And now we leave the road and go through the woods and swamps toward

Boon’s Pond, crossing two or three roads and by Potter’s house in Stow;

still on east of river. The fruit of the _Pyrola rotundifolia_ in the

damp woods. Larch trees in Stow about the houses. Beyond Potter’s we

struck into the extensive wooded plain where the ponds are found in

Stow, Sudbury, and Marlborough. Part of it called Boon’s Plain.[348]

Boon said to have lived on or under Bailey’s Hill at west of pond.

Killed by Indians between Boon[’s Pond] and White’s Pond as he was

driving his ox-cart. The oxen ran off to Marlborough garrison-house.

His remains have been searched for. A sandy plain, a large level tract.

The pond shores handsome enough, but water shallow and muddy looking.

Well-wooded shores. The maples begin to show red about it. Much fished.

Saw a load of sunflowers in a farmers [_sic_]. Such is the destiny of

this large, coarse flower; the farmers gather it like pumpkins.

Returned by railroad down the Assabet. A potato-field yellow with

wild radish. But no good place to bathe for three miles, Knight’s

new dam has so raised the river. A permanent freshet, as it were, the

fluviatile trees standing dead for fish hawk perches, and the water

stagnant for weeds to grow in. You have only to dam up a running stream

to give it the aspect of a dead stream, and to some degree restore its

primitive wild appearance. Tracts made inaccessible to man and at the

same time more fertile. Some speculator comes and dams up the stream

below, and lo! the water stands over all meadows, making impassable

morasses and dead trees for fish hawks,—a wild, stagnant, fenny

country, the last gasp of wildness before it yields to the civilization

of the factory,—to cheer the eyes of the factory people and educate

them. It makes a little wilderness above the factories.

The woodbine now begins to hang red about the maples and other trees.

As I looked back up the stream from near the bridge (I suppose on the

road from Potter’s house to Stow), I on the railroad, I saw the ripples

sparkling in the sun, reminding me of the sparkling icy fleets which

I saw last winter; and I saw how one corresponded to the other, ice

waves to water ones; the erect ice-flakes were the waves stereotyped.

It was the same sight, the reflection of the sun sparkling from a

myriad slanting surfaces at a distance, a rippled water surface or a

crystallized frozen one.

[Illustration]

Here crossed the river and climbed the high hills on the west side.

The walnut trees conformed in their branches to the slope of the hill,

being just as high from the ground on the upper side as on the lower.

On all sides now I see and smell the withering leaves of brush that has

been cut to clear the land. I see some blackened tracts which have been

burnt over. It is remarkable, for it is rare to see the surface of the

earth black. And in the horizon I can see the smokes of several fires.

The farmers improve this season, which is the driest, their haying

being done and their harvest not begun, to do these jobs,—burn brush,

build walls, dig ditches, cut turf. This is what I find them doing all

over the country now; also topping corn and digging potatoes.

Saw quite a flock, for the first time, of goldfinches.

On the high, round hills in the east and southeast of Stow,—perchance

they are called the Assabet Hills,—rising directly from the river. They

are the highest I know rising thus. The rounded hills of Stow. A hill

and valley country. Very different from Concord.

It had been a warm day, especially warm to the head. I do not perspire

as in the early summer, but am sensible of the ripening heat, more as

if by contact. Suddenly the wind changed to east, and the atmosphere

grew more and more hazy and thick on that side, obstructing the view,

while it was yet clear in the west. I thought it was the result of the

cooler air from over the sea meeting and condensing the vapor in the

warm air of the land. That was the haze, or thin, dry fog which some

call smoke. It gradually moved westward and affected the prospect on

that side somewhat. It was a very thin fog invading all the east. I

felt the cool air from the ocean, and it was very refreshing. I opened

my bosom and my mouth to inhale it. Very delicious and invigorating.

We sat on the top of those hills looking down on the new brick

ice-house. Where there are several hills near together, you cannot

determine at once which is the highest, whether the one you are on or

the next. So, when great men are assembled, each yields an uncertain

respect to the other, as if it were not certain whose crown rose

highest.

