_July 11. Friday._ At 7.15 P. M. with W. E. C. go forth to see the

moon, the glimpses of the moon. We think she is not quite full; we

can detect a little flatness on the eastern side. Shall we wear thick

coats? The day has been warm enough, but how cool will the night be?

It is not sultry, as the last night. As a general rule, it is best to

wear your thickest coat even in a July night. Which way shall we walk?

Northwest, that we may see the moon returning? But on that side the

river prevents our walking in the fields, and on other accounts that

direction is not so attractive. We go toward Bear Garden Hill. The sun

is setting. The meadow-sweet has bloomed. These dry hills and pastures

are the places to walk by moonlight. The moon is silvery still, not

yet inaugurated. The tree-tops are seen against the amber west. I seem

to see the outlines of one spruce among them, distinguishable afar.

My thoughts expand and flourish most on this barren hill, where in

the twilight I see the moss spreading in rings and prevailing over the

short, thin grass, carpeting the earth, adding a few inches of green to

its circle annually while it dies within.

As we round the sandy promontory, we try the sand and rocks with our

hands. The sand is cool on the surface but warmer a few inches beneath,

though the contrast is not so great as it was in May. The larger

rocks are perceptibly warm. I pluck the blossom of the milkweed in the

twilight and find how sweet it smells. The white blossoms of the Jersey

tea dot the hillside, with the yarrow everywhere. Some woods are black

as clouds; if we knew not they were green by day, they would appear

blacker still. When we sit, we hear the mosquitoes hum. The woodland

paths are not the same by night as by day; if they are a little grown

up, the eye cannot find them, but must give the reins to the feet, as

the traveller to his horse. So we went through the aspens at the base

of the Cliffs, their round leaves reflecting the lingering twilight on

the one side, the waxing moonlight on the other. Always the path was

unexpectedly open.

Now we are getting into moonlight. We see it reflected from particular

stumps in the depths of the darkest woods, and from the stems of

trees, as if it selected what to shine on,[225]—a silvery light. It

is a light, of course, which we have had all day, but which we have

not appreciated, and proves how remarkable a lesser light can be when

a greater has departed. How simply and naturally the moon presides!

’T is true she was eclipsed by the sun, but now she acquires an

almost equal respect and worship by reflecting and representing him,

with some new quality, perchance, added to his light, showing how

original the disciple may be who still in midday is seen, though pale

and cloud-like, beside his master. Such is a worthy disciple. In his

master’s presence he still is seen and preserves a distinct existence;

and in his absence he reflects and represents him, not without adding

some new quality to his light, not servile and never rival. As the

master withdraws himself, the disciple, who was a pale cloud before,

begins to emit a silvery light, acquiring at last a tinge of golden

as the darkness deepens, but not enough to scorch the seeds which have

been planted or to dry up the fertilizing dews which are falling.

Passing now near Well Meadow Head toward Baker’s orchard. The

sweet-fern and indigo-weed fill the path up to one’s middle, wetting

us with dews so high. The leaves are shining and flowing.[226] We

wade through the luxuriant vegetation, seeing no bottom. Looking back

toward the Cliffs, some dead trees in the horizon, high on the rocks,

make a wild New Hampshire prospect. There is the faintest possible

mist over the pond-holes, where the frogs are eructating, like the

falling of huge drops, the bursting of mephitic air-bubbles rising from

the bottom, a sort of blubbering,—such conversation as I _have_ heard

between men, a belching conversation, expressing a sympathy of stomachs

and abdomens. The peculiar appearance of the indigo-weed, its misty

massiveness, is striking. In Baker’s orchard the thick grass looks like

a sea of mowing in this weird moonlight, a bottomless sea of grass.

Our feet must be imaginative, must know the earth in imagination only,

as well as our heads. We sit on the fence, and, where it is broken

and interrupted, the fallen and slanting rails are lost in the grass

(really thin and wiry) as in water. We even see our tracks a long way

behind, where we have brushed off the dew. The clouds are peculiarly

wispy to-night, somewhat like fine flames, not massed and dark nor

downy, not thick, but slight, thin wisps of mist.

I hear the sound of Heywood’s Brook falling into Fair Haven Pond,

inexpressibly refreshing to my senses. It seems to flow through my

very bones. I hear it with insatiable thirst. It allays some sandy heat

in me. It affects my circulations; methinks my arteries have sympathy

with it. What is it I hear but the pure waterfalls within me, in the

circulation of my blood, the streams that fall into my heart? What

mists do I ever see but such as hang over and rise from my blood? The

sound of this gurgling water, running thus by night as by day, falls

on all my dashes, fills all my buckets, overflows my float-boards,

turns all the machinery of my nature, makes me a flume, a sluice-way,

to the springs of nature. Thus I am washed; thus I drink and quench my

thirst.[227] Where the streams fall into the lake, if they are only a

few inches more elevated, all walkers may hear.

On the high path through Baker’s wood I see, or rather feel, the

tephrosia. Now we come out into the open pasture. And under those woods

of elm and buttonwood, where still no light is seen, repose a family

of human beings. By night there is less to distinguish this locality

from the woods and meadows we have threaded. We might go very near to

farmhouses covered with ornamental trees and standing on a highroad,

thinking that [we] were in the most retired woods and fields still.

Having yielded to sleep, man is a less obtrusive inhabitant of nature.

Now, having reached the dry pastures again, we are surrounded by a

flood of moonlight. The dim cart-path over the sward curves gracefully

through the pitch pines, ever to some more fairy-like spot. The rails

in the fences shine like silver. We know not whether we are sitting on

the ruins of a wall, or the materials which are to compose a new one.

I see, half a mile off, a phosphorescent arc on the hillside, where

Bartlett’s Cliff reflects the moonlight. Going by the shanty, I smell

the excrements of its inhabitants, which I had never smelt before.

And now, at half-past 10 o’clock, I hear the cockerels crow in

Hubbard’s barns, and morning is already anticipated. It is the

feathered, wakeful thought in us that anticipates the following day.

This sound is wonderfully exhilarating at all times. These birds are

worth far more to me for their crowing and cackling than for their

drumsticks and eggs.[228] How singular the connection of the hen with

man,—that she leaves her eggs in his barns always! She is a domestic

fowl, though still a little shyish of him. I cannot [help] looking at

the whole as an experiment still and wondering that in each case it

succeeds. There is no doubt at last but hens may be kept. They will put

their eggs in your barn by a tacit agreement. They will not wander far

from your yard.

_July 12._ 8 P. M.—Now at least the moon is full, and I walk alone,

which is best by night, if not by day always. Your companion must

sympathize with the present mood. The conversation must be located

where the walkers are, and vary exactly with the scene and events and

the contour of the ground. Farewell to those who will talk of nature

unnaturally, whose presence is an interruption. I know but one with

whom I can walk. I might as well be sitting in a bar-room with them as

walk and talk with most. We are never side by side in our thoughts, and

we cannot hear each other’s silence. Indeed, we cannot be silent. We

are forever breaking silence, that is all, and mending nothing. How can

they keep together who are going different ways!

I start a sparrow from her three eggs in the grass, where she had

settled for the night. The earliest corn is beginning to show its

tassels now, and I scent it as I walk,—its peculiar dry scent.[229]

(This afternoon I gathered ripe blackberries, and felt as if the autumn

had commenced.) Now perchance many sounds and sights only remind

me that they once said something to me, and are so by association

interesting. I go forth to be reminded of a previous state of

existence, if perchance any memento of it is to be met with hereabouts.

I have no doubt that Nature preserves her integrity. Nature is in as

rude health as when Homer sang. We may at last by our sympathies be

well. I see a skunk on Bear Garden Hill stealing noiselessly away from

me, while the moon shines over the pitch pines, which send long shadows

down the hill. Now, looking back, I see it shining on the south side

of farmhouses and barns with a weird light, for I pass here half an

hour later than last night. I smell the huckleberry bushes. I hear

a human voice,—some laborer singing after his day’s toil,—which I do

not often hear. Loud it must be, for it is far away. Methinks I should

know it for a white man’s voice. Some strains have the melody of an

instrument. Now I hear the sound of a bugle in the “Corner,” reminding

me of poetic wars; a few flourishes and the bugler has gone to rest.

At the foot of the Cliff hill I hear the sound of the clock striking

nine, as distinctly as within a quarter of a mile usually, though there

is no wind. The moonlight is more perfect than last night; hardly a

cloud in the sky,—only a few fleecy ones. There is more serenity and

more light. I hear that sort of throttled or chuckling note as of a

bird flying high, now from this side, then from that.[230] Methinks

when I turn my head I see Wachusett from the side of the hill. I smell

the butter-and-eggs as I walk. I am startled by the rapid transit of

some wild animal across my path, a rabbit or a fox,—or you hardly know

if it be not a bird. Looking down from the cliffs, the leaves of the

tree-tops shine more than ever by day. Here and there a lightning-bug

shows his greenish light over the tops of the trees.

As I return through the orchard, a foolish robin bursts away from

his perch unnaturally, with the habits of man. The air is remarkably

still and unobjectionable on the hilltop, and the whole world below

is covered as with a gossamer blanket of moonlight. It is just about

as yellow as a blanket. It is a great dimly burnished shield with

darker blotches on its surface. You have lost some light, it is true,

but you have got this simple and magnificent stillness, brooding like

genius.[231]

_July 13._ Observed yesterday, while surveying near Gordon’s, a bittern

flying over near Gordon’s, with moderate flight and outstretched neck,

its breast-bone sticking out sharp like the bone in the throats of

some persons, its anatomy exposed. The evergreen is very handsome in

the woods now, rising somewhat spirally in a round tower of five or

six stories, surmounted by a long bud. Looking across the river to

Conantum from the open plains, I think how the history of the hills

would read, since they have been pastured by cows, if every plowing

and mowing and sowing and chopping were recorded. I hear, 4 P. M., a

pigeon woodpecker on a dead pine near by, uttering a harsh and scolding

scream, spying me. The chewink jingles on the tops of the bushes, and

the rush sparrow,[232] the vireo, and oven-bird at a distance; and a

robin sings, superior to all; and a barking dog has started something

on the opposite side of the river; and now the wood thrush surpasses

them all. These plains are covered with shrub oaks, birches, aspens,

hickories, mingled with sweet-fern and brakes and huckleberry bushes

and epilobium, now in bloom, and much fine grass. The hellebore by the

brooksides has now fallen over, though it is not broken off. The cows

now repose and chew the cud under the shadow of a tree, or crop the

grass in the shade along the side of the woods, and when you approach

to observe them they mind you just enough. I turn up the _Juniperus

repens_, and see the lighter color of its leaves on the under sides,

and its berries with three petal-like divisions in one end. The

sweet-scented life-everlasting is budded.

This might be called the Hayer’s or Haymaker’s Moon, for I perceive

that when the day has been oppressively warm the haymakers rest at noon

and resume their mowing after sunset, sometimes quite into evening.

_July 14._ Passing over the Great Fields (where I have been surveying

a road) this forenoon, where were some early turnips, the county

commissioners plucked and pared them with their knives and ate them.

I, too, tried hard to chew a mouthful of raw turnip and realize the

life of cows and oxen, for it might be a useful habit in extremities.

These things occur as the seasons revolve. These are things which

travellers will do. How many men have tasted a raw turnip! How few have

eaten a whole one! Some bovine appetites, which find some fodder in

every field. For like reasons we sometimes eat sorrel and say we love

it, that we may return the hospitality of Nature by exhibiting a good

appetite.

The citizen looks sharp to see if there is any dogwood or poison sumach

in the swamp before he enters.

If I take the same walk by moonlight an hour later or earlier in the

evening, it is as good as a different one. I love the night for its

novelty; it is less prophaned than the day.[233]

The creaking of the crickets seems at the very foundation of all sound.

At last I cannot tell it from a ringing in my ears. It is a sound from

within, not without. You cannot dispose of it by listening to it. In

proportion as I am stilled I hear it. It reminds me that I am a denizen

of the earth.

_July 16. Wednesday._ Methinks my present experience is nothing; my

past experience is all in all. I think that no experience which I

have to-day comes up to, or is comparable with, the experiences of my

boyhood. And not only this is true, but as far back as I can remember

I have unconsciously referred to the experiences of a previous state of

existence. “For life is a forgetting,” etc. Formerly, methought, nature

developed as I developed, and grew up with me. My life was ecstasy.

In youth, before I lost any of my senses, I can remember that I was

all alive, and inhabited my body with inexpressible satisfaction; both

its weariness and its refreshment were sweet to me. This earth was the

most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains. To

have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the

breezes! I can remember how I was astonished. I said to myself,—I said

to others,—“There comes into my mind such an indescribable, infinite,

all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and

expansion, and [I] have had nought to do with it. I perceive that

I am dealt with by superior powers.[234] This is a pleasure, a joy,

an existence which I have not procured myself. I speak as a witness

on the stand, and tell what I have perceived.” The morning and the

evening were sweet to me, and I led a life aloof from society of men.

I wondered if a mortal had ever known what I knew. I looked in books

for some recognition of a kindred experience, but, strange to say, I

found none. Indeed, I was slow to discover that other men had had this

experience, for it had been possible to read books and to associate

with men on other grounds. The maker of me was improving me. When I

detected this interference I was profoundly moved. For years I marched

as to a music in comparison with which the military music of the

streets is noise and discord. I was daily intoxicated, and yet no man

could call me intemperate. With all your science can you tell how it

is, and whence it is, that light comes into the soul?

