty feet above the still river; see the sheeny pads, and the moon,
and some bare tree-tops in the distant horizon. Those bare tree-tops
add greatly to the wildness.

Lower down I see the moon in the water as bright as in the heavens;
only the water-bugs disturb its disk; and now I catch a faint glassy
glare from the whole river surface, which before was simply dark. This
is set in a frame of double darkness on the east, _i. e._ the reflected
shore of woods and hills and the reality, the shadow and the substance,
bipartite, answering to each.

I see the northern lights over my shoulder, to remind me of the
Esquimaux and that they are still my contemporaries on this globe,
that they too are taking their walks on another part of the planet,
in pursuit of seals, perchance.[356] The stars are dimly reflected in
the water. The path of water-bugs in the moon’s rays is like ripples
of light. It is only when you stand fronting the sun or moon that
you see their light reflected in the water. I hear no frogs these
nights,—bullfrogs or others,—as in the spring. It is not the season of
sound.

At Conantum end, just under the wall. From this point and at this
height I do not perceive any bright or yellowish light on Fair Haven,
but an oily and glass-like smoothness on its southwestern bay, through
a very slight mistiness. Two or three pines appear to stand in the
moonlit air on this side of the pond, while the enlightened portion of
the water is bounded by the heavy reflection of the wood on the east.
It was so soft and velvety a light as contained a thousand placid days
sweetly put to rest in the bosom of the water. So looked the North Twin
Lake in the Maine woods. It reminds me of placid lakes in the mid-noon
of Indian summer days, but yet more placid and civilized, suggesting
a higher cultivation, as the wild ever does, which æons of summer days
have gone to make. Like a summer day seen far away. All the effects of
sunlight, with a softer tone; and all this stillness of the water and
the air superadded, and the witchery of the hour. What gods are they
that require so fair a vase of gleaming water to their prospect in
the midst of the wild woods by night? Else why this beauty allotted to
night, a gem to sparkle in the zone of night? They are strange gods now
out; methinks their names are not in any mythology.[357] I can faintly
trace its zigzag border of sheeny pads even here. If such is then to
be seen in remotest wildernesses, does it not suggest its own nymphs
and wood gods to enjoy it? As when, at middle of the placid noon in
Indian-summer days, all the surface of a lake is as one cobweb gleaming
in the sun, which heaves gently to the passing zephyr. There was the
lake, its glassy surface just distinguishable, its sheeny shore of
pads, with a few pines bathed in light on its hither shore, just as in
the middle of a November day, except that this was the chaster light
of the moon, the cooler temperature of the night, and there were the
deep shades of night that fenced it round and imbosomed. It tells of a
far-away, long-passed civilization, of an antiquity superior to time,
unappreciable by time.

Is there such virtue in raking cranberries that those men’s industry
whom I now see on the meadow shall reprove my idleness? Can I not
go over those same meadows after them, and rake still more valuable
fruits? Can I not rake with my mind? Can I not rake a thought,
perchance, which shall be worth a bushel of cranberries?

A certain refinement and civilization in nature which increases with
the wildness. The civilization that consists with wildness, the light
that is in night. A smile as in a dream on the face of the sleeping
lake. There is light enough to show what we see, what _night_ has to
exhibit. Any more would obscure these objects. I am not advertised
of any deficiency of light.[358] The actual is fair as a vision
or a dream. If ever we have attained to any nobleness, even in our
imagination and intentions, that will surely ennoble the features of
nature for us, that will clothe them with beauty. Of course no jeweller
ever dealt with a gem so fair and suggestive as this actual lake, the
scene, it may be, of so much noble and poetic life, and not merely [to]
adorn some monarch’s crown.

It is remarkably still at this hour and season. No sound of bird or
beast for the most part. This has none of the reputed noxious qualities
of night.

On the peak. The faint sounds of birds, dreaming aloud in the night,
the fresh, cool air, and sound of the wind rushing over the rocks
remind me of the tops of mountains. That is, all the earth is but
the outside of the planet bordering on the hard-eyed sky. Equally
withdrawn and near to heaven is this pasture as the summit of the White
Mountains. All the earth’s surface like a mountain-top, for I see its
relation to heaven as simply, and am not imposed upon by a difference
of a few feet in elevation. In this faint, hoary light, all fields
are like a mossy rock and remote from the cultivated plains of day.
All is equally savage, equally solitary and cool-aired, and the slight
difference in elevation is felt to be unimportant. It is all one with
Caucasus, the slightest hill pasture.

The basswood had a singularly solid look and sharply defined, as by a
web or film, as if its leaves covered it like scales.

Scared up a whip-poor-will on the ground on the hill. Will not my
townsmen consider me a benefactor if I conquer some realms from the
night, if I can show them that there is some beauty awake while they
are asleep, if I add to the domains of poetry,[359] if I report to the
gazettes anything transpiring in our midst worthy of man’s attention?
I will say nothing now to the disparagement of Day, for he is not here
to defend himself.

The northern lights now, as I descend from the Conantum house, have
become a crescent of light crowned with short, shooting flames,—or the
shadows of flames, for sometimes they are dark as well as white. There
is scarcely any dew even in the low lands.

Now the fire in the north increases wonderfully, not shooting up so
much as creeping along, like a fire on the mountains of the north
seen afar in the night. The Hyperborean gods are burning brush, and
it spread, and all the hoes in heaven couldn’t stop it. It spread
from west to east over the crescent hill. Like a vast fiery worm it
lay across the northern sky, broken into many pieces; and each piece,
with rainbow colors skirting it, strove to advance itself toward the
east, worm-like, on its own annular muscles. It has spread into their
choicest wood-lots. Now it shoots up like a single solitary watch-fire
or burning bush, or where it ran up a pine tree like powder, and
still it continues to gleam here and there like a fat stump in the
burning, and is reflected in the water. And now I see the gods by great
exertions have got it under, and the stars have come out without fear,
in peace.

Though no birds sing, the crickets vibrate their shrill and stridulous
cymbals, especially on the alders of the causeway, those minstrels
especially engaged for Night’s quire.[360]

It takes some time to wear off the trivial impression which the day has
made, and thus the first hours of night are sometimes lost.

There were two hen-hawks soared and circled for our entertainment, when
we were in the woods on that Boon Plain the other day, crossing each
other’s orbits from time to time, alternating like the squirrels of the
morning, till, alarmed by our imitation of a hawk’s shrill cry, they
gradually inflated themselves, made themselves more aerial, and rose
higher and higher into the heavens, and were at length lost to sight;
yet all the while earnestly looking, scanning the surface of the earth
for a stray mouse or rabbit.[361]


_Sept. 8._ No fog this morning. Shall I not have words as fresh as
my thoughts? Shall I use any other man’s word? A genuine thought
or feeling can find expression for itself, if it have to invent
hieroglyphics. It has the universe for type-metal. It is for want of
original thought that one man’s style is like another’s.

       *       *       *       *       *

Certainly the voice of no bird or beast can be compared with that of
man for true melody. All other sounds seem to be hushed, as if their
possessors were attending, when the voice of man is heard in melody.
The air gladly bears the burden. It is infinitely significant. Man only
sings in concert. The bird’s song is a mere interjectional shout of
joy; man’s a glorious expression of the foundations of his joy.

Do not the song of birds and the fireflies go with the grass? While
the grass is fresh, the earth is in its vigor. The greenness of the
grass is the best symptom or evidence of the earth’s youth or health.
Perhaps it will be found that when the grass ceases to be fresh and
green, or after June, the birds have ceased to sing, and that the
fireflies, too, no longer in _myriads_ sparkle in the meadows. Perhaps
a history of the year would be a history of the grass, or of a leaf,
regarding the grass-blades as leaves, for it is equally true that the
leaves soon lose their freshness and soundness, and become the prey
of insects and of drought. Plants commonly soon cease to grow for the
year, unless they may have a fall growth, which is a kind of second
spring. In the feelings of the man, too, the year is already past, and
he looks forward to the coming winter. His occasional rejuvenescence
and faith in the current time is like the aftermath, a scanty crop.
The enterprise which he has not already undertaken cannot be undertaken
this year. The period of youth is past. The year may be in its summer,
in its manhood, but it is no longer in the flower of its age. It is a
season of withering, of dust and heat, a season of small fruits and
trivial experiences. Summer thus answers to manhood. But there is
an aftermath in early autumn, and some spring flowers bloom again,
followed by an Indian summer of finer atmosphere and of a pensive
beauty. May my life be not destitute of its Indian summer, a season of
fine and clear, mild weather in which I may prolong my hunting before
the winter comes, when I may once more lie on the ground with faith, as
in spring, and even with more serene confidence. And then I will [wrap
the] drapery of summer about me and lie down to pleasant dreams. As one
year passes into another through the medium of winter, so does this our
life pass into another through the medium of death.

