Am still surveying the W— or Lee farm. W— cleared out and left this faithful servant like a cat in some corner of this great house, but without enough to buy him a pair of boots, I hear. Parker was once a Shaker at Canterbury. He is now Captain E—’s right-hand man . . .

  E—, having lent W— money, was obliged to take the farm to save himself, but he is nearly blind and is anxious to get rid of it . . .

  (Jan. 4) this morning it is a good deal drifted.

  I should not be ashamed to have a shrub oak for my coat-of-arms.

  It is bitter cold, with a cutting northwest wind. The pond is now a plain snow-field, but there are no tracks of fishers on it. It is too cold for them. The surface of the snow there is finely waved and grained, giving it a sort of slaty fracture, the appearance which hard, dry blown. snow assumes. All animate things are reduced to their lowest terms. This is the fifth day of cold, blowing weather. All tracks are concealed in an hour or two . . .

  It was 18° by ours when I went out for a walk. I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck’s land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball or close ring, like a woodchuck. I pressed it hard between my fingers and found it frozen. I put it into my hat, and when I took it out in the evening, it soon began to stir and at length crawled about, but a portion of it was not quite flexible. It took some time for it to thaw. This is the fifth cold day, and it must have been frozen so long. It was more than an inch long . . .

  Mother remembers the Cold Friday very well. She lived in the house where I was born. The people in the kitchen—Jack Garrison, Esther, and a Hardy girl—drew up close to the fire, but the dishes which the Hardy girl was washing froze as fast as she washed them, close to the fire. They managed to keep warm in the parlor by their great fires . . .

For some years past I have partially offered myself as a lecturer . . . Yet I have had but two or three invitations to lecture in a year, and some years none at all. I congratulate myself on having been permitted to stay at home thus, I am so much the richer for it . . .

  I go slumping four or five inches in the snow on the river, and often into water above the ice, breaking through a slight crust under the snow, which has formed in the night. Each cold day is this concealed overflow, mixing with the snow beneath, is converted into ice, and so raises it, makes the surface snow shallower, and improves the walking; but unless it is quite cold, this snow and water is apt to get a slight crust only, through which you sink . . .

  We sometimes think that the inferior animals act foolishly, but are there any greater fools than mankind? Consider how so many, perhaps most, races . . . treat the traveller; what fears and prejudices has he to contend with. So many millions believing that he has to come [to] do them some harm. Let a traveller set out to go round the world, visiting every race, and he shall meet with such treatment at their hands that he will be obliged to pronounce them incorrigible fools. Even in Virginia a naturalist who was seen crawling through a meadow catching frogs, etc. was seized and carried before the authorities . . .

  At R. W. E.’s this evening, at about 6 P.M., I was called out to see Eddy’s cave in the snow. It was a hole about two and a half feet wide and six feet long, into a drift, a little winding, and he had got a lamp at the inner extremity. I observed, as I approached in a course at right angles with the length of the cave, that the mouth of the cave was lit as if the light were close to it, so that I did not suspect its depth . . . But, what was most surprising to me, when Eddy crawled into the extremity of his cave and shouted at the top of his voice, it sounded ridiculously faint, as if he were a quarter of a mile off, and at first I could not believe that he spoke loud, but we all of us crawled in by turns, and though our heads were only six feet from those outside, our loudest shouting only amused and surprised them . . .

  It is remarkable how many tracks of foxes you will see quite near the village, where they have been in the night, and yet a regular walker will not glimpse one oftener than once in eight or ten years (Journal, 9:228).

  P. M.—To Walden.

I asked M[inott]. about Cold Friday. He said, “it was plaguy cold; it stung like a wasp.” He remembers seeing them toss up water in a shoemaker’s shop, usually a very warm place, and when it struck the floor it was frozen and rattled like so many shot. Old John Nutting used to say, “When it is cold it is a sign it’s going to be warm,” and “When it’s warm it’s a sign it’s going to be cold.”

  The road beyond Hubbard’s Bridge has been closed by snow for two or three weeks; only the walls show that there has been a road there. Travellers take to the fields . . . (Journal, 9:231).

  Notice many heaps of leaves on snow on the hillside southwest of the pond, as usual. Probably the rain and thaw have brought down some of them . . . (Journal, 9:234).

  A laborer on the railroad tells me it is Candlemas Day (February 2d) to-morrow and the winter half out. “Half your wood and half your hay,” . . . and as that day is, so will be the rest of the winter . . .

[W]hen I have been resting and quenching my thirst on the eternal plains of truth, where rests the base of those beautiful columns that sustain the heavens, I have been amused to see a traveller who had long confined himself to the quaking shore, which was all covered with the traces of the deluge, come timidly tiptoeing toward me, trembling in every limb.

  P. M.—To Hubbard Bath . . .

  I looked into Shattuck’s History and found that, according to him, “Henry Woodhouse, or Woodis, as his name was sometimes written, came to Concord from London, about 1650, freeman 1656 . . .

When I returned from Worcester yesterday morning, I found that the Lee house, of which six weeks ago I made an accurate plan, had been completely burned up the evening before, i.e. the 13th, while I was lecturing in Worcester . . . There was nothing of the house left but the chimneys and cellar walls. The eastern chimney had fallen in the night . . .

  This morning (the 15th), it having rained in the night, and thinking the fire would be mostly out, I made haste to the ruins of the Lee house to read that inscription. By laying down boards on the bricks and cinders, which were quite too hot to tread on and covered a smothered fire, I was able to reach the chimney. The inscription was on the cast side of the east chimney (which had fallen) . . .

  It was a rough-cast house when I first knew it. The fire still glowing among the bricks in the cellar. Richard Barrett says he remembers the inscription and the date 1650, but not the rest distinctly . . .

  The river is fairly breaking up, and men are out with guns after muskrats, and even boats. Some are apprehending loss of fruit from this warm weather. It is as open as the 3d of April last year, at least.

  P.M.—To the old Hunt house . . .

  When I step out into the, yard I hear that earliest spring note from some bird, perhaps a pigeon woodpecker (or can it be a nuthatch, whose ordinary note I hear?), the rapid whar whar, whar whar, whar whar, which I have so often heard before any other note.

  I thought at one time that I heard a bluebird. Hear a fly buzz amid some willows.

  Thermometer at 1 P.M., 65.

  Sophia says that Mrs. Brooks’s spireas have started considerably! . . .

  Minott says that the house he framed and set up by Captain Isaac Hoar just beyond the old house by Moore’s, this side the one he was born in, his mother’s (?) house (whose well is that buried by Alcott on the sidewalk), and there the frame stood several years . . .

  I wish that there was in every town, in some place accessible to the traveller, instead [of] or beside the common directories, etc., a list of the worthies of the town, i.e. of those who are worth seeing . . .

  The river for some days has been open and its sap visibly flowing, like the maple.

  The Tonnmy Wheeler house, like the Hunt house, has the sills projecting inside. Its bricks are about the same size with those of the Lee chimney . . . (Journal, 9:275).

  You see I’ve saved this letter which is the best I ever wrote you (for I burnt the rest) & posted it in Town. For Rome being so uncertain a Post I thought `better wait till I get to Town’; & send it properly . . .

  I am just going now on an expedition to search for a little cottage somewhere in Kent or Sussex where I may henceforth dwell & endeavour to gather a little moss . . .

  However if I do succeed in getting my cottage in Kent remember there will be a room for you there, & as much as ever you can eat & drink . . .

  I met [James] Spedding the other day & had much talk with him but nothing real-but he is a good man & in expression like your Alcott. He is now bringing out his Bacon the work of his whole life. Farewell

Ever yrs
Thos Chol.ley

I have read your Hermit Life and also a very appropriate Fourth of July Oration on Slavery in Massachusetts. To say that I greatly admired both would be but an inadequate expression.

A compliance with the above request will be gratefully remembered by

Yours Truly
John Burt
Bellvale Orange Co N.Y.

  If I should make the least concession, my friend would spurn me. I am obeying his law as well as my own.

  Where is the actual friend you love? Ask from what hill the rainbow’s arch springs! It adorns and crowns the earth.

  Our friends are our kindred, of our species. There are very few of our species on the globe . . .

  P.M.—To Walden . . .

  A Week on the Concord & Merrimack Rivers-p 137.

  Henry D. Thoreau

  I see the track, apparently of a muskrat (?),—about five inches wide with very sharp and distinct trail of tail,—on the snow and thin ice over the little rill in the Miles meadow . . . (Journal, 9:282-83).

