9.30 P. M.—To Fair Haven . . .

  McKean has sawed another of the pines under Fair Haven. He says it made eighty-two feet in length of mill-logs, and was so straight that it would have made a first-rate mast eighty feet long. I told him that Nathan Hosmer had told me that he once helped saw down a pine three feet in diameter, that they sawed it clean through and it still stood on the stump, and it took two men to push it over. McKean could understand how this might be done by wedging. He says that he often runs his saw straight through a tree without wedges and without its pinching to within an eighth of an inch of the other side before it breaks . . .

  Now from the shanty plain I see the sun descending into the west.

  Reading from my manuscripts to Miss Emerson this evening and using the word “god,” in one instance, in perchance a merely heathenish sense, she inquired hastily in a tone of dignified anxiety, “Is that god spelt with a little g?” Fortunately it was. (I had brought in the word “god” without any solemnity of voice or connection.) So I went on as if nothing had happened . . .

  Here I am on the Cliffs at half past three or four o’clock. The snow more than a foot deep over all the land . . .

  Standing on the hill on the Baker Farm to-day, the level shrub oak plain under Fair Haven appeared as if Walden and other small ponds, and perhaps Fair Haven, had anciently sunk down in it, and the Cliffs been pushed up, for the level is continued in many cases even over extensive hollows . . .

  The Governor, Bout well (?), lectured before the Lyceum to-night. Quite democratic. He wore no badge of his office. I believe that not even his brass buttons were official, but, perchance, worn with some respect to his station. If he could have divested himself a little more completely in his tone and manner of a sense of the dignity which belonged to his office, it would have been better still.

  It is good to see Minott’s hens pecking and scratching the ground. What never-failing health they suggest! Even the sick hen is so naturally sick—like a green leaf turning to brown. No wonder men love to have hens about them and hear their creaking note. They are even laying eggs from time to time still—the undespairing race!

  Minott was telling me to-day about his going across lots on snow-shoes. Why do they not use them now? He thinks the snows are not so deep . . .

  Channing has great respect for McKean, he stands on so low a level. Says he’s great for conversation. He never says anything, hardly answers a question, but keeps at work; never exaggerates, nor uses an exclamation, and does as he agrees to. He appears to have got his shoulder to the wheel of the universe. But the other day he went greater lengths with me, as he and Barry were sawing down a pine, both kneeling of necessity. I said it was wet work for the knees in the snow. He observed, looking up at me, “We pray without ceasing.

  I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper in a week, for I now take the weekly Tribune, and for a few days past, it seems to me, I have not dwelt in Concord; the sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say to so much to me. Thou cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day’s devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day. To read of things distant and sounding betrays us into slighting theses which are then apparently near and small. We learn to look abroad for our mind and spirit’s daily nutriment, and what is this dull town to me? what are theses plain fields and the aspects of this earth and these skies? All summer and far into the fall I unconsciously went by the newspapers and the news, and not I find it was because the morning and evening were full of news for me. My walks were full of incidents. I attended not to the affairs of Europe, but to my own affairs in Concord fields . . .

  It is a sharp, cutting cold day, stiffening the face. Thermometers have lately sunk to 20° . . .

  P.M.—Deep Cut, going to Fair Haven Hill. No music from the telegraph harp on the causeway, where the wind is strong, but in the Cut this cold day I hear memorable strains . . .

  Where the mountains in the horizon are well wooded and the snow does not lodge, they still look blue. All but a narrow segment of the sky in the northwest and southeast being suddenly overcast by a passing kind of snow-squall, though no snow falls, I look into the clear sky with its floating clouds in the northwest as from night into day, now at 4 P.M. The sun sets about five.

  Walden and White Ponds are a vitreous greenish blue, like patches of the winter sky seen in the west before sundown . . .

  When the cars passed, I being on the pond (Walden), the sun was setting and suffusing the clouds far and near with rosy light. Even the steam from the engine, as its flocks or wreaths rose above the shadow of the woods, became a rosy cloud even fairer than the rest, but it was soon dissipated . . .

  When I come out on the causeway, I beheld a splendid picture in the west. The damask-lined clouds, like rifts from a coal mine, which sparkle beneath, seen diving into the west. When clouds rise in mid-afternoon, you cannot foresee what sunset picture they are preparing for us. A single elm by Hayden’s is relieved against the amber and golden border, deepening into dusky but soon to be red, in the horizon.

  When Sophia told R. Rice that Dr. B. said that Foster was an infidel and was injuring the young men, etc., “Did he?” he observed. “Well, he is a great man. He swims in pretty deep water, but it isn’t very extensive.” When she added, “Mr. Frost says that Garrison had to apologize for printing Foster’s sermon,” he said, “Did he? Well, they may set as many back fires as they please; they won’t be of any use; they’ll soon go out.” She said the selectmen were going to ask seven dollars instead of five for the hall. But he said that he would build them a hall, if they would engage to give him five dollars steadily. To be sure, it would riot be quite so handsome as the present, but it should have the same kind of seats.

  The clay in the Deep Cut is melting and streaming down, glistening in the sun. It is I that melts, while the harp sounds on high, and the snow-drifts on the west side look like clouds.

  We turned down the brook at Heywood’s meadow . . .

  The sun reflected from the sandy, gravelly bottom sometimes a bright sunny streak no bigger than your finger, reflected from a ripple as from a prism, and the sunlight, reflected from a hundred points of the surface of the rippling brook, enabled me to realize summer. But the dog partly spoiled the transparency of the water by running in the brook . . .

  Having gone a quarter of a mile beyond the bridge, where C. calls this his Spanish Brook, I looked back from the top of the hill on the south into this deep dell . . .

  Now we are on Fair Haven, still but a snow plain . . .

  We returned down the brook at Heywood’s meadow.

  It is good to break and smell the black birch twigs now. The lichens look rather bright to-day, near the town line, in Heywood’s wood by the pond . . .

  The woodpecker’s work in Emerson’s wood on the Cliff-top, the trees being partly killed by the top, and the grubs having hatched under the bark . . .

  About 2 o’clock, P. M. these days, after a fair forenoon, there is wont to blow up from the northwest a squally cloud, spanning the heavens, but before it reaches the southeast horizon it has lifted above the northwest, and so it leaves the sky clear there for sunset, while it has sunk low and dark in the southeast.

  The men on the freight-train, who go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often and I think they take me for an “employé;” and am I not?

  As I stand under the hill beyond J. Hosmer’s and look over the plains westward toward Acton and see the farmhouses nearly half a mile apart, few and solitary, in these great fields between these stretching woods… I cannot realize that this is that hopeful young America which is famous throughout the world for its activity and enterprise, and this is the most thickly settled and Yankee part of it . . .

  3 P.M.—Went round by Tuttle’s road, and so out on to the Walden road . . .

  About Brister’s Spring the ferns, which have been covered with snow, and the grass are still quite green.

  I have come to see the clay and sand in the Cut. A reddish tinge in the earth, stains . . .

  I observed this afternoon that the ground where they are digging for some scales near the depot was frozen about nine inches where the snow has lain most and sixteen inches where the road was . . .

  Heard C. [William Ellery Channing] lecture to-night. It was a bushel of nuts. Perhaps the most original lecture I ever heard. Ever so unexpected, not to be foretold, and so sententious that you could not look at him and take his thought at the same time. You had to give your undivided attention to the thoughts, for you were not assisted by set phrases or modes of speech intervening. There was no sloping up or down to or from his points. It was all genius, no talent. It required more close attention, more abstraction from surrounding circumstances, than any lecture I have heard. For, well as I know C., he more than any man disappoints my expectation. When I see him in the desk, hear him, I cannot realize that I ever saw him before. He will be strange, unexpected, to his best acquaintance. I cannot associate the lecturer with the companion of my walks. It was from so original and peculiar a point of view, yet just to himself in the main, that I doubt if three in the audience apprehended a tithe that he said. It was so hard to hear that doubtless few made the exertion. A thick succession of mountain passes and no intermediate slopes and plains. Other lectures, even the best, in which so much space is given to the elaborate development of a few ideas, seemed somewhat meagre in comparison. Yet it would be how much more glorious if talent were added to genius, if there [were] a just arrangement and development of the thoughts, and each step were not a leap, but he ran a space to take a yet higher leap!

  Most of the spectators sat in front of the performer but here was one who, by accident, sat all the while on one side, and his report was peculiar and startling.

  Sir F. Head thinks that the greater cold—equal to thirteen degrees of latitude—in this country is owing to the extensive forests, which prevent the sun and wind from melting the snows, which therefore accumulate on the ground and create a cold stratuaa of air, which, blown to warmer ones by the northwest wind, condenses the least into snow. But, in Concord woods at any rate, the snow (in the winter) melts faster, and beside is not so deep as in the fields. Not so toward spring, on the north sides of lulls and in hollows. At any rate I think he has not allowed enough for the warmth of the woods.

  Snow quite deep. The sun had set without a cloud in the sky,—a rare occurrence, but I missed the clouds, which make the glory of evening . . .

  Venus is now like a little moon in the west, and the lights in the village twinkle like stars. It is perfectly still and not very cold . . .

  The reflector of the cars, as I stand over the Deep Cut, makes a large and dazzling light in this air . . .

  Now through the Spring Woods and up Fair Haven Hill. Here, in the midst of a clearing where the choppers have been leaving the woods in pieces to-day, and the tops of the pine trees are strewn about half buried in snow, only the saw-logs being carried off, it is stiller and milder than by day . . .

  The moonlight now is very splendid in the untouched pine woods above the Cliffs, alternate patches of shade and light . . .

  Heard Professor Blasius lecture on the tornado this evening. He said that nine vessels were wrecked daily in the world on an average; that Professor Dove of Berlin was the best meteorologist in his opinion, but had not studied the effects of wind in the fields so much as some here . . .

  The audience are never tired of hearing how far the wind carried some man, woman, or child, or family Bible, but they are immediately tired if you undertake to give them a scientific account of it.

  Carried a new cloak to Johnny Riordan. I found that the shanty was warmed by the simple social relations of the Irish . . .

  It now rains,—a drizzling rain mixed with mist, which ever and anon fills the air to the height of fifteen or twenty feet. It makes what they call an old-fashioned mill privilege in the streets, i.e. I suppose, a privilege on a small stream good only for a part of the year.

  Perhaps the best evidence of an amelioration of the climate -at least that the snows are less deep than formerly-is the snow-shoes which still lie about in so many garrets, now useless, though the population of this town has not essentially increased for seventy-five years past, and the travelling within the limits of the town accordingly not much facilitated. No man ever cases them now, yet the old men used them in their youth.

  9 A.M.—to Conantum.

  The rain has diminished the snow and hardened the crust, and made bare ground in many places. A yellow water, a foot or two deep, covers the ice on the meadows, but is not frozen quite hard enough to bear. As the river swells, the ice cracks along both sides over.

  Our meetings go on finely—Rev. Sam. Johnson, Mr Alcott, Ed. Quincy so far. People were delighted at Mr A. and listened with great enthusiasm. Young Johnson is magnificent, and you may safely go a hundred miles to hear. I hope nothing will prevent one of you from coming, & let me know as early in the wk. as you can. Can’t you [read to] us from your Life in the woods, with Mr Alcott pronounces just eh thing for us—I will meet you at the cars.

  One discovery in meteorology, one significant observation, is a good deal. I am grateful to the man who introduces order among the clouds. Yet I look up into the heavens so fancy free, I am almost glad not to know any law for the winds.

  I find the partridges among the fallen pine-tops on Fair Haven these afternoons, an hour before sundown, ready to commence budding in the neighboring orchard. The mosses on the rocks look green where the snow has melted. This must be one of the spring signs, when spring comes.

  The last two or three days have been among the coldest in the winter, though not so cold as a few weeks ago. I notice, in the low ground covered with bushes near Flint’s Pond, many little rabbit-paths in the snow, where they have travelled in each other’s tracks, or many times back and forth, six inches wide. This, too, is probably their summer habit. The rock by the pond is remarkable for its umbilicaria (?).

