I have yours of the 29th, and credit you $20. Pay me when and in such sums as may be convenient. I am sorry you and C [George William Curtis] cannot agree so as to have your whole MS. printed. It will be worth nothing elsewhere after having partly appeared in Putnam’s. I think it is a mistake to conceal the authorship of the several articles, making them all (so to speak) editorial; but if that is done, don’t you see that the elimination of very flagrant heresies (like your defiant Pantheism) becomes a necessity? If you had withdrawn your MS., on account of the abominable misprints in the first number, your ground would have been far more tenable.

  However, do what you will.

  Yours,

  Horace Greeley

Cohasset, Mass. Ellen Sewall writes to her aunt Prudence Ward:

  I see where probably a red squirrel had scratched along over the snow, and in one place a very perfect and delicate print of his feet. His five toes in separate sharp triangles distinctly raying off, or often only four visible. In one place I find a beaten track from a hole in the ground to [a] walnut a rod distant up which they have gone for nuts, which still hang on it. The whole
print of the foot, etc., is about an inch and three quarters long, a part of the leg being impressed. Two of the tracks, when they are running, apparently, the two foremost, are wider apart and perhaps with one pair.

  Arrived probably before half past ten. There were perhaps thirty or forty wagons there. The kernel-mill had blown up first, and killed three men who were in it, said to be turning a roller with a chisel. In three seconds after, one of the mixing-houses exploded. The kernel-house was swept away, and fragments, mostly but a foot or two in length, were strewn over the hills and meadows, as if sown, for thirty rods, and the slight snow then on the ground was for the most part melted around. The mixing-house, about ten rods west, was not so completely dispersed, for the most of the machinery remained, a total wreck. The press-house, about twelve rods east, had two thirds [of] its boards off, and a mixing-house next westward from that which blew up had lost some boards on the east side. The boards fell out (i.e. of those buildings which did not blow up), the air within apparently rushing out to fill up the vacuum occasioned by the explosions, and so, the powder being bared to the fiery particles in the air, another building explodes. The powder on the floor of the bared press-house was six inches deep in some places, and the crowd were thoughtlessly going into it. A few windows were broken thirty or forty rods off. Timber six inches square and eighteen feet long were thrown over a hill eighty feet high at least, – a dozen rods; thirty rods was about the limit of fragments. The drying-house in which was a fire, was perhaps twenty-five rods distant and escaped. Every timber and piece of wood which was blown up was as black as if it had been dyed, except where it had broken on falling, other breakages were completely concealed by the color. I mistook what had been iron hoops in the woods for leather straps. Some of the clothes of the men were in the tops of the trees, where undoubtedly their bodies had been and left them. The bodies were naked and black, some limbs and bowels here and there, and a head at some distance from its trunk. The feet were bare; the hair singed to a crisp. I smelt the powder half a mile before I got there. Put the different buildings thirty rods apart, and then but one will blow up at a time.

  Brown thinks my red-headed bird of the winter the lesser redpoll.

  P.M.—To Walden and Andromeda Ponds.

  The place of the sun appears through the storm about three o’clock, a sign that it is near its end, though it still snows as hard as ever. An intenser, whiter light is reflected from the west side of drifts and hills, like another day, in comparison with which the level snow is dark. There is this recognition of fair weather. The west side of abrupt drifts toward the lit clouds reflects quite a glow of light, many shades brighter than the levels. It is a very light snow, lying like down or feathery scales. Examined closely, the flakes are beautifully regular six-rayed stars or wheels with a centre disk, perfect geometrical figures in thin scales . . .

  A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance. Observe how the greatest minds yield in some degree to the superstitions of their age.

  A thick fog. The trees and woods look well through it. You are inclined to walk in the woods for objects. They are draped with mist, and you hear the sound of it dripping from them. It is a lichen day. Not a bit of rotten wood lies on the dead leaves, but it is covered with fresh, green cup lichens, etc., etc. All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, -a sudden humid growth. I remember now that the mist was much thicker over the pond than elsewhere. I could not distinguish a man there more than ten rods off, and the woods, seen dimly across a bay, were mistaken for the opposite side of the pond. I could almost fancy a bay of an acre in extent the whole pond. Elsewhere, methinks, I could see twice as far. I felt the greater coolness of the air over the pond, which it was, I suppose, that condensed the vapor more there.

  I send you inclosed Putnam’s cheque for 59 dollars, which together with the 20” sent last December—make, nearly enough, principal interest of the $75 which you lent me last July—However I regard that loan as a kindness for which I am still indebted to you both principal and interest. I am sorry that my manuscript should be so mangled, insignificant as it is, but I do not know how I could have helped it fairly, since I was born to be a pantheist—if that be the name of me, and I do the deeds of one.

  I suppose that Sartain is quite out of hearing by this time, & it is well that I sent him no more.

  Let me know how much I am still indebted to you pecuniarily for trouble taken in disposing of my papers – which I am sorry to think were hardly worth our time.

  Yrs with new thanks

  Henry D. Thoreau

  I mentioned to you that Mr. [Michael] Flannery had given me an order on you for ¾ of his wages. I have agreed with him that that arrangement shall not begin to take effect until the first of March 1854.

  yrs

  Henry D. Thoreau

  I have not answered your letter before because I have been almost constantly in the fields surveying of late. It is long since I have spent so many days so profitably in a pecuniary sense; so unprofitably, it seems to me, in a more important sense. I have earned just a dollar a day for 76 days past; for though I charge at a higher rate for the days which are seen to be spent, yet so many more are spent than appears. This is instead of lecturing, which has not offered to pay for that book which I printed. I have not only cheap hours, but cheap weeks and months, i.e. weeks which are bought at the rate I have named. Not that they are quite lost to me, or make me very melancholy, alas! for I too often take a cheap satisfaction in so spending them, – weeks of pasturing and browsing, like beeves and deer, which gave me animal health, it may be, but created a tough skin over the soul and intellectual part. Yet if men should offer my body a maintenance for the work of my head alone, I feel that it would be a dangerous temptation.

  As to whether what you speak of as the “world’s way” (Which for the most part is my way) or that which is sown me, is the better, the former is imposture, the latter is truth. I have the coldest confidence in the last. There is only such hesitation as the appetites feel in following the apiratons The clod hesitates because it is inert, wants animation. The one is the way of death, the other is life everlasting. My ours are not “cheap in such a way that I doubt whether the world’s way would not have been better,” but cheap in such a way, that I doubt whether the world’s way, which I have adopted for the time, could be worse. The whole enterprise of this nation which is not upward, but a westward one, towards Oregon California, Japan &c, is totally devoid of interest to me, whether performed on foot or by a sentiment, there is nothing in it which one should lay down his life for, nor even his gloves, hardly which one should take up a newspaper for. It is perfectly heathenish -a flibustiering towards heaven by the great western route. No, they may go their way to their manifest destiny which I trust is not mine. May my 76 dollars whenever I get them help to carry me in the other direction. I see them on their winding way, but no music ‘is’ wafted from their host, only the rattling of change in their pockets. I would rather be a captive knight, and let them all pass my, than be free only to go whither they are bound. What end do they propose to themselves beyond Japan? What aims more lofty have they than the prairie dogs.

  As it respects these things I have not changed an opinion one iota from the first. As the stars looked to me when I was a shepherd in Assyria they look to me now a New Englander. The higher the mt. on which you stand, the less change in the prospect from year to year, from age to age. Above a certain height, there is no change. I am a Switzer on the edge of a glacier, with his advantages & disadvantages, goitre, or what not. (You may suspect it to be some kind of swelling at any rate). I have had but one spiritual birth (excuse the word,) and now weather it rains or snows, whether I laugh or cry, fall father below or approach nearer to my standard, whether Pierce or Scott is elected—not a new scintillation of light flashes on me, but ever and anon, though with longer intervals, the same surprising & everlastingly new light dawns to me, with only such variations as in the coming of the natural day, with which indeed, it is often coincident.

  As to how to preserve potatoes from rotting, your opinion may change from year to year, but as to how to preserve your sound from rotting, I have nothing to learn but something to practise.

  Thus I declaim against them, but I in my folly am the world I condemn.

  I very rarely indeed, if ever, “feel any itching to be what is called useful to my fellowmen.” Sometimes, it may be when my thoughts for want of employment, fall into a beaten path or humdrum, I have dreamed idly of stopping a man’s horse in order that I might stop him, or, of putting out a fire, but then of course it must have got well a—going. Now, to tell the truth, I do not dream much of acting upon horses before they run, or of preventing fires which are not yet kindled. What a foul subject is this, of doing good, instead of minding ones life, which should be his business—going food as a dead carcass, which is only for for manure, instead of as a living man,—Instead of taking care to flourish & smell & taste sweet and refresh all mankind to the extent of our capacity & quality. People will sometimes try to persuade you that you have done something from that motive, as if you did not already know enough about it. If I ever did a man any good, in their sense, of course it was something exceptional, and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am constantly doing by being what I am. As if you were to preach to the ice to shape itself into burning glasses, which are sometimes useful, and so the peculiar properties of ice be lost—Ice that merely performs the office of a burning glass does not do its duty.

  The problem of life becomes one cannot say by how many degrees more complicated as our material wealth is increased, whether that needle they tell of was a gate-way or not,—since the problem is not merely nor mainly to get life for our bodies, but by this or a similar discipline to get life for our souls; but cultivating the lowland farm on right principles, that is with this view, to turn it into an upland farm. You have so many more talents to account for. If I accomplish as much more in spiritual work as I am richer in worldly goods, then I am just as worthy, or worth just as much as I was before, and no more. I see that, in my own case, money might be of great service to me, but probably it would not be, for the difficulty ever is that I do not improve my opportunities, and therefore I am not prepared to have my opportunities increased. Now I warn you, if it be as you say, you have got to put on the pack of an Upland Farmer in good earnest the coming spring, the lowland farm being cared for, aye you must be selecting your seeds forth with and doing what winter work you can; nd while others are raising potatoes and Baldwin apples for you, you must be raising apples of the hesperides for them. (Only hear how he preaches!) No man can suspect that he is the proprietor of an Upland farm, upland in the sense that it will produce nobler crops and better replay cultivation in the long run, but he will be perfectly sure that he ought to cultivate it.

  Though we are desirous to earn our bread, we need not be anxious to satisfy men for it—though we shall take care to pay them, but Good [sic] who alone gave it to us. Men may in effect put us in the debtors jails, for that matter, simply for paying our whole debt to God which includes our debt to them, and though we have his receipt for it, for his paper is dishonored. The carrier will tell you that he has no stock in his bank.

  How prompt we are to satisfy the hunger & thirst of our bodies; how slow to satisfy the hunger & thirst of our souls. Indeed we [who] would be practical folks cannot use this work without blushing because of our infidelity, having starved this substance almost to a shadow. We feel it to be as absurd as if a man were to break forth into a eulogy on his dog who hasn’t any. An ordinary man will work every day for a year at shovelling dirt to support his body, or a family of bodies, but he is an extraordinary man who will work a whole day in a year for the sport of his soul. Even the priests, then men of God, so called, for the most part confess that they work for the support of their body. But he alone is the truly enterprising & practical man who succeeds in maintaining his soul here. Haven’t we our everlasting life to get? And isn’t that the only excuse at last for eating drinking sleeping or even carrying an umbrella when it rains? A man might as well devote himself to raising pork, as topatening the bodies or temporal part merely of the whole human family. If we made the true distinction we should almost all of us be seen to be in the almshouse for souls.

  I am much indebted to you because you look so steadily at the better side, or rather the true center of me (for our center & perhaps oftenest does lie entirely aside from us, and we are in fact eccentric,) and as I have elsewhere said “Give me an opportunity to live.” You speak as if the image or idea which I see were reflected from me to you, and I see it again reflected from you to me, because we stand at the right angle to one another; and so it does, zig-zag, to what successive reflecting surfaces, before it is all dissipated, or absorbed by the more unreflecting, or differently reflecting, who knows? Or perhaps what you see directly you refer to me. What a little shelf is required, by which we may impinge upon another, and build there our eyrie in the clouds, and all the heaven we see above us we refer to the crags around and beneath us. Some piece of mica, as it were, in the face or eyes of heaves to us, But in the slow geological depressions & upheavals, these mutual angles are distibed, these suns set & new ones rise to us. That ideal which I worshipped was a greater stranger to the mica than to me. It was not the hero I admired but the reflection from his epaulet or helmet. It is nothing (for us) permanently inherent in another, but his attitude or relation to what we prize that we admire. The meanest man may glitter with micaceous particles to his fellow’s eye. There are the spangles that adorn a man. The highest union—the only un-ion (don’t laugh) or central oneness, is the coincidence of visual rays. Our club room was an apartment in a constellation where our visual rays met (and there was no debate about the restaurant) The way between us is over the mount.