De Quincey and Dickens have not moderation enough. They never stutter;
they flow too readily.

The tree-primrose and the dwarf ditto and epilobium still. Locust is
heard. _Aster amplexicaulis_, beautiful blue, purplish blue (?), about
twenty-four rayed. _Utricularia vulgaris_, bladderwort. Dandelion and
houstonia.


_Sept. 9._ 2 A. M.—The moon not quite full. To Conantum _via_ road.

There is a low vapor in the meadows beyond the depot, dense and
white, though scarcely higher than a man’s head, concealing the stems
of the trees. I see that the oaks, which are so dark and distinctly
outlined, are illumined by the moon on the opposite side. This as
I go up the back road. A few thin, ineffectual clouds in the sky. I
come out thus into the moonlit night, where men are not, as if into a
scenery anciently deserted by men. The life of men is like a dream.
It is three thousand years since night has had possession. Go forth
and hear the crickets chirp at midnight. Hear if their dynasty is not
an ancient one and well founded. I feel the antiquity of the night.
She surely repossesses herself of her realms, as if her dynasty were
uninterrupted, or she had underlain the day. No sounds but the steady
creaking of crickets and the occasional crowing of cocks.

I go by the farmer’s houses and barns, standing there in the dim light
under the trees, as if they lay at an immense distance or under a veil.
The farmer and his oxen now all asleep. Not even a watch-dog awake. The
human slumbers. There is less of man in the world.

The fog in the lowlands on the Corner road is never still. It now
advances and envelops me as I stand to write these words, then clears
away, with ever noiseless step. It covers the meadows like a web. I
hear the clock strike three.

Now at the clayey bank. The light of Orion’s belt seems to show traces
of the blue day through which it came to us. The sky at least is
lighter on that side than in the west, even about the moon. Even by
night the sky is blue and not black, for we see through the veil of
night into the distant atmosphere of day. I see to the plains of the
sun, where the sunbeams are revelling. The cricket’s (?) song, on the
alders of the causeway, not quite so loud at this hour as at evening.
The moon is getting low. I hear a wagon cross one of the bridges
leading into the town. I see the moonlight at this hour on a different
side of objects. I smell the ripe apples many rods off beyond the
bridge. A sultry night; a thin coat is enough.

On the first top of Conantum. I hear the farmer harnessing his horse
and starting for the distant market, but no man harnesses himself, and
starts for worthier enterprises. One cock-crow tells the whole story of
the farmer’s life. The moon is now sinking into clouds in the horizon.
I see the glow-worms deep in the grass by the little brookside in midst
of Conantum. The moon shines dun and red. A solitary whip-poor-will
sings.

The clock strikes four. A few dogs bark. A few more wagons start for
market, their faint rattling heard in the distance. I hear my owl
without a name; the murmur of the slow-approaching freight-train, as
far off, perchance, as Waltham; and one early bird.

The round, red moon disappearing in the west. I detect a whiteness in
the east. Some dark, massive clouds have come over from the west within
the hour, as if attracted by the approaching sun, and have arranged
themselves raywise about the eastern portal, as if to bar his coming.
They have moved suddenly and almost unobservedly quite across the sky
(which before was clear) from west to east. No trumpet was heard which
marshalled and advanced these dark masses of the west’s forces thus
rapidly against the coming day. Column after column the mighty west
sent forth across the sky while men slept, but all in vain.

The eastern horizon is now grown dun-colored, showing where the
advanced guard of the night are already skirmishing with the vanguard
of the sun, a lurid light tingeing the atmosphere there, while a
dark-columned cloud hangs imminent over the broad portal, untouched by
the glare. Some bird flies over, making a noise like the barking of a
puppy.[362] It is yet so dark that I have dropped my pencil and cannot
find it.

The sound of the cars is like that of a rushing wind. They come
on slowly. I thought at first a morning wind was rising. And now
(perchance at half-past four) I hear the sound of some far-off
factory-bell arousing the operatives to their early labors. It sounds
very sweet here. It is very likely some factory which I have never
seen, in some valley which I have never visited; yet now I hear this,
which is its only matin bell, sweet and inspiring as if it summoned
holy men and maids to worship and not factory girls and men to resume
their trivial toil, as if it were the summons of some religious or even
poetic community. My first impression is that it is the matin bell of
some holy community who in a distant valley dwell, a band of spiritual
knights,—thus sounding far and wide, sweet and sonorous, in harmony
with their own morning thoughts. What else could I suppose fitting this
earth and hour? Some man of high resolve, devoted soul, has touched the
rope; and by its peals how many men and maids are waked from peaceful
slumbers to fragrant morning thoughts! Why should I fear to tell that
it is Knight’s factory-bell at Assabet? A few melodious peals and all
is still again.

The whip-poor-wills now begin to sing in earnest about half an hour
before sunrise, as if making haste to improve the short time that is
left them. As far as my observation goes, they sing for several hours
in the early part of the night, are silent commonly at midnight,—though
you may meet [them] then sitting on a rock or flitting silently
about,—then sing again just before sunrise. It grows more and more red
in the east—a fine-grained red under the overhanging cloud—and lighter
too, and the threatening clouds are falling off to southward of the
sun’s passage, shrunken and defeated, leaving his path comparatively
clear. The increased light shows more distinctly the river and the fog.

5 o’clock.—The light now reveals a thin film of vapor like a gossamer
veil cast over the lower hills beneath the Cliffs and stretching to the
river, thicker in the ravines, thinnest on the even slopes. The distant
meadows towards the north beyond Conant’s Grove, full of fog, appear
like a vast lake out of which rise Annursnack and Ponkawtasset like
rounded islands. Nawshawtuct is a low and wooded isle, scarcely seen
above the waves. The heavens are now clear again. The vapor, which was
confined to the river and meadows, now rises and creeps up the sides
of the hills. I see it in transparent columns advancing down the valley
of the river, ghost-like, from Fair Haven, and investing some wooded or
rocky promontory, before free. So ghosts are said to advance.

Annursnack is exactly like some round, steep, distant hill on the
opposite shore of a large lake (and Tabor on the other side), with here
and there some low Brush Island in middle of the waves (the tops of
some oaks or elms). Oh, what a sail I could take, if I had the right
kind of bark, over to Annursnack! for there she lies four miles from
land as sailors say. And all the farms and houses of Concord are at
bottom of that sea. So I forget them, and my thought sails triumphantly
over them. As I looked down where the village of Concord lay buried in
fog, I thought of nothing but the surface of a lake, a summer sea over
which to sail; no more than a voyager on the Dead Sea who had not read
the Testament would think of Sodom and Gomorrah, once cities of the
plain. I only wished to get off to one of the low isles I saw in midst
of the [sea] (it may have been the top of Holbrook’s elm), and spend
the whole summer day there.

Meanwhile the redness in the east had diminished and was less deep.
(The fog over some meadows looked green.) I went down to Tupelo Cliff
to bathe. A great bittern, which I had scared, flew heavily across
the stream. The redness had risen at length above the dark cloud, the
sun approaching. And next the redness became a sort of yellowish or
fawn-colored light, and the sun now set fire to the edges of the broken
cloud which had hung over the horizon, and they glowed like burning
turf.