Set out at 3 P. M. for Nine-Acre Corner Bridge _via_ Hubbard’s Bridge

and Conantum, returning _via_ Dashing Brook, rear of Baker’s, and

railroad at 6.30 P. M.

The song sparrow, the most familiar and New England bird, is heard

in fields and pastures, setting this midsummer day to music, as if

it were the music of a mossy rail or fence post; a little stream of

song, cooling, rippling through the noon,—the usually unseen songster

usually unheard like the cricket, it is so common,—like the poet’s

song, unheard by most men, whose ears are stopped with business, though

perchance it sang on the fence before the farmer’s house this morning

for an hour. There are little strains of poetry in our animals.

Berries are just beginning to ripen, and children are planning

expeditions after them. They are important as introducing children

to the fields and woods, and as wild fruits of which much account

is made. During the berry season the schools have a vacation, and

many little fingers are busy picking these small fruits. It is ever

a pastime, not a drudgery. I remember how glad I was when I was kept

from school a half a day to pick huckleberries on a neighboring hill

all by myself to make a pudding for the family dinner. Ah, they got

nothing but the pudding, but I got invaluable experience beside! A half

a day of liberty like that was like the promise of life eternal. It was

emancipation in New England. O, what a day was there, my countrymen!

I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and

on the flowers of the milkweed (_Asclepias pulchra_) by the roadside,

a really handsome flower; also the smaller butterfly, with reddish

wings, and a larger, black or steel-blue, with wings spotted red on

edge, and one of equal size, reddish copper-colored. Now you may see a

boy stealing after one, hat in hand. The earliest corn begins to tassel

out, and my neighbor has put his hand in the hill some days ago and

abstracted some new potatoes as big as nuts, then covered up again.

Now they will need—or will get—no more weeding. The lark sings in the

meadow; the very essence of the afternoon is in his strain. This is a

New England sound, but the cricket is heard under all sounds. Still

the cars come and go with the regularity of nature, of the sun and

moon. (If a hen puts her eggs elsewhere than in the barns,—in woods

or among rocks,—she is said to _steal_ her nest!) The twittering of

swallows is in the air, reminding me of water. The meadow-sweet is now

in bloom, and the yarrow prevails by all roadsides. I see the hardhack

too, homely but dear plant, just opening its red clustered flowers.

The small aster, too, now abounds (_Aster miser_),[235] and the tall

buttercup still. After wading through a swamp the other day with my

shoes in my hand, I wiped my feet with sassafras leaves, which reminded

me of some Arabian practices, the bruised leaves perfuming the air and

by their softness being adapted to this purpose. The tree-primrose,

or scabish, still is seen over the fence. The red-wings and crow

blackbirds are heard chattering on the trees, and the cow troopials are

accompanying the cows in the pastures for the sake of the insects they

scare up. Oftentimes the thoughtless sportsman has lodged his charge of

shot in the cow’s legs or body in his eagerness to obtain the birds.

St. John’s-wort, one of the first of yellow flowers, begins to shine

along the roadside. The mullein for some time past. I see a farmer

cradling his rye, John Potter. Fields are partly mown,—some English

grass on the higher parts of the meadow next to the road. The farmer’s

work comes not all at once. In haying time there is a cessation from

other labors to a considerable extent. Planting is done, and hoeing

mainly; only some turnip seed is to be scattered amid the corn. I hear

the kingbird twittering or chattering like a stout-chested swallow.

The prunella sends back a blue ray from under my feet as I walk; the

pale lobelia too. The plaintive, spring-restoring peep of a bluebird

is occasionally heard. I met loads of hay on the road, which the oxen

draw indifferently, swaggering in their gait, as if it were not fodder

for them. Methinks they should testify sometimes that they are working

for themselves. The whiteweed is turning black. Grapes are half grown

and lead the mind forward to autumn. It is an air this afternoon

that makes you indifferent to all things,—perfect summer, but with

a comfortable breeziness. You know not heat nor cold. What season of

the year is this? The balls of the button-bush are half formed, with

its fine, glossy, red-stemmed leaf atoning for its nakedness in the

spring. My eye ranges over green fields of oats, for which there is a

demand then somewhere. The wild rose peeps from amid the alders and

other shrubs by the roadside. The elder-blow fills the air with its

scent. The angelica, with its large umbels, is gone to seed. On it I

find one of those slow-moving green worms, with rings spotted black and

yellow, like an East Indian production. What if these grew as large

as elephants? The honest and truly fair is more modestly colored.

Notwithstanding the drifting clouds, you fear no rain to-day. As you

walk, you smell some sweet herbage, but detect not what it is. Hay is

sticking to the willows and the alders on the causeway, and the bridge

is sprinkled with it. The hemlock (_Cicuta Americana_) displays its

white umbels now. The yellow lilies reign in the river. The painted

tortoises drop off the willow stumps as you go over the bridge. The

river is now so low that you can see its bottom, shined on by the

sun, and travellers stop to look at fishes as they go over, leaning on

the rails. The pickerel-weed sends up its heavenly blue. The color of

the cows on Fair Haven Hill, how fair a contrast to the hillside! How

striking and wholesome their clean brick-red! When were they painted?

How carelessly the eye rests on them, or passes them by as things of

course! The tansy is budded. The devil’s-needles seem to rest in air

over the water. There is nothing New-English about them.

Now, at 4 P. M., I hear the pewee in the woods, and the cuckoo reminds

me of some silence among the birds I had not noticed. The vireo

(red-eyed?) sings like a robin at even, incessantly,—for I have now

turned into Conant’s woods. The oven-bird helps fill some pauses. The

poison sumach shows its green berries, now unconscious of guilt. The

heart-leaved loosestrife (_Lysimachia ciliata_) is seen in low open

woods. The breeze displays the white under sides of the oak leaves and

gives a fresh and flowing look to the woods. The river is a dark-blue

winding stripe amid the green of the meadow. What is the color of the

world? Green mixed with yellowish and reddish for hills and ripe grass,

and darker green for trees and forests; blue spotted with dark and

white for sky and clouds, and dark blue for water. Beyond the old house

I hear the squirrel chirp in the wall like a sparrow; so Nature merges

her creations into one. I am refreshed by the view of Nobscot and the

southwestern vales, from Conantum, seething with the blue element.

Here comes a small bird with a ricochet flight and a faint twittering

note like a messenger from Elysium. The rush sparrow jingles her small

change, pure silver, on the counter of the pasture. From far I see the

rye stacked up. A few dead trees impart the effect of wildness to the

landscape, though it is a feature rare in an old settled country.

Methinks this is the first of dog-days. The air in the distance has

a peculiar blue mistiness, or furnace-like look, though, as I have

said, it is not sultry yet. It is not the season for distant views.

Mountains are not _clearly_ blue now. The air is the opposite to what

it is in October and November. You are not inclined to travel. It is

a world of orchards and small-fruits now, and you can stay at home if

the well has cool water in it. The black thimble-berry is an honest,

homely berry, now drying up as usual. I used to have a pleasant time

stringing them on herd’s-grass stems, tracing the wall-sides for them.

It is pleasant to walk through these elevated fields, terraced upon

the side of the hill so that the eye of the walker looks off into the

blue cauldron of the air at his own level. Here the haymakers have just

gone to tea,—at 5 o’clock, the farmer’s hour, before the afternoon is

ended, while he still thinks much work may still be done before night.

He does not wait till he is strongly reminded of the night. In the

distance some burdened fields are black with haycocks. Some thoughtless

and cruel sportsman has killed twenty-two young partridges not much

bigger than robins, against the laws of Massachusetts and humanity. At

the Corner Bridge the white lilies are budded. Green apples are now so

large as to remind me of coddling and the autumn again.[236] The season

of fruits is arrived. The dog’s-bane has a pretty, delicate bell-like

flower. The Jersey tea abounds. I see the marks of the scythes in the

fields, showing the breadth of each swath the mowers cut. Cool springs

are now a desideratum. The geranium still hangs on. Even the creeping

vines love the brooks, and I see where one slender one has struggled

down and dangles into the current, which rocks it to and fro. Filberts

are formed, and you may get the berry stains out of your hands with

their husks, if you have any. Nightshade is in blossom. Came through

the pine plains behind James Baker’s, where late was open pasture,

now open pitch pine woods, only here and there the grass has given

place to a carpet of pine-needles. These are among our pleasantest

woods,—open, level, with blackberry vines interspersed and flowers,

as lady’s-slippers, earlier, and pinks on the outskirts. Each tree has

room enough. And now I hear the wood thrush from the shade, who loves

these pine woods as well as I. I pass by Walden’s scalloped shore.

The epilobium reflects a pink gleam up the vales and down the hills.

The chewink jingles on a bush’s top. Why will the Irishman drink of a

puddle by the railroad instead of digging a well? How shiftless! What

death in life! He cannot be said to live who does not get pure water.

The milkweeds, or silkweeds, are rich flowers, now in blossom. The

_Asclepias syriaca_, or common milkweed; its buds fly open at a touch.

But handsomer much is _Asclepias pulchra_, or water silkweed. The thin

green bark of this last, and indeed of the other, is so strong that a

man cannot break a small strip of it by pulling. It contains a mass

of fine silken fibres, arranged side by side like the strings of a

fiddle-bow, and may be bent short without weakening it.

* * * * *

What more glorious condition of being can we imagine than from impure

to be becoming pure? It is almost desirable to be impure that we may

be the subject of this improvement. That I am innocent to myself!

That I love and reverence my life! That I am better fitted for a lofty

society to-day than I was yesterday! To make my life a sacrament! What

is nature without this lofty tumbling? May I treat myself with more

and more respect and tenderness. May I not forget that I am impure

and vicious. May I not cease to love purity. May I go to my slumbers

as expecting to arise to a new and more perfect day. May I so live

and refine my life as fitting myself for a society ever higher than I

actually enjoy. May I treat myself tenderly as I would treat the most

innocent child whom I love; may I treat children and my friends as my

newly discovered self. Let me forever go in search of myself; never for

a moment think that I have found myself; be as a stranger to myself,

never a familiar, seeking acquaintance still. May I be to myself as one

is to me whom I love, a dear and cherished object. What temple, what

fane, what sacred place can there be but the innermost part of my own

being? The possibility of my own improvement, that is to be cherished.

As I regard myself, so I am. O my dear friends, I have not forgotten

you. I will know you to-morrow. I associate you with my ideal self.

I had ceased to have faith in myself. I thought I was grown up and

become what I was intended to be, but it is earliest spring with me.

In relation to virtue and innocence the oldest man is in the beginning

spring and vernal season of life. It is the love of virtue makes us

young ever. That is the fountain of youth, the very aspiration after

the perfect. I love and worship myself with a love which absorbs my

love for the world. The lecturer suggested to me that I might become

better than I am. Was it not a good lecture, then? May I dream not that

I shunned vice; may I dream that I loved and practiced virtue.

_July 18._ It is a test question affecting the youth of a person,—Have

you knowledge of the morning? Do you sympathize with that season of

nature? Are you abroad early, brushing the dews aside? If the sun rises

on you slumbering, if you do not hear the morning cock-crow, if you

do not witness the blushes of Aurora, if you are not acquainted with

Venus as the morning star, what relation have you to wisdom and purity?

You have then forgotten your Creator in the days of your youth! Your

shutters were darkened till noon! You rose with a sick headache! In the

morning sing, as do the birds. What of those birds which should slumber

on their perches till the sun was an hour high? What kind of fowl would

they be and new kind of bats and owls,—hedge sparrows or larks? then

took a dish of tea or hot coffee before they began to sing?

I might have added to the list of July 16th the _Aralia hispida_,

bristling aralia; the heart-leaved loosestrife (_Lysimachia ciliata_);

also the upright loosestrife (_L. racemosa_), with a rounded terminal

raceme; the tufted vetch (_Vicia cracca_). Sweet-gale fruit now green.

I first heard the locust sing, so dry and piercing, by the side of the

pine woods in the heat of the day.

_July 19._ Here I am thirty-four years old,[237] and yet my life is

almost wholly unexpanded. How much is in the germ! There is such an

interval between my ideal and the actual in many instances that I may

say I am unborn. There is the instinct for society, but no society.

Life is not long enough for one success. Within another thirty-four

years that miracle can hardly take place. Methinks my seasons revolve

more slowly than those of nature; I am differently timed. I am

contented. This rapid revolution of nature, even of nature in me, why

should it hurry me? Let a man step to the music which he hears, however

measured. Is it important that I should mature as soon as an apple

tree? aye, as soon as an oak? May not my life in nature, in proportion

as it is supernatural, be only the spring and infantile portion of my

spirit’s life? Shall I turn my spring to summer? May I not sacrifice a

hasty and petty completeness here to entireness there? If my curve is

large, why bend it to a smaller circle? My spirit’s unfolding observes

not the pace of nature. The society which I was made for is not here.