  When I cut a white pine twig the crystalline sap in-stantly exudes. How long has it been thus? Get a glimpse of a hawk, the first of the season. The tree sparrows sing a little on this still sheltered and sunny side of the hill,but not elsewhere.

  No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring, but lie will presently discover some evidence that vegetation had awaked some days at least before . . .

  A still and warm but overcast morning, threatening rain. I now again hear the song sparrow’s tinkle along the riverside, probably to be heard for a day or two, and a robin, which also has been heard a day or two. The ground is almost completely bare, and but little ice forms at night along the riverside.

  I meet Goodwin paddling up the still, dark river on his first voyage to Fair Haven for the season, looking for muskrats and from time to time picking up driftwood—logs and boards, etc.—out of the water and laying it up to dry on the bank, to eke out his wood-pile with . . .

  The water is fast going down. See a small waterbug. It is pretty still and warm. As I round the Island rock, a striped squirrel that was out [on] the steel) polypody rock scampered up with a chuckle . . .

  8.30 A.M.—Up Assabet in boat.

  At last I push myself gently through the smooth and sunny water, sheltered by the Island woods and hill, where I listen for birds, etc. There I may expect to hear a woodpecker tapping the rotten aspen tree. There I pause to hear the faint voice of some early bird amid the twigs of the still wood-side. You are pretty sure to bear a woodpecker early in the morning over these still waters. But now chiefly there comes borne on the breeze the tinkle of the song sparrow along the riverside, and I push out into wind and current. Leave the boat and run down to the white maples by the bridge . . .
(Journal, 9:304-7).

  A pleasant morning; the song of the earliest birds, i.e. tree sparrows, (now decidedly) and song sparrows and bluebirds, in the air. A red-wing’s gurgle from a willow . . .

  If it chances to be perfectly agreeable and convenient to you, I
will make you a visit next week, say Wednesday or Thursday, and we
will have some more rides to Assawampset and the seashore . . .

  Walden open, say to-day, though there is still a little ice in the deep southern bay and a very narrow edging along the southern shore.

  Cross through the woods to my boat under Fair Haven Hill. How empty and silent the woods now, before the leaves have put forth or thrushes and warblers are come! . . .

  I have just received your note of the 28th at my brother’s, and hasten a reply for the Post Office before I leave for Brooklawn.

  Nothing would give me more pleasure than a visit from you at any time. It will be perfectly agreeable to myself and family at this present time, and I shall duly expect you on Wednesday or Thursday. Should this reach you in time for an answer, I will be at Tarkiln Hill station to meet you; if not, make your appearance as early as you wish . . .

  P.M.—To Hill.

  As I rise the east side of the Hill, I hear the distant faint peep of hylodes and the tut tut of croaking frogs from the west of the Hill . . .

  An Irishman is digging a ditch for a foundation wall to a new shop where James Adams shop stood. He tells me that he dug up three cannon-balls just in the rear of the shop lying within a foot of each other and about eighteen inches beneath the surface . . .

  I got your note of welcome night before last. Channing is not here, at least I have not seen nor heard of him, but depend on meeting him in New Bedford. I expect if the weather is favorable, to take the 4 :30 train from Boston tomorrow, Thursday, pm—for I hear of no noon train, and shall be glad to find your wagon at Tarkiln Hill . . . (The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 472-73).

  A great change in the weather. I set out apple trees yesterday, but in the night it was very cold, with snow, which is now several inches deep. On the sidewalk in Cambridge I see a toad, which apparently hopped out from under a fence last evening, frozen quite hard in a sitting posture. Carried it into Boston in my pocket, but could not thaw it into life . . .

  Hear [Daniel] R[icketson]. describing to Alcott his bachelor uncle James Thornton. When he awakes in the morning he lights the fire in his stove (all prepared) with a match on the end of a stick, without getting up. When he gets up he first attends to his ablutions, being personally very clean, cuts off a head of tobacco to clean his teeth with, eats a hearty breakfast, sometimes, it was said, even buttering his sausages. Then he goes to a relative’s store and reads the Tribune till dinner, sitting in a corner with his back to those who enter. Goes to his boarding-house and dines, eats an apple or two, then in the afternoon frequently goes about the solution of some mathematical problem (having once been a schoolmaster), which often employs him a week.

  In January I was in Providence a short time and had a walls with Newcomb at Narragansett Bay. Since you heard from me I have learned more of him . . .

  If it be not unfair to ask an author what he means I would inquire
what I am to understand when in your list of employments given in Walden you say “I long ago lost a hound a bay-horse and a turtle-dove.” If I transgress let the question pass unnoticed.

  For myself I make fictitious employments. I am not satisfied with much that I do. Exultingly should I hail that wherein I could give exercise to my best powers for an end of unquestionable value . . .

  I had been surprised to find the season more backward, i.e. the vegetation, in New Bedford than in Concord. I could find no alder and willow and hazel catkins and no caltha and saxifrage so forward as in Concord. The ground was a uniform russet when I left, but when I had come twenty miles it was visibly greener, and the greenness steadily increased all the way to Boston. Coming to Boston, and also to Concord, was like coming from early spring to early summer. It was as if a fortnight at least had elapsed. Yet NeNv Bedford is much warmer in the winter. Why is it more backward than Concord? . . .

  I returned from New Bedford night before last. I met Alcott there & learned from him that probably you had gone to Concord. I am very sorry that I missed you I bad expected you earlier, & at last thought that I should get back before you came, but I ought to have notified you of my absence. However, it would have been too late, after I had made up my mind to go. I hope you lost nothing by going a little round . . .

  It snows hard all day. If it did not melt so fast, would be a foot deep . . . (Journal, 9:332).

  The water is at its height, higher than before this year. I see a few shad-flies on its surface. Scudding over the Great Meadows, I see the now red crescents of the red Ina.ples in their prime round about . . .

  Saw a large old hollow log with the tipper side [gone], which [made] me doubt if it was riot a trough open at the ends, and suggested that the first trough was perhaps such a hollow log with one side split off and the ends closed.

  It is cool and windy this afternoon. Some sleet falls, but as we sit on the east side of Smith’s chestnut grove, the wood, though so open and leafless, makes a perfect lee for its, apparently by breaking the force of the wind . . .

  P.M.—Up Assabet to White Cedar Swamp . . . We sit on the shore at Wheeler’s fence, opposite Merriams’s.  At this season we still go seeking the sunniest, the most sheltered, and warmest place. [William Ellery] C[hanning]. says this is the warmest place he has been in this year . . .

  I have been spending a fortnight in New Bedford, and on my return find your last letter awaiting me . . .

  How shall we account for our pursuits if they are original. We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of a common mint. If others have their losses, which they are busy repairing, so have I mine, & their hound and horse may perhaps be the symbols of some of them. But also I have lost, or am in the danger of losing, a far finer & more etherial treasure, which commonly no loss of which they are conscious will symbolize—this I answer hastily & and with some hesitation, according as I now understand my own words . . .

  While standing by my compass over the supposed town bound beyond Wyman’s, Farrar having just gone along northeast on the town line, I saw with the side of my eye some black creature crossing the road, reminding me of a black cat two thirds grown. Turning, I saw it plainly for half a minute. It crossed to my side about twenty-five feet off, apparently not observing me, and disappeared in the goods. It was perfectly black, for aught I could see (not brown), some eighteen or twenty inches or more in length from tip to tip, and I first thought of a large black weasel, then of a large blade squirrel, then wondered if it could be a pine marten. I now try to think it a hunk; yet it appeared larger and with a shorter body . . .

  P.M.—To  Dugan Desert.

  At Tarbell’s watering-place, see a dandelion, its conspicuous bright-yellow disk in the midst of a green space on the moist bank. It is thus I commonly meet with the earliest dandelion set in the midst of some liquid green patch. It seems a sudden and decided progress in the season . . . Sweet fern at entrance of Ministerial Swamp. A partridge there drums incessantly. [William Ellery] C[hanning]. says it makes his heart beat with it, or he feels it in his breast . . .

  Hear a kingfisher at Goose Pond. Hear again the same bird heard at Conantum April 18th, which I think must be the ruby-crowned wren As we stood looking for a bound by the edge of Goose Pond, a pretty large hawk alighted on an oak . . .

  A.M.—To Battle-Ground by river.

  I heard the ring of toads at 6 A. M. The flood on the meadows, still high, is quite smooth, and many are out this still and suddenly very warm morning, pushing about in boats. Now, thinks many a one, is the time to paddle or push gently far up or down the river, along the still, warm meadow’s edge, and perhaps we may see some large turtles, or muskrats, or otter, or rare fish or fowl. It will be a grand forenoon for a cruise, to explore these meadow shores and inundated maple swamps . . .