_Sept. 10._ As I watch the groves on the meadow opposite our house, I
see how differently they look at different hours of the day, _i. e._
in different lights, when the sun shines on them variously. In the
morning, perchance, they seem one blended mass of light green. In the
afternoon, distinct trees appear, separated by heavy shadows, and in
some places I can see quite through the grove.

3 P. M.—To the Cliffs and the Grape Cliff beyond.

Hardhack and meadow-sweet are now all dry. I see the smoke of burning
brush in the west horizon this dry and sultry afternoon, and wish to
look off from some hill. It is a kind of work the farmer cannot do
without discovery. Sometimes I smell these smokes several miles off,
and by the odor know it is not a burning building, but withered leaves
and the rubbish of the woods and swamp. As I go through the woods, I
see that the ferns have turned brown and give the woods an autumnal
look. The boiling spring is almost completely dry. Nothing flows (I
mean without the shed), but there are many hornets and yellow wasps
apparently buzzing and circling about in jealousy of one another,
either drinking the stagnant water, which is the most accessible this
dry parching day, or it may be collecting something from the slime,—I
think the former.

As I go up Fair Haven Hill, I see some signs of the approaching fall
of the white pine. On some trees the old leaves are already somewhat
reddish, though not enough to give the trees a parti-colored look, and
they come off easily on being touched,—the old leaves on the lower part
of the twigs.

Some farmers are sowing their winter rye? I see the fields smoothly
rolled. (I hear the locust still.) I see others plowing steep rocky
and bushy fields, apparently for the same purpose. How beautiful
the sprout-land (burnt plain) seen from the Cliff! No more cheering
and inspiring sight than a young wood springing up thus over a large
tract, when you look down on it, the light green of the maples shaded
off into the darker oaks; and here and there a maple blushes quite
red, enlivening the scene yet more. Surely this earth is fit to be
inhabited, and many enterprises may be undertaken with hope where so
many young plants are pushing up. In the spring I burned over a hundred
acres till the earth was sere and black, and by midsummer this space
was clad in a fresher and more luxuriant green than the surrounding
even. Shall man then despair? Is he not a sprout-land too, after
never so many searings and witherings?[363] If you witness growth and
luxuriance, it is all the same as if you grew luxuriantly.

I see three smokes in Stow. One sends up dark volumes of wreathed
smoke, as if from the mouth of Erebus. It is remarkable what
effects so thin and subtile a substance as smoke produces, even at a
distance,—dark and heavy and powerful as rocks at a distance.

The woodbine is red on the rocks.

The poke is a very rich and striking plant. Some which stand under the
Cliffs quite dazzled me with their now purple stems gracefully drooping
each way, their rich, somewhat yellowish, purple-veined leaves, their
bright purple racemes,—peduncles, and pedicels, and calyx-like petals
from which the birds have picked the berries (these racemes, with their
petals now turned to purple, are more brilliant than anything of the
kind),—flower-buds, flowers, ripe berries and dark purple ones, and
calyx-like petals which have lost their fruit, all on the same plant. I
love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It is
the richest color. I love to press these berries between my fingers and
see their rich purple wine staining my hand. It asks a bright sun on it
to make it show to best advantage, and it must be seen at this season
of the year. It speaks to my blood. Every part of it is flower, such is
its superfluity of color,—a feast of color. That is the richest flower
which most abounds in color. What need to taste the fruit, to drink the
wine, to him who can thus taste and drink with his eyes? Its boughs,
gracefully drooping, offering repasts to the birds. It is cardinal in
its rank, as in its color. Nature here is full of blood and heat and
luxuriance. What a triumph it appears in Nature to have produced and
perfected such a plant,—as if this were enough for a summer.[364]

The downy seeds of the groundsel are taking their flight here. The
calyx has dismissed them and quite curled back, having done its part.
_Lespedeza sessiliflora_, or reticulated lespedeza on the Cliffs now
out of bloom. At the Grape Cliff, the few bright-red leaves of the
tupelo contrast with the polished green ones. The tupelos with drooping
branches.

The grape-vines overrunning and bending down the maples form little
arching bowers over the meadow, five or six feet in diameter, like
parasols held over the ladies of the harem, in the East. _Cuscuta
Americana_, or dodder, in blossom still. The _Desmodium paniculatum_ of
De Candolle and Gray (_Hedysarum paniculatum_ of Linnæus and Bigelow),
tick-trefoil, with still one blossom, by the path-side up from the
meadow. The rhomboidal joints of its loments adhere to my clothes. One
of an interesting family that thus disperse themselves. The oak-ball of
dirty drab now.[365]


_Sept. 11._ Every artisan learns positively something by his trade.
Each craft is familiar with a few simple, well-known, well-established
facts, not requiring any genius to discover, but mere use and
familiarity. You may go by the man at his work in the street every
day of your life, and though he is there before you, carrying into
practice certain essential information, you shall never be the wiser.
Each trade is in fact a craft, a cunning, a covering an ability;
and its methods are the result of a long experience. There sits a
stone-mason, splitting Westford granite for fence-posts. Egypt has
perchance taught New England something in this matter. His hammer,
his chisels, his wedges, his shims or half-rounds, his iron spoon,—I
suspect that these tools are hoary with age as with granite dust. He
learns as easily where the best granite comes from as he learns how
to erect that screen to keep off the sun. He knows that he can drill
faster into a large stone than a small one, because there is less jar
and yielding. He deals in stone as the carpenter in lumber. In many of
his operations only the materials are different. His work is slow and
expensive. Nature is here hard to be overcome. He wears up one or two
drills in splitting a single stone. He must sharpen his tools oftener
than the carpenter. He fights with granite. He knows the temper of
the rocks. He grows stony himself. His tread is ponderous and steady
like the fall of a rock. And yet by patience and art he splits a
stone as surely as the carpenter or woodcutter a log. So much time and
perseverance will accomplish. One would say that mankind had much less
moral than physical energy, that any day you see men following the
trade of splitting rocks, who yet shrink from undertaking apparently
less arduous moral labors, the solving of moral problems. See how
surely he proceeds. He does not hesitate to drill a dozen holes, each
one the labor of a day or two for a savage; he carefully takes out the
dust with his iron spoon; he inserts his wedges, one in each hole, and
protects the sides of the holes and gives resistance to his wedges
by thin pieces of half-round iron (or shims); he marks the red line
which he has drawn, with his chisel, carefully cutting it straight; and
then how carefully he drives each wedge in succession, fearful lest he
should not have a good split!

The habit of looking at men in the gross makes their lives have less
of human interest for us. But though there are crowds of laborers
before us, yet each one leads his little epic life each day. There is
the stone-mason, who, methought, was simply a stony man that hammered
stone from breakfast to dinner, and dinner to supper, and then went to
his slumbers. But he, I find, is even a man like myself, for he feels
the heat of the sun and has raised some boards on a frame to protect
him. And now, at mid-forenoon, I see his wife and child have come and
brought him drink and meat for his lunch and to assuage the stoniness
of his labor, and sit to chat with him.

There are many rocks lying there for him to split from end to end,
and he will surely do it. This only at the command of luxury, since
stone posts are preferred to wood. But how many moral blocks are lying
there in every man’s yard, which he surely will not split nor earnestly
endeavor to split. There lie the blocks which will surely get split,
but here lie the blocks which will surely not get split. Do we say
it is too hard for human faculties? But does not the mason dull a
basketful of steel chisels in a day, and yet, by sharpening them again
and tempering them aright, succeed? Moral effort! Difficulty to be
overcome!!! Why, men work in stone, and sharpen their drills when they
go home to dinner!

Why should Canada, wild and unsettled as it is, impress one as an
older country than the States, except that her institutions are old.
All things seem to contend there with a certain rust of antiquity,
such as forms on old armor and iron guns, the rust of conventions and
formalities. If the rust was not on the tinned roofs and spires, it was
on the inhabitants.[366]

       *       *       *       *       *

2 P. M.—To Hubbard’s Meadow Grove.

The skunk-cabbage’s checkered fruit (spadix), one three inches long;
all parts of the flower but the anthers left and enlarged. _Bidens
cernua_, or nodding burr-marigold, like a small sunflower (with rays)
in Heywood Brook, _i. e._ beggar-tick. _Bidens connata_ (?), without
rays, in Hubbard’s Meadow. Blue-eyed grass still. Drooping neottia
very common. I see some yellow butterflies and others occasionally and
singly only. The smilax berries are mostly turned dark. I started a
great bittern from the weeds at the swimming-place.