  Talked to two men and a boy fishing on Fair Haven, just before sunset. (Heard the dog bark in Baker’s wood as I came down the brook.) They had caught a fine parcel of pickerel and perch. The perch especially were full of spawn. the boy had caught a large bream which had risen to the surface, in his hands. They had none of them ever seen one before in the winter, though they sometimes catch chivins. They had also kicked to death a muskrat that was crossing the southwest end of the pond on the snow. They told me of two otters being killed in Sudbury this winter, beside some coons near here.

  Thank you for your remembrance, though the motto you suggest is impracticable, The People’s Course is full for the season; and even if it were not, your name would probably not pass; because it is not merely necessary that each lecturer should continue well the course, but that he shall be known as the very man beforehand. Whatever draws less than fifteen hundred hearers damages the finances of the movement, so low is the admission, and so large the expense. But, Thoreau, you are a better speaker than many, but a far better writer still. Do you wish to swap any of your “wood-notes wild” for dollars? If yea, and you will sell me some articles, shorter, if you please, than the former, I will try to coin them for you. Is it a bargain? Yours,

  Horace Greeley

  Returned across Flint’s Pond and the wood-lot, where some Irishman must have tried his first experiment in chopping, his first winter, where the trees were hacked off two feet from the ground, as if with a hatchet,—standing on every side of the tree by turns, and crossing the carf a hundred ways. The owner can commonly tell when an Irishman has trespassed on his wood-lot . . .

  I cut my initials on the bee tree. Now, at 11.30 perhaps, the sky begins to be slightly overcast . . .

  It is pleasant to see the reddish-green leaves of the lambkill still hanging with fruit above the snow, for I am now crossing the shrub oak plain to the Cliffs . . .

  Old Mr. Joe Hosmer chopping wood at his door. He is full of meat. Had a crack with him. I told him I was studying lichens, pointing to his wood. He thought I meant the wood itself. Well, he supposed he’d had more to do with wood than I had. “Now,” said he, “there are two kinds of white oak. Most people wouldn’t notice it. When I’ve been chopping, say along in March, after the sap begins to start, I’ll sometimes come to an oak that will color my axe steel-blue like a sword-blade. Well, that oak is fine-grained and heavier than the common, and I call it blue white oak, for no other blues my axe so. Then there are two kinds of black oak, or yellow-bark. One is the mean black oak, or bastard. Then there’s a kind of red oak smells like urine three or four days old” . . .

  [The rest of the page (a half) cut out.]

  been the track of an otter near the Clamshell Hill, for it looks too large for a mink . . .

  Found three or four parmelias (caperata) in fruit on a white oak on the high river-bank between Tarbell’s and Harrington’s.

  At 9 o’clock P. M. to the woods by the full moon . . .

  Going through the high field beyond the lone graveyard, I see the track of a boy’s sled before me, and his footsteps shining like silver between me and the moon . . .

  As I look down the railroad, standing on the west brink of the Deep Cut, I seem to see in the manner in which the moon is reflected from the west slope covered with snow, in the sort of misty light as if a fine vapor were rising from it, a promise or sign of spring . . .

  3 P.M.—Down the railroad.

  Cloudy but springlike. When the frost comes out of the ground, there is a corresponding thawing of the man. The earth is now half bare. These March winds, which make the woods roar and fill the world with life and bustle, appear to wake up the trees out of their winter sleep and excite the sap to flow. I have no doubt they serve sonic such use, as well as to hasten the evaporation of the snow and water.

  The mingled sand and water flowing down the bank, the water inclines ever to separate from the sand, and while the latter is detained by its weight and by friction beneath and on the sides, the water flows in a semicylindrical channel which it makes for itself, still carrying much sand with it . When the flowing drop of sand and water in front meets with new resistance, or the impetus of the water is diminished, perhaps by being absorbed, the drop of sand suddenly swells out laterally and dries, while the water, accumulating, pushes out a new sandy drop on one side and forms a new leafy lobe, and by other streams one is piled upon another . . .

  That dull-gray-barked willow shows the silvery down of its forthcoming catkins. I believe that I saw blackbirds yesterday. The ice in the pond is soft on the surface, but it is still more than a foot thick. Is that slender green weed which I draw up on my sounding-stone where it is forty feet deep and upward Nitella gracrilis (allied to Chara), described in London?

  The woods I walked in in my youth are cut off. Is it not time that I ceased to sing? My groves are invaded. Water that has been so long detained on the hills and uplands by frost is now rapidly finding its level in the ocean. All lakes without outlet are oceans, larger or smaller.

  I see the Populus (apparently tremuloides, not grandidentata) at the end of the railroad causeway, showing the down of its ament. Bigelow makes it flower in April, the grandidentata in May.

  I see the sand flowing in the Cut and hear the harp at the same time. Who shall say that the primitive forces are not still at work? Nature has not lost her pristine vigor, neither has he who sees this. To see the first dust fly is a pleasant sight. I saw it on the east side of till’ Deep Cut.

We go out without our coats, saunter along the street, look at the aments of the willow beginning to appear and the swelling buds of the maple and the elm. The Great Meadows are water instead of ice. I see the ice on the bottom in white sheets. And now one great cake rises amid the bushes (behind Peter’s). I see no ducks . . .

  With what infinite and unwearied expectation and proclamation the cocks usher in every dawn, as if there had never been one before! And the dogs bark still, and the thallus of lichens springs, so tenacious of life is nature.

  Spent the day in Cambridge Library. Walden is not yet melted round the edge. It is perhaps, more suddenly warm this spring than usual. Mr. Bull thinks that the pine grosbeaks, which have been unusually numerous the past winter, have killed many branches of his elms by budding them, and that they will die and the wind bring them down, as heretofore. Saw a large flock of geese go over Cambridge and heard the robins in the College Yard . . .

  I ought to have responded before this to yours of the 5th inst. but have been absent—hurried, &c &c. I have had no time to bestow upon it till to-day.

  I shall get you some money for the articles you send me, though not immediately.

  As to your longer account of a canadian tour, I don’t know. It looks unmanageable. Can’t you cut it into three or four, and omit all that relates to time? The cities are described to death; but I know you are at home with Nature, and that she rarely and slowly changes. Break this up if you can, and I will try to have it swallowed and digested.

  I enclose herewith two articles from my friend Henry D. Thoreau, of Concord, Mass. the pupil of Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose name must be familiar to you. You may never have see his book—“A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers”—but his articles in Graham’s Magazine—“Thomas Carlyle and his Writings,” Mount Katahdin and the Pine Woods of Maine”—though several years back, I think cannot have escaped you. I consider him one of the best of your young writers, and have solicited these pieces from him because I want to make him better known than he is. He has more Ms. on hand, but I shall not send you more unless you ask them. If you use these, I shall expect you to pay him. If you don’t want them, please preserve them and notify me, so that I can make another disposition of them. Yours

  Horace Greeley.

  P.S. If you happen to know where a copy of “The Dial” may be consulted, just look into it at one of Thoreau’ s articles—“A Winter Walk”—I don’t know who could write a better one. Yrs. H. G.

  The ice no sooner melts than you see the now red and yellow pads of the yellow lily beginning to shoot up from the bottom of the pools and ditches, for there they yield to the first impulses of the heat and feel not the chilling blasts of March.

  This evening a little snow falls. The weather about these days is cold and wintry again.

  I have read the articles of Mr. Thoreau forwarded by you, and will be glad to publish them if our terms are satisfactory. We generally pay for prose composition per printed page, and would allow him three dollars per page. We do not pay more than four dollars for any that we now engage. I did not suppose our maximum rate would have paid you (Mr. Greeley) for your lecture, and therefore requested to know your own terms. Of course, when an article is unusually desirable, we may deviate from rule; I now only mention ordinary arrangement . I was very sorry not to have your article, but shall enjoy the reading of it in Graham, Mr. T. might send us some further contributions, and shall at least receive prompt and courteous decision respecting them.

  Yours truly,
  John Sartain

  Yours received. Very well. Please publish Mr. Thoreau’s articles as soon as convenient. I will write him for more

  Yours

  Horace Greeley

  Saw dead frogs, and the mud stirred by a living one, in this ditch, and afterward in Conantum Brook a living frog, the first of the season; also a yellow-spotted tortoise by the causeway side in the meadow near Hubbard’s Bridge . . .

  Observed a singular circle round the moon to-night between nine and ten, the moon being about half full . . .

  10.15 P. M.—The geese have just gone over, making a great cackling and awaking people in their beds.

  There is an evident spring in the grass about springs and brooks, as at Tarbell’s. Some mosses now in fruit. Icicles still form under the banks at night on the north side of hills, from the dripping of the melting snow during the day. The leaves of the rattlesnake-plantain continue green but not so distinctly reticulated. Struck Second Division Brook at the old dam. It is as deep as wide, three feet or more, with a very handsome sandy bottom, rapidly flowing and meandering. A very attractive brook, to trout, etc., as well as men. It not only meanders as you look down on it, but the line of its bottom is very serpentine, in this wise, successively
deep and shallow.

  Walden is all white ice, but little melted about the shores . . .

  There is an early willow on sand-bank of the railroad, against the pond, by the fence, grayish below and yellowish above. The railroad men have dug around the sleepers that the sun my thaw the ground and let them down. It is not yet out. Cut across near Baker’s barn . . .

  Is that the red osier (cornel or viburnum) near the grape-vine on the Bare Hill road? . . .

  Sat awhile before sunset on the rocks in Saw Mill Brook . . .

  Saw the freshly (?) broken shells of a tortoise’s eggs—or were they a snake’s?—in Hosmer’s field. I hear a robin singing in the woods south of Hosmer’s, just before sunset . . .

  As I come over the Turnpike, the song sparrow’s jingle comes up from every part of the meadow, as native as the tinkling rills or the blossoms of the spirca, the meadow-sweet, soon to spring . . .

  As a fair day is promised, and the waters are falling, decide to go to the Sudbury meadows with C., 9 A. M. Started some woodcocks in a wet place in Hi Wheeler’s stubble-field. Saw six spotted tortoises (Emys gutata), which had crawled to the shore by the side of the Hubbard Bridge causeway . . .

  The Charles Miles Run full and rumbling . . .

  Saw a striped squirrel in the wall near Lee’s. Brigham, the wheelwright, building a boat . . .

  Israel Rice’s dog stood stock-still so long that I took him at a distance for the end of a bench. He looked much like a fox, and his fur was as soft. Rice was very ready to go with us to his boat, which we borrowed, as soon as he had driven his cow into the barn where her calf was, but she preferred to stay out in the yard this pleasant morning. He was very obliging, persisted, without regard to our suggestions that we could help ourselves, in going with us to his boat, showed us after a larger boat and made no remark on the miserableness of it. Thanks and compliments fell off him like water off a rock . . .

  Steered across for the oaks opposite the mouth of the Pantry . . . After coming in sight of Sherman’s Bridge, we moored our boat by sitting on a maple twig on the east side, to take a leisurely view of the meadow . . .

  Landed on Tall’s Island . . .

  We landed near a corn-field in the bay on the west side, below Sherman’s Bridge, in order to ascend Round Hill, it still raining gently or with drops far apart. From the top we see smoke rising from the green pine hill in the southern part of Lincoln . . .

  Return to our boat. We have to go ashore and upset it every half-hour, it leaks so fast, for the leak increases as it sinks in the water in geometrical progression . . .

  We land in a steady rain and walk inland by R. Rice’s barn, regardless of the storm, toward White Pond. Overtaken by an Irishman in search of work. Discovered some new oaks and pine groves and more New England fields. At last the drops fall wider apart, and we pause in a sandy field near the Great Road of the Corner, where it was agreeably retired and sandy, drinking up the rain . . .

  At Hubbard’s Bridge, count eight ducks going over. Had seen one with outstretched neck over the Great Meadows in Sudbury. Looking up, the flakes are black against the sky. And now the ground begins to whiten. Get home at 5.30 P.M.