  Balm-of-Gilead pollen in house to-day; outdoors, say to-morrow, if fair.

  Minott tells me of one Matthias Bowers, a native of Chelmsford and cousin of C. Bowers, a very active fellow, who used to sleep with him and when he found the door locked would climb over tlne roof and come in at the dormer-window . . .

 Hear the tull-lull of a myrtle-bird . . . (Journal, 9:357).

  P.M.—Up river.

  Salix Babylonica behind Dodd’s, how long? Say with S. alba. I observe that the fertile flowers of many plants are more late than the barren ones . . .

  I went looking for snapping turtles over the meadow south of railroad. Now I see one large head like a, brown stake projecting three or four inches above the water four rods off, but it is slowly withdrawn, and I paddle tip and catch the fellow lying still in the dead grass there. Soon after I paddle within ten feet of one whose eyes like kncibs appear on the side of the stake, and touch him with my paddle . . .

  To Miles Swamp, Conantum.

  The brother of Edward Garfield (after dandelions!) tells me that two years ago, when he was cutting wood at Bittern Cliff in the winter he saw something dark squatting on the ice, which he took to be a mink, and taking a stake he went out to inspect it. It turned out to be a bird, a new kind of duck, with a long, slender, pointed bill (he thought red). It moved off backwards, hissing at him . . .

  P.M.—To Leaning Hemlocks . . . (Journal, 9:368).

  A recent neighbor of ours, Wm. W. Wheildon, having heard that you talked somewhat of moving to Concord (for such things will leak out) has just been asking me to inform you that he will rent his house, which is a furnished one, with a garden, or sell the same, if you like them. It is a large house, the third below (East of) us on the same side of the street-was built some 20 years ago partly of old material, & since altered. The garden is a very good one, of about 2 1/2 acres, with many fruit trees &c &c. Channing can tell you about it . . .

  I hear two thrashers plainly singing in emulation of each other.

  At the temporary brush fence pond, now going down, amid the sprout-land and birches, I see, within a dozen rods along its shore, one to three rods from edge, thirteen wood tortoises on the grass, at 4 P.M. this cloudy afternoon. This is apparently a favorite resort for them . . .

  Abel Hosmer thought that the Salix alba roots might reach half a dozen rods into his field as big as your finger . . . (Journal, 9:368).

  The meadows are now mostly bare, the grass showing itself above the water that is left . . . (Journal, 9:368).

  Gold-thread is abundantly out at Trillium Woods. The yellow birch catkins, now fully out or a little past prime, are very handsome now, numerous clusters of rich golden catkins hanging straight clown at a height from the ground on the end of the pendulous branches, amid the just expanding leaf-buds. It is like some great chandelier hung high over the underwood . . .

  Pratt says he saw the first rhodora and cultivated pear out yesterday. Many are now setting out pines and other evergreens, transplanting some wildness into the neighborhood of their houses . . .

  See myriads of minute pollywogs, recently hatched, in the water of Moore’s Swamp on Bedford road. Digging again to find a stake in woods, came across a nest or colony of wood ants, yellowish or sand-color, a third of an inch long, with their white grubs, now squirming . . .

  It has been confidently asserted and believed that if the cold in the winter exceeded a certain degree it surely killed the peach blossoms. Last winter we had greater cold than has ever been generally observed here, and yet it is a remarkable spring for peach blossoms; thus once for all disproving that assertion . . .

  P.M.—To Hill.

  Sassafras (fertile) will apparently bloom to-morrow. These, too,—the Young trees,—have been killed the past winter, like the fever-bush.

  There is, leaning over the Assabet at the Grape Bower, an amelanchier variety Botryapium about five inches in diameter and some twenty-eight feet long, a light and graceful tree . . .

  9 A.M.—I go up the Assabet in boat to stone bridge.

  Is it not summer when we do not go seeking sunny and sheltered places, but also love the wind and shade?

  As I stand on the sand-bank below the Assabet stone bridge and look up through the arch, the river makes a pretty picture . . .

  River still high generally over the meadows. Can sail across the Hubbard meadow. Off Staples wood-lot, hear the ah tche tche chit-i-vet of the redstart.

  Tortoises out again abundantly. Each particularly warns and sunny day brings them out on to every floating rail and stump. I count a dozen within three or four feet on a rail It is a tortoise day . . .

  White ash, apparently yesterday, at Grape Shore but not at Conantum. What a singular appearance for some weeks its great masses of dark-purple anthers have made, fruit-like on the trees!

  A very warm morning. Now the birds sing more than ever, methinks, now, when the leaves are fairly expanding, the first really warm summer days . . .

  I have received your four books & what is more I have read them. Olmstead was the only entire stranger. His book I think might have been shortened-& if he had indeed written only one word instead of ten-I should have liked it better . . .Of your own book I will say nothing but I will ask you a question, which perhaps may be a very ignorant one. I have observed a few lines about [sentence unfinished].

  Now there is something 1iere unlike anything else in these pages Are they absolutely your own, or whose? And afterward you shall hear what I think of them . . .

A fine-grained air, June-like, after a cloudy rain threatening or rainy morning. Sufficient [sic] with a still, clear air in which the hum of insects is heard, and the sunniness contrasts with the shadows of the freshly expanded foliage, lilac the glances of an eye from under the dark eyelashes of June. The grass is not yet dry. The birds sing more lively than ever now after the rain, though it is only 2 P.M. . . .

  I think that there are many chestnut-sided warblers this season. They are pretty tame. One sits within six feet of me, though not still. He is much painted up . . .

Perhaps I could write mediation under a rock in a shower. When first I had sheltered myself under the rock, I began at once to look out on the pond with new eyes, as from my house. I was at Lee’s Cliff as I had never been there before, had taken up my residence there, as it were. Ordinarily we make haste away from all opportunities to be where we have instinctively endeavored to get. When the storm was over where I was, and only a few thin drops were falling around me, I plainly saw the rear of the rain withdrawing over the Lincoln woods south of the pond, and, above all, heard the grand rushing sound made by the rain falling on the freshly green forest, a very different sound when thus heard at a distance from what it is when we are in the midst of it . . .

  I sang “Tom Bowling” there in the midst of the rain and the dampness seemed to be favorable to my voice. There was a slight rainbow on my way home . . .

  In the ditches in Moore’s Swamp on the new Bedford road, the myriads of pollywogs, now three quarters of an inch long, crowding close to the edge, make a continuous black edging to the pool a foot wide . . .

  The weather has been less reliable for a few weeks past than at any other season of the year. Though fair in the forenoon, it may rain in the afternoon, and the continuance of the showers surpasses all expectation. After several (lays of rain a fair day may succeed, and you close your eyes at night on a starlit sky . . .

  It was a portion of the natural surface of the earth itself which jutted out and became my roof the other day. How fit that Nature should thus shelter her own children! The first drops were dimpling the pond even as the fishes had done . . .

  Salix lucida out of bloom, but S. nigra still in bloom. I see a large branch of S. lucida, which has been broken off probably by the ice in the winter and come down from far up-stream and lodged, butt downward, amid some bushes, where it has put forth pink fibres from the butt end in the water, and is growing vigorously, though not rooted in the bottom . . .

I have several friends and acquaintances who are very good companions in the house or for an afternoon walk, but whom I cannot make up my mind to make a longer excursion with; for I discover, all at once, that they are too gentlemanly in manners, dress, and all their habits . . . Sometimes it is near shiftlessness or want of originality,—the clothes wear them; sometimes it is egotism, that cannot afford to be treated like a common man,—they wear the clothes . . .

  The early potentilla is now erect in the June grass. Salix tristis is going to seed, showing some cotton . . .

  One thing that chiefly distinguishes this season from three weeks ago is that fine serene undertone or earthsong as we go by sunny banks and hillsides, the creak of crickets, which affects our thoughts so favorably, imparting its own serenity. It is time now to bring our philosophy out of doors. Our thoughts pillow themselves unconsciously in the troughs of this serene, rippling sea of sound . . .

  The shad-flies were very abundant probably last evening about the house, for this morning they are seen filling and making black every cobweb on the side of the house, blinds, etc. All freshly painted surfaces are covered with them . . .

  At evening, travel up Assabet. There are many ephemerae [mayflies] in the air; but it is cool, and their great fight is not yet. Pincushion gall on oak.

  I am interested in each contemporary plant in my vicinity, and have attained to a certain acquaintance with the larger ones. They are cohabitants with me of this part of the planet . . .