Under the nut trees on these hills, the grass is short and green as if

grazed close by cattle who had stood there for shade, making a distinct

circular yard. Yet, as there is no dung and the form corresponds so

closely to the tree, I doubt if that can be the cause.

On hillside north of river above powder-mills the _Pycnanthemum

incanum_ (mountain mint, calamint) and the _Lespedeza violacea_.

Saw what I thought a small red dog in the road, which cantered along

over the bridge this side the powder-mills and then turned into the

woods. This decided me—this turning into the woods—that it was a fox.

The dog of the woods, the dog that is more at home in the woods than in

the roads and fields. I do not often see a dog turning into the woods.

Some large white (?) oak acorns this side the last-named bridge. A

few oaks stand in the pastures still, great ornaments. I do not see

any young ones springing up to supply their places. Will there be any

a hundred years hence? These are the remnants of the primitive wood,

methinks. We are a young people and have not learned by experience the

consequence of cutting off the forest. One day they will be planted,

methinks, and nature reinstated to some extent.

I love to see the yellow knots and their lengthened stain on the dry,

unpainted pitch[?]-pine boards on barns and other buildings,—the Dugan

house, for instance. The indestructible yellow fat! it fats my eyes to

see it; worthy for art to imitate, telling of branches in the forest

once.

_Sept 5._ No doubt, like plants, we are fed through the atmosphere,

and the varying atmospheres of various seasons of the year feed us

variously. How often we are sensible of being thus fed and invigorated!

And all nature contributes to this aerial diet its food of finest

quality. Methinks that in the fragrance of the fruits I get a finer

flavor, and in beauty (which is appreciated by sight—the taste and

smell of the eye) a finer still. As Wilkinson says, “the physical man

himself is the builded aroma of the world. This then, at least, is the

office of the lungs—to drink the atmosphere with the planet dissolved

in it.” “What is the import of _change of air_, and how each pair of

lungs has a _native air_ under some one dome of the sky.”

Wilkinson’s book to some extent realizes what I have dreamed of,—a

return to the primitive analogical and derivative senses of words.

His ability to trace analogies often leads him to a truer word than

more remarkable writers have found; as when, in his chapter on the

human skin, he describes the papillary cutis as “an encampment of

small conical tents coextensive with the surface of the body.” The

faith he puts in old and current expressions as having sprung from an

instinct wiser than science, and safely to be trusted if they can be

interpreted. The man of science discovers no world for the mind of man

with all its faculties to inhabit. Wilkinson finds a _home_ for the

imagination, and it is no longer outcast and homeless. All perception

of truth is the detection of an analogy; we reason from our hands to

our head.

It is remarkable that Kalm says in 1748 (being in Philadelphia): “Coals

have not yet been found in Pennsylvania; but people pretend to have

seen them higher up in the country among the natives. Many people

however agree that they are met with in great quantity more to the

north, near Cape Breton.”

* * * * *

As we grow old we live more coarsely, we relax a little in our

disciplines, and, to some extent, cease to obey our finest instincts.

We are more careless about our diet and our chastity. But we should be

fastidious to the extreme of sanity.[349] All wisdom is the reward of

a discipline, conscious or unconscious.

By moonlight at Potter’s Field toward Bear Garden Hill, 8 P. M. The

whip-poor-wills sing.

Cultivate reverence. It is as if you were so much more respectable

yourself. By the quality of a man’s writing, by the elevation of its

tone, you may measure his self-respect. How shall a man continue his

culture after manhood?

Moonlight on Fair Haven Pond seen from the Cliffs. A sheeny lake in

the midst of a boundless forest, the windy surf sounding freshly and

wildly in the single pine behind you; the silence of hushed wolves in

the wilderness, and, as you fancy, moose looking off from the shore

of the lake. The stars of poetry and history and unexplored nature

looking down on the scene. This is my world now, with a dull whitish

mark curving northward through the forest marking the outlet to the

lake. Fair Haven by moonlight lies there like a lake in the Maine

wilderness in the midst of a primitive forest untrodden by man. This

light and this hour take the civilization all out of the landscape.

Even in villages dogs bay the moon; in forests like this we listen to

hear wolves howl to Cynthia.