It is very hot and dry weather. We have had no rain for a week, and
yet the pitcher-plants have water in them. Are they ever quite dry?
Are they not replenished by the dews always, and, being shaded by the
grass, saved from evaporation? What wells for the birds!

The white-red-purple-berried bush in Hubbard’s Meadow, whose berries
were fairest a fortnight ago, appears to be the _Viburnum nudum_,
or withe-rod. Our cornel (the common) with berries blue one side,
whitish the other, appears to be either the _Cornus sericea_ or _C.
stolonifera_ of Gray, _i. e._ the silky, or the red-osier cornel
(_osier rouge_), though its leaves are neither silky nor downy nor
rough.

This and the last four or five nights have been perhaps the most sultry
in the year thus far.


_Sept. 12._ Not till after 8 A. M. does the fog clear off so much that
I see the sun shining in patches on Nawshawtuct. This is the season of
fogs.

Like knight, like esquire. When Benvenuto Cellini was attacked by the
constables in Rome, his boy Cencio assisted him, or at least stood by,
and afterward related his master’s exploits; “and as they asked him
several times whether he had been afraid, he answered that they should
propose the question to me, for he had been affected upon the occasion
just in the same manner that I was.”

Benvenuto Cellini relates in his memoirs that, during his confinement
in the castle of St. Angelo in Rome, he had a terrible dream or vision
in which certain events were communicated to him which afterward
came to pass, and he adds: “From the very moment that I beheld the
phenomenon, there appeared (strange to relate!) a resplendent light
over my head, which has displayed itself conspicuously to all that
I have thought proper to show it to, but those were very few. This
shining light is to be seen in the morning over my shadow till two
o’clock in the afternoon, and it appears to the greatest advantage when
the grass is moist with dew: it is likewise visible in the evening
at sunset. This phenomenon I took notice of when I was at Paris,
because the air is exceedingly clear in that climate, so that I could
distinguish it there much plainer than in Italy, where mists are much
more frequent; but I can still see it even here, and show it to others,
though not to the same advantage as in France.” This reminds me of
the halo around my shadow which I notice from the causeway in the
morning,—also by moonlight,—as if, in the case of a man of an excitable
imagination, this were basis enough for his superstition.[367]

After I have spent the greater part of a night abroad in the moonlight,
I am obliged to sleep enough more the next night to make up for
it,—_Endymionis somnum dormire_ (to sleep an Endymion sleep), as the
ancients expressed it.[368] And there is something gained still by
thus turning the day into night. Endymion is said to have obtained of
Jupiter the privilege of sleeping as much as he would. Let no man be
afraid of sleep, if his weariness comes of obeying his Genius. He who
has spent the night with the gods sleeps more innocently by day than
the sluggard who has spent the day with the satyrs sleeps by night.
He who has travelled to fairyland in the night sleeps by day more
innocently than he who is fatigued by the merely trivial labors of the
day sleeps by night. That kind of life which, sleeping, we dream that
we live awake, in our walks by night, we, waking, live, while our daily
life appears as a dream.

       *       *       *       *       *

2 P. M.—To the Three Friends’ Hill beyond Flint’s Pond, _via_ railroad,
R. W. E.’s wood-path south side Walden, George Heywood’s cleared lot,
and Smith’s orchard; return _via_ east of Flint’s Pond, _via_ Goose
Pond and my old home to railroad.

I go to Flint’s Pond for the sake of the mountain view from the hill
beyond, looking over Concord. I have thought it the best, especially
in the winter, which I can get in this neighborhood. It is worth the
while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day. I have thus seen
some earth which corresponds to my least earthly and trivial, to my
most heavenward-looking, thoughts. The earth seen through an azure, an
ethereal, veil. They are the natural _temples_, elevated brows, of the
earth, looking at which, the thoughts of the beholder are naturally
elevated and sublimed,—etherealized. I wish to see the earth through
the medium of much air or heaven, for there is no paint like the air.
Mountains thus seen are worthy of worship. I go to Flint’s Pond also to
see a rippling lake and a reedy island in its midst,—Reed Island. A man
should feed his senses with the best that the land affords.[369]

At the entrance to the Deep Cut, I heard the telegraph-wire vibrating
like an æolian harp. It reminded me suddenly,—reservedly, with a
beautiful paucity of communication, even silently, such was its
effect on my thoughts,—it reminded me, I say, with a certain pathetic
moderation, of what finer and deeper stirrings I was susceptible,
which grandly set all argument and dispute aside, a triumphant
though transient exhibition of the truth. It told me by the faintest
imaginable strain, it told me by the finest strain that a human ear can
hear, yet conclusively and past all refutation, that there were higher,
infinitely higher, planes of life which it behooved me never to forget.
As I was entering the Deep Cut, the wind, which was conveying a message
to me from heaven, dropped it on the wire of the telegraph which it
vibrated as it passed. I instantly sat down on a stone at the foot of
the telegraph-pole, and attended to the communication. It merely said:
“Bear in mind, Child, and never for an instant forget, that there are
higher planes, infinitely higher planes, of life than this thou art
now travelling on. Know that the goal is distant, and is upward, and is
worthy all your life’s efforts to attain to.” And then it ceased, and
though I sat some minutes longer I heard nothing more.

There is every variety and degree of inspiration from mere fullness
of life to the most rapt mood. A human soul is played on even as
this wire, which now vibrates slowly and gently so that the passer
can hardly hear it, and anon the sound swells and vibrates with such
intensity as if it would rend the wire, as far as the elasticity and
tension of the wire permits, and now it dies away and is silent, and
though the breeze continues to sweep over it, no strain comes from
it, and the traveller hearkens in vain. It is no small gain to have
this wire stretched through Concord, though there may be no office
here. Thus I make my own use of the telegraph, without consulting the
directors, like the sparrows, which I perceive use it extensively
for a perch. Shall I not go to this office to hear if there is
any communication for me, as steadily as to the post-office in the
village?[370]

I can hardly believe that there is so great a difference between one
year and another as my journal shows. The 11th of this month last
year, the river was as high as it commonly is in the spring, over the
causeway on the Corner road. It is now quite low. Last year, October
9th, the huckleberries were fresh and abundant on Conantum. They are
now already dried up.

We yearn to see the mountains daily, as the Israelites yearned for the
promised land, and we daily live the fate of Moses, who only looked
into the promised land from Pisgah before he died.

On Monday, the 15th instant, I am going to perambulate the bounds of
the town. As I am partial to across-lot routes, this appears to be a
very proper duty for me to perform, for certainly no route can well
be chosen which shall be more across-lot, since the roads in no case
run round the town but ray out from its centre, and my course will lie
across each one. It is almost as if I had undertaken to walk round the
town at the greatest distance from its centre and at the same time from
the surrounding villages. There is no public house near the line. It
is a sort of reconnoissance of its frontiers authorized by the central
government of the town, which will bring the surveyor in contact with
whatever wild inhabitant or wilderness its territory embraces.

This appears to be a very ancient custom, and I find that this word
“perambulation” has exactly the same meaning that it has at present in
Johnson and Walker’s dictionary. A hundred years ago they went round
the towns of this State every three years. And the old selectmen tell
me that, before the present split stones were set up in 1829, the
bounds were marked by a heap of stones, and it was customary for each
selectman to add a stone to the heap.