  I do not see that I can refuse to read another lecture, but what makes me hesitate is the fear that I have not another available which will entertain a large audience, though I have thoughts to offer which I think will be quite as worthy of their attention. However I will try, for the prospect of earning a few dollars is alluring. As far as I can foresee, my subject would be Reality rather transcendentally treated. It lies still in “Walden or Life in the Woods.” Since you are kind enough to undertake the arrangements, I will leave it to you to name an evening of next week—decide on the most suitable room—and advertise if this is not taking you too literally at your word

  If you still think it worth the while to attend to this, will you let me know as soon as may be what evening will be most convenient

  Yrs with thanks

  Henry D. Thoreau

  The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

  I am going over the hills in the rear of the windmill site and along Peter’s path . . .

  One side of the village street, which runs east and west, appears a month in advance of the other. I go down the street on the wintry side; I return through summer . . .

  The moon appears to be full to-night. About 8.30 P. M. I walked to the Clamshell Hill . . .

  Henry D. Thoreau

  I wish you to write me an article on Ralph Waldo Emerson, his Works and Ways, extending to one hundred pages, or so, of letter sheet like this, to take the form of a review of his writings, but to give some idea of the Poet, the Genius, the Man,—with some idea of the New England scenery and home influence, which have combined to make him what he is. Let it be calm, searching, and impartial; nothing like adulation, but a just summing up of what he is and what he has done. I mean to get this into the “Westminster Review,” but if not acceptable there, I will publish it elsewhere. I will pay you fifty dollars for the article when delivered; in advance, if you desire it. Say the word, and I will send the money at once. It is perfectly convenient to do so. Your “Carlyle” article is my model, but you can give us Emerson better than you did Carlyle. I presume he would allow you to write extracts for this purpose from his lectures not yet published. I would delay the publication of the article to suit his publishing arrangements, should that be requested.

  Yours,

  Horace Greeley

  It is refreshing to stand on the face of the Cliff and see the water gliding over the surface of the almost perpendicular rock in a broad thin sheet, pulsing over it . . .

  I see the snow lying thick on the south side of the Peterboro Hills . . .

  I see the old circular shore of Fair Haven, where the tops of the button-bushes, willows, etc., rise above the water. This pond is now open; only a little ice against the Pleasant Meadow . . .

  Went into the old Hunt house, which they said Uncle Abel said was built one hundred and fifty years ago. The second story projects five or six inches over the first, the garret a foot over the second at the gables. There are two large rooms, one above the other, though the walls are low. The fireplace in the lower room rather large, with a high shelf of wood painted or stained to represent mahogany . . .

  Saw and heard the white-bellied swallows this morning for the first time. Took boat at Stedman Buttrick’s, a gunner’s boat, smelling of muskrats and provided with slats for bushing the boat. Having got into the Great Meadows, after grounding once or twice on low spits of grass ground, we begin to see ducks which we have scared . . .

  The ground is now for the most part bare, though I went through drifts three feet deep in some places. I hear that Simmonds had planted his potatoes (! !) before the snow a week ago. As I go over the railroad bridge, I hear the pewee singing pewet pewee, pee-wet pee-wee. The last time rising on the last syllable . . .

  I asked W. E. C. yesterday if he had acquired fame. He answered that, giving his name at some place, the bystanders said: “Yes, sir, we have heard of you. We know you here, sir. Your name is mentioned in Mr. ————’s book.” That’s all the fame I have had,—to be made known by another man . . .

  2 P.M.—To the powder-mills via Harrington’s, returning by railroad.

  The road through the pitch pine woods beyond J. Hosmer’s is very pleasant to me, curving under the pines, without a fence,—the sandy road, with the pines close abutting on it, yellow in the sun and lowbranched, with younger pines filling up all to the ground. I love to see a sandy road like this curving through a pitch pine wood where the trees closely border it without fences . . .

  Rain, rain, rain, all day, carrying off the snow. It appears, then, that if you go out at this season and walk in the sun in a clear, warm day like ,yesterday while the earth is covered with snow, you may have your face burnt in a few moments. The rays glance off from the snowy crystals and scorch the skin . . .

  2 P.M.—To Conantum.

  It clears up (the rain) at noon, with a rather cool wind from the northwest and flitting clouds. The ground about one third covered with snow still What variety in the trunks of oaks! flow expressive of strength are some! There is one behind Hubbard’s which expresses a sturdy strength . . .

  The water on the meadows is now quite high on account of the melting snow and the rain. It makes a lively prospect when the wind blows, where our sumner meads spread,—a tumultuous sea, a myriad waves breaking with whitecaps, like gambolling sheep, for want of other comparison in the country. Far and wide a sea of motion, schools of porpoises, lines of Virgil realized. One would think it a novel sight for inland meadows. Where the cranberry and andromeda and swamp white oak and maple grow, here is a mimic sea with its gulls. At the bottom of the sea, cranberries.

  We love to see streams colored by the earth they have flown over, as well as pure . . .

  Gray refers the cone-like excrescences on the ends of willow twigs to the punctures of insects. I think that both these and the galls of the oak, etc., are to be regarded as something more normal than this implies. Though it is impossible to draw the line between disease and health at last . . .

  2 P.M.—To river.

  A driving rain, i.e. a rain with easterly wind and driving mists. River higher than before this season, about eighteen inches of the highest arch of the stone bridge above water.

  Going through Dennis’s field with C., saw a flock of geese on east side of river near willows. Twelve great birds on the troubled surface of the meadow, delayed by the storm. We lay on the ground behind an oak and our umbrella, eighty rods off, and watched them . . .

  A stormy day.

  2 P.M.—With C. over Wood’s Bridge to Lee’s back by Baker Farm.

  It is a violent northeast storm, in difficult and almost useless to carry am soon wet to my skin over half my body. At first, and for a long time, I feel cold and as if I had lost some vital heat by it, but at last the water in my clothes feels warm to me, and I know not but I am dry. It is a wind to turn umbrellas. The meadows are higher, more wild and angry . . .

  To see the larger and wilder birds, you must go forth in the great storms like this. At such times they frequent our neighborhood and trust themselves in our midst. A life of fair-weather walks might never show you the goose sailing on our waters, or the great heron feeding here. When the storm increases, then these great birds that carry the mail of the seasons lay to. To see wild life you must go forth at a wild season. When it rains and blows, keeping men indoors, then the lover of Nature must forth. Then returns Nature to her wild estate. . . .

  I have yours of the 17th. I am rather sorry you will not do the Works and Ways; but glad that you are able to employ your time to better purpose.

  But your Quebeck notes don’t reach me yet, and I fear the `good time’ is passing. They ought to have appeared in the June Nos. of the Monthlies, but now cannot before July. If you choose to send them to me all in a bunch, I will try to get them printed in that way. I don’t care about them if you choose to reserve or to print them elsewhere; but I can better make a use for them at this season than at any other.

Yours,
Horace Greeley.

  2 P.M.—Another walk in the rain.

  The river is remarkably high. Nobody remembers when the water came into so many cellars. The water is up to the top of the easternmost end of the easternmost Iron truss on the south side of the stone bridge. It is over the Union Turnpike that was west of the bridge, so that it is impassable to a foot-traveller, and just over the road west of Wood’s Bridge. Of eight carriage roads leading into Concord, the water to my knowledge is now over six . . .

  On the east side of Ponkawtasset I hear a robin singing cheerily from some perch in the wood, in the midst of the rain, where the scenery is now wild and dreary. His song a singular antagonism and offset to the storm. As if Nature said, “Have faith, these two things I can do.” It sings with power, like a bird of great faith that sees the bright future through the dark present, to reassure the race of man, like one to whom many talents were given and who will improve its talents. They are sounds to make a dying man live. They sing not their despair. It is a pure, immortal melody . . .

  P.M.—Up river on east side.

  It takes this day to clear up gradually; successive sun-showers still make it foul. But the sun feels very warm after the storm. This makes five stormy days . . .

  The storm may be said to have fairly ended last night. I observed yesterday that it was drier in most fields, pastures, and even meadows that were not reached by the flood, immediately after this remarkable fall of water than at the beginning . . .

  I know two species of men. The vast majority are men of society. They live on the surface; they are interested in the transient and fleeting; they are like driftwood on the flood . . . The terra firma of my existence lies far beyond, behind them and their improvements . . . When I am most myself and see the clearest, men are least to be seen . . .

  Lay on the dead grass in a cup-like hollow sprinkled with half-dead low shrub oaks. As I lie flat, looking close in among the roots of the grass, I perceive that its endless ribbon has pushed up about one inch and is green to that extent,—such is the length to which the spring has gone here,—though when you stand up the green is not perceptible. It is a dull, rain dropping and threatening afternoon, inclining to drowsiness. I feel as if I could go to sleep under a hedge. The landscape wears a subdued tone, quite soothing to the feelings; no glaring colors . . .

  2.30 P.M.—To Conantum via railroad bridge.

  The Corner road still impassable to foot-travellers. Water eighteen or twenty inches deep; must have been two feet deeper. Observed the spotted tortoise in the water of the meadow on J. Hosmer’s land, by riverside. Bright-yellow spots on both shell and head, yet not regularly disposed, but as if, when they were finished in other respects, the maker had sprinkled them with a brush . . .

  As I come home over the Corner road, the sun, now getting low, is reflected very bright and silvery from the water on the meadows, seen through the pines of Hubbard’s Grove . . .

  The elms are now generally in blossom and Cheney’s elm still also. The last has leaf-buds which show the white. Now, before any leaves have appeared, their blossoms clothe the trees with a rich, warm brown color, which serves partially for foliage to the streetwalker, and makes the tree more obvious. Held in the Band, the blossoms of some of the elms are quite rich and variegated, now purple and yellowish specked with the dark anthers and two light styles . . .

  The season advances by fits and starts; you would not believe that there could be so many degrees to it. If you have had foul and cold weather, still some advance has been made, as you find when the fair weather comes,—new lieferungs of warmth and summeriness, which make yesterday seem far off and the clog-days or midsummer incredibly nearer . . .

  A smart frost in the night, the plowed ground and platforms white with it . . .

  I hear the first towhee finch. He says to-wee, to-wee, and another, much farther off than I supposed when I went in search of him, says whip your ch-r-r-r-r-r-r, with a metallic ring. I hear the first catbird also, mewing, and the wood thrush, which still thrills me,—a sound to be heard in a new country,—from one side of a clearing . . .

  A great brassy moon going down in the west. A flock of neat sparrows, small, striped-throated, whitish over eye, on an apple tree by J. Potter’s. At Hayden’s orchard, quite a concert from sonic small sparrows, forked-tailed, many jingling together like canaries. Their note still sonnewhat like the chip-sparrow’s. Can it be this?

  Fair Haven. How cheering and glorious any landscape viewed from an eminence! For every one has its horizon and sky . It is so easy to take wide views. Snow on the mountains. The wood thrush reminds me of cool mountain springs and morning walks . . .

  Evening.—The moon is full. The air is filled with a certain luminous, liquid, white light. You can see the moonlight, as it were reflected from the atmosphere, which some might mistake for a haze,—a glow of mellow light, somewhat like the light I saw in the afternoon sky some weeks ago; as if the air were a very thin but transparent liquid, not dry, as in winter, nor gross, as in summer. It has depth, and not merely distance (the sky) . . . .

  This excitement about Kossuth is not interesting to me, it is so superficial It is only another kind of dancing or of politics. Men are making speeches to him all over the country, but each expresses only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stands on truth. They are merely banded together as usual, one leaning on another and all together on nothing . . . But an individual standing on truth you cannot pass your hand under, for his foundations reach to the centre of the universe. So superficial these men and their doings, it is life on a leaf or a chip which has nothing but air or water beneath. I love to see a man with a tap-root, though it make him difficult to transplant . . .