Even at this hour in the evening the crickets chirp, the small birds

peep, the wind roars in the wood, as if it were just before dawn. The

moonlight seems to linger as if it were giving way to the light of

coming day.

The landscape seen from the slightest elevation by moonlight is seen

remotely, and flattened, as it were, into mere light and shade, open

field and forest, like the surface of the earth seen from the top of a

mountain.

How much excited we are, how much recruited, by a great many particular

fragrances! A field of ripening corn, now at night, that has been

topped, with the stalks stacked up to dry,—an inexpressibly dry,

rich, sweet, ripening scent.[350] I feel as if I were an ear of

ripening corn myself. Is not the whole air then a compound of such

odors undistinguishable? Drying corn-stalks in a field; what an

herb-garden![351]

_Sept. 6._ The other afternoon I met Sam H—— walking on the railroad

between the depot and the back road. It was something quite novel to

see him there, though the railroad there is only a short thoroughfare

to the public road. It then occurred to me that I had never met Mr.

H. on the railroad, though he walks every day, and moreover that it

would be quite impossible for him to walk on the railroad, such a

formalist as he is, such strait-jackets we weave for ourselves. He

could do nothing that was not sanctioned by the longest use of men,

and as men had voted in all their assemblies from the first to travel

on the public way, he would confine himself to that. It would no doubt

seem to him very improper, not to say undignified, to walk on the

railroad; and then, is it not forbidden by the railroad corporations?

I was sure he could not keep the railroad, but was merely using the

thoroughfare here which a thousand pioneers had prepared for him. I

stood to see what he would do. He turned off the rails directly on to

the back road and pursued his walk. A passing train will never meet him

on the railroad causeway. How much of the life of certain men _goes_ to

sustain, to make respected, the institutions of society. They are the

ones who pay the heaviest tax. Here are certain valuable institutions

which can only be sustained by a wonderful strain which appears all to

come upon certain Spartans who volunteer. Certain men are always to be

found—especially the children of our present institutions—who are born

with an instinct to perceive them. They are, in effect, supported by

a fund which society possesses for that end, or they receive a pension

and their life _seems_ to be a sinecure,—but it is not. The unwritten

laws are the most stringent. They are required to wear a certain

dress. What an array of gentlemen whose sole employment—and it is no

sinecure—is to support their dignity, and with it the dignity of so

many indispensable institutions!

The use of many vegetables—wild plants—for food, which botanists

relate, such as Kalm at Cap aux Oyes on the St. Lawrence, _viz._ the

sea plantain, sea-rocket, sweet-gale, etc., etc., making us feel the

poorer at first because we never use them, really advertises us of our

superior riches, and shows to what extremities men have been driven in

times of scarcity. No people that fare as well as we will grub these

weeds out of the seashore.

* * * * *

2 P. M.—To Hapgood’s in Acton direct, returning _via_ Strawberry Hill

and Smith’s Road.

The ripening grapes begin to fill the air with their fragrance. The

vervain will hardly do for a clock, for I perceive that some later

and smaller specimens have not much more than begun to blossom, while

most have done. Saw a tall pear tree by the roadside beyond Harris’s

in front of Hapgood’s. Saw the lambkill (_Kalmia angustifolia_) in

blossom—a few fresh blossoms at _the ends_ of the fresh twigs—on

Strawberry Hill, beautiful bright flowers. Apparently a new spring with

it, while seed vessels, apparently of this year, hung dry below.

From Strawberry Hill the first, but a very slight, glimpse of Nagog

Pond by standing up on the wall. That is enough to relate of a hill,

methinks, that its elevation gives you the first sight of some distant

lake. The horizon is remarkably blue with mist this afternoon. Looking

from this hill over Acton, successive valleys filled with blue mist

appear, and divided by darker lines of wooded hills. The shadows of the

elms are deepened, as if the whole atmosphere were permeated by floods

of ether. Annursnack never looked so well as now seen from this hill.

The ether gives a velvet softness to the whole landscape. The hills

float in it. A blue veil is drawn over the earth.

The elecampane (_Inula Helenium_), with its broad leaves wrinkled

underneath and the remains of sunflower-like blossoms, in front of

Nathan Brooks’s, Acton, and near J. H. Wheeler’s. _Prenanthes alba_;

this Gray calls _Nabalus albus_, white lettuce or rattlesnake-root.