Saw a pigeon-place on George Heywood’s cleared lot,—the six dead trees
set up for the pigeons to alight on, and the brush house close by to
conceal the man. I was rather startled to find such a thing going now
in Concord. The pigeons on the trees looked like fabulous birds with
their long tails and their pointed breasts. I could hardly believe
they were alive and not some wooden birds used for decoys, they sat
so still; and, even when they moved their necks, I thought it was the
effect of art. As they were not catching then, I approached and scared
away a dozen birds who were perched on the trees, and found that they
were freshly baited there, though the net was carried away, perchance
to some other bed. The smooth sandy bed was covered with buckwheat,
wheat or rye, and acorns. Sometimes they use corn, shaved off the ear
in its present state with a knife. There were left the sticks with
which they fastened the nets. As I stood there, I heard a rushing sound
and, looking up, saw a flock of thirty or forty pigeons dashing toward
the _trees_, who suddenly whirled on seeing me and circled round and
made a new dash toward the bed, as if they would fain alight if I had
not been there, then steered off. I crawled into the bough house and
lay awhile looking through the leaves, hoping to see them come again
and feed, but they did not while I stayed. This net and bed belong to
one Harrington of Weston, as I hear. Several men still take pigeons in
Concord every year; by a method, methinks, extremely old and which I
seem to have seen pictured in some old book of fables or symbols, and
yet few in Concord know exactly how it is done. And yet it is all done
for money and because the birds fetch a good price, just as the farmers
raise corn and potatoes. I am always expecting that those engaged in
such a pursuit will be somewhat less grovelling and mercenary than the
regular trader or farmer, but I fear that it is not so.

Found a violet, apparently _Viola cucullata_, or hood-leaved violet,
in bloom in Baker’s Meadow beyond Pine Hill; also the _Bidens cernua_,
nodding burr-marigold, with five petals, in same place. Went through
the old corn-field on the hillside beyond, now grown up to birches and
hickories,—woods where you feel the old corn-hills under your feet;
for these, not being disturbed or levelled in getting the crop, like
potato-hills, last an indefinite while; and by some they are called
Indian corn-fields, though I think erroneously, not only from their
position in rocky soil frequently, but because the squaws probably,
with their clamshells or thin stones or wooden hoes, did not hill their
corn more than many now recommend.

What we call woodbine is the _Vitis hederacea_, or common creeper, or
American ivy.

When I got into the Lincoln road, I perceived a singular sweet scent
in the air, which I suspected arose from some plant now in a peculiar
state owing to the season, but though I smelled everything around,
I could not detect it, but the more eagerly I smelled, the further
I seemed to be from finding it; but when I gave up the search, again
it would be wafted to me. It was one of the sweet scents which go to
make the autumn air, which fed my sense of smell rarely and dilated
my nostrils. I felt the better for it. Methinks that I possess the
sense of smell in greater perfection than usual, and have the habit
of smelling of every plant I pluck. How autumnal is the scent of ripe
grapes now by the roadside![371]

From the pond-side hill I perceive that the forest leaves begin to look
rather rusty or brown. The pendulous, drooping barberries are pretty
well reddened. I am glad when the berries look fair and plump. I love
to gaze at the low island in the pond,—at any island or inaccessible
land. The isle at which you look always seems fairer than the mainland
on which you stand.

I had already bathed in Walden as I passed, but now I forgot that I had
been wetted, and wanted to embrace and mingle myself with the water of
Flint’s Pond this warm afternoon, to get wet inwardly and deeply.

Found on the shore of the pond that singular willow-like herb in
blossom, though its petals were gone. It grows up two feet from
a large woody horizontal root, and droops over to the sand again,
meeting which, it puts out a myriad rootlets from the side of its stem,
fastens itself, and curves upward again to the air, thus spanning or
looping itself along. The bark just above the ground thickens into a
singular cellular or spongy substance, which at length appears to crack
nearer the earth, giving that part of the plant a winged and somewhat
four-sided appearance. It appears to be the cellular tissue, or what
is commonly called the green bark, and likewise invests the root to a
great thickness, somewhat like a fungus, and is of a fawn-color. The
_Lythrum verticillatum_, or swamp loosestrife, or grass poly, but I
think better named, as in Dewey, swamp-willow-herb.

The prinos berries are pretty red. Any redness like cardinal-flowers,
or poke, or the evening sky, or cheronæa, excites us as a red flag does
cows and turkeys.


_Sept. 13._ Railroad causeway, before sunrise.

Here is a morning after a warm, clear, moonlight night almost entirely
without dew or fog. It has been a little breezy through the night, it
is true; but why so great a difference between this and other mornings
of late? I can walk in any direction in the fields without wetting my
feet.

I see the same rays in the dun, buff, or fawn-colored sky now, just
twenty minutes before sunrise, though they do not extend quite so far
as at sundown the other night. Why these rays? What is it divides the
light of the sun? Is it thus divided by distant inequalities in the
surface of the earth, behind which the other parts are concealed, and
since the morning atmosphere is clearer they do not reach so far? Some
small island clouds are the first to look red.

The cross-leaved polygala emits its fragrance as if at will. You are
quite sure you smelled it and are ravished with its sweet fragrance,
but now it has no smell. You must not hold it too near, but hold it on
all sides and at all distances, and there will perchance be wafted to
you sooner or later a very sweet and penetrating fragrance. What it is
like you cannot surely tell, for you do not enjoy it long enough nor
in volume enough to compare it. It is very likely that you will not
discover any fragrance while you are rudely smelling at it; you can
only remember that you once perceived it. Both this and the caducous
polygala are now somewhat faded.

Now the sun is risen. The sky is almost perfectly clear this morning;
not a cloud in the horizon. The morning is not pensive like the
evening, but joyous and youthful, and its blush is soon gone. It is
unfallen day. The Bedford sunrise bell rings sweetly and musically at
this hour, when there is no bustle in the village to drown it. Bedford
deserves a vote of thanks from Concord for it. It is a great good at
these still and sacred hours, when towns can hear each other. It would
be nought at noon.


_Sept. 14._ A great change in the weather from sultry to cold, from one
thin coat to a thick coat or two thin ones.

2 P. M.—To Cliffs.

The dry grass yields a crisped sound to my feet. The white oak
which appears to have made part of a hedge fence once, now standing
in Hubbard’s fence near the Corner road, where it stretches along
horizontally, is (one of its arms, for it has one running each way)
two and a half feet thick, with a sprout growing perpendicularly out
of it eighteen inches in diameter. The corn-stalks standing in stacks,
in long rows along the edges of the corn-fields, remind me of stacks of
muskets.

  [Illustration]

As soon as berries are gone, grapes come. The chalices of the
_Rhexia Virginica_, deer-grass or meadow-beauty, are literally little
reddish chalices now, though many still have petals,—little cream
pitchers.[372] The caducous polygala in cool places is faded almost
white. I see the river at the foot of Fair Haven Hill running up-stream
before the strong cool wind, which here strikes it from the north. The
cold wind makes me shudder after my bath, before I get dressed.

_Polygonum aviculare_—knot-grass, goose-grass, or door-grass—still in
bloom.


_Sept. 15. Monday._ Ice in the pail under the pump, and quite a frost.

Commenced perambulating the town bounds. At 7.30 A. M. rode in company
with —— and Mr. —— to the bound between Acton and Concord near Paul
Dudley’s. Mr. —— told a story of his wife walking in the fields
somewhere, and, to keep the rain off, throwing her gown over her head
and holding it in her mouth, and so being poisoned about her mouth from
the skirts of her dress having come in contact with poisonous plants.
At Dudley’s, which house is handsomely situated, with five large elms
in front, we met the selectmen of Acton, —— —— and —— ——. Here were
five of us. It appeared that we weighed, — —— I think about 160, ——
155, —— about 140, —— 130, myself 127. —— described the wall about
or at Forest Hills Cemetery in Roxbury as being made of stones upon
which they were careful to preserve the moss, so that it cannot be
distinguished from a very old wall.

Found one intermediate bound-stone near the powder-mill drying-house on
the bank of the river. The workmen there wore shoes without iron tacks.
He said that the kernel-house was the most dangerous, the drying-house
next, the press-house next. One of the powder-mill buildings in
Concord? The potato vines and the beans which were still green are now
blackened and flattened by the frost.


END OF VOLUME II




     The Riverside Press

     H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY
     CAMBRIDGE
     MASSACHUSETTS




FOOTNOTES


     [1] [A new book is begun here, but the first date is that of May
     12, 1850, on p. 7 (p. 8 of the original). The first entries may or
     may not belong to this year.]