  A fine scarlet sunset As I sit by my window and see the clouds reflected in the meadow, I think it is important to have water, because it multiplies the heavens.

  Evening.—To the Lee place rock.

  Moon not up. The dream frog’s is such a sound as you can make with a quill on water, a bubbling sound. Behind Dodd’s. The spearers are out, their flame a bright yellow, reflected in the calm water. Without noise it is slowly carried along the shores. It reminds me of the light which Columbus saw on approaching the shores of the New World. There goes a shooting star down towards the horizon, like a rocket, appearing to describe a curve. The water sleeps with stars in its bosom . . .

  Heard the first warbling vireo this morning on the elms. This almost makes a summer. Heard also, as I sat at my desk, the unusual low of cows being driven to their country pastures. Sat all day with the window open, for the outer air is the warmest . . .

  My dream frog turns out to be a toad. I watched half a dozen a long time at 3.30 this afternoon in Hubbard’s Pool, where they were frogging (?) lustily . . .

  It is pleasant when the road winds along the side of a hill with a thin fringe of wood through which to look into the low land. It furnishes both shade and frame for your pictures . . .

  The music of all creatures has to do with their loves, even of toads and frogs. Is it not the same with man? There are odors enough in nature to remind you of everything, if you had lost every sense but smell . . .

  Has been a dew, which wets the feet, and I see a very thin fog over the low ground, the first fog, which must be owing to the warm weather. Heard a robin singing powerfully an hour ago, and song sparrows, and the cocks. No peeping frogs in the morning, or rarely . . .

  I would fain see the sun as a moon, more weird. The sun now rises in a rosaceous amber. Methinks the birds sing more some mornings than others, when I cannot see the reason. I smell the damp path, and derive vigor from the earthy scent between Potter’s and Hayden’s . . .

  P.M.—To Nawshawtuct.

  The vireo comes with warm weather, midwife to the leaves of the elms. I see little ant-hills in the path, already raised How long have they been? The first small pewee sings now che-vet, or rather chirrups chevet, tche-vet—a rather delicate bird with a large head and two white bars on wings. The first summer yellowbirds on the willow causeway. The birds I have lately mentioned come not singly, as the earliest, but all at once, i.e. many yellowbirds all over town. Now I remember the yellowbird comes when the willows begin to leave out. (And the small pewee on the willows also.) So yellow. They bring summer with them and the sun, tche-tche-tchc-tcha tch.a-tchar . . .

  P.M.—Down river to Red Bridge.

  The blackbirds Dave a rich sprayey warble now, sitting on the top [of] a willow or in elm. They possess the river now, living back and forth across it . . .

  The blackbirds fly in flocks and sing in concert on the willows,—what a lively, chattering concert! a great deal of chattering with many liquid and rich warbling notes and clear whistles,—till now a hawk sails low, beating the bush: and they are silent or off, but soon begin again. Do any other birds sing in such deafening concert? . . .

  Apples and cherry trees begin to look green at a distance. I see the catkin of a female Populus tremuloides far advanced, i.e. become large like the willows. These low woods are full of the Anemone nemorosa, half opened at this hour and gracefully drooping,—sepals with a purple tinge on the under side, now exposed. They are in beds and look like hail on the ground, their now globular flowers spot the ground white . . .

  P.M.—To hill north of Walden.

  I smell the blossoms of the willows, the row of Salix alba on Swamp Bridge Brook, a quarter of a mile to windward, the wind being strong. There is a delightful coolness in the wind. Reduce neck-cloth. Nothing so harmonizes with this condition of the atmosphere—warm and hazy—as the dream of the toad . . .

  These are the warm-west-wind, dream-frog, leafing-out, willowy, haze days. Is not this summer, whenever it occurs, the vireo and yellowbird and golden robin being here ? The young birch leaves reflect the light in the sun . . .

  P.M.—Kossuth here.

  The hand-organ, when I am far enough off not to hear the friction of the machinery, not to see or be reminded of the performer, serves the grandest use for me, deepens my existence . . .

  P.M.—To Walden in rain.

  A May storm, yesterday and to-day; rather cold. The fields are green now, and the cows find good feed. The female Populus grandidentata, whose long catkins are now growing old, is now leafing out. The flowerless (male?) ones show half-unfolded silvery leaves. Both these and the aspens are quite green (the bark) in the rain . . .

  A foul day. The scent of golden senecio recalls the meadows of my golden age. It is like sweet-briar a little.

  First kingbird. Its voice and flight relate it to the swallow . . .

  Most men can be easily transplanted from here there, for they have so little root,—no tap-root,—or their roots penetrate so little way, that you can thrust a shovel quite under them and take them up, roots and all.

  On the 11th, when Kossuth was here, I looked about for shade, but did not find it, the trees not being leaved out. Nature was not prepared for great heats . . .

  P.M.—To Conantumn.

  I think I may say that the buttercup (bulbous crow-foot) which I plucked at the Corner Spring would have
blossomed to-day . . .

  Here on this causeway is the sweetest fragrance I have perceived this season, blown from the newly flooded meadows. I cannot imagine what there is to produce it. No nosegay can equal it. It is ambrosially, nectarealh , fine and subtile, for you can see naught but the water, with green spires of meadow grass rising above it. Yet no flower from the Islands of the Blessed could smell sweeter . . .

  P.M.—To Loring’s Pond.

  Decidedly fair weather at last; a bright, breezy, flowing, washing day. I see that dull-red grass whose blades, having risen above the surface of the water . . .

  P.M.—To Cliffs.

  Frog or toad spawn in a pool in long worm-like or bowel-like strings, sometimes coiled up spirally.

  It is fine clear atmosphere, only the mountains blue. A slight seething but no haze. Shall we have much of this weather after this ? There is scarcely a flock of cloud in the sky. The heaven is now broad and open to the earth in these longest days. The world can never be more beautiful than now, for, combined with the tender fresh green, you have this remarkable clearness of the air . . . .

  At evening the water is quite white, reflecting the white evening sky, and oily smooth. I see the willows reflected in it, when I cannot see their tops in the twilight against the dark hillside . . .

  So many birds that I have not attended much to any of late. A barn swallow accompanied me across the Depot Field, methinks attracted by the insects which I started, though I saw them not, wheeling and tacking incessantly on all sides and repeatedly dashing within a rod of me. It is an agreeable sight to watch one . . .

  A song sparrow’s nest and eggs so placed in a bank that none could tread on it; bluish-white, speckled . . . (Journal, 4:67-68)

  5 P.M.—Plymouth.

  The hill whence Billington discovered the pond. The field plantain in blossom and abundant here. A chickweed in bloom in Watson’s garden. Is it the same that was so early? . . .

  The purple finch sings like a canary and like a robin. Huckleberry leaves here, too, are sticky, and yellow in my fingers. Pyrus arbutifolia in bloom. The low, spreading red cedars which come abruptly to naught at top suggest that they be used for posts with the stubs of branches left, as they often are . . .

  The Rhodora Canadensis is not yet out of blossom, and its leaves are not expanded. It is important for its contrast with the surrounding green,—so much high-colored blossom. The Pyrus arbutifolia now. The ferns are grown up large, and some are in fruit, a dark or blackish fruit part way down the stem, with a strong scent,—quite a rich-looking fruit . . .

  The early thalictrum has been in bloom some time. Perceive the rank smell of brakes. Observe the yellow bark of the barberry . . .

  The air is full of the odor of apple blossoms, yet the air is fresh as from the salt water. The meadow smells sweet as you go along low places in the road at sundown. To-night I hear many crickets. They have commenced their song. They bring in the summer . . .

I duly received your package and letter, and immediately   handed over the former to C. Bissell Editor of the Whig Review, asking him to examine it fully and tell me what he could give for it, which he promised to do. Two or three days afterward, I left for the West without having heard from him. This morning, without having seen your letter, having reached home at 1 o’clock, I went to Bissell at 9, and asked him about the matter. He said he had not read all the MSS, but had part of it, and inquired if I would be willing to have him print part and pay for it. I told him I could not consent without consulting you, but would thank him to make me a proposition in writing, which I would send you. He said he would do so very soon, whereupon I left him.

  I hope you will acquit me of negligence in the matter, though I ought to have acknowledged the receipt of your package. 1 did not, simply because I was greatly hurried, trying to get away, and because I momently expected some word from Bissell.

Yours,
Horace Greeley

  A wet day. The veery sings nevertheless. The road is white with the apple blossoms fallen off, as with snowflakes. The dogwood is coming out. Ladies’ slippers out. They perfume the air . . .

  Israel Rice thinks the first half of June is not commonly so warm as May, and that the reason is that vegetation is so advanced that the earth is shaded and protected from the sun by the grass also, so that it is delayed in being warmed by the summer sun.

  The sounds I hear by the bridge: the midsummer frog (I think it is not the toad), the nighthawk, crickets, the peetweet (it is early), the hum of dor-bugs, and the whip-poor-will. The boys are corning home from fishing, for the river is down at last. The moving clouds are the drama of the moonlight nights, and never-failing entertainment of nightly travellers . . .

  The constant inquiry which nature puts is: “Are you virtuous? Then you can behold me.” Beauty, fragrance, music, sweetness, and joy of all kinds are for the virtuous. That I thought when I heard the telegraph harp to-day . . .

  The priests of the Germans and Britons were druids. They had their sacred oaken groves. Such were their steeple houses. Nature was to some extent a fane to them. There was fine religion in that form of worship, and Stonehenge remains as evidence of some vigor in the worshippers . . .

  I hear the bobolink, though he does not sing so much as he did, and the lark and my seringo, as I go down the railroad causeway. The cricket sings. The red clover does not yet cover the fields. The whitcwecd is more obvious. It commonly happens that a flower is considered more beautiful that is not followed by fruit. It must culminate in the flower . . .

  As I climbed the Cliffs, when I jarred the foliage, I perceived an exquisite perfume which I could not trace to its source. Ah, those fugacious universal fragrances of the meadows and woods! Odors rightly mingled! . . .

  For some time I have noticed the grass whitish and killed at top by worms (?). The meadows are yellow with golden senecio. Marsh speedwell (Veronica scutellata), lilac-tinted, rather pretty. The mouse-ear forget-me-not (Myosotis laxa) has now extended its racemes (?) very much, and hangs over the edge of the brook. It is one of the most interesting minute flowers. It is the more beautiful for being small and unpretending, for even flowers must be modest . . .

  A warm day. It has been cold, and we have had fires the past week sometimes. Clover begins to show red in the fields, and the wild cherry is not out of blossom. The river has a summer midday look, smooth to a cobweb, with green shores, and shade from the trees on its banks . . .

  IIow, rapidly new flowers unfold! as if Nature would get through her work too soon. One has as much as he can do to observe how flowers successively unfold. It is a flowery revolution, to which but few attend. Hardly too much attention can be bestowed on flowers. We follow, we march after, the highest color; that is our flag, our standard, our “color.” Flowers were made to be seen, not overlooked . . .

  On Mt. Misery, panting with heat, looking down the river. The haze an hour ago reached to Wachusett; now it obscures it. Methinks there is a male and female shore to the river, one abrupt, the other flat and meadowy. Have not all streams this contrast more or less, on the one hand eating into the bank, on the other depositing their sediment? . . .

  9 P.M.—Down railroad.

  Heat lightning in the horizon. A sultry night. A flute front some villager. How rare among men so fit a thing as the sound of a flute at evening! Have not the fireflies in the meadow relation to the stars above, étincelant? When the darkness comes, we see stars beneath also . . .

  No fog this morning . At early dawn, the windows being open, I hear a steady, breathing, cricket-like sound from the chip-bird (?), ushering in the day. Perhaps these mornings are the most memorable in the year,—after a sultry night and before a sultry day,—when, especially, the morning is the most glorious season of the day, when its coolness is most refreshing and you enjoy the glory of the summer gilded or silvered with dews, without the torrid summer’s sun or the obscuring haze. The sound of the crickets at dawn after these first sultry nights seems like the dreaming of the earth still continued into the daylight. I love that early twilight hour when the crickets still creak . . .