  Your worlds make me think of a man my acquaintance whom I occasionally meet, whom you too appear to have met, one Myself, as he is called. Yet why not call him Your-self? If you have met with him & know him it is all I have done, and surely here there is a mutual acquaintance the my & thy make a distinction without a difference.

  I do not wonder that you do not like my Canada story. It concerns me but little, and probably is not worth the time it took to tell it. Yet I had absolutely no design whatever in my mind, but simply to report what I saw. I have inserted all of myself that was implicated or made the excursion. It has come to an end at any rate, they will print no more, but return me my mss. when it is but little more than half done as ellas another I had sent them, because the editor Curtis requires the liberty to omit the hereies without consulting me -a privilege California is not rich enough to bid for.

  I thank you again & again for attending to me; that is to say I am glad that you hear me and that you also are glad. Hold fast to your most indefinite waking dream. The very green dust on the walls is an organized vegetable; the atmosphere has its fauna & flora floating in it; & shall we think that dreams are but dust & askes, are always disintegrated & crumbling thoughts and not dust like thoughts trooping to its standard with music systems beginning to be organized. These expectations there are toots there are nuts which even the poorest man has in his bin, and roasts or cracks them occasionally in winter evenings, which even the poor debtor retains with his bed and his pig i.e. his idleness & sensuality. Men go to the opera because they hear there a faint expression in sound of this news which is never quite distinctly proclaimed Suppose a man where to sell the hue the least amount of coloring matter in the superficies of his thought,—for a farm—were to exchange an absolute & infinite value for a relative & finite one- to gain the whole work & lose his own soul!

  Do not wait as long as I have before you write. If you will look at another star I will try to supply my side of the triangle

  Tell Mr Brown that I remember him & trust that he remembers me.

Yrs
H.D.T

PS. Excuse this rather flippant reaching—which does not cost me enough—and do not think that I mean you always—though your letter requested the subjects.

  P. M.—To Lee’s Hill.

  Stedman Buttrick calls the ducks which we see in winter, widgeons and wood sheldrakes.

  Together with the ms of my Cape Cod adventures Mr [George Palmer] Putnam sends me only the first 70 or 80 (out of 200) pages of the “Canada,” all which having been printed is of course of no use to me. He states that “the remainder of the mss. seems to have been lost at the printers’.” You will not be surprised if I wish to know if it actually is lost, and if reasonable pains have been taken to recover it. Supposing that Mr. P. may not have had an opportunity to consult you respecting its whereabouts—or have thought it of importance enough to inquire after particularly—I write again to you to whom I entrusted it to assure you that it is of more value to me than may appear.

  With your leave I will improve this opportunity to acknowledge the receipt of another cheque from Mr. Putnam.

  I trust that if we ever have any intercourse hereafter it may be something more cheering than this curt business kind.

  Yrs,

  Henry D. Thoreau

  I have yours of the 9th, inclosing Putnam’s check for $59, making $79 in all you have paid me. I am paid in full, and this letter is your receipt in full. I don’t want any pay for my “services,” whatever they may have been. Consider me your friend who wished to serve you, however unsuccessfully. Don’t break with C [George William Curtis] or Putnam.

  Yours,

  Horace Greeley

  P.M.—Rode to Lexington with Brown . . .

  Now, then, spring is beginning again in earnest after this short check . . . I no sooner step out of the house than I hear the bluebirds in the air, and far and near, everywhere except in the woods, throughout the town you may hear them . . . Everywhere also, all over the town, within an hour or two have come out little black two-winged gnats with plumed or fuzzy shoulders. When I catch one in my hands, it looks like [a] bit of black silk ravelling. I hear the chuck, chuck of a blackbird in the sky, whom I cannot detect . . . And there’s the great gull I came to see, already fishing in front of Bittern Cliff . . . The ice in Fair Haven is more than half melted . . .

  Hearing a faint quack, I looked up and saw two apparently dusky ducks winging their swift way northward over the course of the river. [William Ellery] Channing says he saw some large white-breasted ducks to-day, and also a frog. I have seen dead frogs, as if killed while dormant.

  The chill-lill of the blue snowbirds is heard again. A partridge goes off on Fair Haven Hill-side . . . I detect a few catkins at a distance by their distinct yellowish color . . .

  P.M.—To Martial Mile’s Meadow, by boat to Nut Meadow Brook. Launched my new boat . . . The cranberries now make a show under water, and I always make it a point to taste a few . . .

  C. [William Ellery Channing] says he saw a painted tortoise yesterday. Very likely. We started two ducks feeding behind a low spit of meadow . . . The spear-heads of the skunk-cabbage are now quite conspicuous . . .

  At Nut Meadow Brook, water-bugs and skaters are now plenty . . . C. saw a frog. Hubbard’s field a smooth russet bank lit by the setting sun and the pale skim-milk sky above. I told Stacy the other day that there was another volume of De Quincey’s Essays (wanting to see it in his library). “I know it,” says he, “but I shan’t buy any more of them, for nobody reads them.” I asked what book in his library was most read. He said, “The Wide, Wide World.”

  6 A.M.—Up the North River . . .

  P.M.—To Howard’s meadow.

  The telegraph harp sounds more commonly, now that westerly winds prevail . . . The ice went out of Walden this forenoon . . . The pads at Howard’s meadow are very forward . . . I go to look for mud turtles in Heywood’s meadow.

  Saw two gray squirrels coursing over the trees on the Rock Island . . .

  P.M.—To Second Division Brook. The white pine wood, freshly cut, piled by the side of the Charles Miles road, is agreeable to walk beside . . . C. [William Ellery Channing] declares that Miss Ripley spent one whole season studying the lichens on a stick of wood they were about to put on the fire . . . I tied a string round what I take to be the Alnus incana, two or three rods this side of Jenny’s Road, on T. Wheeler’s ditch . . . A yellow lily bud already yellow at the Tortoise Ditch, Nut Meadow. Those little holes in sandy fields and on the sides of hills, which I see so numerously as soon as the snow is off and the frost out of the ground, are probably made by the skunk in search of bugs and worms, as Rice says.

  11 A.M.—To Framingham.

  A Lincoln man heard a flock of geese, he thinks it was day before yesterday. Measured a white oak in front of Mr. Billing’s new house, about one mile beyond Saxonville,—twelve and one twelfth feet in circumference at four feet from the ground (the smallest place within ten feet from the ground), fourteen feet circumference at ground, and a great spread. Frank’s place is on the Concord River within less than ten miles of Whitehall Pond in Hopkinton, one of [the sources], perhaps the principal source, of the river. I thought that a month hence the stream would not be twenty feet wide there. Mr. Wheeler, auctioneer, of Framingham, told me that the timber of the factory at Saxonville was brought by water to within about one mile of where the mill stands. There is a slight rapid. Brown says that he saw the north end of Long Pond covered with ice the 22d, and that R.W.E. [Ralph Waldo Emerson] saw the south end entirely open.

  P.M.—Up Assabet to stone-heaps, in boat . . . Went forth just after sunset. A storm gathering, an April-like storm. I hear now in the dusk only the song sparrow along the fences and a few hylas at a distance. And now the rattling drops compel me to return.

  The skunk-cabbage in full bloom under the Clamshell Hill . . . I see but on tortoise (Emys guttata) in Nut Meadow Brook now . . . Tried to see the faint-croaking frogs at J. P. Brown’s Pond in the woods . . . Did not see frog spawn in the pool by Hubbard’s Wood.

  6 A.M.—To Cliffs . . .

  P.M.—To Assabet . . .

  I saw in Dodd’s yard and flying thence to the alders by the river what I think must be the tree sparrow.

  From Cheney’s boat-house I hear very distinctly the tapping of a woodpecker at the Island about a quarter of a mile . . .

  P.M.—To early willow behind Martial Miles’s . . . On the railroad I hear the telegraph . . . Under the south side of Clamshell Hill, in the sun, the air is filled with those black fuzzy gnats and I hear a fine hum from them . . . Walking along near the edge of the meadow under Lupine Hill, I slumped through the sod into a muskrat’s nest, for the sod was only two inch thick over it, which was enough when it was frozen . . . A wood tortoise in Nut Meadow Brook . . . Dugan tells me that three otter were dug out the past winter in Deacon Farrar’s wood-lot, side of the swamp, by Powers and Willis of Sudbury. He has himself seen one in the Second Division woods. He saw two pigeons to-day. Prated[sic] for them; they came near and then flew away. He saw a woodchuck yesterday . . . Dugan wished to get some guinea-hens to keep off the hawks.

  The gooseberry leaves in the garden are just beginning to show a little green . . . Seeing one of those little holes (which I have thought were made by beetles or dor-bugs) in Wheeler’s upland rye-field near the Burying-Ground, the mouth walled about like a well with a raised curb with fragments of dried grass and little bits of wood, I resolved to explore it, but after the first shovelful I lost the trace of it, for I had filled it with sand.

  9 A. M.—To Lincoln, surveying for Mr. [Loring H.] Austin (Journal, 5:75-78).

  Saw ten black ducks at Clamshell . . . The gooseberry in Brown’s pasture shows no green yet, though ours in the garden does . . . Starlight by river up Assabet . . . Ascend Nawshawtuct. See a fire in horizon toward Boston.

  Found twenty or thirty of the little brown nuts of the skunk-cabbage deposited on a shelf of the turf under an apple tree by E. [Ebenezer] Hubbard’s close, as I have done before . . .

  P. M. to Second Division Brook . . . Was that Rana fontinalis or pipiens in the pool by E. Wood’s railroad crossing? The first large frog I have seen. C. [William Ellery Channing] says a wasp lit on him. A wood tortoise by river above Derby’s Bridge . . . Heard the hooting owl in Ministerial Swamp . . . Cheney’s elm blossomed to-day . . . Observed the first female willow just coming out, apparently Salix eriocephala, just beyond woods by Abel Hosmer’s field by railroad.

  At Hayden’s I hear hylas on two keys or notes . . . The female Populus tremuliformis catkins, narrower and at present more red and somewhat less downy than the male, west side of railroad at Deep Cut.

  To Clematis Brook via Lee’s Bridge . . . I hear the hollow sound of drops falling into the water under Hubbard’s Bridge, and each one makes a conspicuous bubble which is floated down-stream . . . At Conantum End I saw a red-tailed hawk launch himself away from an oak by the pond at my approach, – a heavy flier, flapping even like the great bittern at first,—heavy forward. After turning Lee’s Cliff I heard, methinks, more birds singing even than in fair weather.

  Now, 8.30 A. M., it rains . . .

  P. M.—To Second Division Brook. Near Clamshell Hill, I scare up in succession four pairs of good-sized brown or grayish-brown ducks . . . I see, in J. P. Brown’s field, by Nut Meadow Brook, where a hen has been devoured by a hawk probably . . . Returning by Harrington’s, saw a pigeon woodpecker flash away . . . The robins, too, now toward sunset, perched on the old apple trees in Tarbell’s orchard, twirl forth their evening lays unweariedly.

  10 A. M.—Down river in boat to Bedford, with C. [William Ellery Channing] A windy, but clear, sunny day; cold wind from northwest . . . River has risen from last rains, and we cross the Great Meadows, scaring up many ducks at a great distance . . . A hawk above Ball’s Hill . . . Walk in and about Tarbell’s Swamp . . . Crossed to Bedford side to see where [they] had been digging out (probably) a woodchuck. How handsome the river from those hills! The river southwest of the Great Meadows a sheet of sparkling molten silver, with broad lagoons parted from it by curving lines of low bushes; to the right or northward now, at 2 or 3 P. M., a dark blue, with small smooth, light edgings, firm plating, under the lee of the shore . . . Approach near to Simon Brown’s ducks, on river . . . As we stand on Nawshawtuct at 5 P. M., looking over the meadows, I doubt if there is a town more adorned by its river than ours.

  On a pitch [pine] on side of J. Hosmer’s river hill, a pine warbler, by ventriloquism sounding farther off than it was, which was seven or eight feet, hopping and flitting from twig to twig, apparently picking the small flies at and about the base of the needles at the extremities of the twigs . . .