     [2] [See _Excursions_, p. 228; Riv. 280.]

     [3] [_Walden_, p. 27; Riv. 41, 42.]

     [4] [See _Walden_, p. 185; Riv. 262.]

     [5] [_Walden_, p. 241; Riv. 340.]

     [6] [_Cape Cod_, p. 121; Riv. 143, 144.]

     [7] [_Walden_, p. 126; Riv. 178.]

     [8] [_Walden_, p. 145; Riv. 206.]

     [9] [See _Journal_, vol. i, p. 475.]

     [10] [Channing, p. 298.]

     [11] [See _Journal_, vol. v, June 10, 1853.]

     [12] [_Excursions_, p. 234; Riv. 287.]

     [13] [_Excursions_, p. 225; Riv. 276.]

     [14] [_Walden_, p. 284; Riv. 399.]

     [15] [This in regard to Breed and Newell is written in a fine hand
     at the top of the page, and probably belonged with something on
     the part torn out.]

     [16] [See p. 40.]

     [17] [Where Captain Samuel Wadsworth fell in a battle with the
     Indians, April 18, 1676.]

     [18] [_Walden_, p. 130; Riv. 184, 185.]

     [19] [_Excursions_, p. 226; Riv. 277.]

     [20] I find that they are last year’s. The white pine has not
     blossomed.

     [21] [_Walden_, p. 366; Riv. 513.]

     [22] [_Excursions_, pp. 244, 245; Riv. 300.]

     [23] [_Walden_, pp. 224, 225; Riv. 316.]

     [24] [_Cape Cod_, p. 54; Riv. 62.]

     [25] _Vide_ Kirby and Spence, vol. i.

     [26] [_Walden_, p. 242; Riv. 341.]

     [27] [_Excursions_, p. 234; Riv. 287.]

     [28] [_Walden_, p. 216; Riv. 305.]

     [29] [_Walden_, p. 190; Riv. 268.]

     [30] [_Excursions_, pp. 326-328; Riv. 401-403.]

     [31] [In July, 1850, Thoreau went to Fire Island with other
     friends of Margaret Fuller to search for her remains. See _Cape
     Cod_, pp. 107, 108; Riv. 126, 127. See also next page.]

     [32] [Part of draft of a letter to H. G. O. Blake, dated Aug. 9,
     1850. Other parts follow. _Familiar Letters._]

     [33] [See _Cape Cod_, p. 108; Riv. 127. See also p. 80 of this
     volume.]

     [34] [_Familiar Letters_, Aug. 9, 1850.]

     [35] [_Cape Cod_, p. 155; Riv. 185.]

     [36] [_Cape Cod_, p. 225; Riv. 271.]

     [37] [_Familiar Letters_, Aug. 9, 1850.]

     [38] [Blake was at the time living in Milton, Mass.]

     [39] [_Familiar Letters_, Aug. 9, 1850.]

     [40] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 478; _Misc._, Riv. 282,
     283.]

     [41] [_Familiar Letters_, Aug. 9, 1850.]

     [42] [Channing, p. 78.]

     [43] [_Familiar Letters_, Aug. 9, 1850.]

     [44] [Channing, pp. 36, 37.]

     [45] [See pp. 78, 79.]

     [46] [An example of Thoreau’s practice work,—the same story told
     in two forms. For its final form see _Cape Cod_, p. 88; Riv. 103,
     104.]

     [47] [_Excursions_, p. 212; Riv. 260.]

     [48] [_Excursions_, pp. 212, 213; Riv. 260, 261.]

     [49] [_Excursions_, p. 215; Riv. 263.]

     [50] [_Excursions_, pp. 214-216; Riv. 263, 264.]

     [51] [_Walden_, pp. 209, 210; Riv. 296.]

     [52] [_Walden_, p. 215; Riv. 303.]

     [53] [_Walden_, pp. 135, 136; Riv. 192.]

     [54] Wild holly?

     [55] [Charles Dunbar was Thoreau’s uncle. See Sanborn, pp. 21-23,
     92, 93; also _Journal_, vol. iv, Jan. 1, 1853, and vol. viii, Apr.
     3, 1856.]

     [56] [Channing, p. 293 (as prose).]

     [57] [Channing, pp. 76, 77; Sanborn, pp. 258, 259.]

     [58] [See _Walden_, p. 315; Riv. 441.]

     [59] [_Walden_, p. 240; Riv. 338.]

     [60] [_Walden_, p. 240; Riv. 338.]

     [61] [_Three Years in California_, 1850.]

     [62] [_Excursions_, p. 3; Riv. 3.]

     [63] [_Walden_, p. 361; Riv. 505, 506.]

     [64] [_Walden_, p. 362; Riv. 507.]

     [65] [_Excursions_, p. 100; Riv. 124.]

     [66] [_Excursions_, p. 15; Riv. 18.]

     [67] [Channing, pp. 70, 71; Sanborn, pp. 259, 260.]

     [68] [See pp. 49-51.]

     [69] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 107, 108; Riv. 126, 127. See also pp. 49-51
     of this volume.]

     [70] [_Walden_, pp. 346, 347; Riv. 484, 485.]

     [71] [_Walden_, pp. 20, 21; Riv. 32.]

     [72] [_Walden_, p. 265 (Riv. 372, 373), where October is the month
     named.]

     [73] It reached its height in ’52, and has now fallen decidedly in
     the fall of ’53.

     [74] [See _Excursions_, p. 48; Riv. 59.]

     [75] [See pp. 499, 500.]

     [76] [_Walden_, p. 257; Riv. 361, 362.]

     [77] [_Excursions_, p. 99; Riv. 123.]

     [78] [_Excursions_, p. 309; Riv. 379.]

     [79] [_Excursions_, p. 315; Riv. 387.]

     [80] [_Excursions_, p. 246; Riv. 302.]

     [81] [_Excursions_, p. 247; Riv. 303.]

     [82] [_Excursions_, p. 247; Riv. 303.]

     [83] [_Excursions_, p. 212; Riv. 259, 260.]

     [84] [_Excursions_, p. 231; Riv. 283.]

     [85] [_Excursions_, p. 217; Riv. 266.]

     [86] [_Excursions_, p. 217; Riv. 265, 266.]

     [87] [_Excursions_, p. 321; Riv. 394, 395.]

     [88] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 480, 481; _Misc._, Riv.
     285, 286.]

     [89] [_Excursions_, p. 91; Riv. 113.]

     [90] [_Excursions_, p. 304; Riv. 373.]

     [91] [_Excursions_, p. 235; Riv. 287, 288.]

     [92] [See p. 161.]

     [93] [_Excursions_, p. 219; Riv. 268.]

     [94] [_Excursions_, p. 319; Riv. 392.]

     [95] [_Ibid._]

     [96] [_Excursions_, p. 319; Riv. 392.]

     [97] [_Excursions_, p. 211; Riv. 258, 259.]

     [98] [_Maine Woods_, p. 153; Riv. 187.]

     [99] [_Ibid._]

     [100] [_Ibid._]

     [101] [See _Journal_, vol. iii, pp. 149, 150, 241-244.]

     [102] Panicled andromeda.

     [103] [Evidently cocoons of the Promethea moth.]

     [104] [_Excursions_, p. 320; Riv. 393.]

     [105] [_Excursions_, pp. 319, 320; Riv. 392-394.]

     [106] [See _Journal_, vol. i, p. 338.]

     [107] [_Five Years of a Hunter’s Life in the Far Interior of South
     Africa_, 1850.]

     [108] [_Excursions_, p. 225; Riv. 275, 276.]

     [109] [_Excursions_, p. 225; Riv. 276.]

     [110] [Thoreau supplies the word.]

     [111] [_Walden_, p. 11; Riv. 19.]

     [112] [_Excursions_, p. 206; Riv. 253.]

     [113] [The brackets are Thoreau’s.]

     [114] [_Excursions_, p. 205; Riv. 251.]

     [115] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 460, 461; _Misc._, Riv.
     260.]

     [116] [_Excursions_, p. 220; Riv. 269, 270.]