Shall I, then, substitute for the anticipation of that this poor

reality? I would [rather] have the unmixed expectation of that than

this reality. If life is a waiting, so be it. I will not be shipwrecked

on a vain reality. What were any reality which I can substitute? Shall

I with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over myself, though when it

is done I shall be sure to gaze still on the true ethereal heaven far

above, as if the former were not,—that still distant sky o’er-arching

that blue expressive eye of heaven?[238] I am enamored of the blue-eyed

arch of heaven.

_I_ did not _make_ this demand for a more thorough sympathy. This is

not my idiosyncrasy or disease. He that made the demand will answer the

demand.

My blood flows as slowly as the waves of my native Musketaquid; yet

they reach the ocean sooner, perchance, than those of the Nashua.

Already the goldenrod is budded, but I can make no haste for that.

2 P. M.—The weather is warm and dry, and many leaves curl. There is

a threatening cloud in the southwest. The farmers dare not spread

their hay. It remains cocked in the fields. As you walk in the woods

nowadays, the flies striking against your hat sound like rain-drops.

The stump or root fences on the Corner road remind me of fossil remains

of mastodons, etc., exhumed and bleached in sun and rain. To-day I met

with the first orange flower of autumn. What means this doubly torrid,

this Bengal, tint? Yellow took sun enough, but this is the fruit of

a dog-day sun. The year has but just produced it. Here is the Canada

thistle in bloom, visited by butterflies and bees. The butterflies

have swarmed within these few days, especially about the milkweeds.

The swamp-pink still fills the air with its perfume in swamps and by

the causeways, though it is far gone. The wild rose still scatters its

petals over the leaves of neighboring plants. The wild morning-glory

or bindweed, with its delicate red and white blossoms. I remember it

ever as a goblet full of purest morning air and sparkling with dew,

showing the dew-point, winding round itself for want of other support.

It grows by the Hubbard Bridge causeway, near the angelica. The

cherry-birds are making their _seringo_ sound as they flit past. They

soon find out the locality of the cherry trees. And beyond the bridge

there is a goldenrod partially blossomed. Yesterday it was spring, and

to-morrow it will be autumn. Where is the summer then? First came the

St. John’s-wort and now the goldenrod to admonish us. I hear, too, a

cricket amid these stones under the blackberry vines, singing as in the

fall. Ripe blackberries are multiplying. I see the red-spotted berries

of the small Solomon’s-seal in my path. I notice, in the decayed end of

an oak post, that the silver grain is not decayed, but remains sound in

thin flakes, alternating with the decayed portions and giving the whole

a honeycombed look. Such an object supramundane, as even a swallow may

descend to light on, a dry mullein stalk for instance. I see that hens,

too, follow the cows feeding near the house, like the cow troopial,

and for the same object. They cannot so well scare up insects for

themselves. This is the dog the cowbird uses to start up its insect

game. I see yellow butterflies in pairs, pursuing each other a rod or

two into the air, and now, as he had bethought himself of the danger

of being devoured by a passing bird, he descends with a zigzag flight

to the earth, and the other follows. The black huckleberries are now so

thick among the green ones that they no longer incur suspicion of being

worm-eaten.

When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for a living,

some sad experience in conforming to the wishes of friends being

fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often and seriously of

picking huckleberries; that surely I could do, and its small profits

might suffice, so little capital it required, so little distraction

from my wonted thoughts, I foolishly thought. While my acquaintances

went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I thought of this

occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills all summer to pick

the berries which came in my way, which I might carelessly dispose of;

so to keep the flocks of King Admetus. My greatest skill has been to

want but little. I also dreamed that I might gather the wild herbs, or

carry evergreens to such villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods

and so find my living got. But I have since learned that trade curses

everything it handles; and though you _trade_ in messages from heaven,

the whole curse of trade attaches to the business.[239]

The wind rises more and more. The river and the pond are blacker

than the threatening cloud in the south. The thunder mutters in the

distance. The surface of the water is slightly rippled. Where the

pads grow is a light green border. The woods roar. Small white clouds

are hurrying across the dark-blue ground of the storm, which rests

on all the woods of the south horizon. But still no rain now for some

hours, as if the clouds were dissipated as fast as they reached this

atmosphere.

The barberry’s fruit hangs yellowish-green. What pretty covers the

thick bush makes, so large and wide and drooping! The _Fringilla

juncorum_ sings still, in spite of the coming tempest, which,

perchance, only threatens.

The woodchuck is a good native of the soil. The distant hillside and

the grain-fields and pastures are spotted yellow or white with his

recent burrows, and the small mounds remain for many years. Here where

the clover has lately been cut, see what a yellow mound is brought to

light!

[Illustration]

Heavily hangs the common yellow lily (_Lilium Canadense_) in the

meadows. In the thick alder copses by the causeway-side I find

the _Lysimachia hybrida_. Here is the _Lactuca sanguinea_ with

its runcinate leaves, tall stem, and pale-crimson ray. And that

green-stemmed one higher than my head, resembling the last in its

leaves, is perchance the “tall lettuce,” or fireweed. Can that fine

white-flowered meadow-plant with the leaf be a thalictrum?

_July 20. Sunday morning._ A thunder-shower in the night. Thunder near

at hand, though louder, is a more trivial and earthly sound than at a

distance; likened to sounds of men. The clap which waked me last night

was as if some one was moving lumber in an upper apartment, some vast

hollow hall, tumbling it down and dragging it over the floor; and ever

and anon the lightning filled the damp air with light, like some vast

glow-worm in the fields of ether opening its wings.

The river, too, steadily yields its crop. In louring days it is

remarkable how many villagers resort to it. It is of more worth than

many gardens. I meet one, late in the afternoon, going to the river

with his basket on his arm and his pole in hand, not ambitious to catch

pickerel this time, but he thinks he may perhaps get a mess of small

fish. These [_sic_] kind of values are real and important, though but

little appreciated, and he is not a wise legislator who underrates them

and allows the bridges to be built low so as to prevent the passage of

small boats. The town is but little conscious how much interest it has

in the river, and might vote it away any day thoughtlessly. There is

always to be seen either some unshaven wading man, an old mower of the

river meadows, familiar with water, vibrating his long pole over the

lagoons of the off-shore pads, or else some solitary fisher, in a boat

behind the willows, like a mote in the sunbeams reflecting the light;

and who can tell how many a mess of river fish is daily cooked in the

town? They are an important article of food to many a poor family.

Some are poets, some are not,—as in relation to getting a living, so

to getting a wife. As their ideals of life vary, so do their ideals of

love.

4 P. M. Annursnack.—The under sides of the leaves, exposed by the

breeze, give a light bluish tinge to the woods as I look down on them.

Looking at the woods west of this hill, there is a grateful dark shade

under their eastern sides, where they meet the meadows, their cool

night side,—a triangular segment of night, to which the sun has set.

The mountains look like waves on a blue ocean tossed up by a stiff

gale. The _Rhexia Virginica_ is in bloom.

_July 21._ 8 A. M.—The forenoon is fuller of light. The butterflies on

the flowers look like other and frequently larger flowers themselves.

Now I yearn for one of those old, meandering, dry, uninhabited roads,

which lead away from towns, which lead us away from temptation, which

conduct to the outside of earth, over its uppermost crust; where you

may forget in what country you are travelling; where no farmer can

complain that you are treading down his grass, no gentleman who has

recently constructed a seat in the country that you are trespassing;

on which you can go off at half-cock and wave adieu to the village;

along which you may travel like a pilgrim, going nowhither; where

travellers are not too often to be met; where my spirit is free; where

the walls and fences are not cared for; where your head is more in

heaven than your feet are on earth; which have long reaches where you

can see the approaching traveller half a mile off and be prepared for

him; not so luxuriant a soil as to attract men; some root and stump

fences which do not need attention; where travellers have no occasion

to stop, but pass along and leave you to your thoughts; where it

makes no odds which way you face, whether you are going or coming,

whether it is morning or evening, mid-noon or midnight; where earth

is cheap enough by being public; where you can walk and think with

least obstruction, there being nothing to measure progress by; where

you can pace when your breast is full, and cherish your moodiness;

where you are not in false relations with men, are not dining nor

conversing with them; by which you may go to the uttermost parts of

the earth. It is wide enough, wide as the thoughts it allows to visit

you. Sometimes it is some particular half-dozen rods which I wish to

find myself pacing over, as where certain airs blow; then my life will

come to me, methinks; like a hunter I walk in wait for it. When I am

against this bare promontory of a huckleberry hill, then forsooth my

thoughts will expand. Is it some influence, as a vapor which exhales

from the ground, or something in the gales which blow there, or in

all things there brought together agreeably to my spirit? The walls

must not be too high, imprisoning me, but low, with numerous gaps. The

trees must not be too numerous, nor the hills too near, bounding the

view, nor the soil too rich, attracting the attention to the earth.

It must simply be the way and the life,—a way that was never known

to be repaired, nor to need repair, within the memory of the oldest

inhabitant. I cannot walk habitually in those ways that are liable to

be mended; for sure it was the devil only that wore them. Never by the

heel of thinkers (of thought) were they worn; the zephyrs could repair

that damage. The saunterer wears out no road, even though he travel on

it, and therefore should pay no highway, or rather _low_ way, tax. He

may be taxed to construct a higher way than men travel. A way which no

geese defile, nor hiss along it, but only sometimes their wild brethren

fly far overhead; which the kingbird and the swallow twitter over, and

the song sparrow sings on its rails; where the small red butterfly is

at home on the yarrow, and no boys threaten it with imprisoning hat.

There I can walk and stalk and pace and plod. Which nobody but Jonas

Potter travels beside me; where no cow but his is tempted to linger for

the herbage by its side; where the guide-board is fallen, and now the

hand points to heaven significantly,—to a Sudbury and Marlborough in

the skies. That’s a road I can travel, that the particular Sudbury I

am bound for, six miles an hour, or two, as you please; and few there

be that enter thereon. There I can walk, and recover the lost child

that I am without any ringing of a bell; where there was nothing ever

discovered to detain a traveller, but all went through about their

business; where I never passed the time of day with any,—indifferent

to me were the arbitrary divisions of time; where Tullus Hostilius

might have disappeared,—at any rate has never been seen. The road

to the Corner! the ninety and nine acres that you go through to get

there! I would rather see it again, though I saw it this morning,

than Gray’s churchyard. The road whence you may hear a stake-driver,

a whip-poor-will, a quail in a midsummer day, a—yes, a quail comes

nearest to the _gum-c_[240] bird heard there; where it would not be

sport for a sportsman to go. And the mayweed looks up in my face,—not

there; the pale lobelia, the Canada snapdragon, rather. A little

hardhack and meadowsweet peep over the fence,—nothing more serious to

obstruct the view,—and thimble-berries are the food of thought, before

the drought, along by the walls.[241]

It is they who go to Brighton and to market that wear out the roads,

and they should pay all the tax. The deliberate pace of a thinker never

made a road the worse for travelling on.

There I have freedom in my thought, and in my soul am free. Excepting

the omnipresent butcher with his calf-cart, followed by a distracted

and anxious cow.[242]

Be it known that in Concord, where the first forcible resistance to

British aggression was made in the year 1775, they chop up the young

calves and give them to the hens to make them lay, it being considered

the cheapest and most profitable food for them, and they sell the milk

to Boston.

On the promenade deck of the world, an outside passenger. The

inattentive, ever strange baker, whom no weather detains, that does not

bake his bread in this hemisphere,—and therefore it is dry before it

gets here. Ah! there is a road where you might advertise to fly, and

make no preparations till the time comes; where your wings will sprout

if anywhere, where your feet are not confined to earth. An airy head

makes light walking.

Where I am not confined and balked by the sight of distant farmhouses

which I have not gone past. In roads the obstructions are not under

my feet,—I care not for rough ground or wet even,—but they are in my

vision and in the thoughts or associations which I am compelled to

entertain. I must be fancy-free; I must feel that, wet or dry, high

or low, it is the genuine surface of the planet, and not a little

chip-dirt or a compost-heap, or made land or redeemed. Where I can

sit by the wall-side and not be peered at by any old ladies going

a-shopping, not have to bow to one whom I may have seen in my youth,—at

least, not more than once. I am engaged and cannot be polite. Did

you ever hear of such a thing as a man sitting in the road, and then

have four eyes levelled at you? Have we any more right sometimes to

look at one than to point a revolver at him; it might go off; and

so, perchance, we might _see_ him,—though there is not so much danger

of _that_,—which would be equally fatal, if it _should_ ever happen,

though perhaps it never has.

A thinker’s weight is in his thought, not in his tread; when he thinks

freely, his body weighs nothing. He cannot tread down your grass,

farmers.[243]

I thought to walk this forenoon instead of this afternoon, for I have

not been in the fields and woods much of late except when surveying,

but the least affair of that kind is as if you had [a] black veil

drawn over your face which shut out nature, as that eccentric and

melancholy minister whom I have heard of.[244] It may be the fairest

day in all the year and you shall not know it. One little chore to do,

one little commission to fulfill, one message to carry, would spoil

heaven itself. Talk about a lover being engaged! He is the only man in

all the world who is free. And all you get is your dollars. To go forth

before the heat is intolerable, and see what is the difference between

forenoon and afternoon. It seems there is a little more coolness in

the air; there is still some dew, even on this short grass in the

shade of the walls and woods; and a feeling of vigor the walker has.