Also I _seem_ (?) to have found _Nabalus Fraseri_, or lion’s-foot.

Every morning for a week there has been a fog which all disappeared by

seven or eight o’clock.

A large field of sunflowers for hens now in full bloom at Temple’s,

surrounding the house, and now, at 6 o’clock P. M., facing the east.

The larches in the front yards, both Scotch and American, have turned

red. Their fall has come.

_Sept. 7._ We sometimes experience a mere fullness of life, which

does not find any channels to flow into. We are stimulated, but to

no obvious purpose. I feel myself uncommonly prepared for _some_

literary work, but I can select no work. I am prepared not so much for

contemplation, as for forceful expression. I am braced both physically

and intellectually. It is not so much the music as the marching to

the music that I feel. I feel that the juices of the fruits which I

have eaten, the melons and apples, have ascended to my brain and are

stimulating it. They give me a heady force. Now I can write nervously.

Carlyle’s writing is for the most part of this character.

Miss Martineau’s last book is not so bad as the timidity which fears

its influence. As if the popularity of this or that book would be so

fatal, and man would not still be man in the world. Nothing is so much

to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God

himself.[352]

What shall we say of these timid folk who carry the principle of

thinking nothing and doing nothing and being nothing to such an

extreme? As if, in the absence of thought, that vast yearning of their

natures for something to fill the vacuum made the least traditionary

expression and shadow of a thought to be clung to with instinctive

tenacity. They atone for their producing nothing by a brutish respect

for something. They are as simple as oxen, and as guiltless of thought

and reflection. Their reflections are reflected from other minds. The

creature of institutions, bigoted and a conservatist, can say nothing

hearty. He cannot meet life with life, but only with words. He rebuts

you by avoiding you. He is shocked like a woman.

Our ecstatic states, which appear to yield so little fruit, have this

value at least: though in the seasons when our genius reigns we may be

powerless for expression, yet, in calmer seasons, when our talent is

active, the memory of those rarer moods comes to color our picture and

is the permanent paint-pot, as it were, into which we dip our brush.

Thus no life or experience goes unreported at last; but if it be not

solid gold it is gold-leaf, which gilds the furniture of the mind.

It is an experience of infinite beauty on which we unfailingly draw,

which enables us to exaggerate ever truly. Our moments of inspiration

are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for

those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever

and anon reminded of them. Their truth subsides, and in cooler moments

we can use them as paint to gild and adorn our prose. When I despair

to sing them, I will remember that they will furnish me with paint

with which to adorn and preserve the works of talent one day. They are

like a pot of pure ether. They lend the writer when the moment comes

a certain superfluity of wealth, making his expression to overrun and

float itself. It is the difference between our river, now parched and

dried up, exposing its unsightly and weedy bottom, and the same when,

in the spring, it covers all the meads with a chain of placid lakes,

reflecting the forests and the skies.

We are receiving our portion of the infinite. The art of life! Was

there ever anything memorable written upon it? By what disciplines

to secure the most life, with what care to watch our thoughts. To

observe what transpires, not in the street, but in the mind and heart

of me! I do not remember any page which will tell me how to spend this

afternoon. I do not so much wish to know how to economize time as how

to spend it, by what means to grow rich, that the day may not have been

in vain.

What if one moon has come and gone with its world of poetry, its weird

teachings, its oracular suggestions? So divine a creature, freighted

with hints for me, and I not use her! One moon gone by unnoticed!!

Suppose you attend to the hints, to the suggestions, which the moon

makes for one month,—commonly in vain,—will they not be very different

from anything in literature or religion or philosophy?[353]

The scenery, when it is truly seen, reacts on the life of the seer.

How to live. How to get the most life. As if you were to teach the

young hunter how to entrap his game. How to extract its honey from the

flower of the world. That is my every-day business. I am as busy as a

bee about it. I ramble over all fields on that errand, and am never

so happy as when I feel myself heavy with honey and wax. I am like

a bee searching the livelong day for the sweets of nature. Do I not

impregnate and intermix the flowers, produce rare and finer varieties

by transferring my eyes from one to another? I do as naturally and as

joyfully, with my own humming music, seek honey all the day. With what

honeyed thought any experience yields me I take a bee line to my cell.