  Salix pediccllaris off Holden’s has been out of bloom several days at least. So it is earlier to begin and to end than our S. lacida.

  This is June, the month of grass and leaves. The deciduous trees are investing the evergreens and revealing how dark they are. Already the aspens are trembling again, and a new summer is offered me. I feel a little fluttered in my thoughts, as if I might be too late. Each season is but an infinitesimal point. It no sooner comes than it is gone. It has no duration. It simply gives a tone and hue to my thought . . .

  I have just got your note, but I am sorry to say that this very morning I sent a note to Channing, stating that I would go with him to Cape Cod next week on an excursion which we have been talking of for some time. If there were time to communicate with you, I should ask you to come to Concord on Monday, before I go . . .

  Now I notice many bubbles left on the water in my wake, as if it were more sluggish or had more viscidity than earlier. Far behind me they rest without bursting . . .

  A small elm in front of Pratt’s which he says three years ago had flowers in flat cymes, like a cornel! I have pressed some leaves . . .

  Both kinds of sap, yellow birch and black, are now, in some bottles, quite aromatic and alike ; but this year, methinks, it has a more swampy taste and musty, and most of the bottles are merely sour.

  P.M.—To Violet Sorrel and Calla Swamp.

  A peetweet’s nest near wall by Shattuck’s barn, Merrick’s pasture, at base of a dock; four eggs just on the point of being hatched . . .

  P.M.—To White Cedar Swamp.

  A wood tortoise making a hole for her eggs just like a pieta’s hole. The Leucothoё racemosa, not yet generally out, but a little (it being mostly killed) a day or two.

  In Julius Smith’s yard, a striped snake (so called) was running about this forenoon, and in the afternoon it was found to have shed its slough . . .

  EGGS—.

  At Natural History Rooms. The egg found on ground in R. W. E.’s garden some weeks since cannot be the bobolink’s, for that is about as big as a bay-wing’s but more slender, dusky-white, with numerous brown and black blotches . . .

  P.M.—At [Benjamin Marston] Watson’s, Plymouth.

  W. has several varieties of the English hawthorn
(oxyacantha), pink and rose-colored, double and single, and very handsome now.

  His English oak is almost entirely, out of bloom, though I got some flowers. The biggest, which was set out in ’49, is about thirty feet high, and, as I measured, just twenty inches in circumference at four inches from the ground. A very rapid growth . . .

  Mr. Thoreau gauged everything by his beloved Concord River—there an island could be waded to; here was evidently an island—let us wade over there! But there are island and islands, channels and channels! And a rising tide on a flat in Plymouth Harbour is a swift river, full of danger.

  Fortunately for our Concord guest, a small fishing boat was on hand just at the nick of time to save him for his task of writing many volumes for the future joy of all lovers of nature! The skipper landed him at the North End—the back door of the island, so to speak, and here was greeted by the “lord of the isle,” known to all his friends as “Uncle Ed,” Edward Winslow Watson, and a worthy representative of the Pilgrims who spent their first Sunday on this island.

  Bluff and hearty was his welcome, and his first question was, “Where d’ye hail from?” Mr. Thoreau, fresh from the rescue, must have been breathless from climbing the cliffs and overcome with the mighty clap on his slender back that welcomed his answer. “From Concord, Sir, my name is Thoreau,” with “You don’t say so!” I’ve read somewhere in one of your books that you ‘lost a hound, a horse, and a dove.’ Now what do you mean by it?”

  Mr. Thoreau looked up with shy, dark blue eyes, as someone said he looked like a wild woodchuck ready to run back to his hole, and he was very ruddy of complexion, with reddish brown hair and wore a greatcoat—he looked up then in shy astonishment at this breezy, broad-shouldered, white-haired sea farmer, reader of his books. “Well, Sir, I suppose we have all had our loses.” “That’s a pretty way to answer a fellow,” replied the unsatisfied student of a fellow-poet and lover of nature.

  2 P.M.—Ride to Manomet with [Benjamin Marston] Watson and wife, through Manomet Ponds village, about eight miles. At the mouth of Eel River, the marsh vetchling (Lathyrus palustris), apparently in prime, some done. The curve of the shore on the cast of Plymouth Beach is said to resemble the Bay of Naples. Manomet was quite a hill, over which the road ran in the woods. We struck the shore near Holmes’s Hotel about half a mile north of Manomet Point.

  There I shouldered my pack and took leave of my friends,—who thought it a dreary place to leave me,—and my journey along the shore was begun . . .

  Within half a mile I come to the house of an Indian, a gray one-storied cottage, and there were two or three more beyond. They were just beginning to build a meeting-house to-day! . . .

  Crossed Herring River, and went down to the shore and walked a mile or more eastward along the beach. This beach seems to be laid down too long on the map. The sea never runs very much here, since the shore is protected from the swell by Monomoy . . .

  I go along the settled road, where the houses are interspersed with woods, in an unaccountably desponding mood, but when I come out upon a bare and solitary heath am at once exhilarated. This is a common experience in my traveling. I plod along, thinking what a miserable world this is and what miserable fellows that we inhabit it, wondering what tempts men to live in it; but anon I leave the towns behind and am lost in some boundless heath, and life becomes gradually more tolerable, if not even glorious . . .

  A mizzling and rainy day with thick driving fog; a drizzling rain, or “drisk,” as one called it. I struck across into the stage-road, a quarter of a mile east, and followed that a mile or more into an extensive bare plain tract called Silver Springs, in the southwest part of Wellfleet . . .

  Stopped to drv me about ll A.M. at a house near John Newcomb’s, who they told me died last winter, ninety-five years old (or would have been now had he lived?). I had shortly before picked up a Mother-Carey’s-chicken, which was just washed up dead on the beach. This I carried tied to the tip of my umbrella, dangling outside. When the inhabitants saw me come up from the beach this stormy day, with this emblem dangling from my umbrella, and saw me set it up in a corner carefully to be out of the way of cats, they may have taken me for a crazy man . . .

  A man working on the lighthouse, who lives at the Pond Village, says that he raised potatoes and pumpkins there where a vessel once anchored. That was when they let the saltwater into the pond. Says the flags there now are barrel flags ; that the chair flag is smaller, partly three-sided, and has no bur; perhaps now all gone. Speaking of the effect of oil on the water, this man said that a boat’s crew came ashore safely from their vessel on the Bay Side of Truro some time ago in a storm, when the wind blowed square on to the land, only by heaving over oil . . .

  Get home at 5 P.M.

  It seems that Sophia found an Attacus Cecropia out in my chamber last Monday, or the 15th. It soon went to laying eggs on the window-sill, sash, books, etc., of which vide a specimen. Though the window was open (blinds closed), it did not escape . . .

  P.M.—Looked for the black duck’s nest, but could find no trace of it . . .

  I returned from Cape Cod last evening, and now take the first opportunity to invite you men of Worcester to this quiet Mediterranean shore. Can you come this week on Friday or next Monday? I mention the earliest days on which I suppose you can be ready. If more convenient name some other time within ten days. I shall be rejoiced to see you, and to act the part of skipper in the contemplated voyage. I have just got another letter from Cholmondeley, which may interest you somewhat.

H.D.T.

  Melvin thinks there cannot be many black ducks’ nests in the town, else his dog would find them, for he will follow their trail as well as another bird’s, or a fox. The clog once caught live black ducks here but partly grown . harrnvr was ]loving corn with his Irishmen . . .

  See apparently a young bobolink fluttering over the meadow. The garlic not even yet quite.

  In the Wheeler meadow, the bushy one southwest of Egg Rock, the coarse sedge—I think the same with that in the Great Meadows—evidently grows in patches with a rounded outline . . .

  Allium Canadense in house and probably in field. The river is now whitened with the down of the black willow . . . (Journal, 9:461).

  Flannery says that there was a frost this morning in Moore’s Swamp on the Bedford road, where he has potatoes . He observed something white on the potatoes about 3.30 A. M. and, stooping, breathed on and melted it . Minott says he has known a frost every month in the year, but at this season it would be a black frost, which bites harder than a white one . . .

  Potentilla argata abundantly out. Partridges big as quails. At Clamshell I found three arrowheads and a Small Indian chisel for my guests. Rogers determined the rate of the boat’s progress by observing by his second-hand how long the boat was going its length past a pad . . .

  There came out this morning, apparently from one of those hard stem-wound cocoons on a black birch in my window, a moth whose wings are spread four and a quarter inches, and it is about an inch and three quarters long. It is black, wings and body, with two short, broad feathery antennae. The wings all have a clay-colored border behind . . .