There are few sounds but the slight twittering of swallows, and the

_springy_ note of the sparrow in the grass or trees, and a lark in the

meadow (now at 8 A. M.), and the cricket under all to ally the hour

to night. Day is, in fact, about as still as night. Draw the veil of

night over this landscape, and these sounds would not disturb nor be

inconsistent for their loudness with the night. It is a difference

of white and black. Nature is in a white sleep. It threatens to be a

hot day, and the haymakers are whetting their scythes in the fields,

where they have been out since 4 o’clock. When I have seen them in

the twilight commencing their labors, I have been impressed as if

it were last night. There is something ghastly about such very early

labor. I cannot detect the whole and characteristic difference between

this and afternoon, though it is positive and decided enough, as my

instincts know. By 2 o’clock it will be warmer and hazier, obscuring

the mountains, and the leaves will curl, and the dust will rise more

readily. Every herb is fresher now, has recovered from yesterday’s

drought. The cooler air of night still lingers in the fields, as by

night the warm air of day. The noon is perchance the time to stay in

the house.

There is no glory so bright but the veil of business can hide it

effectually. With most men life is postponed to some trivial business,

and so therefore is heaven. Men think foolishly they may abuse and

misspend life as they please and when they get to heaven turn over a

new leaf.

I see the track of a bare human foot in the dusty road, the toes

and muscles all faithfully imprinted. Such a sight is so rare that

it affects me with surprise, as the footprint on the shore of Juan

Fernandez did Crusoe. It is equally rare here. I am affected as

if some Indian or South-Sea-Islander had been along, some man who

had a foot. I am slow to be convinced that any of my neighbors—the

judge on the bench, the parson in the pulpit—might have made that or

something like it, however irregular. It is pleasant as it is to see

the tracks of cows and deer and birds. I am brought so much nearer to

the tracker—when again I think of the sole of my own foot—than when I

behold that of his shoe merely, or am introduced to him and converse

with him in the usual way. I am disposed to say to the judge whom I

meet, “Make tracks.”

Men are very generally spoiled by being so civil and well-disposed.

You can have no profitable conversation with them, they are so

conciliatory, determined to agree with you. They exhibit such

long-suffering and kindness in a short interview. I would meet with

some provoking strangeness, so that we may be guest and host and

refresh one another. It is possible for a man wholly to disappear and

be merged in his manners. The thousand and one gentlemen whom I meet,

I meet despairingly and but to part from them, for I am not cheered

by the hope of any rudeness from them. A cross man, a coarse man, an

eccentric man, a silent, a man who does not drill well,—of him there

is some hope. Your gentlemen, they are all alike. They utter their

opinions as if it was not a man that uttered them. It is “just as you

please;” they are indifferent to everything. They will talk with you

for nothing. The interesting man will rather avoid [you], and it is

a rare chance if you get so far as talk with him. The laborers whom

I know, the loafers, fishers, and hunters, I can spin yarns with

profitably, for it is hands off; they are they and I am I still;

they do not come to me and quarter themselves on me for a day or an

hour to be treated politely, they do not cast themselves on me for

entertainment, they do not approach me with a flag of truce. They

do not go out of themselves to meet me. I am never electrified by my

gentleman; he is not an electric eel, but one of the common kind that

slip through your hands, however hard you clutch them, and leave them

covered with slime. He is a man, every inch of him; is worth a groom.

To eat berries on the dry pastures of Conantum, as if they were the

food of thought, dry as itself! Berries are now thick enough to pick.

* * * * *

9 A. M. On Conantum.—A quarter of a mile is distance enough to make the

atmosphere look blue now. This is never the case in spring or early

summer. It was fit that I should see an indigo-bird here, concerned

about its young, a perfect embodiment of the darkest blue that ever

fills the valleys at this season. The meadow-grass reflecting the light

has a bluish cast also.

Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth; _i. e._, lay up a store

of natural influences. Sing while you may, before the evil days come.

He that hath ears, let him hear. See, hear, smell, taste, etc., while

these senses are fresh and pure.

There is always a kind of fine æolian harp music to be heard in the

air. I hear now, as it were, the mellow sound of distant horns in the

hollow mansions of the upper air, a sound to make all men divinely

insane that hear it, far away overhead, subsiding into my ear. To

ears that are expanded what a harp this world is! The occupied ear

thinks that beyond the cricket no sound can be heard, but there is an

immortal melody that may be heard morning, noon, and night, by ears

that can attend, and from time to time this man or that hears it,

having ears that were made for music. To hear this the hardhack and the

meadow-sweet _aspire_. They are thus beautifully painted, because they

are tinged in the lower stratum of that melody.

I eat these berries as simply and naturally as thoughts come to my

mind.

Never yet did I chance to sit in a house, except my own house in the

woods, and hear a wood thrush sing. Would it not be well to sit in such

a chamber within sound of the finest songster of the grove?

The quail, invisible, whistles, and who attends?

10 A. M.—The white lily has opened. How could it stand these heats?

It has pantingly opened, and now lies stretched out by its too long

stem on the surface of the shrunken river. The air grows more and more

blue, making pretty effects when one wood is seen from another through

a little interval. Some pigeons here are resting in the thickest of

the white pines during the heat of the day, migrating, no doubt. They

are unwilling to move for me. Flies buzz and rain about my hat, and the

dead twigs and leaves of the white pine, which the choppers have left

here, exhale a dry and almost sickening scent. A cuckoo chuckles, half

throttled, on a neighboring tree, and now, flying into the pine, scares

out a pigeon, which flies with its handsome tail spread, dashes this

side and that between the trees helplessly, like a ship carrying too

much sail in midst of a small creek, some great amiral; having no room

to manœuvre,—a fluttering flight.

The mountains can scarcely be seen for the blue haze,—only Wachusett

and the near ones. The thorny apple bush on Conantum has lately sent up

branches from its top, resolved to become a tree; and these spreading

(and bearing fruit), the whole has the form of a vast hour-glass. The

lower part being the most dense by far, you would say the sand had run

out.[245]

I now return through Conant’s leafy woods by the spring, whose floor is

sprinkled with sunlight,—low trees which yet effectually shade you.

The dusty mayweed now blooms by the roadside, one of the humblest

flowers. The rough hawkweed, too, by the damp roadside, resembling

in its flower the autumnal dandelion. That was probably the _Verbena

hastata_, or common blue vervain, which I found the other day by Walden

Pond.

The _Antirrhinum Canadense_, Canada snapdragon, in the Corner road; and

the ragged orchis on Conantum.

* * * * *

8.30 P. M.—The streets of the village are much more interesting to

me at this hour of a summer evening than by day. Neighbors, and also

farmers, come a-shopping after their day’s haying, are chatting in

the streets, and I hear the sound of many musical instruments and of

singing from various houses. For a short hour or two the inhabitants

are sensibly employed. The evening is devoted to poetry, such as the

villagers can appreciate.

How rare to meet with a farmer who is a man of sentiment! Yet there

was one, Gen. Joshua Buttrick, who died the other day, who is said to

have lived in his sentiments. He used to say that the smell of burning

powder excited him.

It is said that Mirabeau took to highway robbery “to ascertain what

degree of resolution was necessary in order to place one’s self in

formal opposition to the most sacred laws of society.” He declared

that “a soldier who fights in the ranks does not require half so much

courage as a foot-pad.” “Honor and religion have never stood in the way

of a well-considered and a firm resolve.[246] Tell me, Du Saillant,

when you lead your regiment into the heat of battle, to conquer a

province to which he whom you call your master has no right whatever,

do you consider that you are performing a better action than mine, in

stopping your friend on the king’s highway, and demanding his purse?”

“I obey without reasoning,” replied the count.

“And I reason without obeying, when obedience appears to me to be

contrary to reason,” rejoined Mirabeau.[247]

This was good and manly, as the world goes; and yet it was desperate.

A saner man would have found opportunities enough to put himself in

formal opposition to the most sacred laws of society, and so test his

resolution, in the natural course of events, without violating the

laws of his own nature. It is not for a man to _put himself_ in such an

attitude to society, but to _maintain_ himself in whatever attitude he

finds himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will

never be one of opposition to a just government.[248] Cut the leather

only where the shoe pinches. Let us not have a rabid virtue that will

be revenged on society,—that falls on it, not like the morning dew, but

like the fervid noonday sun, to wither it.

_July 22._ The season of morning fogs has arrived. I think it is

connected with dog-days. Perhaps it is owing to the greater contrast

between the night and the day, the nights being nearly as cold, while

the days are warmer? Before I rise from my couch, I see the ambrosial

fog stretched over the river, draping the trees. It is the summer’s

vapor bath. What purity in the color! It is almost musical; it is

positively fragrant. How faery-like it has visited our fields. I am

struck by its firm outlines, as distinct as a pillow’s edge, about the

height of my house. A great crescent over the course of the river from

southwest to northeast. Already, 5.30 A. M., some parts of the river

are bare. It goes off in a body down the river, before this air, and

does not rise into the heavens. It retreats, and I do not see how it

is dissipated. This slight, thin vapor which is left to curl over the

surface of the still, dark water, still as glass, seems not [to] be the

same thing,—of a different quality. I hear the cockerels crow through

it, and the rich crow of young roosters, that sound indicative of the

bravest, rudest health, hoarse without cold, hoarse with rude health.

That crow is all-nature-compelling; famine and pestilence flee before

it. These are our fairest days, which are born in a fog.

I saw the tall lettuce yesterday (_Lactuca elongata_), whose top or

main shoot had been broken off, and it had put up various stems, with

entire and lanceolate, not runcinate leaves as usual, thus making what

some botanists have called a variety, _β. linearis_. So I have met

with some geniuses who, having met with some such accident maiming

them, have been developed in some such _monstrous_ and partial, though

original, way. They were original in being less than themselves.

Yes, your leaf is peculiar, and some would make of you a distinct

variety, but to me you appear like the puny result of an accident and

misfortune, for you have lost your main shoot, and the leaves which

would have grown runcinate are small and lanceolate.

The last Sunday afternoon I smelled the clear pork frying for a

farmer’s supper thirty rods off (what a Sunday supper!), the windows

being open, and could imagine the _clear_ tea without milk which

usually accompanies it.

Now the cat-o’-nine-tails are seen in the impenetrable meadows, and

the tall green rush is perfecting its tufts. The spotted polygonum (_P.

Persicaria_) by the roadside.

I scare up a woodcock from some moist place at midday.

The pewee and kingbird are killing bees, perched on a post or a dead

twig.

I bathe me in the river. I lie down where it is shallow, amid the

weeds over its sandy bottom; but it seems shrunken and parched; I

find it difficult to get _wet_ through. I would fain be the channel

of a mountain brook. I bathe, and in a few hours I bathe again, not

remembering that I was wetted before. When I come to the river, I take

off my clothes and carry them over, then bathe and wash off the mud and

continue my walk. I would fain take rivers in my walks endwise.

There was a singular charm for me in those French names,—more than

in the things themselves. The names of Italian and Grecian cities,

villages, and natural features are not more poetic to me than the

names of those humble Canadian villages. To be told by a habitant,

when I asked the name of a village in sight, that is St. Féréol or St.

Anne’s! But I was quite taken off my feet when, running back to inquire

what river we were crossing, and thinking for a long time he said _la

rivière d’océan_, it flashed upon me at last that it was _La Rivière du

Chien_.[249]

* * * * *

There was so much grace and sentiment and refinement in the names, how

could they be coarse who took them so often on their lips,—St. Anne’s,

St. Joseph’s; the holy Anne’s, the holy Joseph’s! Next to the Indian,

the French missionary and voyageur and Catholic habitant have named the

natural features of the land. The _prairie_, the _voyageur_! Or does

every man think his neighbor is the richer and more fortunate man, his

neighbor’s fields the richest?

It needed only a little outlandishness in the names, a little foreign

accent, a few more vowels in the words, to make me locate all my ideals

at once. How prepared we are for another world than this! We are no

sooner over the line of the States than we expect to see men leading

poetic lives,—nothing so natural, that is the presumption. The names

of the mountains, and the streams, and the villages reel with the

intoxication of poetry—Longueuil, Chambly, Barthillon (?), Montilly

(?).[250]

Where there were books only, to find realities. Of course we assign to

the place the idea which the written history or poem suggested. Quebec,

of course, is never seen for what it simply is to practical eyes, but

as the local habitation of those thoughts and visions which we have

derived from reading of Wolfe and Montcalm, Montgomery and Arnold. It

is hard to make me attend to the geology of Cape Diamond or the botany

of the Plains of Abraham.[251] How glad we are to find that there is

another race of men! for they may be more successful and fortunate than

we.

Canada is not a place for railroads to terminate in, or for criminals

to run to.[252]

_July 23. Wednesday._ I remember the last moon, shining through a

creamy atmosphere, with a tear in the eye of Nature and her tresses

dishevelled and drooping, sliding up the sky, the glistening air,

the leaves shining with dew, pulsating upward; an atmosphere unworn,

unprophaned by day. What self-healing in Nature!—swept by the dews.

For some weeks past the roadsides and the dry and trivial fields have

been covered with the field trefoil (_Trifolium arvense_), now in

bloom.