It is with flowers I would deal. Where is the flower, there is the

honey,—which is perchance the nectareous portion of the fruit,—there

is to be the fruit, and no doubt flowers are thus colored and painted

to attract and guide the bee. So by the dawning or radiance of beauty

are we advertised where is the honey and the fruit of thought, of

discourse, and of action. We are first attracted by the beauty of the

flower, before we discover the honey which is a foretaste of the future

fruit. Did not the young Achilles (?) spend his youth learning how

to hunt? The art of spending a day. If it is possible that we may be

addressed, it behooves us to be attentive. If by watching all day and

all night I may detect some trace of the Ineffable, then will it not

be worth the while to watch? Watch and pray without ceasing, but not

necessarily in sadness. Be of good cheer. Those Jews were too sad: to

another people a still deeper revelation may suggest only joy. Don’t I

know what gladness is? Is it but the reflex of sadness, its back side?

In the Hebrew gladness, I hear but too distinctly still the sound of

sadness retreating. Give me a gladness which has never given place to

sadness.

I am convinced that men are not well employed, that this is not the

way to spend a day. If by patience, if by watching, I can secure one

new ray of light, can feel myself elevated for an instant upon Pisgah,

the world which was dead prose to me become living and divine, shall I

not watch ever? shall I not be a watchman henceforth? If by watching

a whole year on the city’s walls I may obtain a communication from

heaven, shall I not do well to shut up my shop and turn a watchman?

Can a youth, a man, do more wisely than to go where his life is to [be]

found? As if I had suffered that to be rumor which may be verified. We

are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery. May we not probe it, pry

into it, employ ourselves about it, a little? To devote your life to

the discovery of the divinity in nature or to the eating of oysters,

would they not be attended with very different results?

I cannot _easily_ buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are all

ruled for dollars and cents.[354]

If the wine, the water, which will nourish me grows on the surface of

the moon, I will do the best I can to go to the moon for it.

The discoveries which we make abroad are special and particular; those

which we make at home are general and significant. The further off, the

nearer the surface. The nearer home, the deeper. Go in search of the

springs of life, and you will get exercise enough. Think of a man’s

swinging dumb-bells for his health, when those springs are bubbling

in far-off pastures unsought by him! The seeming necessity of swinging

dumb-bells proves that he has lost his way.[355]

To watch for, describe, all the divine features which I detect in

Nature.

My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to

know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas, in

nature.

The mind may perchance be persuaded to act, to energize, by the action

and energy of the body. Any kind of liquid will fetch the pump.

We all have our states of fullness and of emptiness, but we overflow

at different points. One overflows through the sensual outlets, another

through his heart, another through his head, and another perchance only

through the higher part of his head, or his poetic faculty. It depends

on where each is tight and open. We can, perchance, then direct our

nutriment to those organs we specially use.

How happens it that there are few men so well employed,—so much to

their mind,—but that a little money or fame would buy them off from

their present pursuits?

To Conantum _via_ fields, Hubbard’s Grove, and grain-field, to Tupelo

Cliff and Conantum and returning over peak same way. 6 P. M.

I hear no larks sing at evening as in the spring, nor robins; only a

few distressed notes from the robin. In Hubbard’s grain-field beyond

the brook, now the sun is down. The air is very still. There is a fine

sound of crickets, not loud. The woods and single trees are heavier

masses in the landscape than in the spring. Night has more allies.

The heavy shadows of woods and trees are remarkable now. The meadows

are green with their second crop. I hear only a tree-toad or song

sparrow singing as in spring, at long intervals. The Roman wormwood is

beginning to yellow-green my shoes,—intermingled with the blue-curls

over the sand in this grain-field. Perchance some poet likened this

yellow dust to the ambrosia of the gods. The birds are remarkably

silent. At the bridge perceive the bats are out. And the yet silvery

moon, not quite full, is reflected in the water. The water is perfectly

still, and there is a red tinge from the evening sky in it.