  A chewink’s nest with four young just hatched, at the bottom of the hyrola hollow and grove, where it is so dry . . . (Journal, 9:472).

  You are right in supposing that I have not been Westward. I am very little of a traveller. 1 am gratified to hear of the interest you take in my books; it is additional encouragement to write more of them. Though my pen is not idle, I have not published anything for a couple of years at least. I like a private life, & cannot bear to have the public in my mind.

  You will excuse me for not responding more heartily to your notes, since I realize what an interval there always is between the actual & imagined author, & feel that it would not be just for me to appropriate the sympathy and good will of my unseen readers.

  Nevertheless, I should like to meet you, & if I ever come into your neighborhood shall endeavor to do so . Cant you tell the world o£ your life also? Then I shall know you, at least as well as you me.

Yrs truly
Henry D, Thoreau

  P. M.—Up Assabet with Sophia.

  There is now but little black willow down left on the trees. They will be handsomest somewhat later than this, when there is no down on them, and the new growth has more invested the stem . . .

  P.M.—To Pratt’s and Peter’s.

  One flower on the Solanum nigrum at Pratt’s, which he says opened the 7th. He found, about a week ago, the Botrychium Virginianum in bloom . . .

  Haying is fairly begun, and for some days I have heard the sound of the mowing-machine, and now the lark must look out for the mowers . . .

  Thermometer at 93º + this afternoon.

  Am surprised to find the water of Corner Spring spoiled for the present, however much I clear it out, by the numbers of dead and dying frogs in it (Rana palustris). There is a mortality among [them] which has made them hop to this spring to die . . .

  Finding myself somewhat stronger than for 2 or 3 years past, I am bent on making a leisurely & economical excursion into your woods—say in a canoe, with two companions, through Moosehead to the Allegash Lakes, and possibly down that river to the French settlements, & so homeward by whatever course we may prefer. I wish to go at an earlier season than formerly or within 10 days, notwithstanding the flies &c and we should want a month at our disposal . . .

  Please let me hear from you as soon as possible.

  Father has arrived safe & sound, and, he says, the better for his journey, though he has no longer his Bangor appetite. He intends writing to you.

Yours truly,
Henry D. Thoreau

  Set fire to the carburetted hydrogen from the sawdust shoal with matches, and heard it flash. It must be an interesting sight by night (Journal, 9:481).

  When I entered the woods there, I was at once pursued by a swarm of those wood flies which gyrate around your head and strike your hat like rain-drops. As usual, they kept up with me as I walked, and gyrated about me still, as if I were stationary, advancing at the same time and receiving reinforcements from time to time. Though I switched them smartly for half a mile with some indigo-weed, they did not mind it in the least . . .

  Geum album, apparently well out.

  As I walked through the pasture side of the hill, saw a mouse or two glance before me faint galleries in the grass. They are seldom seen, for these small deer. like the larger, disappear suddenly, as if they exploded before your eyes . . .

  The young leaves of the slippery elm are a yellowish green and large, and the branches recurved or drooping. Hypericum corymbosum. Am caught in the rain and take shelter under the thick white pine by Lee’s Cliff. I see thereunder an abundance of chimaphila in bloom. It is a beautiful flower, with its naked umbel of crystalline purplish-white flowers, their disks at an angle with the horizon . . .

  George Bradford says he finds in Salem striped maple and Sambucus pubens. He (and Tuckerman?) found the Utricularia resupinata once in Plymouth, and it seems to correspond with mine at Well Meadow . . .

  At Natural History Library. Holbrook makes the Emys terrapin to be found from Rhode Island to Florida and South America . . .

  5 P.M.—Take cars for Portland. Very hot and dusty; as much need of a veil in the cars to exclude cinders as in the woods to keep off mosquitoes . . .

  At a mile and a half north of Bangor, passed the spot, at Treat’s Falls, where the first settler and fur trader, one Treat, lived . . .

  [Mr. Leonard, of Bangor, a sportsman,] said that the horns of a moose would spread four feet, sometimes six ; would weigh thirty or forty pounds (the hide, fifty) ; squirrels and mice ate the horns when shed. (They told me that the horns were not grown at this season.) . . . [Leonard told] also of some panthers which appeared near a house in Foxcroft . . .

  There were two public houses near together, and they wanted to detain us at the first, even took off some of our baggage in spite of us; but, on our protesting, shouted “let them go! let them go!” as if it was any of their business. Whereupon we, thanking them for the privilege, rode on . . .

  It suggested to me how unexplored still are the realms of nature, that what we know and have seen is always an insignificant portion. We may any day take a walk as strange as Dante’s imaginary one to L’Inferno or Paradiso.

  The shores of this lake are rocky, rarely sandy, and we saw no good places for moose to come out on, i.e. no meadows. What P. called Caucomgomoc Mountain, with a double top, was seen north over the lake in mid-forenoon . . .

Thoreau writes in The Maine Woods:

At breakfast this Saturday morning, the Indian, apparently curious to know what would be expected of him the next day, whether we should go along or not, asked me how I spent Sunday when at home. I told him that I commonly sat in my chamber reading, etc., in the forenoon, and went to talk in the afternoon. At which he shook his head and said, “Er, that is ver bad.” “How do you spend it?” I asked. He said that he did no work, that he went to church at Oldtown when he was at home; in short, he did as he had been taught by the whites. This lead to a discussion on which I found myself as the minority. He stated that he was a protestant, and asked me if I was. I did not at first know what to say, but I thought that I could answer with truth that I was . . .

  P. said that his mother was a Province woman and as white as anybody. but his father a pure-blooded Indian. I saw no trace of white blood in his face, and others, who knew him well and also his father, were confident that his mother was an Indian and suggested that she was of the Quoddy tribe (belonged to New Brunswick), who are often quite light-colored . . .

Here were many Canada blueberries and, on the rocks, a new Allium or garlic, with purple flowers, and the Lobelia Kalmii, both on bare rocks just below the falls. On the main land were Norway pines and sandy soil, and Baeromyees roseus and Desmodium Canadense,—a new soil for this river . . .

   Duck-meat, apparently a new kind, there. I. thinks there’s little if any red cedar about Bangor . . . (Journal, 9:501)

  A withdrawn, wooded, and somewhat mountainous country. There was a little trout-pond just over the highest hill, very muddy, surrounded by a broad belt of yellow lily pads. Over this we pushed with great difficulty on a rickety raft of small logs, using poles thirty feet long, which stuck in the mud . . .

  I find that B[enjamin]. M[arston]. Watson sent me from Plymouth, July 20th, six glow-worms, of which two remain, the rest having escaped. He says they were found by his family on the evenings of the 18th and 19th of July . . .

  I kept them in a sod, supplying a fresh one each day. They were invariably found underneath it by day, next the floor, still and curled up in a ring, with the head within or covered by the tail . Were apt to be restless on being exposed to the light. One that got away in the yard was found again ten feet off and down cellar . . .

  I am much indebted to you for your glowing communication of July 20th. I had that very day left Concord for the wilds of Maine; but when I returned, August 8th, two out of the six worms remained nearly, if not quite, as bright as at first, I was assured. In their best estate they had excited the admiration of many of the inhabitants of Concord. It was a singular coincidence that I should find these worms awaiting me, for my mind was full of a phosphorescence which I had seen in the woods . . .

  I expect to go to Cambridge before long, and if I get any more light on this subject I will inform you. The two worms are still alive . . .

  Your Wilson Flagg seems a serious person, and it is encouraging to hear of a contemporary who recognizes nature so squarely, and selects such a theme as “Barns.” (I would rather “Mt Auburn” were omitted.) But he is not alert enough. He wants stirring up with a pole. He should practice turning a series of somersets rapidly, or jump up & see bow many times he can strike his feet together before coming clown. Let him make the earth turn round now the other way—and whet his wits on it, whichever way it goes, as on a grindstone;—in short, see how many ideas he can entertain at once . . .

  Channing was just leaving Concord for Plymouth when I arrived, but said be should be here again in 2 or 3 days.

  Please remember me to your family & say that I have at length learned to sing Tom Bowling according to the notes.

Yrs truly
Henry D. Thoreau

  Fifteenthly. It seems to me that you need some absorbing pursuit. IT does not matter much what it is, so it be honest. Such employment will be favorable to your development in more characteristic and important directions. You know there must be impulse enough for for steerage way, though it the not toward your port, to prevent your drifting helplessly on to rocks or shoals. Some sails are set for this purpose only. There is the large fleet of scholars and men of science, for instance, always to be seen standing off and on every coast, and saved thus from running on to reefs, who will at last run into their proper haven, we trust.