* * * * *

8 A. M.—A comfortable breeze blowing. Methinks I can write better

in the afternoon, for the novelty of it, if I should go abroad this

morning. My genius makes distinctions which my understanding cannot,

and which my senses do not report. If I should reverse the usual,—go

forth and saunter in the fields all the forenoon, then sit down in my

chamber in the afternoon, which it is so unusual for me to do,—it would

be like a new season to me, and the novelty of it [would] inspire me.

The wind has fairly blown me outdoors; the elements were so lively and

active, and I so sympathized with them, that I could not sit while the

wind went by. And I am reminded that we should especially improve the

summer to live out-of-doors. When we may so easily, it behooves us to

break up this custom of sitting in the house, for it is but a custom,

and I am not sure that it has the sanction of common sense. A man no

sooner gets up than he sits down again. Fowls leave their perch in the

morning, and beasts their lairs, unless they are such as go abroad only

by night. The cockerel does not take up a new perch _in the barn_, and

he is the embodiment of health and common sense. Is the literary man to

live always or chiefly sitting in a chamber through which nature enters

by a window only? What is the use of the summer?

You must walk so gently as to hear the finest sounds, the faculties

being in repose. Your mind must not perspire. True, out of doors my

thought is commonly drowned, as it were, and shrunken, pressed down

by stupendous piles of light ethereal influences, for the pressure

of the atmosphere is still fifteen pounds to a square inch. I can do

little more than preserve the equilibrium and resist the pressure of

the atmosphere. I can only nod like the rye-heads in the breeze. I

expand more surely in my chamber, as far as expression goes, as if that

pressure were taken off; but here outdoors is the place to store up

influences.

The swallow’s twitter is the sound of the lapsing waves of the air, or

when they break and burst, as his wings represent the ripple. He has

more air in his bones than other birds; his feet are defective. The

fish of the air. His note is the voice of the air. As fishes may hear

the sound of waves lapsing on the surface and see the outlines of the

ripples, so we hear the note and see the flight of swallows.

The influences which make for one walk more than another, and one

day more than another, are much more ethereal than terrestrial. It is

the quality of the air much more than the quality of the ground that

concerns the walker,—cheers or depresses him. What he may find in the

air, not what he may find on the ground.

On such a road (the Corner) I walk securely, seeing far and wide on

both sides, as if I were flanked by light infantry on the hills, to

rout the provincials, as the British marched into Concord, while my

grenadier thoughts keep the main road. That is, my light-armed and

wandering thoughts scour the neighboring fields, and so I know if the

coast is clear. With what a breadth of van I advance! I am not bounded

by the walls. I think more than the road full. (Going southwesterly.)

While I am abroad, the ovipositors plant their seeds in me; I am

fly-blown with thought, and go home to hatch and brood over them.

I was too discursive and rambling in my thought for the chamber, and

must go where the wind blows on me walking.

A little brook crossing the road (the Corner road), a few inches’ depth

of transparent water rippling over yellow sand and pebbles, the pure

blood of nature. How miraculously crystal-like, how exquisite, fine,

and subtle, and liquid this element, which an imperceptible inclination

in the channel causes to flow thus surely and swiftly! How obedient

to its instinct, to the faintest suggestion of the hills! If inclined

but a hair’s breadth, it is in a torrent haste to obey. And all the

revolutions of the planet—nature is so exquisitely adjusted—and the

attraction of the stars do not disturb this equipoise, but the rills

still flow the same way, and the water levels are not disturbed.

We are not so much like debauchees as in the afternoon.

The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the

earth. Pay not too much heed to them. Let not the traveller stop for

them. They consist with the fairest weather. By the mood of my mind, I

suddenly felt dissuaded from continuing my walk, but I observed at the

same instant that the shadow of a cloud was passing over [the] spot

on which I stood, though it was of small extent, which, if it had no

connection with my mood, at any rate suggested how transient and little

to be regarded that mood was. I kept on, and in a moment the sun shone

on my walk within and without.

The button-bush in blossom. The tobacco-pipe in damp woods. Certain

localities only a few rods square in the fields and on the hills,

sometimes the other side of a wall, attract me as if they had been the

scene of pleasure in another state of existence.

But this habit of close observation,—in Humboldt, Darwin, and others.

Is it to be kept up long, this science? Do not tread on the heels of

your experience. Be impressed without making a minute of it. Poetry

puts an interval between the impression and the expression,—waits till

the seed germinates naturally.

_July 24._ 5 A. M.—The street and fields betray the drought and look

more parched than at noon; they look as I feel,—languid and thin and

feeling my nerves. The potatoes and the elms and the herbage by the

roadside, though there is a slight dew, seem to rise out of an arid and

thirsty soil into the atmosphere of a furnace slightly cooled down. The

leaves of the elms are yellow. Ah! now I see what the noon was and what

it may be again. The effects of drought are never more apparent than

at dawn. Nature is like a hen panting with open mouth, in the grass, as

the morning after a debauch.

_July 25. Friday._ Started for Clark’s Island at 7 A. M.

At 9 A. M. took the Hingham boat and was landed at Hull. There was

a pleasure party on board, apparently boys and girls belonging to

the South End, going to Hingham. There was a large proportion of

ill-dressed and ill-mannered boys of Irish extraction. A sad sight to

behold! Little boys of twelve years, prematurely old, sucking cigars! I

felt that if I were their mothers I should whip them and send them to

bed. Such children should be dealt with as for stealing or impurity.

The opening of this valve for the safety of the city! Oh, what a

wretched resource! What right have parents to beget, to bring up, and

attempt to _educate_ children in a city? I thought of infanticide among

the Orientals with complacency. I seemed to hear infant voices lisp,

“Give us a fair chance, parents.” There is no such squalidness in the

country. You would have said that they must all have come from the

house of correction and the farm-school, but such a company do the boys

in Boston streets make. The birds have more care for their young,—where

they place their nests. What are a city’s charities? She cannot be

charitable any more than the old philosopher could move the earth,

unless she has a resting-place without herself. A true culture is more

possible to the savage than to the boy of average intellect, born of

average parents, in a great city. I believe that they perish miserably.

How can they be kept clean, physically or morally? It is folly to

attempt to educate children within a city; the first step must be to

remove them out of it. It seemed a groping and helpless philanthropy

that I heard of.

I heard a boy telling the story of Nix’s Mate to some girls, as we

passed that spot, how “he said, ‘If I am guilty, this island will

remain; but if I am innocent, it will be washed away,’ and now it

is all washed away.”[253] This was a simple and strong expression of

feeling suitable to the occasion, by which he committed the evidence

of his innocence to the dumb isle, such as the boy could appreciate, a

proper sailor’s legend; and I was reminded that it is the illiterate

and unimaginative class that seizes on and transmits the legends in

which the more cultivated delight. No fastidious poet dwelling in

Boston had tampered with it,—no narrow poet, but broad mankind, sailors

from all ports sailing by. They, sitting on the deck, were the literary

academy that sat upon its periods.

On the beach at Hull, and afterwards all along the shore to Plymouth,

I saw the datura, the variety (red-stemmed), methinks, which some call

_Tatula_ instead of _Stramonium_. I felt as if I was on the highway of

the world, at sight of this cosmopolite and veteran traveller. It told

of commerce and sailors’ yarns without end. It grows luxuriantly in

sand and gravel. This Captain Cook among plants, this Norseman or sea

pirate, viking or king of the bays, the beaches. It is not an innocent

plant; it suggests commerce, with its attendant vices.[254]

Saw a public house where I landed at Hull, made like some barns which

I have seen, of boards with a cleat nailed over the cracks, without

clapboards or paint, evidently very simple and cheap, yet neat and

convenient as well as airy. It interested me, as the New House at Long

Island did not, as it brought the luxury and comfort of the seashore

within reach of the less wealthy. It was such an exhibition of good

sense as I was not prepared for and do not remember to have seen

before. Ascended to the top of the hill, where is the old French fort,

with the well said to be ninety feet deep, now covered.[255] I saw some

horses standing on the very top of the ramparts, the highest part of

Hull, where there was hardly room to turn round, for the sake of the

breeze.[256] It was excessively warm, and their instincts, or their

experience perchance, guided them as surely to the summit as it did

me. Here is the telegraph, nine miles from Boston, whose State-House

was just visible,—movable signs on a pole with holes in them for the

passage of the wind. A man about the telegraph station thought it the

highest point in the harbor; said they could tell the kind of vessel

thirty miles off, the number at masthead ten or twelve miles, name on

hull six or seven miles. They can see furthest in the fall. There is

a mist summer and winter, when the contrast between the temperature

of the sea and the air is greatest. I did not see why this hill should

not be fortified as well as George’s Island, it being higher and also

commanding the main channel. However, an enemy could go by all the

forts in the dark, as Wolfe did at Quebec.[257] They are bungling

contrivances.

[Illustrations]

Here the bank is rapidly washing away. On every side, in Boston Harbor,

the evidences of the wasting away of the islands are so obvious and

striking that they appear to be wasting faster than they are. You

will sometimes see a springing hill, showing by the interrupted arch

of its surface against the sky how much space [it] must have occupied

where there is now water, as at Point Allerton,—what botanists call

premorse. Hull looks as if it had been two islands, since connected

by a beach. I was struck by the gracefully curving and fantastic shore

of a small island (Hog Island) inside of Hull, where everything seemed

to be gently lapsing into futurity, as if the inhabitants should bear

a ripple for device on their coat-of-arms, a wave passing over them,

with the datura growing on their shores. The wrecks of isles fancifully

arranged into a new shore. To see the sea nibbling thus voraciously

at the continents![258] A man at the telegraph told me of a white oak

pole a foot and a half in diameter, forty feet high, and four feet or

more in the rock at Minot’s Ledge, with four guys, which stood only one

year. Stone piled up cob-fashion near same place stood eight years.

Hull pretty good land, but bare of trees—only a few cherries for the

most part—and mostly uncultivated, being owned by few. I heard the

voices of men shouting aboard a vessel half a mile from the shore,

which sounded as if they were in a barn in the country, they being

between the sails. It was not a sea sound. It was a purely rural

sound.[259]

Man needs to know but little more than a lobster in order to catch him

in his traps. Here were many lobster traps on the shore. The beds of

dry seaweed or eel-grass on the beach remind me of narrow shavings. On

the farther hill in Hull, I saw a field full of Canada thistles close

up to the fences on all sides, while beyond them there was none. So

much for these fields having been subjected to different culture. So a

different culture in the case of men brings in different weeds. As are

the virtues, so are the vices. Weeds come in with the seeds, though

perhaps much more in the manure. Each kind of culture will introduce

its own weeds.

I am bothered to walk with those who wish to keep step with me. It is

not necessary to keep step with your companion, as some endeavor to do.

They told me at Hull that they burned the _stem_ of the kelp chiefly

for potash. Chemistry is not a splitting hairs when you have got half

a dozen raw Irishmen in the laboratory.

As I walked on the beach (Nantasket), panting with thirst, a man

pointed to a white spot on the side of a distant hill (Strawberry

Hill he called it) which rose from the gravelly beach, and said that

there was a pure and cold and unfailing spring; and I could not help

admiring that in this town of Hull, of which I had heard, but now for

the first time saw, a single spring should appear to me and should be

of so much value. I found Hull indeed, but there was also a spring on

that parched, unsheltered shore; the spring, though I did not visit it,

made the deepest impression on my mind. Hull, the place of the spring

and of the well. This is what the traveller would remember. All that he

remembered of Rome was a spring on the Capitoline Hill![260]

* * * * *

It is the most perfect seashore I have seen.[261] The rockweed falls

over you like the _tresses_ of mermaids, and you see the propriety of

that epithet. You cannot swim among these weeds and pull yourself up by

them without thinking of mermen and mermaids.

The barnacles on the rocks, which make a whitish strip a few feet in

width just above the weeds, remind me of some vegetable growth which I

have seen,—surrounded by a circle of calyx-like or petal-like shells

like some buds or seed-vessels. They, too, clinging to the rocks

like the weeds; lying along the seams of the rock like buttons on a

waistcoat.

I saw in Cohasset, separated from the sea only by a narrow beach, a

very large and handsome but shallow lake, of at least four hundred

acres, with five rocky islets in it; which the sea had tossed over the

beach in the great storm in the spring, and, after the alewives had

passed into it, stopped up its outlet; and now the alewives were dying

by thousands, and the inhabitants apprehended a pestilence as the water

evaporated. The water was very foul.[262]

The rockweed is considered the best for manure. I saw them drying

the Irish moss in quantities at Jerusalem Village in Cohasset. It is

said to be used for sizing calico. Finding myself on the edge of a

thunder-storm, I stopped a few moments at the Rock House in Cohasset,

close to the shore. There was scarcely rain enough to wet one, and no

wind. I was therefore surprised to hear afterward, through a young man

who had just returned from Liverpool, that there was a severe squall at

quarantine ground, only seven or eight miles northwest of me, such as

he had not experienced for three years, which sunk several boats and

caused some vessels to drag their anchors and come near going ashore;

proving that the gust which struck the water there must have been of

very limited breadth, for I was or might have been overlooking the spot

and felt no wind. This rocky shore is called Pleasant Cove on large

maps; on the map of Cohasset alone, the name seems to be confined to

the cove where I first saw the wreck of the St. John alone.[263]

Brush Island, opposite this, with a hut on it, not permanently

inhabited. It takes but little soil to tempt men to inhabit such

places. I saw here the American holly (_Ilex opaca_), which is not

found further north than Massachusetts, but south and west. The yellow

gerardia in the woods.