The sky is singularly marked this evening. There are bars or rays of

nebulous light springing from the western horizon where the sun has

disappeared, and alternating with beautiful blue rays, more blue by

far than any other portion of the sky. These continue to diverge till

they have reached the middle, and then converge to the eastern horizon,

making a symmetrical figure like the divisions of a muskmelon, not very

bright, yet distinct, though growing less and less bright toward the

east. It was a quite remarkable phenomenon encompassing the heavens,

as if you were to behold the divisions of a muskmelon thus alternately

colored from within it. A proper vision, a colored mist. The most

beautiful thing in nature is the sun reflected from a tearful cloud.

These white and blue ribs embraced the earth. The two outer blues much

the brightest and matching one another.

You hear the hum of mosquitoes.

Going up the road. The sound of the crickets is now much more universal

and loud. Now in the fields I see the white streak of the neottia in

the twilight. The whip-poor-wills sing far off. I smell burnt land

somewhere. At Tupelo Cliff I hear the sound of singers on the river,

young men and women,—which is unusual here,—returning from their row.

Man’s voice, thus uttered, fits well the spaces. It fills nature. And,

after all, the singing of men is something far grander than any natural

sound. It is wonderful that men do not oftener sing in the fields,

by day and night. I bathe at the north side the Cliff, while the moon

shines round the end of the rock. The opposite Cliff is reflected in

the water. Then sit on the south side of the Cliff in the woods. One

or two fireflies. Could it be a glow-worm? I thought I saw one or two

in the air. That is all in this walk. I hear a whip-poor-will uttering

a cluck of suspicion in my rear. He is suspicious and inquisitive.

The river stretches off southward from me. I see the sheeny portions

of its western shore interruptedly for a quarter of a mile, where

the moonlight is reflected from the pads, a strong, gleaming light

while the water is lost in the obscurity. I hear the sound from time

to time of a leaping fish, or a frog, or a muskrat, or turtle. It is

even warmer, _methinks_, than it was in August, and it is perfectly

clear,—the air. I know not how it is that this universal crickets’

creak should sound thus regularly intermittent, as if for the most part

they fell in with one another and creaked in time, making a certain

pulsing sound, a sort of breathing or panting of all nature. You sit

twenty feet above the still river; see the sheeny pads, and the moon,

and some bare tree-tops in the distant horizon. Those bare tree-tops

add greatly to the wildness.

Lower down I see the moon in the water as bright as in the heavens;

only the water-bugs disturb its disk; and now I catch a faint glassy

glare from the whole river surface, which before was simply dark. This

is set in a frame of double darkness on the east, _i. e._ the reflected

shore of woods and hills and the reality, the shadow and the substance,

bipartite, answering to each.

I see the northern lights over my shoulder, to remind me of the

Esquimaux and that they are still my contemporaries on this globe,

that they too are taking their walks on another part of the planet,

in pursuit of seals, perchance.[356] The stars are dimly reflected in

the water. The path of water-bugs in the moon’s rays is like ripples

of light. It is only when you stand fronting the sun or moon that

you see their light reflected in the water. I hear no frogs these

nights,—bullfrogs or others,—as in the spring. It is not the season of

sound.

At Conantum end, just under the wall. From this point and at this

height I do not perceive any bright or yellowish light on Fair Haven,

but an oily and glass-like smoothness on its southwestern bay, through

a very slight mistiness. Two or three pines appear to stand in the

moonlit air on this side of the pond, while the enlightened portion of

the water is bounded by the heavy reflection of the wood on the east.