  Small light-brown lizards, about five inches long, with somewhat darker tails, and some a light line along back, are very active, wiggling off, in J. P. Brown’s ditch, with pollywogs. Beyond the desert, hear the hooting owl, which, as formerly, I at first mistook for the hounding of a dog,—a squealing eee followed by hoo hoo hoo deliberately, and particularly sonorous and ringin. This at 2 P.M . . . That willow by H.’s Bridge is very brittle at base of stem, but hard to break above . . . Evening.—Hear the snipe a short time at early starlight.

  Another singular kind of spiritual foot-ball,—really nameless, handleless, homeless, like myself,—a mere arena for thoughts and feelings; definite enough outwardly, indefinite more than enough inwardly. But I do not know why we should be styled “misters” or “masters”; we come so near to being anything or nothing, and seeing that we are mastered, and not wholly sorry to be mastered, by the least phenomenon. It seems to me that we are the mere creatures of thought,—one of the lowest forms of intellectual life, we men,—as the sunfish is of animal life. As yet our thoughts have acquired no definiteness nor solidity; they are purely molluscous, not vertebrate; and the height of our existence is to float upward in an ocean where the sun shines,—appearing only like a vast soup or chowder to the eyes of the immortal navigators. It is wonderful that I can be here, and you there, and that we can correspond, and do many other things, when, in fact, there is so little of us, either or both, anywhere. In a few minutes, I expect, this slight film or dash of vapor that I am will be what is called asleep,—resting! forsooth from what? Hard work? and thought? The hard work of the dandelion down, which floats over the meadow all day; the hard work of a pismire that labors to raise a hillock all day, and even by moonlight. Suddenly I can come forward into the utmost apparent distinctness, and speak with a sort of emphasis to you; and the next moment I am so faint an entity, and make so slight an impression, that nobody can find the traces of me. I try to hunt myself up, and find the little of me that is discoverable is falling asleep, and then I assist and tuck it up. It is getting late. How can I starve or feed? Can I be said to sleep? There is not enough of me even for that. If you hear a noise, -’t aint I, -’t aint I, as the dog says with a tin-kettle tied to his tail. I read of something happening to another the other say: how happens if that nothing ever happens to me? A dandelion down the never alights,—settles, blown off by a boy to see if his mother wanted him,—some divine boy in the upper pastures.

  Well, if there really is another such a meteor sojourning in these spaces, I would like to ask you if you know whose estate this is that we are on? For my part I enjoy it well enough, what with the wild apples and the scenery; but I shouldn’t wonder if the owner set his dog on me next. I could remember something not much to the purpose, probably; but if I stick to what I do know, then-

  It is worth the while to live respectably unto ourselves. We can possibly get along with a neighbor, even with a bedfellow, whom we respect but very little; but as soon as it comes to this, that we do not respect ourselves, then we do not get along at all, no matter how much money we are paid for halting. There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life. It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are, if indeed you cannot get it above them, than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

  Once you were in Milton doubting what to do. To live a better life—this surely can be done. Dot and carry one. Wait not for a clear sight, for that you are to get. What you see clearly you may omit to do. Milton and Worcester? It is all Blake, Blake. Never mind the rats in the wall; the cat will take care of them. All that men have said or are is a faint rumor, and it is not worth the while to remember or refer to that. If you are to meet God, will you refer to anybody out of that court? How shall men know how to succeed, unless they are in at the life? I did not see the “Times” reporter there. It is not delightful to provide one’s self with the necessaries of life,—to collect dry wood for the fire when the weather grows cool, or fruits when we grow hungry?—not till then. And then we have all the time left for thought!Of what use were it, pray, to get a little wood to burn, to warm your body this cold weather, if there were not a divine fire kindled at the same time to warm your spirit?

“Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!”

  I cuddle up by my stove, and there I get up another fire which warms fire itself. Life is so short that it is not wise to take roundabout ways, nor can we spend much time in waiting. Is it absolutely necessary, then, that we should do as we are doing? Are we chiefly under obligations to the devil, like Tom Walker? Though it is late to leave off this wrong way, it will seem early the moment we begin in the right way; instead of mid-afternoon, it will be early morning with us. We have not got half way to dawn yet.
 
  As for the lectures, I feel that I have something to say, especially on Traveling, Vagueness, and Poverty; but I cannot come now. I will wait till I am fuller, and have fewer engagements. Your suggestions will help me much to write them when I am ready. I am going to Haverhill tomorrow, surveying, for a week or more. You met me on my last errand thither.

  I trust that you realize what an exaggerater I am,—that I may myself out to exaggerate when I have the opportunity,—pile Pelion upon Ossa, to reach heaven so. Expect no trivial truth from me, unless I am on the witness-stand. I will come as near to lying as you can drive a coach-and-four. If it isn’t thus and so with me, it is with something. I am not particular whether I get the shells or meat, in view of the latter’s worth.

  I see that I have not at all answered your letter, but there is time enough for that.

  First hear toads (and take off coat), a loud, ringing sound filling the air which yet few notice. First shad naught at Haverhill to-dav; first alewife 10th. Fishermen say that no fish can get above the dam at Lawrence . . .

  Talked with a fisherman at the Burrough [sic], who was cracking and eating walnuts on a post before his hut . . . He called it Little Concord where I lived.

  Moses Emerson, the kind and gentlemanly man who assisted and looked after me in Haverhill, said that a good horse was worth $75, and all above was fancy, and that when he saw a man driving a fast horse he expected he would fail soon.

  As I walk through the village at evening, when the air is still damp after the rainy morning, I perceive and am exhilarated by the sweet scent of expanding leaves . . .

  A white-throated sparrow (Fringilla Pennsylvanica) died in R.W.E.’s garden this morning . . .

  Riding through Lincoln, found the peach bloom now in prime . . .

  A low row of elms just set out by Wheeler from his gate to the old Lee place. The planting of so long a row of trees which are so stately and may endure so long deserves to be recorded . . .

  There is an old pasture behind E. Wood’s incrusted with the clay-like thallus of the bæomyces which is unexpectedly thin . . . P. M.—To Saw Mill Brook and Smith’s Hill.

  The Nepta Glechoma is out under R. Brown’s poles . . . I proceed down the Turnpike . . . That sedum (?) by Tuttle’s is now a foot high . . . I sit on a rock in Saw Mill Brook . . . I leave the woods and begin to ascend Smith’s Hill along the course of the rill . . . Return by Mill Brook Ditch Path . . . The pond, Walden, has risen considerably since the melting.

  P.M.—To Corner via Hubbard’s Bathing Place . . .

  A high blueberry by Potter’s heater piece . . .

  P.M.—To Black Birch Woods and Yellow Birch Swamp . . . (Journal, 5:146-150).

  At Corner Spring, stood listening to a catbird, sounding a good way off . . . Heard a stake-driver in Hubbard’s meadow from Corner road . . .

  Passing Conantum under sail at 10 o’clock, the cows in this pasture are already chewing the cud in the thin shade of the apple trees, a picture of peace, already enjoying the luxury of their green pastures . . . Suddenly there start up from the riverside at the entrance of Fair Haven Pond, scared by our sail, two great blue herons . . .

  Land at Lee’s Cliff, where the herons have preceded us and are perched on the oaks, conspicuous from afar, and gain we have a fair view of their flight . . . Again we embark, now having furled our sail and taken to our oars . . . After leaving Rice’s harbor the wind is with us again . . .

  The golden willow catkins begin to fall; their prime is past. And buttercups and silvery cinquefoil, and the first apple blossoms, avid waving grass beginning to be tinged with sorrel, introduce us to a different season. The huckleberry, resinosa, its red flowers are open, in more favorable places several days earlier, probably; and the earliest shrub and red and black oaks in warm exposures may be set down to to-day. A red butterfly goes by . . .

  P.M.—To Corner Spring and Fair Haven Cliff . . .

  Returning toward Fair Haven, I perceive at Potter’s fence the first whiff of that ineffable fragrance from the Wheeler meadow . . . Sit on Cliffs . . . Returning slowly, I sit on the wall of the orchard by the white pine . . . Coming home from Spring by Potter’s Path to the Corner road in the dusk, saw a dead-leaf-colored hylodes . . .

  Probably a red-wing blackbird’s nest, of grass, hung between two button-bushes; whitish eggs with irregular black marks. Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis), probably two days. White oak, swamp white, and chestnut oak probably will open by the 22d.

  The white ashes are in full flower now, and how long?

  8 A. M.—To Flint’s Pond . . .

  On Pine Hill.—In this clear morning light and a strong wind from the northwest, the mountains in the horizon, seen against some low, thin clouds in the background, look darker and more like earth than usual . . . Saw a tanager in Sleepy Hollow . . .

  One of the most beautiful things to me now is the reddish-ash, and, higher, the silvery, canopies of half a dozen young white oak leaves over their catkins,—thousands of little tents pitched in the air for the May training of the flowers, so many little parasols to their tenderer flowers. Young white oaks and shrub oaks have a reddish look quite similar to their withered leaves in the winter . . .

  Left our horse at the Howe tavern. The oldest date on the sign is “D. H. 1716.” An old woman, who had been a servant in the family and said she was ninety-one, said this was the first house built on the spot . . .

  The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected. He must be something superior to her, something more than natural. He must furnish equanimity. No genius will excuse him from importing the ivory which is to be his material.

  That small veronica (V. arvensis) by Mrs. Hosmer’s is the same with that on the Cliffs; there is also the smooth or V. serhyllifolia by her path at the brook. This is the fifth windy day. A May wind—a washing wind. Do we not always have after the early thunder-showers a May storm? The first windy weather which it is agreeable to walk or ride in—creating a lively din . . .

  P. M.—Talked, or tried to talk with R.W.E. Lost my time—nay, almost my identity. He, assuming a false opposition where there was no difference of opinion, talked to the wind—told me what I knew—and I lost my time trying to imagine myself somebody else to oppose him . . .

  Heard the popping of guns last night and this morning, nevertheless . . . Two young men who had borrowed my boat the other day returned from the riverside through Channing’s yard, quietly. It was almost the only way for them. But as they passed out his gate, C. boorishly walked out his house behind them in his shirt-sleeves, and shut his gate behind them as if to shut them out. It was just that sort of behavior which, if he had met with it in Italy, or France, he would have complained of, whose meanness he would have condemned.

  No breaking away, but the clouds have ceased to drop rain awhile and the birds are very lively. The waters are dark, and our attention is confined to earth. Saw two striped snakes deliberately drop from the stone bank wall into the river at Hubbard’s Bridge and remain under water while we looked. Do not perceive the meadow fragrance in this wet weather. A high blueberry bush by roadside beyond the bridge very full of blossoms. It has the more florid and blossoming effect because the leaves are few and quite distinct, or standing out from the flowers—the countless inverted white mugs (in rows and everywhere as on counters or shelves) with their peculiar green calyxes. If there are as many berries as blossoms we shall fare well . . .

  The Cornus florida now fairly out, and the involucres are now not greenish-white but white tipped with reddish—like a small flock of white birds passing—three and a half inches in diameter, the larger ones, as I find by measuring. It is something quite novel in the tree line . . .

  P. M.—To Saw Mill Brook.

  Cleared up last night after two and a half days’ rain. This, with the two days’ rain the 18th and 19th, makes our May rain—and more rain either of the two than at any other time this spring. Coming out into the sun after this rain, with my thick clothes, I
find it unexpectedly and oppressively warm. Yet the heat seems tempered by a certain moisture still lingering in the air. (Methinks I heard a cuckoo yesterday and a quail (?) to-day.) A new season has commenced—summer—leafy June . . .

  8 P. M.—Up Union Turnpike.

  The reign of insects commences this warm evening after the rains. They could not come out before. I hear from the pitch pine woods beyond E. Wood’s a vast faint hum, as of a factory far enough off to be musical. I can fancy it something ambrosial from starlit mansions, a faint murmuring harp music rising from all groves; and soon insects are felt on the hands and face, and dor-bugs are heard humming by, or entangled in the pines, like winged bullets . . .

  5 P. M.—To Lupine’s Hill by boat.

  The carnival of the year commencing—a warm, moist, hazy air, the water already smooth and uncommonly high, the river overflowing, and yellow lilies all drowned, their stems not long enough to reach the surface. I see the boat-club, or three or four in pink shirts, rowing at a distance . . .

  Thimble-berry two or three days. Cattle stand in the river by the bridge for coolness. Place my hat lightly on my head that the air may circulate beneath. Wild roses budded before you know it—will be out often before you know they are budded. Fields are whitened with mouse-ear gone to seed—a mass of white fuzz blowing off one side—and also with dandelion globes of seeds. Some plants have already reached their fall. How still the hot noon; people have retired behind blinds. Yet the kingbird—lively bird, with white belly and tail edged with white, and with its lively twittering—stirs and keeps the air brisk. I see men and women through open windows in white undress taking their Sunday-afternoon nap, overcome with heat . . .