_July 26._ At Cohasset.—Called on Captain Snow, who remembered hearing

fishermen say that they “fitted out at Thoreau’s;” remembered him. He

had commanded a packet between Boston or New York and England. Spoke

of the wave which he sometimes met on the Atlantic coming against the

wind, and which indicated that the wind was blowing from an opposite

quarter at a distance, the undulation travelling faster than the wind.

They see Cape Cod loom here. Thought the Bay between here and Cape

Ann thirty fathoms deep; between here and Cape Cod, sixty or seventy

fathoms. The “Annual of Scientific Discovery” for 1851 says, quoting a

Mr. A. G. Findley, “Waves travel very great distances, and are often

raised by distant hurricanes, having been felt simultaneously at St.

Helena and Ascension, though 600 miles apart, and it is probable that

ground swells often originate at the Cape of Good Hope, 3000 miles

distant.” Sailors tell of tide-rips. Some are thought to be occasioned

by earthquakes.

The ocean at Cohasset did not look as if any were ever shipwrecked in

it. Not a vestige of a wreck left. It was not grand and sublime now,

but beautiful. The water held in the little hollows of the rocks, on

the receding of the tide, is so crystal-pure that you cannot believe it

salt, but wish to drink it.[264]

The architect of a Minot Rock lighthouse might profitably spend a day

studying the worn rocks of Cohasset shore, and learn the power of the

waves, see what kind of sand the sea is using to grind them down.

A fine delicate seaweed, which some properly enough call sea-green. Saw

here the staghorn, or velvet, sumach (_Rhus typhina_), so called from

form of young branches, a size larger than the _Rhus glabra_ common

with us. The _Plantago maritima_, or sea plantain, properly named.

I guessed its name before I knew what it was called by botanists.

The American sea-rocket (_Bunias edentula_) I suppose it was that I

saw,—the succulent plant with much cut leaves and small pinkish (?)

flowers.

_July 27. Sunday._ Walked from Cohasset to Duxbury and sailed thence to

Clark’s Island.

Visited the large tupelo tree (_Nyssa multiflora_) in Scituate, whose

rounded and open top, like some umbelliferous plant’s, I could see from

Mr. Sewal’s, the tree which George Emerson went twenty-five miles to

see, called sometimes snag-tree and swamp hornbeam, also pepperidge

and gum-tree. Hard to split. We have it in Concord. Cardinal-flower in

bloom. Scituate meeting-houses on very high ground; the principal one

a landmark for sailors. Saw the buckthorn, which is naturalized. One of

Marshfield meeting-houses on the height of land on my road. The country

generally descends westerly toward the sources of Taunton River.

After taking the road by Webster’s beyond South Marshfield, I walked

a long way at noon, hot and thirsty, before I could find a suitable

place to sit and eat my dinner,—a place where the shade and the sward

pleased me. At length I was obliged to put up with a small shade close

to the ruts, where the only stream I had seen for some time crossed

the road. Here, also, numerous robins came to cool and wash themselves

and to drink. They stood in the water up to their bellies, from time

to time wetting their wings and tails and also ducking their heads and

sprinkling the water over themselves; then they sat on a fence near by

to dry. Then a goldfinch came and did the same, accompanied by the less

brilliant female. These birds evidently enjoyed their bath greatly, and

it seemed indispensable to them.

A neighbor of Webster’s told me that he had hard on to sixteen hundred

acres and was still buying more,—a farm and factory within the year;

cultivated a hundred and fifty acres. I saw twelve acres of potatoes

together, the same of rye and wheat, and more methinks of buckwheat.

Fifteen or sixteen men, Irish mostly, at ten dollars a month, doing the

work of fifty, with a Yankee overseer, long a resident of Marshfield,

named Wright. Would eat only the produce of his farm during the few

weeks he was at home,—brown bread and butter and milk,—and sent out for

a pig’s cheek to eat with his greens. Ate only what grew on his farm,

but drank more than ran on his farm.

Took refuge from the rain at a Mr. Stetson’s in Duxbury.

I forgot to say that I passed the Winslow House, now belonging to

Webster. This land was granted to the family in 1637.

Sailed with tavern-keeper Winsor, who was going out mackereling. Seven

men, stripping up their clothes, each bearing an armful of wood and

one some new potatoes, walked to the boats, then shoved them out a

dozen rods over the mud, then rowed half a mile to the schooner of

forty-three tons. They expected [to] be gone about a week, and to begin

to fish perhaps the next morning. Fresh mackerel which they carried

to Boston. Had four dories, and commonly fished from them. Else they

fished on the starboard side aft, where their lines hung ready with the

old baits on, two to a man. I had the experience of going on a mackerel

cruise.

They went aboard their schooner in a leisurely way this Sunday evening,

with a fair but very slight wind, the sun now setting clear and shining

on the vessel after several thunder-showers. I was struck by the small

quantity of supplies which they appeared to take. We climbed aboard,

and there we were in a mackerel schooner. The baits were not dry on

the hooks. Winsor cast overboard the foul juice of mackerels mixed

with rain-water which remained in his trough. There was the mill in

which to grind up the mackerel for bait, and the trough to hold it, and

the long-handled dipper to cast it overboard with; and already in the

harbor we saw the surface rippled with schools of small mackerel. They

proceeded leisurely to weigh anchor, and then to raise their two sails.

There was one passenger, going for health or amusement, who had been

to California. I had the experience of going a-mackereling, though I

was landed on an island before we got out of the harbor. They expected

to commence fishing the next morning. It had been a very warm day with

frequent thunder-showers. I had walked from Cohasset to Duxbury, and

had walked about the latter town to find a passage to Clark’s Island,

about three miles distant, but no boat could stir, they said, at that

state of the tide.[265] The tide was down, and boats were left high

and dry. At length I was directed to Winsor’s tavern, where perchance I

might find some mackerel-fishers, who were going to sail that night to

be ready for fishing in the morning, and, as they would pass near the

island, they would take me. I found it so. Winsor himself was going.

I told him he was the very man for me; but I must wait an hour. So

I ate supper with them. Then one after another of his crew was seen

straggling to the shore, for the most part in high boots,—some made of

india-rubber,—some with their pants stripped up. There were seven for

this schooner, beside a passenger and myself. The leisurely manner in

which they proceeded struck me. I had taken off my shoes and stockings

and prepared to wade. Each of the seven took an armful of pine wood and

walked with it to the two boats, which lay at high-water mark in the

mud; then they resolved that each should bring one more armful and that

would be enough. They had already got a barrel of water and had some

more in the schooner, also a bucket of new potatoes. Then, dividing

into two parties, we pulled and shoved the boats a dozen rods over

the mud and water till they floated, then rowed half a mile or more

over the shallow water to the little schooner and climbed aboard. Many

seals had their heads out. We gathered about the helmsman and talked

about the compass, which was affected by the iron in the vessel, etc.,

etc.[266]

* * * * *

[Illustration]

Clark’s Island, Sunday night.—On Friday night December 8th, O. S.,

the Pilgrims, exploring in the shallop, landed on Clark’s Island (so

called from the master’s mate of the May-Flower), where they spent

three nights and kept their first Sabbath. On Monday, or the 11th,

O. S., they landed on the Rock. This island contains about eighty-six

acres and was once covered with red cedars which were sold at Boston

for gate-posts. I saw a few left, one, two feet in diameter at the

ground, which was probably standing when the Pilgrims came. Ed. Watson,

who could remember them nearly fifty years, had observed but little

change in them. Hutchinson calls this one of the best islands in

Massachusetts Bay. The town kept it at first as a sacred place, but

finally sold it in 1690 to Samuel Lucas, Elkanah Watson, and George

Morton. Saw a stag’s-horn sumach five or six inches in diameter and

eighteen feet high. Here was the marsh goldenrod (_Solidago lævigata_)

not yet in blossom; a small bluish flower in the marshes, which they

called rosemary; a kind of chenopodium which appeared distinct from the

common; and a short oval-leaved, set-looking plant which I suppose is

_Glaux maritima_, sea milkwort, or saltwort. Skates’ eggs, called in

England skate-barrows from their form, on the sand. The old cedars were

flat-topped, spreading, the stratum of the wind drawn out.

_July 28. Monday morning._ Sailed [to] the Gurnet, which runs down

seven miles into the bay from Marshfield. Heard the _peep_ of the

_beach-bird_. Saw some ring-necks in company with peeps. They told of

eagles which had flown low over the island lately. Went by Saquish.

Gathered a basketful of Irish moss bleached on the beach. Saw a

field full of pink-blossomed potatoes at the lighthouse, remarkably

luxuriant and full of blossoms; also some French barley. Old fort and

barracks by lighthouse. Visited lobster houses or huts there, where

they use lobsters to catch bait for lobsters. Saw on the shanties signs

from ships, as “Justice Story” and “Margueritta.” To obtain bait is

sometimes the main thing. Samphire (_Salicornia_), which they pickle;

also a kind of prickly samphire, which I suppose is saltwort, or

_Salsola Caroliniana_. Well at Clark’s Island twenty-seven and three

quarters feet deep. Cut the rockweed on the rocks at low tide once in

two or three years. Very valuable; more than they have time to save.

Uncle Ned told of a man who went off fishing from back of Wellfleet in

calm weather, and with great difficulty got ashore through the surf.

Those in the other boat, who had landed, were unwilling to take the

responsibility of telling them when to pull for shore; the one who had

the helm was inexperienced. They were swamped at once. So treacherous

is this shore. Before the wind comes, perchance, the sea may run so as

to upset and drown you on the shore. At first they thought to pull for

Provincetown, but night was coming on, and that was distant many a long

mile. Their case was a desperate one. When they came near the shore

and saw the terrific breakers that intervened, they were deterred. They

were thoroughly frightened.[267]

[Illustrations]

Were troubled with skunks on this island; they must have come over on

the ice. Foxes they had seen; had killed one woodchuck; even a large

_mud turtle_, which they _conjectured some bird must have dropped_.

Muskrats they had seen, and killed two raccoons once. I went a-clamming

just before night. This the clam-digger, borrowed of Uncle Bill

(Watson) in his schooner home. The clams nearly a foot deep, but I

broke many in digging. Said not to be good now, but we found them good

eaten fresh. No sale for them now; fetch twenty-five cents a bucket in

their season. Barry caught squids as bait for bass. We found many dead

clams,—their shells full of sand,—called sand clams.[268] By a new clam

law any one can dig clams here. Brown’s Island, so called, a shoal off

the Gurnet, thought to have been an isle once, a dangerous place. Saw

here fences, the posts set in cross sleepers, made to be removed in

winter.

The finest music in a menagerie, its wildest strains, have something

in them akin to the cries of the tigers and leopards heard in their

native forests. Those strains are not unfitted to the assemblage

of wild beasts. They express to my ear what the tiger’s stripes and

the leopard’s spots express to my eye; and they appear to grin with

satisfaction at the sound. That nature has any place at all for music

is very good.

_July 29. Tuesday._ A northeast wind with rain, but the sea is the

wilder for it. I heard the surf roar on the Gurnet [in] the night,

which, as Uncle Ned and Freeman said, showed that the wind would work

round east and we should have rainy weather. It was the wave reaching

the shore before the wind. The ocean was heaped up somewhere to the

eastward, and this roar was occasioned by its effort to preserve its

equilibrium. The rut of the sea.[269] In the afternoon I sailed to

Plymouth, three miles, notwithstanding the drizzling rain, or “drisk,”

as Uncle Ned called it. We passed round the head of Plymouth beach,

which is three miles long. I did not know till afterward that I had

landed where the Pilgrims did and passed over the Rock on Hedge’s

Wharf. Returning, we had more wind and tacking to do.

Saw many seals together on a flat. Singular that these strange animals

should be so abundant here and yet the man who lives a few miles inland

never hear of them. To him there is no report of the sea, though he may

read the Plymouth paper. The Boston papers do not tell us that they

have seals in the Harbor. The inhabitants of Plymouth do not seem to

be aware of it. I always think of seals in connection with Esquimaux or

some other outlandish people, not in connection with those who live on

the shores of Boston and Plymouth harbors. Yet from their windows they

may daily see a family [of] seals, the real _Phoca vitulina_, collected

on a flat or sporting in the waves. I saw one dashing through the waves

just ahead of our boat, going to join his companions on the bar,—as

strange to me as the merman. No less wild, essentially, than when the

Pilgrims came is this harbor.

[Illustrations]

It being low tide, we landed on a flat which makes out from Clark’s

Island, to while away the time, not being able to get quite up yet.