  7 P.M.—To Cliffs. No moon . . .

  I hear a man playing a clarionet far off. Apollo tending the flocks of King Admetus. How cultivated, how sweet and glorious, is music! Men have brought this art to great perfection, the art of modulating sound, by long practice since the world began. What superiority over the rude harmony of savages! There is something glorious and flower-like in it. What a contrast this evening melody with the occupations of the day! It is perhaps the most admirable accomplishment of man . . .

  A comfortable breezy June morning. No dust to-day. To explore a segment of country between the Stow hills and the railroad in Acton, west to Boxboro. A fine, clear day, a journey day . . .

  It was a very good day on the whole, for it was cool in the morning, and there were just clouds enough to shade the earth in the hottest part of the day, and at evening it was comfortably cool again . . .

  The blue-eyed grass is shut up. When does it open? Some blue flags are quite a red purple,—dark wine-color . . .

  Lying -,with my window open, these warm, even sultry nights, I hear the sonorously musical trump of the bullfrogs from time to time, from some distant shore of the river, as if the world were given up to them. By those villagers who live on the street they are never seen and rarely heard by day, but in the quiet sultry nights their notes ring from one end of the town to another . . .

  Cherry-birds. I leave not seen, though I think I have heard them before,—their fine seringo note, like a vibrating sprung in the air. They are a handsome bird, with their crest and chestnut breasts . . .

  It is dusky now. Men are fishing on the Corner Bridge. I hear the veery and the huckleberry-bird and the catbird. It is a cool evening, past 8 o’clock. I sec the tephrosia out through the dusk; a handsome flower . . .

  We have had a succession of thunder-showers today and at sunset a rainbow. How moral the world is made! This bow is not utilitarian. Methinks men are great in proportion as they are moral. After the rain He sets his bow in the heavens! The world is not destitute of beauty . . .

  The bobolink still sings, though not as in May. The tall buttercups do not make so much show in the meadows, methinks, as the others did. Or are they beaten down by last night’s rain? The small Solomon’s-seal is going out of flower and shows small berries . . .

  I sit on one of these boulders and look south to Ponkawtasset. Looking west, whence the wind comes, you do not see the under sides of the leaves, but, looking east, every bough shows its under side; those of the maples are particularly white. All leaves tremble like aspen leaves. Perhaps on those westward hills where I walked last Saturday the fields are somewhat larger than commonly with us, and I expand with a sense of freedom . . .

  The keys of the white ash cover the trees profusely, a sort of mulberry brown, an inch and a half long, handsome. The Vaccinium macrocarpon, probably for some days . . .

  I still perceive that wonderful fragrance from the meadow ( ?) on the Corner causeway, intense as ever. It is one of those effects whose cause it is best not to know, perchance. Uncommonly cool weather now, after warm days and nights for a week or snore. I see -many grasshoppers for the first time (only single ones before), in the grass in the White Pond road . . .

A few moments after, it rained heavily for a half-hour . . .

  One man lies in his words, and gets a bad reputation; another in his manners, and enjoys a good one.

  The air is clear, as if a cool, dewy brush had swept the vales and meadows of all haze. A liquid coolness invests them, as if their midnight aspect were suddenly revealed to midday. The mountain outline is remarkably distinct, and the intermediate earth appears more than usually scooped out, like a vast saucer sloping upward to its sharp mountain rim . . .

  8.30 P.M.—To Conantum.

  Moon half full. Fields dusky; the evening one other bright one near the moon. It is a pretty still night . . .

  I have had only bad luck with your manuscript. Two magazines have refused it on the ground of its length, saying that articles ‘To be continued’ are always unpopular, however good. I will try again.

Yours,
Horace Greeley

  Looking from Bear Hill, I am struck by the yellowish green of meadows, almost like an ingrained sunlight . . . It is somewhat hazy, yet I can just distinguish Monadnock. It is a good way to describe the density of a haze to say how distant a mountain can be distinguished through it, or how near a hill is obscured by it.

  Saw a very large white ash tree, three and a half feet in diameter, in front of the house which White formerly owned, under this hill, which was struck by lightning the 22d, about 4 P.M. The lightning apparently struck the top of the tree . . . and so it went down in the midst of the trunk to the earth, where it apparently exploded, rending the trunk into six segments . . . The lightning appeared to have gone off through the roots, furrowing them as the branches, and through the earth, making a furrow like a plow, four or five rods in one direction, and in another passing through the cellar of the neighboring house, about thirty feet distant . . . The windows in the house were broken and the inhabitants knocked down by the concussion. All this was accomplished in an instant by a kind of fire out of the heavens called lightning, or a thunderbolt, accompanied by a crashing sound. For what purpose? The ancients called it Jove’s bolt, with which he punished the guilty and we moderns understand it no better. There was displayed a Titanic force, some of that force which made and can unmake the world . . .

  There are meteorologists, but who keeps a record of the fairer sunsets P While men are recording the direction of the wind, they neglect to record the beauty of the sunset or the rainbow. The sun not yet set . . .

  Walden imparts to the body of the bather a remarkably chalky-white appearance, whiter than natural, tinged with blue, which, combined with its magnifying anti distorting; influence, produces a monstrous and ogre-like effect, proving, nevertheless, the purity of the water . . .

  The wind exposes the red under sides of the white lily pads. This is one of the aspects of the river now. The bud-bearing stem of this plant is a little larger, but otherwise like the leaf-stem, and coming like it directly from the long, large root. It is interesting to pull up the lily root with flowers and leaves attached and sec how it sends its buds upward to the light and air to expand and flower in another element . . .

  7.30 P.M.—To stone bridge over Assabet. Moon nearly full; rose a little before sunset . . .

  The moon appears full. At first a mere white cloud. As soon as the sun sets, begins to grow brassy or obscure golden in the gross atmosphere. It is starlight about half an hour after sunset to-night; i.e. the first stars appear. The moon is now brighter, but not so yellowish. Ten or fifteen minutes after, the fireflies are observed . . .

  A cloudy and slightly showery morning, following a thunder-shower the previous afternoon . . .

  Borrowed Brigham the wheelwright’s boat at the Corner Bridge. He was quite ready to lend it, and took pains to shave down the handdle of a paddle for me, conversing the while on the subject of spiritual knocking, which he asked if I had looked into,—which made him the slower. An obliging man, who understands that I am abroad viewing the works of Nature and not loafing, though he makes the pursuit a semi-religious one, as are all more serious ones to most men . . .

  The freshly opened lilies were a pearly white, and though the water amid the pads was quite unrippled, the passing air gave a slight oscillating, boat-like motion to and fro to the flowers, like boats held fast by their cables. Some of the lilies had a beautiful rosaceous tinge, most conspicuous in the half-opened flower . . .

  On my way to the Hubbard Bathing-Place, at sundown.

  The blue-eyed grass shuts up before night, and methinks it does not open very early the next morning . . .

  Nature is reported not by him who goes forth consciously as an observer, but in the fullness of life. To such a one she rushes to make her report. To the full heart she is all but a figure of speech. This is my year of observation, and I fancy that my friends are also more devoted to outward observation than ever before . . .

  The yellow lily (Giliura Canadense) is out, rising above the meadow-grass, sometimes one, sometimes two. Young woodchucks, sitting in their holes, allow me to come quite near . . .

  I hear an occasional crowing of cocks in distant barns, as has been their habit for how many thousand years. It was so when I was young; and it will be so when I am old. I hear the croak of a tree-toad as I am crossing the yard. I am surprised to find the dawn so far advanced. There is a yellowish segment of light in the east, paling a star and adding sensibly to the light of the waning and now declining moon . . .

  The light is more and more general, and some low bars begin to look bluish as well as reddish. (Elsewhere the sky wholly clear of clouds.) The dawn is at this stage far lighter than the brightest moonlight. I write by it. Yet the sun will not rise for some time. Those bars are reddening more above one spot. They grow purplish, or lilac rather . . .

  Sunrise . I see it gilding the top of the hill behind me, but the sun itself is concealed by the hills and woods on the east shore. A very slight fog begins to rise now in one place on the river. There is something serenely glorious and memorable to me in the sight of the first cool sunlight now gilding the eastern extremity of the bushy island in Pair Haven, that wild lake . . .

  Some birds are poets and sing all summer. They are the true singers. Any man can write verses during the love season. I am reminded of this while we rest in the shade on the Major Heywood road and listen to a wood thrush, now just before sunset . . .

  Now for the shade of oaks in pastures. The witnesses attending court sit on the benches in the shade of the great elm. The cattle gather under the trees . . .

  Hosmer is haying, but inclined to talk as usual. I blowed on his horn at supper-time. I asked if I should do any harm if I sounded it. He said no, but I called Mrs. Hosmer back, who was on her way to the village . . .

  I am disappointed that Hosmer, the most intelligent farmer in Concord, and perchance in Middlesex, who admits that he has property enough for his use without accumulating more, and talks of leaving off hard work, letting his farm, and spending the rest of has days easier and better, cannot yet think of any method of employing himself but in work with his hands . . .

  We have all kinds of walks in the woods, if we follow the paths . . .

  The cobwebs on the dead twigs in sprout-lands covered with fog or dew. Their geometry is very distinct, and I see where birds have flown through them. I noticed that the fog last night, just after sundown, was like a fine smoke in valleys between the woods . . .

  Under the Salix nigra var. falcata, near that handsomest one, which now is full of scythe-shaped leaves, the larger six inches long by seven eighths wide, with remarkably broad lunar leafy appendages or stipules at their base, I found a remarkable moth lying flat on the still water as if asleep (they appear to sleep during the day), as large as the smaller birds. Five and a half inches in alar extent and about three inches long, something like the smaller figure in one position of the wings (with a remarkably narrow lunar-cut tail), of a sea-green color, with four conspicuous spots whitish within, then a red line, then yellowish border below or toward the tail, but brown, brown orange, and black above, toward head; a very robust body, covered with a kind of downy plumage, an inch and a quarter long by five eighths thick. The sight affected me as tropical, and I suppose it is the northern verge of some species. It suggests into what productions Nature would run if all the year were a July. By night it is active, for, though I thought it dying at first, it made a great noise in its prison, a cigar-box, at night. When the day returns, it apparently drops wherever it may be, even into the water, and dozes till evening again . . .

  Yours received. I was absent yesterday. I can lend you the seventy-five dollars, and am very glad to do it. Don’t talk about security. I am sorry about your MSS., which I do not quite despair of using to your advantage.

Yours,
Horace Greeley

  No dew, no dewy cobwebs. The sky looks mist-like, not clear blue. An aurora fading into a general saffron color. At length the redness travels over, partly from east to west, before sunrise, and there is little color in the cast. The birds all unite to make the morning quire; sing rather faintly, not prolonging their strains. The crickets appear to have received a reinforcement during the sultry night. There is no name for the evening red corresponding to aurora. It is the blushing foam about the prow of the sun’s boat, and at eve the salve in its wake . . .

  Bathing is an undescribed luxury. To feel the wind blow on your body, the water flow on you and lave you, is a rare physical enjoyment this hot day. The water is remarkably warm here, especially in the shallows,-warm to the hand, like that which has stood long in a kettle over a fire. The pond water being so warm made the water of the brook feel very cold; and this kept close on the bottom of the pond for a good many rods about the mouth of the brook, as I could feel with my feet; and when I thrust my arm down where it was only two feet deep, my arm was in the warm water of the pond, but my hand in the cold water of the brook . . .

  2 P.M.—To the North River in front of Major Barrett’s. It is with a suffocating sensation and a slight pain in the head that I walk the Union Turnpike where the heat is reflected from the road. The leaves of the elms on the dry highways begin to roll up. I have to lift my hat to let the air cool my head. But I find a refreshing breeze from over the river and meadow. In the hottest day you can be comfortable in the shade on the open shore of a pond or river where a zephyr comes over the water, sensibly cooled by it . . .