  High Blackberry out. As I go by Hayden’s in the still cool morning, the farmer’s door is open—probably his cattle have been attended to – and the odor of the bacon which is being fried for his breakfast fills the air. The dog lies with his paws hanging over the windowsill this agreeably cool morning . . .

  P.M.—To Carlisle Bridge by boat.

  A strong but somewhat gusty southerly wind, before which C. [William Ellery Channing] and I sailed all the way from home to Carlisle Bridge in not far from an hour; the river unusually high for the season . . .

  I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora. Sophia brought home a single flower without twig or leaf from Mrs. Brook’s last evening. Mrs. Brooks. I find, has a large twig in a vase of water, still pretty fresh, which she says George Melvin gave to her son George. I called at his office. He says that Melvin came in to Mr. Gourgas’s office, where he and others were sitting Saturday evening, with his arms full and gave each a sprig, but he does n’t know where he got it. Somebody, I heard, had seen it at Captain Jarvis’s; so I went there. I found that they had some still pretty fresh in the house. Melvin gave it to them Saturday night, but they did not know where he got it. A young man working at Stedman Buttrick’s said it was a secret; there was only one bush in the town; Melvin knew of it and Stedman knew; when asked, Melvin said he got it in the swamp, or from a bush, etc. The young man thought it grew on the Island across the river on the Wheeler farm. I went on to Melvin’s house, though I did not expect to find him home at this hour, so early in the afternoon. (Saw the wood-sorrel out, a day or two perhaps, by the way.) At length I saw his dog by the door, and knew he was at home . . .

  Summer begins now about a week past, with the expanded leaves, the shade and warm weather. Cultivated fields also are leaving out, i.e corn and potatoes coming up. Most trees have bloomed and are now forming their fruit. Young berries, too, are forming, and birds are being hatched. Dor-bugs and other insects have come forth the first warm evening after showers.

  The birds have now all (?) come and no longer fly in flocks. The hylodes are no longer heard. The bullfrogs begin to trump. Thick and extensive fogs in the morning begin. Plants are rapidly growing,—shooting.

  4 A.M.—To Nawshawtuct.

  I go to the river in a fog through which I cannot see more than a dozen rods,—three or four times as deep as the houses. As I row down the stream, the dark, dim outlines of the trees on the banks appear . . .

  4 P.M.—To Conantum.

  Equisetum limosum out some days. Look for it at Myosotis Brook, bottom of Wheildon’s field. Sidesaddle-flower—purple petals (?) now begin to hang down. Arethusas are abundant in what I may call Arethusa Meadow. They are the more striping for growing in such green localities, -in meadows where their brilliant purple, more or less red, contrasts with the green grass.

  By way of the linnæ, which I find is not yet out. That thick pine wood is full of birds. Saw a large moth or butterfly exactly like a decayed withered leaf,—a rotten yellowish or buff. The small-leaved pyrola will open in a day or two. Two or three ripe strawberries on the south slope of a drv hill. I was thinking that they had set, when, seeking a more favorable slope, I found ripe fruit The painted-cup is in its prime. It reddens the meadow,—Painted-Cup Meadow. It is a splendid show of brilliant scarlet, the color of the cardinal flower, and surpassing it in mass and profusion. They first appear on the side of the hill in drier ground, half a dozen inches high, and their color is most striking then, when it is most rare and precious; but they now cover the meadow, mingled with buttercups, etc., and manv are more than eighteen inches high. I do not like the name; it does not remind me of a cup, rather of a flame, when it first appears. It might be called flame-flower, or scarlet-tip.

  P. M.—To Hubbard’s Close Swamp.

  The vetch just out by Turnpike,—dark violet-purple. Horse-radish fully out (some time). The great ferns are already two or three feet high in Hubbard’s shady swamp. The clintonia is abundant there along by the foot of the hill, and in its prime. Look there for its berries. Commonly four leaves there, with an obtuse point,—the lady’s-slipper leaf not so rich, dark green and smooth, having several channels. The bullfrog now begins to be heard at night regularly; has taken the place of the hylodes.

  For the most part we are inclined to doubt the prevalence of gross superstition among the civilized ancients,—whether the Greeks, for instance, accepted literally the mythology which we accept as matchless poetry,—but we have only to be reminded of the kind of respect paid to the Sabbath as a holy day here in New England, and the fears which haunt those who break it, to see that our neighbors are the creatures of an equally gross superstition with the ancients. I am convinced that there is no very important difference between a New-Englander’s religion and a Roman’s. We both worship in the shadow of our sins : they erect the temples for us. Jehovah has no superiority to Jupiter . . .

  P.M.—To Mason’s pasture.

  The world now full of verdure and fragrance and the air comparatively clear (not yet the constant haze of the dog-days), through which the distant fields are seen, reddened with sorrel, and the meadows wetgreen, full of fresh grass, and the trees in their first beautiful, bright, untarnished and unspotted green. May is the bursting into leaf and early flowering, with much coolness and wet and a few decidedly warm days, ushering in summer; June, verdure and growth with not intolerable, but agreeable, heat.

  Famous place for tanagers. Considerable fog on river. Few sights more exhilarating than one of these banks of fog lying along a stream. The linnæa just out. Corydalis glauca, a delicate glaucous plant rarely met with, with delicate flesh-colored and yellow flowers, covered with a glaucous bloom, on dry, rocky hills. Perhaps it suggests gentility . . .

  P.M.—To Conantum by boat.

  The Potamogeton [a blank space] out two or three days, probably. The small primrose out at Hubbard’s Swimming-Place, drooping at top like a smilacina’s leaves. Blue-eyed grass now begins to give that slatyblue tint to meadows. A breezy day, a June wind showing the under sides of leaves. The now red round white lily pads are now very numerous and conspicuous, red more or less on both sides and, with the yellow ‘lily pads, turned up by the wind. In ‘May and June we have breezes which, for the most part, are not too cold but exhilarating . . .

  Huckleberry-apples, which are various stages of a monstrous and abortive development of the flower, common now. Clover begins to redden the fields generally. The horsetail has for some time covered the causeway with a close, dense green, like moss. The
quail is heard at a distance. The marsh speedwell has been out apparently some days. A little mowing begins in the gardens and front yards. The grass is in full vigor now, yet it is already parti-colored with whitish withered stems which worms have cut. Buttercups, of various kinds mingled, yellow the meadows,—the tall, the bulbous, and the repens. Probably a Prinos lcevigatus in Trillium Woods, ready to blossom.

  Nest of a Maryland yellow-throat by Utricularia Pool in a tuft of sedge ; made of dry sedge, grass, and a few dry leaves; about four small eggs, a delicate white with reddish-brown spots on larger end; the nest well concealed. At the last small pond near
Well Meadow, a frog, apparently a small bullfrog, on the shore enveloped by a swarm of small, almost invisible insects, some resting on him, attracted perhaps by the slime which shone on him. He appeared to endure the persecution like a philosopher.

  A prevalent fog, though not quite so thick as the last described. It is a little more local, for it is so thin southwest of this hill that I can see the earth through it, but as thick as before northeast. Yet here and there deep valleys are excavated in it, as painters imagine the Red Sea for the passage of Pharaoh’s host, wherein trees and houses appear as it were at the bottom of the sea. What is peculiar about it is that it is the tops of the trees which you see first and most distinctly, before you see their trunks or where they stand on earth . . .

  8 A.M.—To Orchis Swamp; Well Meadow.

  Hear a goldfinch; this the second or third only, that I have heard. Whiteweed now whitens the fields. There are many star flowers. I remember the anemone, especially the rue anemone, which is not yet all gone, lasting longer than the true one above all the trientalis, and of late the yellow Bethlehem-star, and perhaps others.

  P. M.—To Mason’s pasture in Carlisle.

  Cool but agreeable easterly wind. Streets now beautiful with verdure and shade of elms, under which you look, through an air clear for summer, to the woods in the horizon . . . But to return, as C. [William Ellery Channing] and I go through the town, we hear the cool peep of the robin calling its young, now learning to fly. The locust bloom is now perfect, filling the street with its sweetness, but it is more agreeable to my eye than my nose. The curled dock out. The fuzzy seeds or down of the black (? ) willows is filling the air over the river and, falling on the water, covers the surface. By the 30th of May, at least, white maple keys were falling. How early, then, they had matured their seed!

  The mosquitoes first troubled me a little last night. On the river at dusk I hear the toads still, with the bullfrogs. The black willow, having shed its fuzzy seeds and expanded its foliage, now begins to be handsome, so light and graceful.

  The upland fields are already less green where the June-grass is ripening its seeds. They are greenest when only the blade is seen. In the sorrel-fields, also, what lately was the ruddy, rosy cheek of health, now that the sorrel is ripening and dying, has become the tanned and imbrowned cheek of manhood.

  Going up Pine Hill, disturbed a partridge and her brood. She ran in deshabille directly to me, within four feet, while her young, not larger than a chicken just hatched, dispersed, flying along a foot or two from the ground, just over the bushes, for a rod or two. The mother kept close at hand to attract my attention, and mewed and clucked and made a noise as when a hawk is in sight. She stepped about and held her head above the hushes and clucked just like a hen. What a remarkable instinct that which keeps the young so silent and prevents their peeping and betraying themselves! The wild bird will run almost any risk to save her young. The young, I believe, make a fine sound at first in dispersing, something like a cherry-bird.

  Find that there are two young hawks; one has left the nest and is perched on a small maple seven or eight rods distant. This one appears much smaller than the former one. I am struck by its large, naked head, so vulture-like, and large eyes, as if the vulture’s were an inferior stage through which the hawk passed. Its feet, too, are large, remarkably developed, by which it holds to its perch securely like an old bird, before its wings can perform their office. It has a buff breast, striped with dark brown. Pratt, when I told him of this nest, said he would like to carry one of his rifles down there. But I told him that I should be sorry to have them killed. I would rather save one of these hawks than have a, hundred hens and chickens. It was worth more to see them soar, especially now that they are so rare in the landscape. It is easy to buy eggs, but not to buy hen-hawks. My neighbors would not hesitate to shoot the last pair of hen-hawks in the town to save a few of their chickens! But such economy is narrow and grovelling. It is unnecessarily to sacrifice the greater value to the less. I would rather never taste chickens’ meat nor hens’ eggs than never to see a hawk sailing through the upper air again. This sight is worth incomparably more than a chicken soup or a boiled egg.

  Herd’s-grass heads. The warmest afternoon as yet. Ground getting dry, it is so long since we had any rain to speak of.

  C. says he saw a “lurker” yesterday in the woods on the Marlborough road. He heard a distressing noise like a man sneezing but long continued, but at length found it was a man wheezing. He was oldish and grizzled, the stumps of his grizzled beard about an inch long, and his clothes in the worst possible condition,—a wretched-looking creature, an escaped convict hiding in the woods, perhaps. He appeared holding on to his paunch, and wheezing as if it would kill him. He appeared to have come straight through the swamp, and—what was most interesting about him, and proved him to be a lurker of the first class,—one of our party, as C. said,—he kept straight, through a field of rye which was fully grown, not regarding it in the least; and, though C. tried to conceal himself on the edge of the rye, fearing to hurt his feelings if the man should mistake him for the proprietor, yet they met, and the lurker, giving him a short bow, disappeared in the woods on the opposite side of the road . . .

  P.M.—To Trillium Woods.

  Clover now in its prime. What more luxuriant than a clover-field? The poorest soil that is covered with it looks incomparably fertile. This is perhaps the most characteristic feature of June, resounding with the hum of insects . . .

  5 P.M., I hear distinctly the sound of thunder in the northwest, but not a cloud is in sight, only a little thickness or mistiness in that horizon, and we get no shower . . .

  No fog this morning and scarcely any dew except in the lowest ground. There is a little air stirring, too; the breeze in the night must have been the reason. It threatens to be a hot, as well as dry, day, and gardens begin to suffer.

  Before 4 A.M., or sunrise, the sound of chip-birds and robins and bluebirds, etc., fills the air and is incessant. It is a crowing on the roost, methinks, as the cock crows before he goes abroad. They do not sing deliberately as at eve, but greet the morning with an incessant twitter. Even the crickets seem to join the concert. Yet I think it is not the same every morning, though it may be fair. An hour or two later it is comparative silence. The awaking of the birds, a tumultuous twittering.