I found numerous _large_ holes of the sea clam in this sand (no small

clams), and dug them out easily and rapidly with my hands. Could have

got a large quantity in a short time; but here they do not eat them;

think they will make you sick. They were not so deep in the sand, not

more than five or six inches. I saw where one had squirted full ten

feet before the wind, as appeared by the marks of the drops on the

sand. Some small ones I found not more than a quarter of an inch in

length. Le Baron brought me [a] round clam or quahog alive, with a

very thick shell, and not so nearly an isosceles triangle as the sea

clam,—more like this: with a protuberance on the back. The sea clam: A

small, narrow clam which they called the bank clam; also crab-cases,

handsomely spotted. Small crab always in a cockle-shell if not in a

case of his own. A cockle as large as my fist. Mussels, small ones,

empty shells; an extensive bank where they had died. Occasionally a

large deep-sea mussel, which some kelp had brought up. We caught some

sand eels seven or eight inches long,—_Ammodytes tobianus_, according

to Storer, and not the _A. lancea_ of Yarrell, though the size of the

last comes nearer. They were in the shallow pools left on the sand (the

flat was here pure naked yellowish sand), and quickly buried themselves

when pursued. They are used as bait for bass. Found some sand-circles

or sandpaper, like top of a stone jug cut off, with a large nose; said

to be made by the foot of the large cockle, which has some glutinous

matter on it.[270] A circle of sand about as thick as thick pasteboard.

It reminded me of the caddis-worm cases, skate-barrows, etc., etc. I

observed the shell of a sea clam one valve of which was filled exactly

even full with sand,—evenly as if it had been heaped and then scraped

off, as when men measure by the peck. This was a fresher one of the

myriad sand-clams, and it suggested to me how the stone clams which I

had seen on Cape Cod might have been formed. Perchance a clamshell was

the mould in which they were cast, and a slight hardening of the level

surface, before the whole is turned to stone, causes them to split in

two. The sand was full of stone clams in the mould.[271] I saw the kelp

attached to stones half as big as my head, which it had transported. I

do not think I ever saw the kelp _in situ_. Also attached to a deep-sea

mussel. The kelp is like a broad ruffled belt. The middle portion is

thicker and flat, the edges for two or three inches thinner and fuller,

so that it is fulled or ruffled, as if the edges had been hammered. The

extremity is generally worn and ragged from the lashing of the waves.

It is the prototype of a fringed belt. Uncle Ned said that the cows

ate it.[272] We saw in the shallow water a long, _round_ green grass,

six or eight feet long, clogging up the channel. Round grass, I think

they called it. We caught a lobster, as you might catch a mud turtle in

the country, in the shallow water, pushing him ashore with the paddle,

taking hold of his tail to avoid being bitten. They are obliged to put

wooden plugs or wedges beside their claws to prevent their tearing each

other to pieces. All weeds are bleached on the beach.

This sailing on salt water was something new to me. The boat is such

a living creature, even this clumsy one sailing within five points of

the wind. The sailboat is an admirable invention, by which you compel

the wind to transport you even against itself. It is easier to guide

than a horse; the slightest pressure on the tiller suffices. I think

the inventor must have been greatly surprised, as well as delighted,

at the success of his experiment. It is so contrary to expectation, as

if the elements were disposed to favor you. This deep, unfordable sea!

but this wind ever blowing over it to transport you! At 10 P. M. it was

perfectly fair and bright starlight.

_July 30. Wednesday._ The house here stands within a grove of

balm-of-Gileads, horse-chestnuts, cherries, apples, and plums, etc.

Uncle Bill, who lives in his schooner,—not turned up Numidian fashion,

but anchored in the mud,—whom I meant to call on yesterday morn, lo!

had run over to “the Pines” last evening, fearing an easterly storm.

He outrode the great gale in the spring alone in the harbor, dashing

about. He goes after rockweed, lighters vessels, and saves wrecks.

Now I see him lying in the mud over at the Pines in the horizon, which

place he cannot leave if he will, till flood-tide; but he will not, it

seems. This waiting for the tide is a singular feature in the life by

the shore. In leaving your boat to-day you must always have reference

to what you are going to do the next day. A frequent answer is, “Well,

you can’t start for two hours yet.” It is something new to a landsman,

and at first he is not disposed to wait.[273] I saw some heaps of

shells left by the Indians near the northern end of the island. They

were a rod in diameter and a foot or more high in the middle, and

covered with a shorter and greener grass than the surrounding field.

Found one imperfect arrowhead.

At 10 A. M. sailed to Webster’s, past Powder Point in Duxbury. We

could see his land from the island. I was steersman and learned the

meaning of some nautical phrases,—“luff,” to keep the boat close to

the wind till the sails begin to flap; “bear away,” to put the sail

more at right angles with the wind; a “close haul,” when the sails are

brought and belayed nearly or quite in a line with the vessel. On the

marshes we saw patches of a “_black_ grass.” A large field of wheat at

Webster’s,—half a dozen acres at least,—many apple trees, three-thorned

acacias, tulip-trees; cranberry experiment; seaweed spread under his

tomatoes. Wild geese with black and gray heads and necks, not so heavy

and clumsy as the tame Bremens. Large, noisy Hongkong geese. Handsome

calves. Three thousand (?) acres of marsh.

Talked with Webster’s nearest neighbor, Captain Hewit, whose small

farm he surrounds and endeavors in vain to buy. A fair specimen of

a retired Yankee sea-captain turned farmer. Proud of the quantity of

carrots he had raised on a small patch. It was better husbandry than

Webster’s. He told a story of his buying a cargo for his owners at

St. Petersburg just as peace was declared in the last war. These men

are not so remarkable for anything as the quality of hardness. The

very fixedness and rigidity of their jaws and necks express a sort of

adamantine hardness. This is what they have learned by contact with the

elements. The man who does not grow rigid with years and experience!

Where is he? What avails it to grow hard merely? The harder you are,

the more brittle really, like the bones of the old. How much rarer and

better to grow mellow! A sort of stone fruit the man bears commonly; a

bare stone it is, without any sweet and mellow pericarp around it. It

is like the peach which has dried to the stone as the season advanced;

it is dwindled to a dry stone with its almond. In presence of one of

these hard men I think: “How brittle! How easily you would crack! What

a poor and lame conclusion!” I can think of nothing but a stone in his

head. Truly genial men do not grow [hard]. It is the result of despair,

this attitude of resistance. They behave like men already driven to the

wall. Notwithstanding that the speaker trembles with infirmity while

he speaks,—his hand on the spade,—it is such a trembling as betrays a

stony nature. His hand trembles so that the full glass of cider which

he prizes to a drop will have lost half its contents before it reaches

his lips, as if a tempest had arisen in it. Hopelessly hard. But there

is another view of him. He is somebody. He has an opinion to express,

if you will wait to hear him. A certain manliness and refreshing

resistance is in him. He generally makes Webster a call, but Webster

does not want to see you more than twenty minutes. It does not take him

long to say all he has got to say. He had not seen him to speak to him

since he had come home this time. He had sent him over a couple of fine

cod the night before. Such a man as Hewit sees not finely but coarsely.

The eagle given by Lawrence on the hill in the buckwheat field.

_July 31. Thursday._ Those same round shells (_Scutella parma_

(_placenta_) ?) on the sand as at Cape Cod, the live ones reddish, the

dead white. Went off early this morning with Uncle Ned to catch bass

with the small fish I had found on the sand the night before. Two of

his neighbor Albert Watson’s boys were there,—not James, the oldest,

but Edward, the sailor, and Mortimer (or Mort),—in their boat. They

killed some striped bass (_Labrax lineatus_) with paddles in a shallow

creek in the sand, and caught some lobsters. I remarked that the

seashore was singularly clean, for, notwithstanding the spattering of

the water and mud and squirting of the clams and wading to and fro the

boat, my best black pants retained no stains nor dirt, as they would

acquire from walking in the country. I caught a bass with a young—haik?

(perchance), trailing thirty feet behind while Uncle Ned paddled.

They catch them in England with a “trawl-net.” Sometimes they weigh

seventy-five pounds here.

At 11 A. M. set sail to Plymouth. We went somewhat out of a direct

course, to take advantage of the tide, which was coming in. Saw the

site of the first house, which was burned, on Leyden Street. Walked

up the same, parallel with the Town Brook. Hill from which Billington

Sea was discovered hardly a mile from the shore, on Watson’s grounds.

Watson’s Hill, where treaty was made across brook south of Burying

Hill. At Watson’s,[274] the oriental plane, _Abies Douglasii_,

ginkgo tree (_q. v._ on Common), a foreign hardhack, English oak

(dark-colored, small leaf), Spanish chestnut, Chinese arbor-vitæ,

Norway spruce (like our fir balsam), a new kind of fir balsam. Black

eagle one of the good cherries. Fuchsias in hothouse. Earth bank

covered with cement.

Mr. Thomas Russell, who cannot be seventy, at whose house on Leyden

Street I took tea and spent the evening, told me that he remembered to

have seen Ebenezer Cobb, a native of Plymouth, who died in Kingston in

1801, aged one hundred and seven, who remembered to have had personal

knowledge of Peregrine White, saw him an old man riding on horseback

(he lived to be eighty-three). White was born at Cape Cod Harbor before

the Pilgrims got to Plymouth. C. Sturgis’s mother told me the same

of herself at the same time. She remembered Cobb sitting in an arm

chair like the one she herself occupied, with his silver locks falling

about his shoulders, twirling one thumb over the other. Lyell in first

volume, “Second Visit,” page 97, published 1849,[275] says: “Colonel

Perkins, of Boston, ... informed me, in 1846, that there was but one

link wanting in the chain of personal communication between him and

Peregrine White, the first white child born in Massachusetts, a few

days after the Pilgrims landed. White lived to an advanced age, and was

known to a man of the name of Cobb, whom Colonel Perkins visited, in

1807, with some friends who yet survive. Cobb died in 1808, the year

after Colonel Perkins saw him.”

[Illustration: _Town Brook, Plymouth_]

Russell told me that he once bought some _primitive_ woodland in

Plymouth which was sold at auction—the biggest pitch pines two feet

diameter—for _eight shillings_ an acre. If he had bought enough, it

would have been a fortune. There is still forest in this town which

the axe has not touched, says George Bradford. According to Thatcher’s

History of Plymouth, there were 11,662 acres of woodland in 1831, or

twenty square miles. Pilgrims first saw Billington Sea about January

1st; visited it January 8th. The oldest stone in the Plymouth Burying

Ground, 1681. (Coles (?) Hill, where those who died the first winter

were buried, is said to have been levelled and sown to conceal loss

from Indians.) Oldest on our hill, 1677. In Mrs. Plympton’s garden on

Leyden Street, running down to Town Brook, saw an abundance of pears,

gathered excellent June-eating apples, saw a large lilac about eight

inches diameter. Methinks a soil may improve when at length it has

shaded itself with vegetation.

William S. Russell, the registrar at the court-house, showed the oldest

town records, for all are preserved. On first page a plan of Leyden

Street dated December, 1620, with names of settlers. They have a great

many folios. The writing plain. Saw the charter granted by the Plymouth

Company to the Pilgrims, signed by Warwick, dated 1629, and the box in

which it was brought over, with the seal.

[Illustrations]

Pilgrim Hall. They used to crack off pieces of the Forefathers’ Rock

for visitors with a cold chisel, till the town forbade it. The stone

remaining at wharf is about seven feet square. Saw two old armchairs

that came over in the Mayflower, the large picture by Sargent,

Standish’s sword, gun-barrel with which Philip was killed, mug and

pocket-book of Clark the mate, iron pot of Standish, old pipe-tongs.

Indian relics: a flayer; a pot or mortar of a kind of fire-proof stone,

very hard, only seven or eight inches long. A commission from Cromwell

to Winslow (?), his signature torn off. They talk of a monument on the

Rock. The Burying Hill 165 feet high. Manomet 394 feet high by State

map. Saw more pears at Washburn’s garden. No graves of Pilgrims.

Seaweed generally used along shore. Saw the _Prinos glabra_, ink-berry,

at Billington Sea. Sandy plain with oaks of various kinds cut in less

than twenty years. No communication with Sandwich. Plymouth end of

world; fifty miles thither by railroad. Old Colony road poor property.

Nothing saves Plymouth but the Rock. Fern-leaved beach.

Saw the king crab (_Limulus polyphemus_), horseshoe and saucepan

fish, at the Island, covered with sea-green and buried in the sand for

concealment.

In Plymouth the _Convolvulus arvensis_, small bindweed.

VII

AUGUST, 1851

(ÆT. 34)

Left [Plymouth] at 9 A. M., August 1st. After Kingston came Plympton,

Halifax, and Hanson, all level with frequent cedar swamps, especially

the last,—also in Weymouth.

Desor and Cabot think the jellyfish _Oceania tubulosa_ are buds from

a polyp of genus _Syncoryne_. Desor, accounting for suspended moisture

or fogs over sandbanks (or shoals), says, the heat being abstracted by

radiation, the moisture is condensed in form of fog.

Lieutenant Walsh lost his lead and wire when 34,200 [feet], or more

than six statute miles, had run out perpendicularly.