  The shore is strewn with quite a long grove of young red maples two inches high, with the samaræ attached. So they are dispersed. The heart-leaf flower is abundant more than ever, but shut up at this hour. The first lily I noticed opened about half an hour after sunrise, or at 5 o’clock . . .

  2 P.M.—To the Assabet.

  Still no rain. The clouds, cumuli, lie in high piles along the southern horizon, glowing, downy, or creamcolored, broken into irregular summits in the form of bears erect, or demigods, or rocking stones, infant Herculeses; and still we think that from their darker bases a thunder-shower may issue . . .

The pool by Walden is now quite yellow with the common utricularia (vulgaris). This morning the heavens were overcast with a fog, which did not clear off till late in the forenoon. I heard the muttering of thunder behind it about 5 A.M. and thought it would rain at last, but there were dewy cobwebs on the grass, and it did not rain, but we had another hot dry day after all . . .

  I am a miserable letter writer, but perchance if I should say this at length and with sufficient emphasis & regret, it could make a letter. I am sorry that nothing transpires here of much moment; or, I should rather say that I am so slackened and rusty, like the telegraph wire this season, that no wind that blows can extract music from me. I am not on the trail of any elephants or mastodons, but have succeeded in trapping only a few ridiculous mice, which can not need my imagination. I Have become sadly scientific. I would rather come upon the vast valley-like “spore” only of some celestial beast which this world’s woods can no longer sustain, than spring my net over a bushel of moles. You must do better in those woods where you are. You must have some adventures to relate and repeat for your years to come—which will eclipse even Mother’s voyage to Goldsborough & Sissiboo. They say that Mr Pierce the presidential candidate was in town last 5th of July visiting Hawthorne whose college chum he was, and that Hawthorne is writing a life of him for electioneering purposes. Concord is just as idiotic as ever in relation to the spirits and their knockings. Most people here believe in a spiritual world which no respectable junk bottle which had not met with a lip—would condescend to contain even a portion of for a moment—whose atmosphere would extinguish a candle let down into it, like a well that wants airing—in spirits with the very bullfrogs in our meadows would blackball. Their evil genius is seeing how low it can degrade them. The hooting of owls—the croaking of frogs—is celestial wisdom in comparison. If I could be brought to believe in the things which they believe—I should make haste to get rid of my certificate of stock in this & the next world’s enterprises, and buy a share in the first Immediate Annihilation Company that offered—would exchange my immortality for a glass of small beer this hot weather. Where are the heathen? Was there ever any superstition before? And yet I suppose there may be a vessel this very moment setting sail from the coast of North America to that of Africa with a missionary on board! Consider the dawn & the sun rise—the rain bow & the evening, the words of Christ & the aspirations of all the saints! Hear music? See—smell—taste—feel—hear—anything—& then hear these idiots inspired by the cracking of a restless board-humbly asking “Please spirit, if you cannot answer by knocks, answer by tips of the table,”!!!!!!

Yrs
H. D. Thoreau

  Saw to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies dispersing before us, [as] we rode along berrying on the Walden road . . .

  Pyrus arbutifolia melanocarpa fruit begins to be black. Cephalanthus occidentalis, button-bush.

  The bass on Conantum is a very rich sight now, tlxnlgh the flowers are somewhat stale . . . The tree resounds with the hum of bees,—bumblebees and honey-bees; rose-bugs and butterflies, also, are here—a perfect susurrus, a sound, as C. says, unlike any other in nature,—not like the wind, as that is like the sea. The bees abound on the flowers of the smooth sumach now. The branches of this tree touch the ground, and it has somewhat the appearance of being weighed down with flowers. The air is full of sweetness. The tree is full of poetry . . .

  Beck Stow’s Swamp! What an incredible spot to think of in town or city! When life looks sandy and barren, is reduced to its lowest terms, we have no appetite, and it has no flavor, then let me visit such a swamp as this, deep and impenetrable, where the earth quakes for a rod around you at every step, with its open water where the swallows skim and twitter, its meadow and cotton-grass . . .

  Peter Bobbins says that the rain of yesterday has not reached the potatoes, after all. Exorbitant potatoes! It takes a good deal to reach them,—serious preaching to convert them . . .

  After passing Hubbard’s Bridge, looking up the smooth river between the rows of button-bushes, willows, and pads, we see the sun shining on Fair Haven Hill behind a sun-born cloud, while we are in shadow,—a misty golden light, yellow, fern-like, with shadows of clouds flitting across its slope,—and horses in their pasture standing with outstretched necks to watch us . . .

  Phytolacca decandra, poke, in blossom. The Cerasus pumila ripe. The chestnuts on Pine Hill being in blossom reveals the rounded tops of the trees; separates them, and makes a richer and more varied scene . . .

  Perceived a small weed, coming up all over the fields, which leas an aromatic scent. Did not at first discover that it was blue-curls. It is a little affecting that the year should be thus solemn and regular, that this weed should have withheld itself so long, biding its appointed time, and now, without fail, be coming up all over the land, still extracting that well-known aroma out of the elements, to adorn its part of the year! . . .

I fear that your Worcester people do not often enough go to the hilltops, though, as I am told, the springs lie nearer to the surface on your hills than your valleys. They have the reputation of being Free Soilers—Do they insist on a free atmosphere too, that is, on freedom for the head or brain as well as the feet? If I were consciously to join any party it would be that which is the most free to entertain thought.

All the world complain now a days of a press of trivial duties & engagements which prevents their employing themselves on some higher ground they know of,—but undoubtedly if they were made of the right stuff to work on that higher ground, provided they were released from all those engagements—they would now at once fulfill the superior engagement, and neglect all the rest, as naturally as they breathe. They would never be caught saying that they had no time for this when the dullest man knows that this is all he has time for. No man who acts from a sense of duty ever puts the lesser duty above the greater. No man has the desire and the ability to work on high things but he has also the ability to build himself a high staging.

As for passing through any great and glorious experience, and rising above it, —as an eagle might fly athwart the evening sky to rise into still brighter & fairer regions of the heavens, I cannot say that I ever sailed so creditably, but my bark ever seemed thwarted by some side wind and went off over the edge and now only occasionally tacks back towards the center of that sea again. I have outgrown nothing good, but, I do not fear to say, fallen behind by whole continents of virtue which should have been passed as islands in my course; but I trust—what else can I trust?—that with a stuff wind some Friday, when I have thrown some of my cargo overboard, I may make up for all that distance lost.

Perchance the time will come when we shall not be content to go back & forth upon a raft to some huge Homeric or Shakspearean Indiaman that lies upon the reef, but build a bark out of that wreck, and others that are buried in the sands of this desolate island, and such new timber as may be required, in which to sail away to whole new worlds of light & life where our friends are.

Write again. There is one respect in which you did not finish your letter, you did not write it with ink, and it is not so good therefore against or for you in the eye of the law, nor in the eye of

H.D.T.

  1 P.M.—Lee’s Bridge, via Conantum; return by Clematis Brook . . .

  Herbage is drying up ; even weeds are wilted, and the corn rolls. Agriculture is a good school in which to drill a man. Successful farming admits of no idling. Now is the haying season. How active must these men be, all the country over, that they may get through their work in season! . . .

  Twenty minutes after seven, I sit at my window to observe the sun set. The lower clouds in the north and southwest grow gradually darker as the sun goes down, since we now see the side opposite to the sun, but those high overhead, whose under sides we see reflecting the day, are light. The small clouds low in the western sky were at first dark also, but, as the sun descends, they are lit up and aglow all but their cores. Those in the east, though we see their sunward sides, are a dark blue, presaging night, only the highest faintly glowing . . .

  7 P.M.—To the hills by Abel Hosmer’s.

  How dusty the roads! Wagons, chaises, loads of barrels, etc., all drive into the dust and are lost. The dust now, looking toward the sun, is white and handsome like a vapor in the morning, curling round the head and load of the teamster, while his dog walks obscured in it under the wagon. Even this dust is to one at a distance an agreeable object . . .

  This early twitter or breathing of chip-birds in the dawn sounds like something organic in the earth. This is a morning celebrated by birds. Our bluebird sits on the peak of the house and warbles as in the spring, but as he does not now by day . . .

  The ditch stonecrop is abundant in the now dry pool by the roadside near Hubbard’s.

  From Fair Haven Hill, the sun having risen, I see great wreaths of fog far northeast, revealing the course of the river, a noble sight, as it were the river elevated, or rather the ghost of the ample stream that once flowed to ocean between these now distant uplands in another geological period, filling the broad meadows,—the dews saved to the earth by this great Musketaquid condenser, refrigerator. And now the rising sun makes glow with downiest white the ample wreaths, which rise higher than the highest trees . . .

Went to Cambridge and Boston to-day . . .

Yrs,
Henry D. Thoreau

I send you the thoughts on chastity & sensuality with diffidence and shame, not knowing how far I speak to the condition o£ men generally, or how far I betray my peculiar defects. Pray enlighten me on this point if you can.

Henry D. Thoreau

  It is pleasing to behold at this season contrasted shade and sunshine oil the side of neighboring hills. They are not so attractive to the eye when all in the shadow of a cloud or wholly open to the sunshine. Each must enhance the other.

  That the luxury of walking in the river may be perfect it must be very warm, such as are few days even in July, so that the breeze on those parts of the body that have just been immersed may not produce the least chilliness . . .

  A quarter before seven P. M.—To Cliffs . . .

  I am sure that if I call for a companion in my walk I have relinquished in my design some closeness of communion with Nature. The walk will surely be more commonplace. The inclination for society indicates a distance from Nature. I do not design so wild and mysterious a walk . . .

  Epilobium coloratum, roadside just this side of Dennis’s. Water lobelia, is it, that C. [William Ellery Channing] shows me? There is a vellowish light. now from a low, tufted, yellowish, broad-leaved grass, in fields that have been mown. A June-like, breezy air . . .

  The forget-me-not still by the brook. Floating-heart was very common yesterday in J.P. Brown’s woodland pond . . .

  It is commonly said that history is a history of war, but it is at the same time a history of development . . .

  3.30 P.M.—To Flint’s Pond.

  How long is it since I beard a veery? Do they go, or become silent, when the goldfinch heralds the autumn? Do not all flowers that blossom after mid-July remind us of the fall? After midsummer we have a belated feeling as if we had all been idlers . . .

  There is more shadow under the edges of woods and copses now. The foliage appears to have increased so that the shadows are heavier, and perhaps it is this that makes it cooler, especially morning and evening, though it may be as warm as ever at noon . . .

  Is not that the small-flowered hypericum? The berries of what I have called the alternate-leaved cornel are now ripe, a, very dark blue—blue-black—and round, but dropping off prematurely, leaving handsome red cymes, which adorn the trees from a distance . . .

  Just before sunset. At the window.—The clear sky in the west, the sunset window, has a cloud both above and below. The edges of these clouds about the sun glow golden, running into fuscous . . .

  We had a little rain after all, but I walked through a long alder copse, where the leafy tops of the alders spread like umbrellas over my head, and heard the harmless pattering of the rain on my roof . . .

  Have had a gentle rain, and now with a lowering sky, but still I hear the cricket. He seems to chirp from a new depth toward autumn, new lieferungs of the fall. The singular thought-inducing stillness after a gentle rain like this. It has allayed all excitement. I hear the singular watery twitter of the goldfinch, ter tweeter e et or e ee, as it ricochets over, he and his russet (?) female . . .

  A pleasant time to behold a small lake in the woods is in the intervals of a gentle rain-storm at this season, when the air and water are perfectly still, but the sky still overcast; first, because the lake is very smooth at such a time, second, as the atmosphere is so shallow and contracted, being low-roofed with clouds, the lake as a lower heaven is much larger in proportion to it. With its glassy reflecting surface, it is somewhat more heavenly and more full of light than the regions of the air above it . . .

  Gathered some of those large, sometimes pear-shaped, sweet blue huckleberries which grow amid the rubbish where woods have just been cut . . .