  It is a pity you were not here with [Theo] Brown and [B.B.] Wiley. I think that in this case, for a rarity, the more the merrier.

  You perceived that I did not entertain the idea of our going together to Maine on such an excursion as I had planned. The more I thought of it, the more imprudent it appeared to me. I did think to have written to you before going, though not to propose your going also; but I went at last very suddenly, and could only have written a business letter, if I had tried, when there was no business to be accomplished. I have now returned, and think I have had a quite profitable journey, chiefly from associating with an intelligent Indian . . .

  The hillside at Clintonia Swamp is in some parts quite shingled with the rattlesnake-plantain (Goodyera pubescens) leaves overlapping one another. The flower is now apparently in its prime. As I stand there, I hear a peculiar sound which I mistake for a woodpecker’s tapping, but I soon sec a cuckoo hopping near suspiciously or inquisitively, at length within twelve feet, from once to time uttering a, hard, dry note . . .

  Hear the mole crickets nowadays. Collinsonia (very little left) not out (Journal, 10:9).

  On the left hand, just this side the centre of Wayland, I measure the largest, or northernmost, of two large elms standing in front of an old house. At four feet from the ground, where, looking from one side, is the smallest place between the ground and the branches, it is seventeen feet in circumference . . .

  A[ustin]. Bacon showed me a drawing apparatus which he said he invented, very simply and convenient, also microscopes and many glasses for them which he made . . .

  Plucked a Lilium Canadense at three-ribbed goldenrod wall, six and eight twelfths feet high, with a pyramid of seed-vessels fourteen inches long by nine wide, the first an irregular or diagonal whorl of six, surmounted by a whorl of three. The upper two whorls of leaves are diagonal or scattered . . .

  B[Radford]. tells me he found the Malaxis lilifolia on Kineo. Saw there a tame gull as large as a hen, brown dove-color . . . (Journal, 10:14)

   Detected a, to me, new kind of high blackberry on the edge of the cliff beyond Conant’s wall on Lee’s ground,—a long-peduncled (or pedicelled), leafy-racemed (somewhat panicced), erect blackberry. It has the aspect of R. Canadensis become erect, three or four feet high. The racemes (or panicles?) leafy, with simple ovate and broad-lanceolate leaves; loose, few flowered (ten or twelve); peduncles (or pedicels) one to two or more inches long, often branched, with bracts midway, in fruit, at least, drooping. Perhaps the terminal flowers open first . . .

  Gerardia tenuifolia, a new plant to Concord, apparently in prime, at entrance to Owl-Nest Path and generally in that neighborhood. Also on Conantum height above orchard, two or three days later. This species grows on dry ground, or higher than the purpurea, and is more delicate . . .

  Small botrychium, not long. The flower of Cicuta maculata smells like the leaves of the golden senecio . . . (Journal, 10:18-19).

   An abundance of fine high blackberries behind Britton’s old camp on the Lincoln road, now in their prime there, which have been overlooked. Is it not our richest fruit?

  Our first muskmelon to-day . . .

  Landing at Bittern Cliff, I see that fine purple grass; how long? At Baker’s shore, I at length distinguished fairly the Sagittaria simplex, which I have known so long, the small one with simple leaves. But this year there are very few of them, being nearly drowned out by the high water . . .

  Measured the thorn at Yellow Birch Swamp. At one foot from ground it is a foot and ten inches in circumference. The first branch is at two feet seven inches. The tree spreads about eighteen feet. The height is about seventeen feet . . . (Journal, 10:22-23)

The Polygonum Pennsylvanicum there. One Chimaphila maculate on the hill. Tufts of Woodsia Hvensis . . . (Journal, 10:24).

  Penetrating through the thicket of that swamp, I see a great many very straight and slender upright shoots, the slenderest and tallest that I ever saw. They are the Prinos lavigatus. I cut one and brought it home in a ring around my neck,—it was flexible enough for that,—and found it to be seven and a half feet long and quite straight, eleven fortieths of an inch in diameter at the ground and three fortieths diameter at the other end, only the last foot or so of this year’s growth. It had a light-grayish bark, rough dotted. Generally they were five or six feet high and not bigger than a pipe-stem anywhere. This comes of its growing in dense dark swamps, where it makes a good part of the underwood . . .

River falls suddenly, having been high all summer (Journal, 10:25)

  Returning to my boat, at the white maple, I see a small round flock of birds, perhaps blackbirds, dart through the air, as thick as a charge of shot,—now comparatively thin, with regular intervals of sky between them, like the holes in the strainer of a watering-pot . . .

  I wrote you some two weeks ago that I intended visiting Concord, but have not yet found the way there. The object of my now writing is to invite you to make me a visit. Walton’s small sail boat is now in Assawampset Pond. We took it up in our farm wagon to the south shore of Long Pond (Apponoquet), visited the islands in course and passed through the river that connects the said ponds. This is the finest season as to weather to visit the ponds, and I feel much stronger than when you were here last Spring . . .

  Very few trees have any. I can only manage small ones, fifteen or twenty feet high, climbing til I can reach the dangling green pickle-like fruit in my right hand, while I hold to the main stem with my left. The cones are now all flowing with pitch, and my hands are so covered with it that I cannot easily cast down the cones where I would, they stick to my hands so. I cannot touch the basket, but carry it on my arm; nor can I pick up my coat, which I have taken off, unless with my teeth, or else I kick it up and catch it on my arm. Thus I go from tree to tree, from time to time rubbing my hands in brooks and mud-holes, in the hope of finding something that will remove pitch like grease, but in vain. It is the stickiest work I ever did. I do not see how the squirrels that gnaw them off and then open them scale by scale keep their paws and whiskers clean. They must know of, or possess, some remedy for pitch that we know nothing of. How fast I could collect cones, if I could only contract with a family of squirrels to cut them off for me! . . .

  I thank you for your kind invitation to visit you-but I have taken so many vacations this year—at New Bedford—Cape Cod—& Maine—that any more relaxation, call it rather dissipation, will cover me with shame & disgrace. I have not earned what I have already enjoyed. As some heads cannot carry much wine, so it would seem that I cannot bear so much society as you can. I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don’t get enough of it this year I shall cry all the next . . .

  Cardinal-flower, nearly done. beach plum, almost ripe. Squash vines on the Great Fields, generally killed and blackened by frost (though not so much in our garden), revealing the yellow fruit, perhaps prematurely . . . (Journal, 10:30)

  I received your note of yesterday this A.M. I am glad you write me so frankly. I know well how dear one’s own time & solitude may be, and I would not on any consideration violate the sanctity of your prerogative.

  I fear too that I may have heretofore trespassed upon your time too much If I have please pardon me as I did it unwittingly I felt the need of congenial society-& sought yours I forgot that I could not render you an equivalent. It is good for one to be checked-to be thrown more and more upon his own resources. I have lived years of solitude (seeing only my own family, & Uncle James occasionally,) and was never happier. My heart however was then more buoyant and the woods and fields-the birds & flowers, but more than these, my moral meditations afforded me a constant source of the truest enjoyment . . .

  Solidago puberula apparently in prime, with the S. stricta, near gerardia oaks. Red choke-berry ripe; how long? On the cast edge of Dennis Swamp, where I saw the strange warbler once . . . (Journal, 10:30).

  In an open part of the swamp, started a very large wood frog, which gave one leap and squatted still. I put down my finger, and, though it shrank a little at first, it permitted me to stroke it as long as I pleased. Having passed, it occurred to me to return and cultivate its acquaintance. To my surprise, it allowed me to slide my hand under it and lift it up, while it squatted cold and moist on the middle of my palm, panting naturally. I brought it close to my eye and examined it. It was very beautiful seen thus early, not the dull dead-leaf color which I had imagined, but its back was like burnished bronze armor defined by a varied line on each side, where, as it seemed, the plates of armor united. It had four or five dusky bars which matched exactly when the legs were folded, showing that the painter applied his brush to the animal when in that position, and reddish-orange soles to its delicate feet. There was a conspicuous dark-brown patch along the head, whose upper edge passed directly through the eye horizontally, just above its centre, so that the pupil and all below were dark and the upper portion of the iris golden. I have since taken up another in the same way . . .

  Walked through that beautiful soft white pine grove on the west of the road in John Flint’s pasture. These trees are large, but there is ample space between them, so that the ground is left grassy. Great pines two or more feet in diameter branch sometimes within two feet of the ground on each side, sending out large horizontal branches on which you can sit. Like great harps on which the wind makes music. There is no finer tree . . .