  At sunrise, however, a slight mist curls along the surface of the water. When the sun falls on it, it looks like a red dust . . .

  P.M.—To Baker Farm by boat.

  The yellowish or greenish orchis out, maybe a day or two. It would be a very warm afternoon, if there were not so good a breeze from the southwest . . .

  No fog and very little dew, or perhaps it was a slight rain in the night. I find always some dew in low ground. There is a broad crescent of clear sky in the west, but it looks rainy in the cast. As yet we are disappointed of rain. Almost all birds appear to join the early morning chorus before sunrise on the roost, the matin hymn . . . .

  8.30 P.M.—To Cliffs.

  Moon not quite full. Going across Depot Field. The western shy is now a crescent of saffron inclining to salmon, a little dunnish, perhaps. The grass is wet with dew. The evening star has come out, but no other. There is no wind. I see a nighthawk in the twilight, flitting near the ground. I hear the hum of a beetle going by. The greenish fires of lightning bugs are already seen in the meadow. I almost lay my hand on one amid the leaves as I get over the fence at the brook . . .

  I see large patches of blue-eyed grass in the meadow across the river from my window. The pine woods at Thrush Alley emit that hot dry scent, reminding me even of days when I used to go a-blackberrying. The air is full of the hum of invisible insects, and I hear a locust. Perhaps this sound indicates the time to put on a thin coat. But the wood thrush sings as usual far in the wood . . .

  Returned by Smith’s Hill and the Saw Mill Brook. Got quite a parcel of strawberries on the hill. The hellebore leaves by the brook are already half turned yellow. Plucked one blue early blueberry. The strain of the bobolink now begins to sound a little rare. It never again fills the air as the first week after its arrival. At this season we apprehend no long storm, only showers with or without thunder.

  10 A.M.—To Assabet Bathing-Place.

  I see wood tortoises in the path; one feels full of eggs. Those great greenish-white puffs on the panicled andromeda are now decaying. On the swamp-pink they are solid. The pitchers of the comandra seeds are conspicuous. Meadow-sweet out, probably yesterday. It is an agreeable, unpretending flower . . .

  P.M.—Up North River to Nawshawtuct.

  The moon full. Perhaps there is no more beautiful scene than that on the North River seen from the rock this side the hemlocks. As we look up-stream, we see a crescent-shaped lake completely embosomed in the forest. There is nothing to be seen but the smooth black mirror of the water, on which there is now the slightcst discernible bluish mist, a foot high, and thick-set alders and willows and the green woods without an interstice sloping steeply upward from its very surface, like the sides of a bowl . . .

  H seemed stubborn & implacable; always manly & wise, but rarely sweet. One would say that as Webster could never speak without an antagonist, so H. does not feel himself except in opposition. He wants a fallacy to expose, a blunder to pillory, requires a little sense of victory, a roll of the drus, to call his powers into full exercise.

  No dew even where I keep my boat. The driest night yet, threatening the sultriest day. Yet I see big crystalline drops at the tips or the bases of the pontederia, leaves. The few lilies begin to open about 5 . . .

  P.M.—To Conantum.

  The warmest day yet. For the last two days I have worn nothing about my neck. This change or putting off of clothing is, methinks, as good an evidence of the increasing warmth of the weather as meteorological instruments. I thought it was hot weather perchance, when, a month ago, I slept with a window wide open and laid aside a comfortable, but by and by I found that I had got two windows open, and to-night two windows and the door are far from enough . . .

  The sun down, and I am crossing Fair haven hill, sky overcast, landscape dark and still. I see the smooth river in the north reflecting two shades of light, one from the water, another from the surface of the pads which broadly border it on both sides, and the very irregular waving or winding edge of the pads, especially perceptible in this light, makes a, very agreeable border to distinguish,—the edge of the film which seeks to bridge over and inclose the river wholly. These pads are to the smooth water between like a calyx to its flower. The river at such an hour, seen half a mile away, perfectly smooth and lighter than the sky, reflecting the clouds, is a paradisaical scene. What are the rivers around Damascus to this river sleeping around Concord? Are not the Musketaquid and the Assabet, rivers of Concord, fairer than the rivers of the plain?

  The red morning-glory partly open at 5.45. Looking down on it, it is [a] regular pentagon, with sides but slightly incurved.

  1.30 P.M.—to White Pond.

  Sultry, dogdayish weather, with moist mists or low clouds hanging about,—the first of this kind we have had. I suspect it may be the result of a -warm southwest wind met by a cooler wind from the sea. It is hard to tell if these low clouds most shade the earth or reflect its heat back upon it. At any rate a fresh, cool moisture and a suffocating heat are strangely mingled . . .

  After bathing I paddled to the middle in the leaky boat . . . Now, at about 5 P. M., only at long intervals is a bullfrog’s trump heard . . .I was just roused from my writing by the engine’s whistle, and, looking out, saw shooting through the town two enormous pine sticks stripped of their bark, just from the Northwest and going to Portland Navy-Yard, they say. Before I could call Sophia, they had got round the curve and only showed their ends on their way to the Deep Cut . . .

  My lilies in the pan have revived with the cooler weather since the rain. (It rained a little last night.) This is what they require that they may keep . . . It is cooler and remarkably windy this afternoon, showing the under sides of the leaves and the pads, the white now red beneath and all green above. Wind northwest . . .

  Great orange lily beyond stone bridge. Found in the Glade (?) Meadows an unusual quantity of amelanchier berries, -I think of the two common kinds,—one a taller bush, twice as high as my head, with thinner and lighter-colored leaves and larger, or at least some-what softer, fruit, the other a shorter bush, with more rigid and darker leaves and dark-blue berries, with often a sort of woolliness on them. Both these are now in their prime. These are the first berries after strawberries, or the first, and I think the sweetest, bush berries. Somewhat like high blueberries, but not so hard. Much eaten by insects, worms, etc. As big as the largest blueberries or peas. These are the “service-berries” which the Indians of the north and the Canadians use . . .

  Had for dinner a pudding made of service-berries. It was very much like a rather dry cherry pudding without the stones.

  A slight hail-storm in the afternoon.

  Euphorbia maculata.

  Our warmest night thus far this year was June 21st. It began to be cooler the 24th.

  5.30 P. M.—To Cliffs.

  Carrot by railroad. Mine apparently the Erigeron strigosus, yet sometimes tinged with purple. The tephrosia is an agreeable mixture of white, strawcolor, and rose pink; unpretending . . . A beautiful sunset about 7.30; just clouds enough in the west (we are on Fair Haven Hill); they arrange themselves about the western gate. And now the sun sinks out of sight just on the north side of Watatic, and the mountains, north and south, are at once a dark indigo blue, for they had been darkening for an hour or more. Two small clouds are left on the horizon between Watatic and Monadnock, their sierra edges all on fire. Three minutes after the sun is gone, there is a bright and memorable afterglow in his path, and a brighter and more glorious light falls on the clouds above the portal . . .

  The cuckoo’s nest is robbed, or perhaps she broke her egg because I found it. Thus three out of half a dozen nests which I have revisited have been broken up. It is a very shallow nest, six or seven inches in diameter by two and a half or three deep, on a low bending willow, hardly half an inch deep within; concealed by overlying leaves of a swamp white oak on the edge of the river meadow, two to three feet from ground, made of slender twigs which are prettily ornamented with much ramalina lichen, lined with hickory catkins and pitch pine needles . . .

  Having been engaged for several years in the preparation of a Natural History of the Fishes of the United States, I wish, before beginning the printing of my work, to collect as extensive materials as possible, respecting the geographical distribution of these animals. It has occurred to me, that by means of a circular containing directions for collecting fishes I might obtain the information required. I should, indeed, like to secure separate collections of our fishes from every bay and inlet along the coast, and from every stream, river, creek, lake, and pond upon the mainland, throughout the whole country, and am satisfied that such collections would furnish invaluable information respecting the geographical distribution of our aquatic animals. I would thank you for any assistance and contribution you can furnish from your quarter of the country, and duly acknowledge it in my work; and since I extend my investigations to all the branches of Natural History, any specimens besides fishes, which may be obtained, would be equally acceptable, including geological specimens and fossil remains. In return I would propose exchanges of other specimens if desired, or reciprocate the favor in any other way in my power, and pay the expenses incurred in making collections for me. Specimens from foreign countries are also solicited, especially when their origin is satisfactorily ascertained. Any person into whose hands this circular may come, feeling inclined to correspond with me upon these subjects, is requested to address me under the following direction: –

  L. AGASSIZ,

  Professor of Zoölogy and Geology in the

  Lawrence Scientific School, at

  Cambridge, Mass.

  Moreover the very time at which he used their land & water (for his boat glided like a trout every where unseen,) was in hours when they were sound asleep. Long before they were awake he went up & down to survey like a sovereign his possessions, & he passed onward, & left them before the farmer came out of doors. Indeed it was the common opinion of the boys that Mr T. made Concord.

  Such a habit have cows in a pasture of moving forward while feeding that, in surveying on the Great Fields to-day, I was interrupted by a herd of a dozen cows, which successively passed before my line of vision, feeding forward, and I had to watch my opportunity to look between them. Sometimes, however, they were of use, when they passed behind a birch stake and made a favorable background against which to see it.

  Hardhack in bloom perhaps a day or two. The button-bush beginning to open generally. The late, or river, rose spots the copses over the water,—a great ornament to the river’s brink now . . .

  Plenty of berries there now,—large huckleberries, blueberries, and blackberries. My downy-leafed plant of Annursnack and under the Cliffs, now in bloom . . .

  The Chenopodium hybridum (?); at least its leaves are dark-green, rhomboidal, and heart-shaped. The orchis and spikenard at Azalea Brook are not yet open. The early roses are now about done, – the sweetbriar quite, I think . I see sometimes houstonias still. The elodea out. Bochmeria not yet. On one account, at least, I enjoy walking in the fields less at this season than at any other; there are so many men in the fields haying now.

  I cannot find a single crotalaria pod there this year. Stone-crop is abundant and has now for some time been out at R. Brown’s watering-place; also the water-plantain, which is abundant there. About the water further north the elodea is very common, and there, too, the rhexia is seen afar on the islets,—its brilliant red like a rose. It is fitly called meadow-beauty. Is it not the handsomest and most striking and brilliant flower since roses and lilies began? Blue vervain out some days.

  P. M.—To Corner Spring and Fair Haven Hill . . .

  On Fair Haven a quarter of an hour before sunset.—How fortunate and glorious that our world is not roofed in, but open like a Roman house,—our skylight so broad and open! We do not climb the hills in vain. It is no crystal palace we dwell in. The windows of the sky are always open, and the storms blow in at them . . .

  I have for years had a great deal of trouble with my shoe-strings, because they get untied continually. They are leather, rolled and tied in a hard knot. But some days I could hardly go twenty rods before I was obliged to stop and stoop to tie my shoes . . .

  Those New-Hampshire-like pastures near Asa Melvin’s are covered or dotted with bunches of indigo . . .

  P. M.—To Fair Haven Hill.

  The lycopodium which I see not yet out. The Potentilla Norvegica is common and tall, the tallest and now most flourishing of the potentillas. The xyris, some time, on Hubbard’s meadow, south of the water-plantain, whose large, finely branched, somewhat pyramidal panicle of flowers is attractive. The bobolinks are just beginning to fly in flocks, and I hear their link link . . .

  P.M.—To White Pond in rain . . .

Channing notes in his journal that he bathes in Walden Pond [with Thoreau?] (Channing MS).

  P.M.—To Clematis Brook via Lee’s with Mr. Conway. [Moncure Daniel Conway] Tells me of a kind of apple tree with very thick leaves near the houses in Virginia called the tea-tree, under which they take tea, even through an ordinary shower, it sheds the rain so well, and there the table constantly stands in warm weather . . .

  At Veronia Meadow I notice the beds of horsemint now in flower . . .

  Those huckleberries near the hibiscus are remarkably glossy, fresh, and plump in the lowland, but not so sweet as some. Crossed the river there, carrying over my clothes.

  The Great Meadows present a very busy scene now . . .

  I broke through Heywood’s thick wood, north of Moore’s land, going toward Beck Stow’s in the Great Fields, and unexpectedly came into a long, narrow, winding, and very retired blueberry swamp which I did not know existed there . . .

  Crossed over to Tuttle’s . . . Coral-root well out,—Corallorhiza multiflora,—at Brister’s Hill . . . In the Poorhouse Meadow, the white orchis spike almost entirely out, some days at least . . .