* * * * *

I could make a list of things ill-managed. We Yankees do not deserve

our fame. _Viz._ [_sic_]:—

I went to a menagerie the other day, advertised by a flaming show-bill

as big as a barn-door. The proprietors had taken wonderful pains to

collect rare and interesting animals from all parts of the world,

and then placed by them a few stupid and ignorant fellows, coachmen

or stablers, who knew little or nothing about the animals and were

unwilling even to communicate the little they knew. You catch a rare

creature, interesting to all mankind, and then place the first biped

that comes along, with but a grain more reason in him, to exhibit and

describe the former. At the expense of millions, this rare quadruped

from the sun [_sic_] is obtained, and then Jack Halyard or Tom

Coach-whip is hired to explain it. Why all this pains taken to catch

in Africa, and no pains taken to exhibit in America? Not a cage was

labelled. There was nobody to tell us how or where the animals were

caught, or what they were. Probably the proprietors themselves do

not know,—or what their habits are. They told me that a hyena came

from South America. But hardly had we been ushered into the presence

of this choice, this admirable collection, than a ring was formed

for Master Jack and the pony! Were they _animals_, then, who had

caught and exhibited these, and who had come to see these? Would it

not be worth the while to learn something? to have some information

imparted? The absurdity of importing the behemoth, and then, instead

of somebody appearing [to] tell which it is, to have to _while away

the time_,—though your curiosity is growing desperate to learn one

fact about the creature,—to have Jack and the pony introduced!!! Why,

I expected to see some descendant of Cuvier there, to improve this

opportunity for a lecture on natural history!

That is what they should do,—make this an occasion for communicating

some solid information. That would be fun alive! that would be a sunny

day, a sun day, in one’s existence, not a secular day of Shetland

ponies. Not Jack and his pony and a tintamarre of musical instruments,

and a man with his head in the lion’s mouth. First let him prove

that he has got a head on his shoulders. I go not there to see a man

hug a lion or fondle a tiger, but to learn how he is related to the

wild beast. There’ll be All-Fools’ days enough without our creating

any intentionally. The presumption is that men wish to behave like

reasonable creatures; that they do not need, and are not seeking,

relaxation; that they are not dissipated. Let it be a travelling

zoölogical garden, with a travelling professor to accompany it. At

present, foolishly, the professor goes alone with his poor painted

illustrations of animals, while the menagerie takes another road,

without its professor,—only its keepers, stupid coachmen.

I. M. June [?] & Co., or Van Amburgh & Co., are engaged in a pecuniary

speculation in which certain wild beasts are used as the counters.

Cuvier & Co. are engaged in giving a course of lectures on Natural

History. Now why could they not put head and means together for the

benefit of mankind, and still get their living? The present institution

is imperfect precisely because its object is to enrich Van Amburgh

& Co., and their low aim unfits them for rendering any more valuable

service; but no doubt the most valuable course would also be the most

valuable in a pecuniary sense. No doubt a low self-interest is a better

motive force to these enterprises than no interest at all; but a high

self-interest, which consists with the greatest advantage of all, would

be a better still.

Item 2nd: Why have we not a decent pocket-map of the State of

Massachusetts? There is the large map. Why is it not cut into half a

dozen sheets and folded into a small cover for the pocket? Are there no

travellers to use it? Well, to tell the truth, there are but few, and

that’s the reason why. Men go by railroad, and State maps hanging in

bar-rooms are small enough. The State has been admirably surveyed at a

great cost, and yet Dearborn’s Pocket-Map is the best one we have!

_Aug. 4._ Now the hardhack and meadow-sweet reign, the former one

of our handsomest flowers, I think. The mayweed, too, dusty by the

roadside, and in the fields I scent the sweet-scented life-everlasting,

which is half expanded. The grass is withered by the drought. The

potatoes begin generally to flat down. The corn is tasselled out; its

crosses show in all fields above the blades. The turnips are growing in

its midst.

As my eye rested on the blossom of the meadowsweet in a hedge, I heard

the note of an autumnal cricket, and was penetrated with the sense

of autumn. Was it sound? or was it form? or was it scent? or was it

flavor? It is now the royal month of August. When I hear this sound,

I am as dry as the rye which is everywhere cut and housed, though I am

drunk with the season’s wine.

The farmer is the most inoffensive of men, with his barns and cattle

and poultry and grain and grass. I like the smell of his hay well

enough, though as grass it may be in my way.

The yellow Bethlehem-star still, and the yellow gerardia, and a bluish

“savory-leaved aster.”

_Aug. 5._ 7.30 P. M.—Moon half full. I sit beside Hubbard’s Grove. A

few level red bars above the horizon; a dark, irregular bank beneath

them, with a streak of red sky below, on the horizon’s edge. This

will describe many a sunset. It is 8 o’clock. The farmer has driven

in his cows, and is cutting an armful of green corn fodder for them.

Another is still patching the roof of his barn, making his hammer heard

afar in the twilight, as if he took a satisfaction in his elevated

work,—sitting astride the ridge,—which he wished to prolong. The robin

utters a sort of cackling note, as if he had learned the ways of man.

The air is still. I hear the voices of loud-talking boys in the early

twilight, it must be a mile off. The swallows go over with a watery

twittering.

When the moon is on the increase and half full, it is already in

mid-heavens at sunset, so that there is no marked twilight intervening.

I hear the whip-poor-will at a distance, but they are few of late.

It is almost dark. I hear the voices of berry-pickers coming homeward

from Bear Garden. Why do they go home, as it were defeated by the

approaching night? Did it never occur to them to stay overnight? The

wind now rising from over Bear Garden Hill falls gently on my ear and

delivers its message, the same that I have so often heard passing over

bare and stony mountain-tops, so uncontaminated and untamed is the

wind. The air that has swept over Caucasus and the sands of Arabia

comes to breathe on New England fields. The dogs bark; they are not

as much stiller as man. They are on the alert, suspecting the approach

of foes. The darkness perchance affects them, makes them mad and wild.

The mosquitoes hum about me. I distinguish the modest moonlight on my

paper.

As the twilight deepens and the moonlight is more and more bright, I

begin to distinguish myself, who I am and where; as my walls contract,

I become more collected and composed, and sensible of my own existence,

as when a lamp is brought into a dark apartment and I see who the

company are. With the coolness and the mild silvery light, I recover

some sanity, my thoughts are more distinct, moderated, and tempered.

Reflection is more possible while the day goes by. The intense light

of the sun unfits me for meditation, makes me wander in my thought;

my life is too diffuse and dissipated; routine succeeds and prevails

over us; the trivial has greater power then, and most at noonday, the

most trivial hour of the twenty-four. I am sobered by the moonlight.

I bethink myself. It is like a cup of cold water to a thirsty man. The

moonlight is more favorable to meditation than sunlight.

The sun lights this world from without, shines in at a window, but the

moon is like a lamp within an apartment. It shines for us. The stars

themselves make a more visible, and hence a nearer and more domestic,

roof at night. Nature broods us, and has not left our germs of thought

to be hatched by the sun. We feel her heat and see her body darkening

over us. Our thoughts are not dissipated, but come back to us like an

echo.

The different kinds of moonlight are infinite. This is not a night for

contrasts of light and shade, but a faint diffused light in which there

is light enough to travel, and that is all.

A road (the Corner road) that passes over the height of land between

earth and heaven, separating those streams which flow earthward from

those which flow heavenward.

Ah, what a poor, dry compilation is the “Annual of Scientific

Discovery!” I trust that observations are made during the year which

are not chronicled there,—that some mortal may have caught a glimpse of

Nature in some corner of the earth during the year 1851. One sentence

of perennial poetry would make me forget, would atone for, volumes of

mere science. The astronomer is as blind to the significant phenomena,

or the significance of phenomena, as the wood-sawyer who wears glasses

to defend his eyes from sawdust. The question is not what you look at,

but what you see.

I hear now from Bear Garden Hill—I rarely walk by moonlight without

hearing—the sound of a flute, or a horn, or a human voice. It is a

performer I never see by day; should not recognize him if pointed

out; but you may hear his performance in every horizon. He plays but

one strain and goes to bed early, but I know by the character of that

single strain that he is deeply dissatisfied with the manner in which

he spends his day. He is a slave who is purchasing his freedom. He is

Apollo watching the flocks of Admetus on every hill, and this strain

he plays every evening to remind him of his heavenly descent. It is all

that saves him,—his one redeeming trait. It is a reminiscence; he loves

to remember his youth. He is sprung of a noble family. He is highly

related, I have no doubt; was tenderly nurtured in his infancy, poor

hind as he is. That noble strain he utters, instead of any jewel on his

finger, or precious locket fastened to his breast, or purple garments

that came with him. The elements recognize him, and echo his strain.

All the dogs know him their master, though lords and ladies, rich men

and learned, know him not. He is the son of a rich man, of a famous

man who served his country well. He has heard his sire’s stories. I

thought of the time when he would discover his parentage, obtain his

inheritance and sing a strain suited to the morning hour. He cherishes

hopes. I never see the man by day who plays that clarionet.

The distant lamps in the farmhouse look like fires. The trees and

clouds are seen at a distance reflected in the river as by day. I see

Fair Haven Pond from the Cliffs, as it were through a slight mist.

It is the wildest scenery imaginable,—a Lake of the Woods. I just

remembered the wildness of St. Anne’s. That’s the Ultima Thule of

wildness to me.

What an entertainment for the traveller, this incessant motion

apparently of the moon traversing the clouds! Whether you sit or stand,

it is always preparing new developments for you. It is event enough

for simple minds. You all alone, the moon all alone, overcoming with

incessant victory whole squadrons of clouds above the forests and the

lakes and rivers and the mountains. You cannot always calculate which

one the moon will undertake next.[276]

I see a solitary firefly over the woods.

The moon wading through clouds; though she is eclipsed by this one,

I see her shining on a more distant but lower one. The entrance into

Hubbard’s Wood above the spring, coming from the hill, is like the

entrance to a cave; but when you are within, there are some streaks of

light on the edge of the path.

All these leaves so still, none whispering, no birds in motion,—how can

I be else than still and thoughtful?

_Aug. 6._ The motions of circus horses are not so expressive of music,

do not harmonize so well with a strain of music, as those of animals

of the cat kind. An Italian has just carried a hand-organ through

the village. I hear it even at Walden Wood. It is as if a cheeta had

skulked, howling, through the streets of the village, with knotted

tail, and left its perfume there.

Neglected gardens are full of fleabane (?) now, not yet in blossom.

Thoroughwort has opened, and goldenrod is gradually opening. The smooth

sumach shows its red fruit. The berries of the bristly aralia are

turning dark. The wild holly’s scarlet fruit is seen and the red cherry

(_Cerasus_). After how few steps, how little exertion, the student

stands in pine woods above the Solomon’s-seal and the cow-wheat,

in a place still unaccountably strange and wild to him, and to all

civilization! This so easy and so common, though our literature implies

that it is rare! We in the country make no report of the seals and

sharks in our neighborhood to those in the city. We send them only our

huckleberries, not free wild thoughts.

Why does not man sleep all day as well as all night, it seems so very

natural and easy? For what is he awake?

A man must generally get away some hundreds or thousands of miles

from home before he can be said to begin his travels. Why not

begin his travels at home? Would he have to go far or look very

closely to discover novelties? The traveller who, in this sense,

pursues his travels at home, has the advantage at any rate of a

long residence in the country to make his observations correct and

profitable. Now the American goes to England, while the Englishman

comes to America, in order to describe the country. No doubt there

[are] some advantages in this kind of mutual criticism. But might

there not be invented a better way of coming at the truth than this

scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours method? Would not the American,

for instance, who had himself, perchance, travelled in England and

elsewhere make the most profitable and accurate traveller in his

own country? How often it happens that the traveller’s principal

distinction is that he is one who knows less about a country than a

native! Now if he should begin with all the knowledge of a native, and

add thereto the knowledge of a traveller, both natives and foreigners

would be obliged to read his book; and the world would be absolutely

benefited. It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in

his native village; to make any progress between his door and his gate.

But such a traveller will make the distances which Hanno and Marco

Polo and Cook and Ledyard went over ridiculous. So worthy a traveller

as William Bartram heads his first chapter with the words, “The author

sets sail from Philadelphia, and arrives at Charleston, from whence he

begins his travels.”

I am, perchance, most and most profitably interested in the things

which I already know a little about; a mere and utter novelty is a mere

monstrosity to me. I am interested to see the yellow pine, which we

have not in Concord, though Michaux says it grows in Massachusetts; or

the Oriental plane, having often heard of it and being well acquainted

with its sister, the Occidental plane; or the English oak, having heard

of the royal oak and having oaks ourselves; but the new Chinese flower,

whose cousin I do not happen to know, I pass by with indifference. I do

not know that I am very fond of novelty. I wish to get a clearer notion

of what I have already some inkling.

These Italian boys with their hand-organs remind me of the keepers of

wild beasts in menageries, whose whole art consists in stirring up

their beasts from time to time with a pole. I am reminded of bright

flowers and glancing birds and striped pards of the jungle; these

delicious harmonies tear me to pieces while they charm me. The tiger’s

musical smile.

How some inventions have spread! Some, brought to perfection by the

most enlightened nations, have been surely and rapidly communicated to

the most savage. The gun, for instance. How soon after the settlement

of America were comparatively remote Indian tribes, most of whose

members had never seen a white man, supplied with guns! The gun is

invented by the civilized man, and the savage in remote wildernesses on

the other side of the globe throws away his bow and arrows and takes up

this arm. Bartram, travelling in the Southern States between 1770 and

1780, describes the warriors as so many gun-men.

Ah, yes, even here in Concord horizon Apollo is at work for King

Admetus! Who is King Admetus? It is Business, with his four prime

ministers Trade and Commerce and Manufactures and Agriculture. And this

is what makes mythology true and interesting to us.

_Aug. 8._ 7.30 P. M.—To Conantum.