     [117] [The bracketed words are Thoreau’s.]

     [118] [_Excursions_, p. 231; Riv. 283, 284.]

     [119] [_Excursions_, p. 232; Riv. 284.]

     [120] [_Excursions_, pp. 232, 233; Riv. 285.]

     [121] The fresh ruins of Nauvoo, the bright brick towns.
     Davenport?

     [122] [_Excursions_, pp. 223, 224; Riv. 274.]

     [123] [Arnold Guyot, _The Earth and Man_. Translated by C. C.
     Felton.]

     [124] My own.

     [125] [Guyot, _op. cit._]

     [126] [Guyot, _op. cit._]

     [127] [_Excursions_, p. 239; Riv. 293.]

     [128] [_Excursions_, p. 240; Riv. 294.]

     [129] [_Excursions_, p. 240; Riv. 294.]

     [130] [_Excursions_, p. 241; Riv. 295.]

     [131] [_Excursions_, pp. 224, 225; Riv. 275.]

     [132] [_Excursions_, p. 241; Riv. 296.]

     [133] [_Excursions_, p. 232; Riv. 284, 285.]

     [134] [_Excursions_, p. 223; Riv. 273.]

     [135] [_Excursions_, p. 225; Riv. 275.]

     [136] [See _Excursions_, p. 319; Riv. 392.]

     [137] [See p. 300.]

     [138] [W. E. Channing, “Walden Spring.”]

     [139] [_Excursions_, p. 216; Riv. 264, 265.]

     [140] [_Excursions_, p. 238; Riv. 291.]

     [141] [_Excursions_, p. 238; Riv. 292.]

     [142] [See p. 107.]

     [143] [_Excursions_, p. 225; Riv. 275, 276.]

     [144] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 476-478; _Misc._, Riv.
     280-282.]

     [145] [_Cape Cod and Miscellanies_, p. 462; _Misc._, Riv. 262.]

     [146] [_Excursions_, p. 238; Riv. 292.]

     [147] [_Excursions_, p. 240; Riv. 294.]

     [148] [_Excursions_, p. 244; Riv. 299.]

     [149] [_Excursions_, p. 225; Riv. 276.]

     [150] [_Excursions_, p. 240; Riv. 295.]

     [151] [_Excursions_, p. 225; Riv. 276.]

     [152] [In _The Cæsars_.]

     [153] [Supplied by Thoreau.]

     [154] [Blackwell, _Court of Augustus_; quoted by De Quincey in a
     note.]

     [155] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 390; _Misc._, Riv. 174.]

     [156] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 392-394; _Misc._, Riv.
     177-179.]

     [157] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 394, 395; _Misc._, Riv.
     179, 180.]

     [158] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 397; _Misc._, Riv. 183.]

     [159] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 397-399; _Misc._, Riv.
     183-185.]

     [160] [The brackets are Thoreau’s.]

     [161] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 396; _Misc._, Riv. 181.]

     [162] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 399, 400; _Misc._, Riv.
     185, 186.]

     [163] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 393; _Misc._, Riv. 177,
     178.]

     [164] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 473; _Misc._, Riv. 275,
     276.]

     [165] [_Walden_, p.72; Riv. 103.]

     [166] [_Excursions_, pp. 235, 236; Riv. 288, 289.]

     [167] [_Excursions_, p. 328; Riv. 403.]

     [168] [Supplied by Thoreau.]

     [169] [The bracketed portions in both cases are Thoreau’s.]

     [170] [Toads. See p. 250.]

     [171] [_Excursions_, p. 236; Riv. 289.]

     [172] [_Excursions_, pp. 236, 237; Riv. 289-291.]

     [173] [_Excursions_, p. 237; Riv. 290.]

     [174] [_Excursions_, p. 301; Riv. 370.]

     [175] [_Excursions_, p. 316; Riv. 388.]

     [176] [_Excursions_, p. 294; Riv. 361.]

     [177] [_Excursions_, p. 301; Riv. 369.]

     [178] [_Excursions_, p. 316; Riv. 388, 389.]

     [179] _Vide_ [p. 286].

     [180] Ivy?

     [181] Golden senecio.

     [182] Corydalis.

     [183] [Doubtless Blue Hill is meant, not the lower eminence known
     as Milton Hill.]

     [184] [Toads. See p. 250.]

     [185] [Supplied by Thoreau.]

     [186] Bigelow got this from Kalm. _Vide_ extract from Kalm.

     [187] _Parietes_, _sepes_, _sepimenta_ [alternatives for _septa_].

     [188] [_Excursions_, p. 316; Riv. 388, 389.]

     [189] [_Walden_, p. 308; Riv. 432.]

     [190] [_Excursions_, p. 316; Riv. 389.]

     [191] [Bigelow, _American Medical Botany_, vol. i.]

     [192] [Bigelow, _American Medical Botany_, vol. i.]

     [193] [_Excursions_, p. 221; Riv. 271.]

     [194] [_Excursions_, p. 328; Riv. 403.]

     [195] [The first mention in the Journal of a bird the identity of
     which Thoreau seems never to have made out. See _Journal_, vol. i,
     Introduction, p. xlvi.]

     [196] [That is, Darwin.]

     [197] [_Walden_, p. 14; Riv. 22.]

     [198] [The brackets are Thoreau’s.]

     [199] [The word is supplied by Thoreau.]

     [200] [Channing, p. 78.]

     [201] Toad.

     [202] [See _Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 471, 472; _Misc._,
     Riv. 274.]

     [203] [Otherwise spelled “cucuyo,” a West Indian firefly.]

     [204] [Toads. See p. 250.]

     [205] How quietly we entertain the possibility of joy, of
     recreation, of light into [_sic_] our souls! We should be more
     excited at the pulling of a tooth.

     [206] [_Excursions_, p. 111; Riv. 137.]

     [207] [No water is used in producing the sound. Thoreau had been
     misinformed by one of his neighbors. See _Excursions_, p. 111;
     Riv. 137.]

     [208] Toad?

     [209] [_Excursions_, p. 326; Riv. 401.]

     [210] [_Rough Notes of Journeys in the Pampas and Andes._]

     [211] [Supplied by Thoreau.]

     [212] [Bigelow, in his _Florula Bostoniensis_, says of this plant,
     now generally called the evening-primrose, “In the country it is
     vulgarly known by the name of _Scabish_, a corruption probably
     of _Scabious_, from which however it is a very different plant.”
     Josselyn gives a quaint description of it under the name of
     Lysimachus or Loose-strife in his _Two Voyages_, and says it “is
     taken by the English for Scabious.”]

     [213] I have since heard some complete strains.

     [214] Pale lobelia.

     [215] [Evidently not _Aster miser_, or, as it is now called _A.
     lateriflorus_, which flowers much later in the season.]

     [216] [See p. 252.]

     [217] [Night of June 12. See p. 249.]

     [218] [See pp. 213, 214.]

     [219] [Channing, p. 85.]

     [220] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 473-476; _Misc._, Riv.
     276-279.]

     [221] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 475, 476; _Misc._, Riv.
     279.]

     [222] Rue [_i. e._ meadow-rue].

     [223] [See _Journal_, vol. i, p. 59.]

     [224] [Thoreau’s name for the field sparrow (_Spizella pusilla_,
     or, as it was called by Nuttall, _Fringilla juncorum_). He had the
     name from his old friend Minott.]

     [225] [_Excursions_, p. 327; Riv. 402.]

     [226] [_Excursions_, p. 327; Riv. 402.]

     [227] [See p. 155.]

     [228] [See _Walden_, pp. 140, 141; Riv. 199.]

     [229] [_Excursions_, p. 327; Riv. 403.]

     [230] [See _Excursions_, p. 326; Riv. 401.]

     [231] _Vide_ [p. 337.]

     [232] [The field sparrow. See _Journal_, vol. i, p. 252, note.]

     [233] [_Excursions_, p. 323; Riv. 398.]

     [234] [Channing, p. 84.]

     [235] [This is queried in pencil. See p. 278.]

     [236] [_Excursions_, p. 294; Riv. 361.]