  I should like to visit Plymouth again, though, as you suspect, not particularly on the day of the celebration. I should like to stand once more on your open beach, and be reminded of that simple sea shore it symbolizes, on which we pilgrims all landed not long since; though most of us have wandered far inland, and perchance lost ourselves, and the savor of our salt, amid the hills and forests of this world. I should like to meet there my Sea-born & Peregrine cousins, and have a social chat with them about the time when we came over;—but at present it may not be. It is not convenient for me to come; but be assured that whenever I may do so, I will remember the spirit of your very kind invitation.

  Yrs

  Henry D. Thoreau.

  Going through Dennis’s and Hosmer’s meadows, I see a dozen or more men at work. In almost every meadow throughout the town they are thus engaged at present. In every meadow you see far or near the lumbering hay-cart with its mountainous load and rakers and mowers in white shirts . . .

  The anychia, or forked chickweed, grows larger, with spreading red stems, on the south side of Heywood Peak . . . Goodyera repens well out at Corallorhiza Hillside . . .

  I calculate that less than forty species of flowers known to me remain to blossom this year.

  Sundown.—To Nawshawtuct.

  The waxwork berries are yellowing. I am not sure but the bunches of the smooth sumach berries are handsomest when but partly turned, the crimson contrasting with the green, the green berries showing a velvety crimson cheek . . .

  Inula out (how long?), roadside just beyond Garfield’s. Spikenard berries near Corner Spring just begin to turn . . . Pennyroyal in prime on Conantum. Aster corymbosus pretty plainly (a day or two) in the Miles Swamp or arboretum . . .

  P.M.—To J. Farmer’s Cliff.

  I see the sunflower’s broad disk now in gardens, probably a few days,—a true sun among flowers, monarch of August. Do not the flowers of August and September generally resemble suns and stars? . . .

  The krigia has bloomed again The purple gerardia now fairly out, which I found almost out last Stunday in another place. Elder-berries begin to be ripe, bending their steins. I also see Viburnum dentatum berries just beginning to turn on one side. Their turning or ripening looks lilac decay,—a dark spot,—and so does the rarely ripe state of the naked viburnum and the sweet; but we truly regard it as a ripening still, and not falsely a decaying as when we describe the tint, of the autumnal foliage.

  I think that within a week I have heard the alder cricket,—a clearer and shriller sound from the leaves in low grounds, a clear shrilling out of a cool moist shade, an autumnal sound. The year is in the grasp of the crickets . . .

  The nabalus, which may have been out one week elsewhere. Also rough hawkweed, and that large asterlike flower Diplopappus Umbellatus . . .

  P.M.—To hibiscus and liatris and Beck Stow’s.

  The hibiscus which has escaped the mowers shows a little color. I am rather surprised that it escapes the mowers at all. The river is still much swollen by the rains and cooled, and the current is swifter; though it is quite hot this afternoon, with a close, melting heat. I see, an empty hay-team slowly crossing the river . . .

  August royal and rich. Green corn now, and melons have begun. That month, surely, is distinguished when melons ripen. July could not do it . . .

  P.M.—To Walden and Saw Mill Brook.

  These days are very warm, though not so warm as it was in June. The heat is furnace-like while I am climbing the steep bills covered with shrubs on the north of Walden, through sweet-fern as high as one’s head. The goldfinch sings er, twe, twotter twotter . . .

  A considerable fog. The weeds still covered by the flood, so that we have no Bidens Beckii. B. chrysanthemoides just out. The small, dull, lead-colored berries of the Viburnma dentatum now hang over the water. The Amphicarpa amonoica appears not to have bloomed . . .

  P.M.—To Conantum.

  This is by some considered the warmest day of the year thus far; but, though the weather is melting hot, yet the river having been deepened and cooled by the rains, we have none of those bathing days of July, ’52 . . . At the Swamp Bridge Brook, flocks of cow troopials now about the cows . . .

  You now see and hear no red-wings along the river as in spring. See the blue herons opposite Fair Haven Hill, as if they had bred here. This and the last day or two very hot. Now at last, methinks, the most melting season of this year, though I think it is hardly last. year’s bathing time, because the water is higher. There is very little air over the water, and when I dip my head in it for coolness, I do not feel any coolness . . .

  Hibiscus just beginning to open, its large cylindrical buds, as long as your finger, fast unrolling. They look like loosely rolled pink cigars. Rowed home in haste before a black approaching storm from the northeast, which was slightly cooling the air. How grateful when, as I backed through the bridges, the breeze of the storm blew through the piers, rippling the water and slightly cooling the sultry air! How fast the black cloud came up, and passed over my head, proving all wind! . . .

  The toads probably ceased about the time I last spoke of them. Bullfrogs, also, I have not heard for a long time.

  I perceive the scent of the earliest ripe apples in my walk. How it surpasses all their flavors! . . .

  P.M.—To Walden, Saw Mill Brook, Flint’s Pond.

  Locust days,—sultry and sweltering. I hear them even till sunset. The usually invisible but far-heard locust. In Thrush Alley a lespedeza out of bloom . . .

  I find on Heywood Peak two similar desmodiums of apparently the same date,—one that of July 31st, which I will call for the present D. Dillenii, two or three feet high, curving upward, many stems from a centre, with oval-lanccolate leaves, one to two inches long, and a long, loose, open panicle of flowers, which turn bluegreen in drying, stem somewhat downy and upper sides of leaves smooth and silky to the lips . . .

  P.M.—To White’s Pond via Dugan’s.

  The air is somewhat cooler and beautifully clear at last after all these rains. Instead of the late bluish mistiness, I see a distinct, dark shade under the edge of the woods, tlrc effect of the luxuriant foliage seen through the clear air . . .

  Started a woodcock in the woods. Also saw a large telltale, I think yellow-shanks, whose note I at first mistook for a jay’s, giving the alarm to some partridges. The Polygonum orientale, probably some days, by Turnpike Bridge, a very rich rose-color large flowers . . .

  How earthy old people become,—mouldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it . . .

  The high blackberries are now in their prime; the richest berry we have. That wild black currant by Union Turnpike ripe (in gardens some time). The knapweed now conspicuous, like a small thistle . . .

  Many leaves of the cultivated cherry are turned yellow, and a very few leaves of the elm have fallen,—the dead or prematurely ripe. The abundant and repeated rains since this month came in have made the last fortnight and more seem like a rainy season in the tropics,—warm, still copious rains falling straight down, contrasting with the cold, driving spring rains. Now again I am caught in a heavy shower in Moore’s pitch pines on edge of Great Fields, and am obliged to stand crouching tinder my umbrella till the drops turn to streams, which find their way through my umbrella . . .

  Cooler weather. Last Sunday we were sweltering here and one hundred died of the heat in New York; to-day they have fires in this village. After more rain, with wind in the night, it is now clearing up cool . . .

  On entering Fair Haven with a fair wind, scare up two ducks behind the point of the Island. Saw three or four more in the afternoon Also I hear from over the pond the clear metallic scream of young hawks . . .

  Bidens connata (?) by pond-hole beyond Agricultural Ground; no rays yet at least. No traces of fringed gentian can I find. The liatris now in prime,—purple with a bluish reflection . . .

  I am struck by the clearness and stillness of the air, the brightness of the landscape, or, as it were, the reflection of light from the washed earth, the darkness and heaviness of the shade, as I look now up the river at the white maples and bushes, and the smoothness of the stream. If they are between you and the sun, the trees are more black than green. It must be owing to the clearness of the air since the rains, together with the multiplication of the leaves, whose effect has not been perceived during the mists of the dog-days. But I cannot account for this peculiar smoothness of the dimpled stream unless the air is stiller than before—nor for the peculiar brightness of the sun’s reflection from its surface. I stand on the south bank, opposite the black willows, looking up the full stream, which with a smooth, almost oily and sheeny surface, comes welling and dimpling onward, peculiarly smooth and bright now at 4 P.M., while the numerous trees seen up the stream . . .

  Aster macrophyllim Appear not to blossom generally this year.

  P.M.—To Jenny Dugan’s and Conantum.

  Saw one of those light-green locusts about three quarters of an inch long on a currant leaf in the garden. It kept up a steady shrilling (unlike the interrupted creak of the cricket), with its wings upright on its shoulders, all indistinct, they moved so fast. Near at hand it made my ears ache, it was so piercing, and was accompanied by a hum like that of a factory. The wings are transparent, with marks somewhat like a letter . . .

  A still afternoon with a prospect of a shower in the west. The immediate edge of the river is for the most part respected by the mowers, and many wild plants there escape from year to year, being too coarse for hay. The prevailing flowers now along the river are the mikania, polygonums, trumpet-weed, cardinal, arrow-head, Chelone glabra, and here and there vernonia . . .

  August has been thus dog-days, rain, oppressive sultry heat, and now beginning fall weather . . .

  P.M.—Clematis Brook via Conantum . . . The Solidago nemoralis now yellows the dry fields with its recurved standard as little more than a foot high,—marching in the woods to the Holy Land, a countless host of crusaders. That field in the woods near Well Meadow, where I once thought of squatting, is full of them . . . I am again struck by the perfect correspondence of a day—say an August day—and the year. I think that a perfect parallel may be drawn between the seasons of the day and of the year. Perhaps after middle age man ceases to be interested in the morning and in the spring . . .

  Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet drink and botanical medicines. In August live on berries, not dried meats and pemmican, as if you were on shipboard making your way through a waste ocean, or in a northern desert. Be blown on by all the winds. Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of Nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons . . . Grow green with spring, yellow and ripe with autumn.  Drink of each season’s influence as a vial, a true panacea of all remedies mixed for your special use. The vials of summer never made a man sick, but those which he stored in his cellar. Drink the wines, not of your bottling, but Nature’s bottling; not kept in goat-skins or pig-skins, but the skins of a myriad fair berries. Let Nature do your bottling and your pickling and preserving. For all Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist her. With the least inclination to be well, we should not be sick. Men have discovered—or think they have discovered—the salutariness of a few wild things only, and not of all nature. Why, “nature” is but another name for health, and the seasons are but different states of health.  Some men think they are not well in spring, or summer, or autumn, or winter; it is only because they are not well in them . . .

  P.M.—To Saw Mill Brook via Trillium Woods . . .

  The Ambrina (Chenopodium, Bigelow) Botrys, Jerusalem-oak, a worm-seed, by R.W.E.’s heater piece. The whole plant is densely branched—branches,spike-like—and appears full of seed. Has a pleasant, more distinct wormwood-like odor . . .

  Topping corn now reveals the yellowing pumpkins. Dangle-berries very large in shady copses now; seem to love wet weather; have lost their bloom. Aster undulatus. The decurrent gnaphalium has not long shown yellow. Perhaps I made it blossom a little too early.

  September is at hand; the first month (after the summer heat) with a burr to it, month of early frosts; but December will be tenfold rougher. January relents for a season at the time of its thaw, and hence that liquid r in its name.

  See many sparrows in flocks with a white feather in tail! The smooth sumach leaves are fast reddening. The berries of the dwarf sumach are not a brilliant crimson, but as yet, at least, a dull sort of dusty or mealy crimson. As they are later, so their leaves are more fresh and green than those of the smooth species. The acorns show now on the shrub oaks. A cool, white, autumnal evening.

  Walking down the street in the evening, I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off; though they are concealed behind his house, every passer knows of them . . .

  River one or two feet higher than in July. A very little wind from the south or southwest, but the water quite smooth at first . . . Bathed at Hubbard’s Bend . . .

  The Solidago odora grows abundantly behind the Minott house in Lincoln. I collected a large bundle of it . . .

  Set sail homeward about an hour before sundown. The breeze blows me glibly across Fair Haven, the last dying gale of the day. No wonder men love to be sailors, to be blown about the world sitting at the helm, to shave the capes and see the islands disappear under their sterns,—gubernators to a piece of wood . . .

  Bidens cernua well out, the flowering one. The asters and goldenrods are now in their prime, I think. The rank growth of flowers (commonly called weeds) in this swamp now impresses me like a harvest of flowers I am surprised at their luxuriance and profusion . . . One would think that all the poison that is in the earth and air must be extracted out of them by this rank vegetation. The ground is quite mildewy, it is so shaded by them, cellar-like.

  Raspberries still fresh. I see the first dogwood turned scarlet in the swamp. Great black cymes of elderberries now bend down the bushes. Saw a great black spider an inch long, with each of his legs an inch and three quarters long, on the outside of a balloon-shaped web, within which were young and a great bag . . .