  Watson gave me three glow-worms which he found by the roadside in Lincoln last night. They exhibit a greenish light, only under the caudal extremity, and intermittingly, or at will. As often as I touch one in a dark morning, it stretches and shows its light for a moment, only under the last segment . . .

  We find the water cold for bathing. Coming out on to the Lincoln road at Bartlett’s path, we found an abundance of haws by the roadside, just fit to eat, quite an agreeable subacid fruit. We were glad to see anything that could be eaten so abundant. They must be a supply depended on by some creatures. These bushes bear a profusion of fruit, rather crimson than scarlet when ripe . . .

  Coming home through the street in a thunder-shower at ten o’clock this night, it was exceedingly dark. I met two person within a mile, and they were obliged to call out from a rod distant lest we should run against each other. When lightning lit up the street, almost as plain as day, I saw that it was the same green light that the glow-worm emits. Has the moisture something to do with it in both cases?

  A.M.—To beach plums behind A. Clarke’s.

  We walked in some trodden path on account of the wet grass and leaves, but the fine grass overhanging paths, weighed down with dewy rain, wet our feet nevertheless. We cannot afford to omit seeing the beaded grass and wetting our feet. This is our first fall rain, and makes a dividing line between the summer and fall. Yet there has been no drought the past summer . . .

  Peaches are now in their prime. Came through that thick white pine wood on the east of the spruce swamp . . . (Journal, 10:37-39).

  The river is considerably raised and also muddied by the recent rains.

  I saw a red squirrel run along the bank under the hemlocks with a nut in its mouth. He stopped near the foot of a hemlock, and, hastily pawing a hole with his fore feet, dropped the nut, covered it up, and retreated part way up the trunk of the tree, all in a few moments. I approached the shore to examine the deposit, and he, descending betrayed no little anxiety for his treasure and made two or three motions to recover the nut before he retreated . . .

   These are warm, serene, bright autumn afternoons. I see far off the various-colored gowns of cranberry pickers against the green of the meadow. The river stands a little way over the grass again, and the summer is over . . . (Journal, 10:44-46).

  How out of all proportion to the value of an idea, when you come to one,—in Hindoo literature, for instance,—it the historical fact about it,—the when, where, etc., it was actually expressed, and what precisely it might signify to a sect of worshippers! Anything that is called history of India—or of the world—is impertinent beside any real poetry or inspired thought which is dateless . . .

  P.M.—To Walden.

  Young oaks generally reddening, etc., etc. IZhus Toxicodendroa turned yellow and red, handsomely dotted with brown. At Wheeler’s Wood by railroad, heard a cat owl hooting at 3.30 P.M., which was repeatedly answered by another some forty rods off . . .

  The ash trees are a dull red, and some quite mulberry color. Methinks it has to do with the smart frost of yesterday morning; i.e., that after the maples have fairly begun, the young red oaks, ash trees, etc., begin with the first, smart frost. The pines now half turned yellow, the needles of this year are so much the greener by contrast . . .

  It was three miles off, and I walked back and forth each day, arriving early and working as late as if I were living there. The man was gone away most of the time, but had left some sand dug up in his cow-yard for me to make mortar with. I bricked up a fireplace, papered a chamber,  but my principal work was whitewashing ceilings. Some were so dirty that many coats would not conceal the dirt. In the kitchen I finally resorted to yellow-wash to cover the dirt. I took my meals there, witting down with my employer (when he got home) and his hired men. I remember the awful condition of the sink, at which I washed one day, and when I came to look at what was called the towel I passed it by and wiped my hands on the air . . .

  Looking up Trout Stream, it seems as a wild a place for a man to live as we had seen. What a difference between a residence there and within five minutes walk of the depot! What different men the two live must turn out!

  Hemlock leaves are copiously falling. They cover the hillside like some wild grain. The changing red maples along the river are past their prime now, earlier than generally elsewhere. They are much faded, and many leaves are floating on the water . . .

  The ten days—at least—before this were plainly Indian summer. They were remarkably pleasant and warm. The latter half I sat and slept with an open window, though the first part of the time I had a little fire in the morning. These succeeded to days when you had worn thick clothing and sat by fires for some time . . .

  It clears up entirely by noon, having been cloudy in the forenoon, and is as warm as before now . . .

  I think that the principal stages in the autumnal changes of trees are these, thus far, as I remember, this year:—

  First, there were in September the few prematurely blushing white maples, or blazing red ones in water, that reminded us of October. Next, the red maple swamps blazed out in all their glory, attracting the eyes of all travellers and contrasting with other trees. And hard upon these came the ash trees and yellowing birches, and walnuts, and elms, and the sprout-land oaks, the last streaking the hillsides far off, often occupying more commanding positions than the maples. All these add their fires to those of the maples. But even yet the summer is unconquered . . .

  Clear and pleasant afternoon, but cooler than before. At the brook beyond Hubbard’s Grove, I stand to watch the water-bugs (Gyrinus). The shallow water appears now more than usually clear there, as the weather is cooler, and the shadows of these bugs on the bottoms, half a dozen times as big as themselves, with a narrow and well-defined halo about them . . .

  I see many myrtle-birds now about the house this forenoon, on the advent of cooler weather. They keep flying up against the house and the window and fluttering there . . .

  Ground pretty white with frost. the stiffened and frosted weeds and grass have an aggrieved look. The lately free-flowing blades of grass look now like mourning tresses sculptured stiffly in marble; they lie stiff and dishevelled. A very narrow strip of ice has formed along the riverside, in which I see a pad or two, wearing the same aggrieved look, like the face of the child that cried for spilt milk, its summer irrevocably gone . . .

  Crossing my old bean-field, I see the blue pond between the green whit® pines in the field and am reminded that we are almost reduced to the russet (i.e. pale-brown grass tinged with red blackberry vines) of such fields as this, the blue of water, the green of pines, and the dull reddish brown o£ oak leaves. The sight of the blue water between the now perfectly green white pines, seen over the light-brown pasture, is peculiarly Novemberish, though it may be like this in early spring . . .

  I can find no bright leaves now in the woods. Witch-hazel, etc., are withered, turned brown, or yet green. See by the droppings in the woods where small migrating birds have roosted . . . (Journal, 10:123-124)

  I get a couple of quarts of chestnuts by patiently brushing the thick beds of leaves aside with my hand in successive concentric circles till I reach the trunk . . .

  I find my account in this long-continued monotonous labor of picking chestnuts all the afternoon, brushing the leaves aside without looking up, absorbed in that, and forgetting better things awhile. my eye is educated to discover anything on the ground, as chestnuts, etc. It is probably wholesomer to look at the ground much than at the heavens. As I go stooping and brushing the leaves aside by the hour, I am not thinking of chestnuts merely, but I find myself humming a thought of more significance. This occupation affords a certain broad pause and opportunity to start again afterward,—turn over a new leaf . . .

  It was as if the air, purified by the long storm, reflected these few rays from side to side with a complete illumination, like a perfectly polished mirror, while the effect was greatly enhanced by the contrast with the dull dark clouds and somber earth. As if Nature did not dare at once to let in the full blaze of the sun to this combustible atmosphere. It was a serene, elysian light, in which the deeds I have dreamed of but not realized might be performed. At the eleventh hour, late in the year, we have visions of the life we might have lived. No perfectly fair weather ever offered such an arena for noble acts. it was such a light as we behold but dwell not in! . . .

  Though the pleasure of ascending the mountain is largely mixed with awe, my thoughts are purified and sublimed by it, as if I had been translated.

I see that men may be well-mannered or conventionally polite toward men, but skeptical toward God.

  We see mankind generally either (from ignorance or avarice) toiling too hard and becoming mere machines in order to acquire wealth . . .

  There’s a very large and complete circle round the moon this evening, which part way round is a faint rainbow. It is a clear circular space, sharply and mathematically cut out of a thin mackerel sky. You see no mist within it, large as it is, nor even a star . . .

  Another cloudy afternoon after a clear morning.

  When I enter the woods I notice the drier crispier rustle of withered leaves on the oak trees,—a sharper susurrus . . .

  As I return by the Well Meadow Field and then Wheeler’s large wood, the sun shines from over Fair Haven Hill into the wood, and I see that the sun, when low, will shine into a thick wood, which you had supposed always dark, as much as twenty rods, lighting it all up, making the gray, lichen-clad sterns of the trees all warm and bright with light, and a distinct black shadow behind each. As if every grove, however dense, had its turn. A higher truth, though only dimly hinted at, thrills us more than a lower expressed . . .