  To the Cliffs.

  The small dewdrops rest on the Asclepias pulchra by the roadside like gems, and the flower has lost half its beauty when they are shaken off. What mean these orange-colored toadstools that cumber the ground, and the citron-colored (ice-cream-like) fungus? Is the earth in her monthly courses? The fog has risen up before the sin around the summit of hair Haven . . .

  C. says he keeps a dog for society, to stir up the air of the room when it, becomes dead, for he experiences awful solitudes. Aknother time thinks we must cultivate the social qualities, perhaps had better keep two dogs apiece . . .

  At sunset, the glow being confined to the north, it tinges the rails on the causewav lake-color, but behind they are a dead dark blue. I must look for the rudbeckia which Bradford says he found yesterday behind Joe Clark’s.

  Dawn. No breathing of chip-birds nor singing of robins as in spring, hut still the cock crows lustily. The creak of crickets sounds louder. As I go along the back road, hear two or three song sparrows. This morning’s red, there being a misty cloud there, is equal to an evening red. The woods are very still . . .

  I cannot conceive how a reran can accomplish anything worthy of him, unless his very breath is sweet to him. He must be particularly alive . . .

  The hibiscus flowers are seen a quarter of a mile off over the water, like large roses, now that these high colors are rather rare. Some are exceedingly delicate and pale, almost white, just rose-tinted, others a brighter pink or rose-color, and all slightly plaited (the five large petals) and turned toward the sun, now in the west, trembling in the wind. So much color looks very rich in these localities . . .

  Ilere is a little brook of very cold spring-water, rising a, few rods distant, with a gray sandy and pebbly bottom, flowing through this dense swampy thicket, where, nevertheless, the sun falls in here and there between the leaves and shines on its bottom, Meandering exceedingly, and sometimes running underground. The trilliums on its brim have fallen into it and bathe their red berries in the water, waving in the stream . . .

  Moralists say of men, By their fruits ye shall know them, but botanists say of plants, By their flowers ye shall know them. This is very well generally, but they must make exceptions sometimes when the fruit is fairer than the flower . . .

  About 8 P.M. – To Cliffs, moon half full.

  As I go up the back road, I hear the loud ringing creak of crickets, louder singers on each apple tree by the roadside, with an intermittent pulsing creak. Not THe sound of a bird all the way to the woods. How dark the shadows of the pines and oaks fall across the woodland path! There is a new tree, another forest in the shadow. It is pleasant walking in these forest paths, with heavy darkness on one side and a silvery moonlight on the oak leaves on the other, and again, when the trees meet overhead, to tread the checkered floor of finely divided light and shade . . .

  Now I sit on the Cliffs and look abroad over the river and Conantum hills. I live so much in my habitual thoughts, a routine of thought, that I forget there is any outside to the globe, and am surprised when I behold it as now— yonder hills and river in the moonlight . . .

  P.M.—To Conantum.

  The dandelion blooms again . . .

  At length, before sundown, it begins to rain. You can hardly say when it began, and now, after dark, the sound of it dripping and pattering without is quite cheering. It is long since I heard it. One of those serious and normal storms, not a shower which you can see through, something regular, a fall (?) rain, coincident with a different mood or season of the mind, not a transient cloud that drops rain . . .

  P.M.—To Walden.

  Storm drawing to a close. Crickets sound much louder after the rain in this cloudy weather . . .

  Paddled round the pond . . . Both fishes and plants are clean and bright, like the element they live in. Viewed from a hilltop, it is blue in the depths and green in the shallows, but from a boat it is seen to be a uniform dark green . . .

  We boast that we belong to the Nineteenth Century, and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little this village does for its own culture. We have a comparatively decent system of common schools, schools for infants only, as it were, but, excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter, no school for ourselves. It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men . . .

  It is pleasant to embark on a voyage, if only for a short river excursion, the boat to be your home for the day, especially if it is neat and dry. A sort of moving studio it becomes, you can carry so many things with you. It is almost as if you put oars out at your windows and moved your house along . . .

  Landed at Lee’s Cliff, in Fair Haven Pond, and sat on the Cliff. Late in the afternoon. The wind is gone down; the water is smooth; a serene evening is approaching; the clouds are dispersing; the sun has shone once or twice, but is now in a cloud. The pond, so smooth and full of reflections after a dark and breezy day, is unexpectedly beautiful. There is a little boat on it, schooner-rigged, with three sails, a perfect little vessel and perfectly reflected now in the water . . .

  Paddling over it, I see large schools of perch only an inch long, yet easily distinguished by their transverse bars. Great is the beauty of a wooded shore seen from the water, for the trees have ample room to expand on that side, and each puts forth its most vigorous bough to fringe and adorn the pond. It is rare that you see so natural an edge to the forest. Hence a pond like this, surrounded by hills wooded down to the edge of the water, is the best place to observe the tints of the autumnal foliage. Moreover, such as stand in or near to the water change earlier than elsewhere . . .

  The seringo, too, has long been silent like other birds. The red prinos berries ripe in sunny places. rose hips begin to be handsome. Small flocks of pigeons are seen these days. Distinguished from doves by their sharper wings and bodies. August has been a month of berries and melons, small fruits . . .

  A warm night. A thin coat sufficient. I hear an apple fall, as I go along the road. Meet a man going to market thus early. There are no mists to diversify the night. Its features are very simple . . .

  The petals of the purple gerardia strew the brooks. The oval spikes of somewhat pear-shaped berries of the arum perhaps vermilion-color now; its scapes bent to the ground . . .

  Observed from cars at 7.30 A.M. the dew, or fog rather, on the fine grass in meadows,—a dirty white, which, one of these mornings, will be frozen to a white frost . . . Walked from Mason Village over the mountain tops to Peterboro. Saw, sailing over Mason Village about 10 A. M., a white-headed and white-tailed eagle with black wings,—a grand sight . . .

  Went, still across lots, to Peterboro village, which we could not see from the mountain. But first we had seen the Lyndeboro Mountain, north of these two,—partly in Greenfield,—and further Crotched Mountain, and in the northeast Uncannunuc. Descended where, as usual, the forest had been burned formerly,—tall bleached masts still standing, making a very wild and agreeably [sic] scenery . . .

  Were on the top of the mountain at 1 P.M. The cars left Troy, four or five miles off, at three. We reached the depot, by running at last, at the same instant the cars did, and reached Concord at a quarter after five, i.e. four hours from the time we were picking blueberries on the mountain, with the plants of the mountain fresh in my hat.

  In my ride I experienced the pleasure of coming into a landscape where there was more distance and a bluish tinge in the horizon. I am not contented long with such narrow valleys that all is greenness in them. I wish to see the earth translated, the green passing into blue. How this heaven intervenes and tinges our more distant prospects! The farther off the mountain which is the goal of our enterprise, the more of heaven’s tint it wears . . .

  Since the rains and the sun, great fungi, six inches in diameter, stand in the woods, warped upward on their edges, showing their gills, so as to hold half a gill of water . . .

  The rippled blue surface of Fair Haven from the Cliffs, with its smooth white border where weeds preserve the surface smooth, a placid silver-plated rim. The pond is like the sky with a border of whitish clouds in the horizon . . .

  3.30 P.M.—A-barberrying to Flint’s Pond . . .

  Sophia has come from Bangor and brought the Dalibarda repens, white dalibarda, a little crenate-roundedheart-shaped-leafed flower of damp woods . . .

  The red capsules of the sarothra. Many large crickets about on the sand. Observe the effects of frost in particular places. Some blackberry vines are very red . . .

  The small skull-cap and cress and the mullein still in bloom. I see pigeon woodpeckers oftener now, with their light rears . . .

  As I was walking through the maple swamp by the Corner Spring, I was surprised to see apples on the ground, and at first supposed that somebody had dropped them, but, looking up, I detected a wild apple tree, as tall and slender as the young maples and not more than five inches in diameter at the ground. This had blossomed and borne fruit this year. The apples were quite mellow and of a very agreeable flavor, though they had a rusty-scraperish look, and I filled my pockets with them. The squirrels had found them out before me. It is an agreeable surprise to find in the midst of a swamp so large and edible a fruit as an apple . . .

  Pogonia verticillata, Hubbard’s Second Wood. Bigelow says July.

  Trillium crythrocarpum, Bigelow Says May and June

  Uvularia perfoliata, Bigelow says May.

  P.M.—On river . . .

  In love we impart, each to each, in subtlest immaterial form of thought or atmosphere, the best of ourselves, such as commonly vanishes or evaporates in aspirations, and mutually enrich each other . . .

  The forget-me-not still. I observe the rounded tops of the dogwood bushes, scarlet in the distance, on the edge of the meadow (Hubbard’s), more full and bright than any flower . . .

  P.M.—To Ministerial Swamp.

  The small cottony leaves of the fragrant everlasting in the fields for some time, protected, as it were, by a little web of cotton against frost and snow,—a little dense web of cotton spun over it,—entangled in it,—as if to restrain it from rising higher . . .

  The flashing clearness of tire atmosphere. More light appears toy be reflected from the earth, less absorbed . . .

  From Smith’s Hill I looked toward the mountain line. Who can believe that the mountain peak which he beholds fifty miles off in the horizon, rising far and faintly blue above an intermediate range, while he stands on his trivial native hills or in the dusty highway, can be the same with that which he looked up at once near at hand from a gorge in the midst of primitive woods? For a part of two days I travelled across lots once, loitering by the way, through primitive wood and swamps over the highest peak of the Peterboro hills to Monadnock . . .

  I find the hood-leaved violet quite abundant in a meadow, and the pedata in the Boulder Field . . .

  Children are now gathering barberries,—just the right time. Speaking of the great fall flower which the valleys are at present, its brightest petal is still the scarlet one of dogwood, and in some places the redder red maple one is equally bright . . .

  A fine, clear day after the coolest night and severest frost we have had . . . .

  After we got to the Baker Farm, to one of the open fields nearest to the tree I had marked, the first thing was to find some flowers and catch some honey-bees. We followed up the bank of the brook for some distance, but the goldenrods were all dried up there, and the asters on which we expected to find them were very scarce . By the pond-side we had no better luck, the frosts perhaps having made flowers still more scarce there. We then took the path to Clematis Brook on the north of Mt. Misery . . . I had cut my initials in the bark in the winter, for custom gives the first finder of the nest a right to the honey and to cut down the tree to get it and pay the damages, and if he cuts his initials on it no other hunter will interfere . . .

  The beggar-ticks (Bidens) now adhere to my clothes. I also find the desmodium sooner thus—as a magnet discovers the steel filings in a heap of ashes—than if I used my eyes alone . . .

  I hear a hylodes (?) from time to time. Shrub oaks are red, some of them. Hear the loud laughing of a loon on Flint’s, apparently alone in the middle. A wild sound, heard far and suited to the wildest lake . . .

  I find no fringed gentian. Perhaps the autumnal tints are as bright and interesting now as they will be. Now is the time to behold the maple swamps, one mass of red and yellow, all on fire, as it were . . .

  I sit on Poplar Hill. It is a warm Indian-summerish afternoon. The sun comes out of clouds, and lights up and warms the whole scene. It is perfect autumn. I see a hundred smokes arising through the yellow elmtops in the village, where the villagers are preparing for tea. It is the mellowing year. The sunshine harmonizes with the, imbrowned and fierv foliage . . .

  The autumnal tints about the pond are now perfect. Nothing can exceed the brilliancy of some of the maples which stand by the shore and extend their red banners over the water. Why should so many be yellow? I see the browner yellow of the chestnuts on Pine Hill. The maples and hickories are a clearer yellow. Some white oaks are red. The shrub oaks are bloody enough for a ground. The red and black oaks are yet green . . .

  Many maples have lost all their leaves and are shrunk all at once to handsome clean gray wisps on the edge of the meadows, where, crowded together, at a distance they look like smoke. This is a sudden and important change, produced mainly, I suppose, by the rain of Sunday, 10th. The autumnal tints have commonly already lost their brightness. It lasts but a day or two . . .