  The character of the past month, as I remember, has been, at first, very thick and sultry, dogdayish, the height of summer, and throughout very rainy, followed by crops of toadstools, and latterly, after the dogdays and most copious of the rains, autumnal, somewhat cooler, with signs of decaying or ripening foliage. The month of green corn and melons and plums and the earliest apples,—and now peaches,—of rank weeds . . .

  There are two kinds of simplicity,—one that is akin to foolishness, the other to wisdom. The philosopher’s style of living is only outwardly simple, but inwardly complex . . .

  The soapwort gentian out abundantly in Flint’s Bridge Lane . . .

  Saw at the floral show this afternoon some splendid specimens of the sunflower, king of asters, with the disk filled with ligulate flowers.

  Roman wormwood’s yellow dust on my clothes . . . The fragrance of a grape-vine branch, with ripe grapes on it, which I have brought home, fills the whole house. This fragrance is exceedingly rich, surpassing the flavor of any grape.

  P.M.—To the Cliffs via Hubbard’s Swamp . . .

  In Potter’s dry pasture I saw the ground black with blackbirds (troopials?). As I approach, the front rank rises and flits a little further back into the midst of the flock,—it rolls up on the edges,—and, being thus alarmed, they soon take to flight, with a loud rippling rustle, but soon alight again, the rear wheeling swiftly into place like well-drilled soldiers. Instead of being an irregular and disorderly crowd, they appear to know and keep their places and wheel With the precision of drilled troops . . .

  Carried a pail this afternoon to collect goldenrods and berries . . .

  P.M.—To Dugan’s . . .

  The present appearance of the solidago in Hosmer’s ditch which may be S. stricta is a stout erect red stem with entire, lanceolate, thick, fleshy, smooth sessile leaves above, gradually increasing in length downward till ten inches long and becoming toothed . . .

  Signs of frost last night in M. Miles’s cleared swamp . . .

  It occurred to me when I awoke this morning, feeling regret for intemperance of the day before in eating fruit, which had dulled my sensibilities, that man was to be treated as a musical instrument, and if any viol was to be made of sound timber and kept well tuned always, it was he, so that when the bow of events is drawn across hire he may vibrate and resound in perfect harmony. A sensitive soul will be continually trying its strings to see if they are in tune . . .

  Head and neck (from nose to breast (?) direct) 4 ” 3 1/2 ”

  Fore leg below level of body 4 ” 9 1/3 ”

  Height behind (from the tips of the hoofs to top of back) 6 ” 11 ”

  Height from tips of hoofs to level with back above shoulders a 7 ” 5 ”

  Extreme length (from nose to tail) 8 ” 2 ”

  The ears 10 inches long.

  Went into a batteau manufactory. Said they made knees of almost everything; that they were about worn out in one trip up river . . .

  This wind carried us along glibly, I think six miles an hour, till we stopped in Billerica, just below the first bridge beyond the Carlisle Bridge,—at the Hibiscus Shore . . .

  Father saw to-day in the end of a red oak stick in his wood-shed, three and a half inches in diameter, which was sawed yesterday, something shining. It is lead, wither the side of a bullet or a large buckshot just a quarter of an inch in diameter . . .

   . . . Returning late, we see a double shadow of ourselves and boat, one, the true, quite black, the other directly above it and very faint, on the willows and high bank.

   . . . At Beck Stow’s, surveying, thinking to step upon a leafy shore from a rail, I got into water more than a foot deep and had to wring my stockings out; but this is anticipating.

  I cannot easily dismiss the subject of the fallen leaves. How densely they cover and conceal the water for several feet in width, under and amid the alders and button-bushes and maples along the shore of the river,—still light, tight, and dry boats, dense cities of boats, their fibres not relaxed by the waters, undulating and rustling with every wave, of such various pure and delicate, though fading, tints,—of hues that might make the fame of teas,—dried on great Nature’s coppers . . .

  I go through Brooks’s Hollow. The hazels bare, only here and there a few sere, curled leaves on them. The red cherry is bare. The blue flag seed-vessels at Walden are bursting,—six closely packed brown rows . . .

  Black willows bare. Golden willow with yellow leaves. Larch yellow. Most alders bv river bare except at top . . . (Journal, 5:450-451).

  P.M.—Sailed down river to the pitch pine hill behind Abner Buttrick’s, with a strong northwest wind, and cold. Saw a telltale on Cheney’s shore, close to the water’s edge . . .

  P.M.—To Cliffs . . .

  Went through the dense maple swamp against Potter’s pasture. It is completely bare, and the ground is very thickly strewn with leaves, which conceal the wet places. But still the high blueberry bushes in the midst and on the edge retain a few bright-red or scarlet-red leaves . . .

  I love to be reminded of that universal and eternal spring when the minute crimson-starred female flowers of the hazel are peeping forth on the hillsides,—when Nature revives in all her pores.

  Some less obvious and commonly unobserved signs of the progress of the seasons interest me most . . .

  P. M.—To Hubbard’s Meadow Wood . . .

  What with the rains and frosts and winds, the leaves have fairly fallen now. You may say the fall has ended. Those which still hang on the trees are withered and dry. I am surprised at the change since last Sunday. Looking at the distant woods, I perceive that there is no yellow nor scarlet there now. They are (except the evergreens) a mere dull, dry red. The autumnal tints are gone . . .

  P.M. By boat with Sophia to my grapes laid down in front of Fair Haven.

  It is a beautiful, warm and calm Indian-summer afternoon. The river is so high over the meadows, and the pads and other low weeds so deeply buried, and the water is so smooth and glassy withal, that I am reminded of a calm April day during the freshets. The coarse withered grass, and the willows, and button-bushes with their myriad balls, and whatever else stands on the brink, are reflected with wonderful distinctness. This shore, thus seen from the boat, is like the ornamented frame of a mirror . . .

  Tansy lingers still by Hubbard’s Bridge. But methinks I he flowers are disappearing earlier this season than last . . .

  P.M.—Went after pink azaleas and walnuts by boat . . .

  As I paddle under the Leaning Hemlocks, the breeze rustles the boughs, and showers of their fresh winged seeds come wafted down to the water and are carried round and onward in the great eddy there . . .

  P.M.—To Walden and Flint’s . . .

  C. [William Ellery Channing] says he saw succory yesterday, and a loon on the pond the 30th ult . . .

  I gather some fine large pignuts by the wall (near the beech trees) on Baker’s land . . .

  P.M.—To Ministerial Swamp . . .

  I make it my business to extract from Nature whatever nutriment she can furnish me, though at the risk of endless iteration . I milk the sky and the earth . . .

  I find no traces of the fringed gentian there, so that in low meadows I suspect it does not last very late. Hear a nuthatch. The fertile catkins of the yellow birch appear to be in the same state with those of the white, and their scales are also shaped like birds, but much larger . . .

  Most of the muskrat-cabins were lately covered by the flood, but now that it has gone down in a great measure, leaving the cranberries stranded amid the wreck of rushes, reeds, grass, etc., I notice that they have not been washed away or much injured . . .

  I saw yesterday for a moment by the river a small olivaceous-yellow bird; possibly a goldfinch, but I think too yellow. I see some gossamer on the causeway this afternoon, though it is very windy . . .

  Climbed the wooded hill by Holden’s spruce swamp and got a novel view of the river and Fair Haven Bay through the almost leafless woods. How much handsomer a river or lake such as ours, seen thus through a foreground of scattered or else partially leafless trees, though at a considerable distance this side of it, especially if the water is open, without wooded shores or isles! It is the most perfect and beautiful of all frames, which yet the sketcher is commonly careful to brush aside . . .

  A clear, cold, as well as frosty, morning. I have to walk with my hands in my pockets. Hear a faint chip, probably from a tree sparrow, which I do not see in the garden.

  The notes of one or two small birds, this cold morning, in the now comparatively leafless woods, sound like a nail dropped on an anvil, or a glass pendant tinkling against its neighbor. The sun now rises far southward I see westward the earliest sunlight on the reddish oak leaves and the pines. The former appear to get more than their share. flow soon the sun gets above the hills, as if he would accomplish his whole diurnal journey in a few hours . . .

  P.M.—To Conantum by boat, nutting . . .

  finder the warm south side of Bittern Cliff, where I moor my boat, I hear one cricket singing loudly and untdauntedly still, in the warm rock-side . . .

  P.M.—To riverside as far down as near Peter’s, to look at the water-line before the snow covers it. By Merrick’s pasture it is mainly a fine, still more or less green, thread-like weed or grass of the river bottom . . .

  Three larks rise from the sere grass on Minott’s Hill before me . . .

  Landed and walked over Conant’s Indian rye-field, and I picked up two good arrowheads . . . Went into the woods by Holden Swamp and sat down to hear the wind roar amid the tree-tops . . .

  Hitherto it had only rained a little from time to time, but now it began suddenly in earnest. We hastily rowed across to the firm ground of Fair Haven Hillside, drew up our boat and turned it over in a twinkling on to a clump of alders covered with cat-briars . . .

  A fine, calm, frosty morning, a resonant and clear air except a slight white vapor which escaped being frozen or perchance is the steam of the melting frost. Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields. I wear mittens now. Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket . . .

  9 A.M.—to Fair Haven Pond by boat.

  The morning is so calm and pleasant, winter-like, that I must spend the forenoon abroad. The river is smooth as polished silver. . . Sail back . . .

  8 P.M.—Up river to Hubbard Bathing-Place.

  Moon nearly full. A mild, almost summer evening after a very warm day, alternately clear and overcast. The meadows, with perhaps a little mist on than, look as if covered with frost in the moonlight . . .

  P.M.—To Annursnack and Cedar Swamp.

  There is a clear air and a strong northwest wind drying up the washed earth after the heavy rain of yesterday. The road looks smooth and white as if washed and swept . . .

  6.30 P.M.—To Baker Farm by boat. It is full moon, and a clear night, with a strong northwest wind; so C. [William Ellery Channing] and I must have a sail by moonlight . . .

  This evening at sundown, when I was on the water, I heard come booming up the river what I suppose was the sound of cannon fired in Lowell to celebrate the Whig victory, the voting down the new Constitution. Perchance no one else in Concord heard them, and it is remarkable that I heard them, who was only interested in the natural phenomenon of sound borne far over water . . .

  The river still higher than yesterday. I paddled straight from the boat’s place to the Island . . . (Journal, 5:508).

  They redden all the lee shore, the water being still apparently at the same level with the 16th. This is a very pleasant and warm Indian-summer afternoon. Methinks we have not had one like it since October. 31st. This, too, is a gossamer day, though it is not
particularly calm . . .

  Still quite warm as yesterday. I wear no greatcoat. There has been no freezing in the night. I hear a single hylodes in the wood by the water, while I am raking the cranberries. This warmth has aroused him. While raking, I disturbed two bullfrogs, one quite small. These, too, the warm weather has perhaps aroused. They appear rather stupid. Also I see one painted tortoise, but with no bright markings. Do they fade? . . .

  Minott said he heard geese going south at daybreak the 17th, before he came out of the house . . .

  Is not the dew but a humbler, gentler rain, the nightly rain, above which we raise our heads and unobstructedly behold the stars?  The mountains are giants which tower above the rain, as we above the dew in the grass; it only wets their feet.

  I think it must be the white lily root I find gnawed by the rats, though the leaves are pellucid. It has large roots with eyes and many smaller rootlets attached . . .

  If there is any one with whom we have a quarrel, it is most likely that that one makes some just demand on us which we disappoint.

  If you will inform me in season at what rate per page, (describing the page) you will pay for accepted articles,—returning the rejected within a reasonable time—and your terms are satisfactory, I will forward something for your Magazine before Dec 5th, and you shall be at liberty to put my name in the list of contributors.

Yours

Henry D. Thoreau.

  By 8 o’clock the misty clouds disperse, and it turns out a pleasant, calm, and springlike morning. The water, going down, but still spread far over the meadows, is seen from the window perfectly smooth and full of reflections. What lifts and lightens and makes heaven of the earth is the fact that you see the reflections of the humblest weeds against the sky, but you cannot put your head low enough to see the substance so. The reflection enchants us, just as an echo does . . .

  At 5 P.M. I saw, flying southwest high overhead, a flock of geese, and heard the faint honking of one or two . . .

  10 A.M.—To Cliffs.

  A clear, cold, windy day. The water on the meadows, which are rapidly becoming bare, is skimmed over and reflects a whitish light, like silver plating, while the unfrozen river is a dark blue. In plowed fields I see the asbestos-like ice-crystals, more or less mixed with earth, frequently curled and curved like crisped locks . . .