     [237] [His birthday was July 12.]

     [238] [_Walden_, pp. 358, 359; Riv. 502.]

     [239] [_Walden_, p. 77; Riv. 110, 111.]

     [240] [So Channing (p. 128), who calls it “one of Thoreau’s names
     for some bird, so named by the farmers.” The word as written is
     far from clear.]

     [241] _Vide_ p. [373.]

     [242] [Channing, pp. 126-128.]

     [243] [Channing, pp. 128, 129.]

     [244] [See Hawthorne’s story “The Minister’s Black Veil” and
     footnote to the title, _Twice-Told Tales_, Riverside Edition, p.
     52.]

     [245] [_Excursions_, p. 305; Riv. 375.]

     [246] [_Walden_, p. 355; Riv. 497.]

     [247] _Harper’s New Monthly_, vol. i, p. 648, from _Chambers’
     Edinburgh Journal_.

     [248] [_Walden_, p. 355; Riv. 497.]

     [249] [_Excursions_, pp. 56, 57; Riv. 69, 70.]

     [250] [_Excursions_, p. 57; Riv. 71.]

     [251] [_Excursions_, p. 88; Riv. 109, 110.]

     [252] [_Excursions_, p. 57; Riv. 71.]

     [253] [_Cape Cod_, p. 267; Riv. 323.]

     [254] [_Cape Cod_, p. 14; Riv. 15.]

     [255] [_Cape Cod_, p. 16; Riv. 17.]

     [256] [_Cape Cod_, p. 14; Riv. 15.]

     [257] [See _Excursions_, p. 79; Riv. 98.]

     [258] [_Cape Cod_, p. 15; Riv. 15, 16.]

     [259] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 14, 15; Riv. 15.]

     [260] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 15, 16; Riv. 16.]

     [261] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 16, 17; Riv. 17, 18.]

     [262] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 16, 17; Riv. 17-19.]

     [263] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 16, 18; Riv. 17, 19.]

     [264] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 17, 18; Riv. 18, 19.]

     [265] [Here he tells the story in a different form, showing an
     intention of using it later.]

     [266] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 182-184; Riv. 219-221.]

     [267] [_Cape Cod_, p. 157; Riv. 187, 188.]

     [268] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 109, 110; Riv. 129.]

     [269] [See _Cape Cod_, pp. 97, 98; Riv. 115.]

     [270] The nidus of the animal of _Natica_,—cells with eggs in
     sand.

     [271] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 109, 110; Riv. 129.]

     [272] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 68, 69; Riv. 79.]

     [273] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 141, 142; Riv. 168, 169.]

     [274] [Marston Watson, Thoreau’s friend and correspondent. See
     _Familiar Letters_, _passim_, and especially note to letter of
     April 25, 1858.]

     [275] [Sir Charles Lyell, _A Second Visit to the United States_.]

     [276] [_Excursions_, pp. 329, 330; Riv. 405. See also pp. 383-385
     of this volume.]

     [277] [_Excursions_, p. 327; Riv. 402.]

     [278] [_Excursions_ p. 317; Riv. 389.]

     [279] [_Excursions_, p. 295; Riv. 362.]

     [280] [_Excursions_, pp. 329, 330; Riv. 405, 406. See also p. 374
     of this volume.]

     [281] [_Excursions_, pp. 329, 330; Riv. 405, 406.]

     [282] [See _Excursions_, p. 328; Riv. 403.]

     [283] [_Walden_, p. 238; Riv. 336.]

     [284] Stark and his companions met the enemy in the hay-field.

     [285] Some were drawn out of the swamp behind Abiel Wheeler’s. Old
     lady Potter tells me she cannot remember when they were not there.

     [286] [See _Excursions_, pp. 16, 17; Riv. 20.]

     [287] [_Excursions_, p. 79; Riv. 98.]

     [288] [_Excursions_, p. 27; Riv. 32, 33.]

     [289] [_Excursions_, pp. 29, 30; Riv. 36.]

     [290] [_Excursions_, pp. 82, 83; Riv. 102.]

     [291] [_Excursions_, pp. 77-79; Riv. 95-98.]

     [292] [_Excursions_, p. 27; Riv. 33.]

     [293] [_Excursions_, p. 78; Riv. 97.]

     [294] [_Excursions_, p. 79; Riv. 98.]

     [295] [See _Excursions_, p. 290; also _Journal_, vol. iii, p.
     117.]

     [296] A farmer tells me that he knows when his horse has eaten it,
     because it makes him slobber badly.

     [297] [_Excursions_, p. 83; Riv. 102, 103.]

     [298] [Channing, pp. 85, 86.]

     [299] [Channing, p. 214.]

     [300] [Channing, p. 214.]

     [301] [Channing, p. 74.]

     [302] [Channing, p. 215.]

     [303] [Channing, p. 74.]

     [304] [Channing, p. 214.]

     [305] [_Excursions_, p. 3; Riv. 3.]

     [306] [Channing, pp. 229, 230.]

     [307] [Channing, p. 77.]

     [308] [_Excursions_, p. 88; Riv. 109.]

     [309] [Channing, pp. 287, 288.]

     [310] [The word “mulleins” is queried in pencil.]

     [311] [Channing, p. 215.]

     [312] Yes.

     [313] [Channing, p. 215.]

     [314] [Channing, p. 216.]

     [315] [Channing, p. 87.]

     [316] [_Excursions_, p. 81; Riv. 100, 101.]

     [317] [Channing, p. 70.]

     [318] [Channing, p. 74.]

     [319] [Channing, pp. 74, 215.]

     [320] [Channing, p. 249.]

     [321] [Channing, pp. 75, 216.]

     [322] [Channing, p. 216.]

     [323] [Channing, pp. 301, 302.]

     [324] [Channing, p. 301.]

     [325] [Channing, p. 203.]

     [326] [Channing, p. 86.]

     [327] [Channing, p. 87.]

     [328] [Channing, pp. 60, 61.]

     [329] [Channing, pp. 60, 61.]

     [330] [Channing, p. 60.]

     [331] [Channing, p. 220.]

     [332] [Channing, p. 78.]

     [333] [Channing, pp. 173-175.]

     [334] [Channing, p. 164.]

     [335] [Channing, p. 199.]

     [336] [Channing, p. 216.]

     [337] [Channing, p. 222.]

     [338] [Channing, p. 76.]

     [339] [_Ibid._]

     [340] [Channing, p. 175.]

     [341] [Channing, p. 222.]

     [342] [Channing, p. 69.]

     [343] _Vide_ last journal for bare foot track in Corner road [p.
     328 of this volume].

     [344] [Channing, p. 70.]

     [345] [Channing, p. 86.]

     [346] By Second Division Brook.

     [347] [Channing, p. 70.]

     [348] _Vide_ hawks [p. 480].

     [349] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 468; _Misc._, Riv. 270.]

     [350] [See _Excursions_, p. 327; Riv. 403.]

     [351] [Channing, pp. 251, 252.]

     [352] [Channing, p. 90.]

     [353] [_Excursions_, p. 324; Riv. 398.]

     [354] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 456; _Misc._, Riv. 254,
     255.]

     [355] [_Excursions_, p. 209; Riv. 257.]

     [356] [Channing, p. 115.]

     [357] [Channing, p. 116.]

     [358] [Channing, p. 116.]

     [359] [_Excursions_, p. 323; Riv. 397, 398.]

     [360] [Channing, pp. 116, 117.]

     [361] _Vide_ back [p. 458].

     [362] It was a cuckoo.

     [363] [Channing, p. 217.]

     [364] [_Excursions_, pp. 253-255; Riv. 311, 312.]

     [365] [Channing, pp. 216, 217.]

     [366] [_Excursions_, pp. 80, 81; Riv. 100.]

     [367] [_Walden_, pp. 224, 225; Riv. 316, 317.]

     [368] [_Excursions_, p. 331; Riv. 407.]

     [369] [Channing, p. 163.]

     [370] [Channing, pp. 199, 200.]

     [371] [Channing, p. 217.]

     [372] [Channing, p. 222.]







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