  P.M.—Walden.

  The water of Walden is a light green next the shore, apparently because of the light rays reflected from the sandy bottom mingling with the rays which the water reflects . . .

  A mild, still, but cloudy, or rather misty, afternoon. The water is at present perfectly smooth and calm, but covered with a kind of smoky or hazy film. Nevertheless, the reflections of distant woods, though less distinct, are softer, seen through this smoky and darkened atmosphere. I speak only of the reflections as seen in the broader bays and longer reaches of the river, as at the Willow End . . .

  At 5 P.M. I found the fringed gentian now somewhat stale and touched by frost, being in the meadow toward Peter’s . . .

  Cxilpin speaks of “floats of timber” on the river Wey, in 1775, as picturesque objects. Thus in the oldest settled and civilized country there is a resemblance or reminiscence still of the primitive new country, and more or less timber never ceases to grow on the head waters of its streams, and perchance tile wild muskrat still perforates its banks . . .

  Ebby Hubbard’s oaks, now turned a sober and warm red and yellow, have a very rich crisp and curled look, especially against the green pines. This is when the ripe, high-colored leaves have begun to curl and wither. The they have a warm and harmonious tint . . .

  This may be called an Indian-summer day. It is quite hazy withal, and the mountains invisible. I see a horehound turned lake or steel-claret color . . .

  My friend is one whom I meet, who takes me for what I am. A stranger takes me for something else than I am. We do not speak, we cannot communicate, till we find that we are recognized . . .

  P.M.—Rode to Stow via powder-mills with W.E.C. [William Ellery Channing], returning via the fir tree house, Vose’s Hill, and Corner.

  The road through the woods this side the powdermills was very gorgeous with the sun shining endwise through it, and the red tints of the deciduous trees, now somewhat imbrowned, mingled with the liquid green of the pines . . .

  Another perfect Indian-summer day. One of my oars makes a creaking sound like a block in a harbor, such a sound as would bring tears into an old sailor’s eyes. It suggests to me adventure and seeking one’s fortune . . .

  The autumnal tints grow gradually darker and duller, but not less rich to my eye. And now a hillside near the river exhibits the darkest, crispy reds and browns of every hue, all agreeably blended. At the foot, next the meadow, stands a front rank of smoke-like maples bare of leaves, intermixed with yellow birches . . .

  There are no skaters on the pond now. It is cool today and windier. The water is rippled considerably. As I stand in the boat, the farther off the water, the bluer it is. Looking straight down, it is a dark green. Hence, apparently, the celestial blueness of those distant river-reaches, when the water is agitated, so that their surfaces reflect. the sky at the right angle . . .

  8 P.M.—To Cliffs.

  The moon beginning to wane. It is a quite warm but moist night . . .

  The forest has lost so many leaves that its floor and paths are much more checkered with light. I hear no sound but the rustling of the withered leaves, which lulls the few and silent birds to sleep, and, on the wooded hilltops, the roar of the wind. Each tree is a harp which resounds all night, though some have but a few leaves left to flutter and hum. From the Cliffs, the river and pond are exactly the color of the sky. Though the latter is slightly veiled with a thin mist . . .

  It is remarkable how native man proves himself to the earth, after all, and the completeness of his life in all its appurtenances. His alliances, how wide! He has domesticated not only beasts and fowl . . .

  In the latter part of October the skaters and water-bugs entirely disappear from the surface of the pond, and then and in November, when the weather is perfectly calm, it is almost absolutely as smooth as glass. This afternoon a three-days’ rain-storm is drawing to an end, though still overcast. The air is quite still but misty, from time to time mizzling, and the pond is very smooth, and its surface difficult to distinguish, though it no longer reflects the bright tints of autumn but sombre colors only . . .

  Or I was startled by the cracking of the ground in the coldest nights, which sounded as if it were my house that cracked, and in the morning I would find a crack in the earth a quarter of an inch wide and a quarter of a mile long.

  The sunsets begin to be interestingly warm.

  Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. This life in the present. Let a man have thought what he will of Nature in the, house, she will still be novel outdoors . . .

  My thought is a part of the meaning of the world, and hence I use a part of the world as a symbol to express my thought.

  It clears up. A very bright rainbow. Three reds and greens. I see its foot within half a mile in the southeast, heightening the green of the pines. From Fair Haven Hill, I see a very distant, long, low dark-blue cloud, still left, in the northwest horizon beyond the mountains . . .

  Colder weather and very windy, but still no snow. A verv little ice along the edges of the river, which does not all melt before night . . .

  I send you herewith 100 pages of “Cape Cod.” It is not yet half the whole. The remainder of the narrative is more personal, as I reach the scene of my adventures. I am a little in doubt about the extracts from the old ministers. If you prefer to, you may omit from the middle of the 86th page to the end of this parcel: (the rest being respected); or perhaps a smaller type will use it up fast enough.

  As for the conditions of sale; if you accept the paper, it is to be mine to reprint, if I think it worth the while, after it has appeared in your journal.

  I shall expect to be paid as fast as the paper is printed, and if it is likely to be on hand long, to receive reasonable warning of it.

  I have collected this under several heads for your convenience. The next subject is “The Beach,” which I will copy out & forward as soon as you desire it.

Yrs
Henry D. Thoreau

  3 P.M.—To Cliffs and Walden.

  You must go forth early to see the snow on the twigs. The twigs and leaves are all bare now, and the snow half melted on the ground . . . The beauty and purity of new-fallen snow, lying just as it fell, on the twigs and leaves all the country over, afforded endless delight to the walker. It was a delicate and fairylike scene . . .

  I have made no bargain—none whatever—with [George Palmer] Putnam, concerning your MS. I have indicated no price to him, I handed over the MS. because I wish it published, and presumed that was in accordance both with your interest and your wishes.

  And I now say to you that if he will pay you $3 per printed page, I think that will be very well. I have promised to write something for him myself, and shall be well satisfied with that price. Your `Canada’ is not so fresh and acceptable as if it had just been written on the strength of a last summer’s trip, and I hope you will have it printed in Putnam’s Monthly. But I have said nothing to his folks as to price, and will not till I hear from you again.

  Very probably, there was some misapprehension on the part of Geo. Curtis. I presume the price now offered you is that paid to writers generally for the Monthly.

  As to Sartain, I know his magazine has broken down, but I guess he will pay you. I have not seen but one o£ your articles printed by him, and I think the other may be reclaimed. Please address him at once. I have been very busy the past season, and had to let every thing wait that could till after Nov. 2d.

Yours,
Horace Greeley

  Like many of my contemporaries I had rarely for many years used animal food, or tea or coffee, etc., etc., not so much because of any ill effects which I had traced to them in my own case, though I could theorize extensively in that direction, as because it was not agreeable to my imagination . . . The repugnance to animal food and the rest is not the result of experience, but is an instinct.

  November 29th, walked in P. M. to old stone bridge and down bank of river by Sam Barrett’s house . . .

  The buds of the Populus tremuloides show their down as in early spring, and the early willows. Wood-choppers have commenced some time since. This is another pleasant day. From Pine Hill, Wachusett is seen over Walden. The country seems to slope up from the west end of Walden to the mountain . . .

  The snow keeps off unusually. The landscape is the color of a russet apple which has no golden cheek. The sunset sky supplies that . . .

  Started in boat before 9 A.M. down river to Billerica with W.E.C. [William Ellery Channing]

  Not wind enough for a sail. I do not remember when I have taken a sail or a row on the river in December before. We had to break the ice about the boat-house for some distance. Still no snow . . .

  C. says, “Let us land” (in an orchard by Atkins’s (?) boathouse). “The angle of incidents should be equal to the angle of reflection.” We did so. By the island where I formerly camped, half a mile or more above the bridge on the road from Chelmsford to Bedford, we saw a mink . . .

  Long did it take to sink the Carlisle Bridge. The reflections after sunset were distinct and glorious,—the heaven into which we unceasingly rowed. I thought now that the angle of reflection was greater than the angle of incidents. It cooler grew. The stars came out soon after we turned Ball’s Hill, and it became difficult to distinguish our course . . .

  A dark, but warm, misty day, completely overcast. This great rise of the pond after an interval of many years, and the water standing at this great height for a year or more, kills the shrubs and trees about its edge,—pitch pines, birches, alders, aspens, etc .,—and, falling again, leaves an unobstructed shore. The rise and fall of the pond serves this use at least . . .

  I have said that Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, but it is on the one hand distantly and indirectly related to Flint’s Pond, which is more elevated, by a chain of small ponds coming from that quarter, and on the other hand directly and manifestly related to Concord River, which is lower, by a similar chain of ponds, through which in some other geological period it may have flowed thither . . .

  Those little ruby-crownued wrens (?) still about. They suddenly dash away from this side to that in flocks, with a tumultuous note, half jingle, half rattle, like nuts shaken in a bag, or a bushel of nutshells . . .

  As we walked over the Cedar Hill, Mr. Weston asked me if I had ever noticed how the frost formed around a particular weed in the grass, and no other. It was a clear cold morning. We stooped to examine, and I observed, about the base of the Lechea major (?), or larger pinweed, the frost formed into little flattened trumpets or bells, an inch or more long, with the mouth down about the base of the stem. They were very conspicuous, dotting the grass white. But what was most remarkable was that, though there were plenty of other dead weeds and grasses about, no other species exhibited this phenomenon . . .

  I observed a mouse run down a bush by the pond-side. I approached and found that he had neatly covered over a thrasher or other bird’s nest (it was made partly of sticks like a thrasher’s), about four or five feet from the ground, and lined it warmly with that common kind of green moss (?) which grows about the base of oaks, but chiefly with a kind [of] vegetable wool, perhaps from the wool-grass. He appeared to be a reddish brown above and cream-colored beneath, and ran swiftly down the stems . . .

  We have now the scenery of winter, though the snow is but an inch or two deep . . .

  Ah, who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset? This could not be till the cold and the snow came. . . .

  One’s life, the enterprise he is here upon, should certainly be a grand fact to consider, not a mean or insignificant one. A man should not live without a purpose . . .

  Sedum Telephium, garden orpine or live-for-ever; I think this is the plant with a sort of pineapple-leaved and sheathed bulbs, on a rock between Cox’s and Heywood’s . . .

  A rambling, rocky, wild, moorish pasture, this of Hunt’s, with two or three great white oaks to shade the cattle, which the farmer would not take fifty dollars apiece for, though the ship-builder wanted them . . .

  Both for bodily and mental health, court the present. Embrace health wherever you find her . . .

  It is worth the while to apply what wisdom one has to the conduct of his life, surely. I find myself oftenest wise in little things and foolish in great ones. That I may accomplish some particular petty affair well, I live my whole life coarsely. A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars. What are threescore years and ten hurriedly and coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure in which your life is coincident with the life of the universe? We live too fast and coarsely, just as we eat too fast, and do not know the true savor of our food. We consult our will and understanding and the expectation of men, not our genius . . .

  Sigmodon hispidum, Say and Ord.

  Marsh-Rat of Lawson’s Carolina.

  Wood-Rat, Bartram’s Travels in Florida.

  Arvicola hispidus, Godman.

  Arvcicola hortensis of Griffith and of Cuvier.

  The plate of this resembles my mouse of December 13th.

  It is a sort of frozen rain this afternoon, which does not wet one, but makes the still bare ground slippery with a coating of ice . . .

  I would be glad to visit Plymouth again, but at present I have nothing to read which is not severely heathenish, or at least secular,—which the dictionary defines as “relating to affairs of the present world, not holy,”—though not necessarily unholy,” nor have I any leisure to prepare it. My writing at present is profane, yet in a good sense, and, as it were, sacredly, I may say; for, finding the air of the temple too close, I sat outside. Don’t think I say this to get off; no, no! It will not do to read such things to hungry ears. “If they ask for bread, will you give them a stone?” When I have something of the right kind, depend upon it I will let you know.