  It is too cold to-day to use a paddle; the water freezes on the handle and numbs my fingers . . .

  Dr. Harris [Thaddeus William Harris] described to me his finding a species of cicindela at the White Mountains this fall (the same he had found there one species some time age), supposed to be very rare, found at St Peter’s River and at Lake Superior; but he proves it to be common near the White Mountains.

  P.M.—To J. P. Brown’s pond-hole.

  J. Hosmer showed me a pestle which his son had found this summer while plowing on the plain between his house and the river . . .

  I dug for for frogs at Heart-leaf Pond, but found none . . .

  P.M.—Down river by boat and inland to the green house beyond Blood’s . . .

  Though there were some clouds in the west, there was a bright silver twilight before we reached our boat. C. remarked it descending into the hollows immediately after sunset . . .

  We may infer that every withered culm of brass or sedge, or weed that still stands in the fields, answers some purpose by standing.

  Those trees acid shrubs which retain their withered leaves through the winter-shrub oaks and young white, red, and black oaks, the lower branches of larger trees of the last-mentioned species, hornbeam, etc., and young hickories seem to form an intermediate class between deciduous and evergreen . . .

  The skeleton which at first sight excites only a shudder in all mortals becomes at last not only a pure but suggestive and pleasing object to science. The more we know of it, the less we associate it with any goblin of our imaginations . . .

  I send you herewith a complete article of fifty-seven pages. Putnam’s Magazine pays me four dollars a page, but I will not expect to receive more for this than you pay to anyone else. Of course you will not make any alterations or omissions without consulting me.

  Yours,

  Henry D. Thoreau

  I see that muskrats have not only erected cabins, but, since the river rose, have in some places dug galleries a rod into the bank, pushing the sand behind them into the water . . . One I explored this afternoon was formed in a low shore (Hubbard’s Bathing-Place), at a spot where there were no weeds to make a cabin of . . .

  At J. Hosmer’s tub spring, I dug out a small bullfrog (?) in the sandy mud at the bottom of the tub—it was lively enough to hop – and brought it home . . .

  4 P.M.—To Cliffs . . .

  Many living leaves are very dark red now, the only effect of the frost on them . . . Fair Haven Pond is skimmed completely over . . . I rode home from the woods in a hay-rigging, with a boy who had been collecting a load of dry leaves for the hog-pen; this the third or fourth load. Two other boys asked leave to ride, with four large empty box-traps which they were bringing home from the woods. It was too cold and late to follow box-trapping longer. They had caught five rabbits this fall, baiting with an apple. Before I got home the whole atmosphere was suddenly filled with a mellow yellowish light equally diffused, so that it seemed much lighter around me than immediately after the sun sank behind the horizon cloud, fifteen minutes before . . .

  I am extremely sorry to inform you that Mr. Jewett has decided not to commence the Magazine as he proposed. His decision was made too late to think of commencing this year with another publisher. His ill health and already numerous cares are the reasons he gives. The enterprise is therefore postponed – but not indefinitely it is to be hoped. Should the fates be favorable I will give you the earliest information.

  Very sincerely yours,

  F. H. Underwood

  At midday (3 P.M.) saw an owl fly from toward the river and alight on Mrs. Richardson’s front-yard fence. Got quite near it, and followed it to a rock on the heap of dirt at Collier’s cellar . . .

  Walden at sunset.

  The twilights, morn and eve, are very clear and light, very glorious and pure, or stained with red, and prolonged, these days. But, now the sun is set, Walden (I am on the east side) is more light than the sky,—a whiteness as of silver plating . . .

  I was amused by R.W.E.’s telling me that he drove his own calf out of the yard, as it was coming in with the cow, not knowing it to be his own, a drove going by at the time.

  Paddled Cheney’s boat up Assabet . . .

  R.W.E. told me that W.H. Channing conjectured that the landscape looked fairer when we turned our heads, because we beheld it with nerves of the eye unused before. Perhaps this reason is worth more for suggestion than explanation. It occurs to me that the reflection of objects in still water is in a similar manner fairer than the substance, and yet we do not employ unused nerves to behold it. Is it not that we let much more light into our eyes,-which in the usual position are shaded by the brows,—in the first case by turning them more to the sky, and in the case of the reflections by having the sky placed under our feet? . . .

  9.30 A.M.—Surveying near Strawberry Hill for Smith and Brooks . . . (Journal, 6:17-18).

  Would you be well, see that you are attuned to each mood of nature . . .

  Cross Fair Haven Pond at sunset. The western hills, these bordering it, seen through the clear, cold air, have a hard, distinct edge against the sunset sky. The distant hills are impurpled . . .

  True, a man cannot lift himself by his own waistbands, because he cannot get out of himself; but he can expand himself (which is better, there being no up nor own in nature), and so split his waistbands, being already within himself.

  You speak of doing and being, and the vanity, real or apparent, of much doing. The suckers—I think it is they—make nests in our river in the spring of more than a cart-load of small stones, amid which to deposit their ova. The other day I opened a muskrat’s house. It was made of weeds, five feet broad at base, and three feet high, and farand low within it was a little cavity, only a foot in diameter, where the rat dwelt. It may seem trivial, this piling up of weeds, but so the race of the muskrats is preserved. We must heap up a great pile of doing, for a small diameter of being. It is not imperative on us that we do something, if we only work in a treadmill? And, indeed, some sort of revolving is necessary to produce a centre and nucleus of being. What exercise is to the body, employment is to the mind and morals. Consider what an amount of drudgery must be performed,—how much humdrum and prosaic labor goes to any work of the least value. There are so many layers of mere white lime in every shell to that thin inner one so beautifully tinted. Let not the shell-fish think to build his house of that alone; and pray, what are its tint to him? Is it not his smooth, close-fitting shirt merely, whose tints are not to him, being in the ark, but only when he is gone or dead, and his shell is heaved up to light, a wrech upon the beach, do they appear, With him too, it is a Song of the Shirt, “Work, -work, -work!” And the work is not merely a police in the gross sense, but in the higher sense a discipline. If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevation as a ladder, the means by which we are translated? How admirably the artist is made to accomplish his self-culture by devotion to his art! The wood-sawyer, through his effort to do his work well, becomes not merely a better wood sawyer, but measurably a better man. Few are the men that can work of their navels, only some Brahmins that I have heard of, To the painter is given some paint and canvas instead; to the Irishman a hog, typical of himself In a thousand apparently humble ways men busy themselves to make some right take the place of some wrong, —if it is only to make a better pasteblacking, and they are themselves so much the better morally for it.

  You say that you do not succeed much. Does it concern you enough that you do not? Do you work hard enough at it? Do you get the benefit of discipline out of it? If so, preserve. It is a more serious thing than to walk a thousand miles in a thousand successive hours? Do you get any corns by it? Do you ever think of hanging yourself on the account of failure?

  If you are going into that line,—going to besiege the city of God,—you must not only be strong in engines, but prepared with provisions to starve out the garrison. An Irishman came to see me to—day, who is endeavoring to get his family out to this New World. He rises at half past for, milk twenty-eight cows (which has swollen the joints of his fingers), and eats his breakfast, without and milk in his tea or coffee, before six; and so on, day after day, for six and a half dollars a month; and thus he keep his virtue in him, if he does not add to it; and he regards me as a gentleman able to assist him; but if I ever get to be a gentleman, it will be by working after my fashion harder than he does. If my joints are not swollen, it must be because I deal with the teats of celestial cows before breakfast (and the milker in this case is always allowed some of the milk for his breakfast), to say nothing of the flocks and herds of Admetus afterward.

  It is the art of mankind to polish the work, and everyone who works is scrubbing in some part.
  If the work is high and far,

You must not aim aright,
But draw the bow with all your might.

You must qualify yourself to use a bow which no humbler archer can bend.

“Work, -work, -work!”

Who shall know it for a bow? It is not of yew-tree. It is straighter than a ray of light; flexibility is not known for one of its qualities.

Note: Thoreau continues to write the letter on December 22

  So far I had got when I called off to survey. Pray read the life of Haydon the painter, if you have not. It is a small revelation for these latter days; a great satisfaction to know that he has lived, though he is now dead. Have you met with the letter of a Turkish cadi at the end of Layard’s “Ancient Babylon”? that also is refreshing, and a capita comment on the whole cook which precedes it,—the Oriental genius speaking though him.

  Those Brahmins “put it through.” They come off, or rather stand still, conquerors, with some withereds arms or legs at least to show; and they are said to have cultivated the faculty of abstraction to a depree unknown to Europeans. If we cannot sing of faith and triumph, we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls, and there are night owls, and each is beautiful and even musical while about its business.

  Might you not find some positive work to do with your back to Church and State, letting your back do all the rejection of them? Can you not go upon your pilgrimage, Peter, along the winding mountain path wither you face? A step more will make those funeral church bells over your shoulder sound dar and sweet as a natural sound.

“Work, -work, -work!”

Why not make a very large mud-pie and bake it in the sun. Only put no Church nor State into it, nor upset any other pepper-box that way. Dog out a woodchuck,—for that has nothing to do with rotting institutions. Go ahead.

  Whether a man spends his day in an ecstasy or despondency, he must do some work to show for it, even as there are flesh and bones to show for him. We are superior to the joy we experience.

  Your last two letters, methinks, have more nerve and will in them than usual, as if you had erected yourself more. Why are not they good work, if you only had a hundred correspondents to tax you?

  Make your failure tragical by the earnestness and steadfastness of your endeavour, and then it will not differ from success. Prove it to be the inevitable fate of mortals, of one mortal, if you can.

  You said that you were writing on Immortality. I wish you would communicate to me what you know about that. You are sure to live while that is your theme.
Thus I write on some text which a sentence of your letters may have furnished.

  I think of coming to see you as soon as I get a new coat, if I have money enough left, I will write you again.

  P.M.—Got a white spruce for a Christmas-tree for the town out of the spruce opposite J. Farmer’s. It is remarkable how few inhabitants of Concord can tell a spruce from a fir, and probably not two a white from a black spruce, unless they are together. The woodchopper, even hereabouts, cuts down several kinds of trees without knowing what they are . . .

  P.M.—To the field in Lincoln which I surveyed for Weston the 17th.

  Walden almost entirely open again. Skated across Flint’s Pond; for the most part smooth but with rough spots wbere the rain had not melted the snow. From the hill beyond I get an arctic view northwest . . .

  In the town hall this evening, my white spruce tree, one of the small ones in the swamp, hardly a quarter the size of the largest, looked double its size, and its top had been cut off for want of room. It was lit with candles, but the starlit sky is far more splendid to-night than any saloon.

  About 4 P.M. the sun sunk behind a cloud, and the pond began to boom or whoop. It was perfectly silent before. The weather in both cases clear, cold, and windy. It is a sort of belching, and, as C. said, is somewhat frog-like. I suspect it did not continue to whoop long either night. It is a very pleasing phenomenon, so dependent on the altitude of the sun . . .

  Saw a small flock of tree sparrows in the sprout-lands under Bartlett’s Cliff . . .

  Was overtaken by an Irishman seeking work. I asked him if he could chop wood. He said he was not long in this country; that he could cut one side of a tree well enough, but he had not learned to change hands and cut the other without going around it,—what we call crossing the carf; They get very small wages at this season of the year, almost give up the ghost in the effort to keep soul and body together. He left me on the run to find a new master.

  P.M.—To Fair Haven Pond up meadows and river . . .

  Joe Brown owned those pigs I saw to root up the old pasture behind Paul Adams’s. N. Stow tells me this morning that he has sold and brought to the butcher’s three loads of pork containing twenty-five hundred pounds each, the least; at eight cents per pound amounting to more than $600 . . .

  What a contrast between the village street now and last summer! . . .

  The pond not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night. I carried a two-foot rule and measured the snow of yesterday in Abiel Wheeler’s wood by the railroad, near the pond. In going a quarter of a mile it varied from fourteen to twenty-four inches . . .

  P.M.—Down railroad to Walden and circle round to right, through Wheeler’s woods out to railroad again.

  It is a remarkable sight, this snow-clad landscape, with the fences and bushes half buried and the warm sun on it. The snow lies not quite level in the fields, but in low waves with an abrupt edge on the north or wind side, as it lodges on ice.

  The town and country are now so still, there being no rattle of wagons nor even jingle of sleigh-bells, every tread being as with woolen feet, I hear very distinctly from the railroad causeway the whistle of the locomotive on the Lowell road . . .