  Returning, I see the red oak on R. W. E.’s shore reflected in the bright sky water. In the reflection the tree is black against the clear whitish sky, though as I see it against the opposite woods it is a warm greenish yellow. But the river sees it against the bright sky, and hence the reflection is like ink. The water tells me how it looks to it seen from below . . .

  Looking westward now, at 4 P.M., I see against the sunlight, where the twigs of a maple and black birch intermingle, a little gossamer or fine cobwebs, but much more the twigs, especially of the birch, waving slightly, reflect the light like cobwebs. It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season,—when the twigs are bare and the air is clear. I cannot easily tell what is cobweb and what twig, but the latter often curve upward more than the other . . .

  [George] Minott adorns whatever part of nature he touches; whichever way he walks he transfigures the earth for me.  If a common man speaks of Walden Pond to me, I see only a shallow, dull-colored body of water without reflections or peculiar color, but if [George] Minott speaks of it, I see the green water and reflected hills at once, for he has been there . . .

  About 10 A.M., a flock of geese are going over from northeast to southwest, or parallel with the general direction of the coast and great mountain-ranges . . . The children, instinctively aware of its importance, rushed into the house to tell their parents . . .

Jacob Farmer says that he remembers well a particular bound (which is the subject of dispute between the above two men) from this circumstance: He, a boy, was sent, as the representative of his mother, to witness the placing of the bounds to her lot, and he remembers that, when they had fixed the stake and stones, old Mr. Nathan Barrett asked him if he had a knife about him, upon which he pulled out his knife and gave it to him. Mr. Barrett cut a birch switch and trimmed it in the presence of young Farmer, and then called out, “Boy, here’s your knife;” but as the boy saw that he was going to strike him when he reached his hand for the knife, he dodged into a bush which alone received the blow. And Mr. Barrett said that if it had not been for that, he would have got a blow which would have made him remember that bound as long as he lived, and explained to him that this was his design in striking him . . .

  P.M.—To Lincoln limestone with E. Hoar.

  Hoar showed me last evening the large fossil tooth of a shark, such as figured in Hitchcock, which he bought at Gay Head the other day. He also bought one or more other species . . .

  Father has received your letter of Nov. 10, but is at present unable to reply. He is quite sick with the jaundice, having been under the doctor’s care for a week; this, added to his long standing cold, has reduced him very much. He has no appetite, but little strength and gets very little sleep. We have written to aunts Maria & Jane to come up & see him . . .

  Sophia sends much love to Cousin Rebecca & expects an answer to her letter.

Yrs
Henry D. Thoreau

  This morning it was considerably colder than for a long time, and by noon very much colder than heretofore, with a pretty strong northerly wind. The principal flight of geese was November 8th, so that the bulk of them preceded this cold turn five days. You need greatcoat and buffalo and gloves now, if you ride. I find my hands stiffened and involuntarily finding their way to my pockets. No wonder that the weather is a standing subject of conversation, since we are so sensitive. If we had not gone through several winters, we might well be alarmed at the approach of cold weather. With this keener blast from the north, my hands suddenly fail to fulfill their office, as it were begin to die. We must put on armor against the new foe. I am almost world-ridden suddenly. I can hardly tie and untie my shoe-strings. What a story to tell the inhabitants of the tropics . . .

  You have got the start again. It was I that owed you a letter or two, if I mistake not.

  They make a great ado nowadays about hard times; but I think that the community generally, ministers and all, take a wrong view of the matter, though some of the ministers preaching according to a formula may pretend to take a right one. This general failure, both private and public, is rather occasion for rejoicing, as reminding us whom we have at the helm,-that justice is always done . . .

  Have you ever read Ruskin’s books? If not, I would recommend you to try the second and third volumes (not parts) of his “Modern Painters.” I am now reading the fourth, and have read most of his other books lately. They are singularly good and encouraging, though not without crudeness and bigotry. The themes in the volumes referred to are Infinity, Beauty, Imagination, Love of Nature, etc.,-all treated in a very living manner. I am rather surprised by them. It is remarkable that these things should be said with reference to painting chiefly, rather than literature . . .

  Paddling along, a little above the Hemlocks, I hear, I think, a boy whistling upon the bank above me, but immediately perceive that it is the whistle of the locomotive a mile off in that direction. I perceived that it was distant, and therefore, the locomotive, the moment that the key was changed from a very high to a low one. Was it because distant sounds are commonly on a low key? . . .

   First: The trees are larch, white birch, red maple, spruce, white pine, etc.

  Second: The coarse bushy part, or blueberry thicket, consists of high blueberry, panicled andromeda, Amelanchier Canadensis var. oblongifolia, swamp-pink, choke-berry, Viburnum nudum, rhodora, (and probably prinos, holly, etc., etc., not distinguishable easily now), but chiefly the first two. Much of the blueberry being dead gives it a very gray as well as scraggy aspect. It is a very bad thicket to break through, yet there are commonly, thinner places, or often opens, by which you may wind your way about the denser clumps. Small specimens of the trees are mingled with these and also some water andromeda and lambkill.

  Third: There are the smooth brown and wetter spaces where the water andromeda chiefly prevails, together with purplish lambkill about the sides of them, and hairy huckleberry . . .

  A clear, cold, windy afternoon. The cat crackles with electricity when you stroke her, and the fur rises up to your touch.

  This is November of the hardest kind,—bare frozen ground covered with pale-brown or straw-colored herbage, a strong, cold, cutting northwest wind which makes inc seek to cover my ears, a perfectly clear and cloudless sky . . .

  Spoke to Skinner about that wildcat which he says lie heard a month ago in Ebby Hubbard’s woods. He was going down to Walden in the evening, to see if geese had not settled in it (with a companion), when they heard this sound, which his companion at first thought it made by a coon, but S. said no, it was a wildcat. He says he has heard them often in the Adirondack region, where he has purchased furs . . .

  Surveying the J. Richardson lot.

  The air is full of geese. I saw five flocks within an hour, about 10 A.M., containing from thirty to fifty each, and afterward two more flocks, making in all from two hundred and fifty to three hundred at least, all flying southwest over Goose and Walden Ponds . . .

  It is a fair, sunny, and warm day in the woods for the season. We eat our dinners on the middle of the line, amid the young oaks in a sheltered and very unfrequented place. I cut some leafy shrub oaks and cast them clown for a dry and springy seat . . .

  I expect to go to Boston next week, Thursday 17th, with my daughters Anna and Ernma to attend the Anti-Slavery Bazaar. They will probably return home the next day, and I proceed to Malden for a day or two. After which I may proceed to Concord, if I have your permission, and if you will be at home, for without you Concord would be quite poor and deserted, like to the place some poet, perhaps Walter Scott, describes . . .

  Is “Father Alcott” in your city? I should count much on seeing him too-a man who is All-cot should not be without a home at least in his chosen land.

  Don’t be provoked at my nonsense, for anything better would be like “carrying coals to Newcastle.” I would sit at the feet of Gamaliel, so farewell for the present.

  With kind remembrances to your family, I remain,
  Faithfully your friend,
   D. Ricketson

  P.S. If I can’t come please inform me.

  This and the like ponds are just covered with virgin ice just thick enough to bear, though it cracks about the edges on the sunny sides. You may call it virgin ice as long as it is transparent . . . (Journal, 10:222-223).

  A hen-hawk circling over that wild region. See its red tail . . . (Journal, 10:224).

  Skate on Goose Pond. Heywood says that some who have gone into Ebby Hubbard’s barn to find him have seen the rats run over his shoulders, they are so familiar with him . . . (Journal,10:224-225).

  P.M. – To Goose Pond.

  Tree sparrows about the weeds in the yard. A snowball on every pine plume, for there has been no wind to shake it down. The pitch pines look like trees heavily laden with snow oranges. The snowballs on their plumes are like a white fruit When I thoughtlessly strike at a limb with my hatchet, in my surveying, down comes a sudden shower of snow, whitening my coat and getting into my neck. You must be careful how you approach and jar the trees thus supporting a light snow . . .

  After some rain yesterday and in the night, there was a little more snow, and the ground is still covered. I am surprised to find Walden still closed since Sunday night, notwithstanding the warm weather since it skimmed over, and that Goose Pond bears, though covered with slosh; but ice under water is slow to thaw. it does not break up so soon as you would expect. Walking over it, I thought I saw an old glove on the ice or slosh, but, approaching, found it to be a bull-frog, flat on its belly with its legs stretched out…I found it to be alive, though it could only partially open its eyes…It was evidently nearly chilled to death and could not jump, though there was then no freezing. I looked round a good while and finally found a hole to put it into, squeezing it through . . .