It was so soft and velvety a light as contained a thousand placid days

sweetly put to rest in the bosom of the water. So looked the North Twin

Lake in the Maine woods. It reminds me of placid lakes in the mid-noon

of Indian summer days, but yet more placid and civilized, suggesting

a higher cultivation, as the wild ever does, which æons of summer days

have gone to make. Like a summer day seen far away. All the effects of

sunlight, with a softer tone; and all this stillness of the water and

the air superadded, and the witchery of the hour. What gods are they

that require so fair a vase of gleaming water to their prospect in

the midst of the wild woods by night? Else why this beauty allotted to

night, a gem to sparkle in the zone of night? They are strange gods now

out; methinks their names are not in any mythology.[357] I can faintly

trace its zigzag border of sheeny pads even here. If such is then to

be seen in remotest wildernesses, does it not suggest its own nymphs

and wood gods to enjoy it? As when, at middle of the placid noon in

Indian-summer days, all the surface of a lake is as one cobweb gleaming

in the sun, which heaves gently to the passing zephyr. There was the

lake, its glassy surface just distinguishable, its sheeny shore of

pads, with a few pines bathed in light on its hither shore, just as in

the middle of a November day, except that this was the chaster light

of the moon, the cooler temperature of the night, and there were the

deep shades of night that fenced it round and imbosomed. It tells of a

far-away, long-passed civilization, of an antiquity superior to time,

unappreciable by time.

Is there such virtue in raking cranberries that those men’s industry

whom I now see on the meadow shall reprove my idleness? Can I not

go over those same meadows after them, and rake still more valuable

fruits? Can I not rake with my mind? Can I not rake a thought,

perchance, which shall be worth a bushel of cranberries?

A certain refinement and civilization in nature which increases with

the wildness. The civilization that consists with wildness, the light

that is in night. A smile as in a dream on the face of the sleeping

lake. There is light enough to show what we see, what _night_ has to

exhibit. Any more would obscure these objects. I am not advertised

of any deficiency of light.[358] The actual is fair as a vision

or a dream. If ever we have attained to any nobleness, even in our

imagination and intentions, that will surely ennoble the features of

nature for us, that will clothe them with beauty. Of course no jeweller

ever dealt with a gem so fair and suggestive as this actual lake, the

scene, it may be, of so much noble and poetic life, and not merely [to]

adorn some monarch’s crown.

It is remarkably still at this hour and season. No sound of bird or

beast for the most part. This has none of the reputed noxious qualities

of night.

On the peak. The faint sounds of birds, dreaming aloud in the night,

the fresh, cool air, and sound of the wind rushing over the rocks

remind me of the tops of mountains. That is, all the earth is but

the outside of the planet bordering on the hard-eyed sky. Equally

withdrawn and near to heaven is this pasture as the summit of the White

Mountains. All the earth’s surface like a mountain-top, for I see its

relation to heaven as simply, and am not imposed upon by a difference

of a few feet in elevation. In this faint, hoary light, all fields

are like a mossy rock and remote from the cultivated plains of day.

All is equally savage, equally solitary and cool-aired, and the slight

difference in elevation is felt to be unimportant. It is all one with

Caucasus, the slightest hill pasture.

The basswood had a singularly solid look and sharply defined, as by a

web or film, as if its leaves covered it like scales.

Scared up a whip-poor-will on the ground on the hill. Will not my

townsmen consider me a benefactor if I conquer some realms from the

night, if I can show them that there is some beauty awake while they

are asleep, if I add to the domains of poetry,[359] if I report to the

gazettes anything transpiring in our midst worthy of man’s attention?

I will say nothing now to the disparagement of Day, for he is not here

to defend himself.

The northern lights now, as I descend from the Conantum house, have

become a crescent of light crowned with short, shooting flames,—or the

shadows of flames, for sometimes they are dark as well as white. There

is scarcely any dew even in the low lands.

Now the fire in the north increases wonderfully, not shooting up so

much as creeping along, like a fire on the mountains of the north

seen afar in the night. The Hyperborean gods are burning brush, and

it spread, and all the hoes in heaven couldn’t stop it. It spread

from west to east over the crescent hill. Like a vast fiery worm it

lay across the northern sky, broken into many pieces; and each piece,

with rainbow colors skirting it, strove to advance itself toward the

east, worm-like, on its own annular muscles. It has spread into their

choicest wood-lots. Now it shoots up like a single solitary watch-fire

or burning bush, or where it ran up a pine tree like powder, and

still it continues to gleam here and there like a fat stump in the

burning, and is reflected in the water. And now I see the gods by great

exertions have got it under, and the stars have come out without fear,

in peace.

Though no birds sing, the crickets vibrate their shrill and stridulous

cymbals, especially on the alders of the causeway, those minstrels

especially engaged for Night’s quire.[360]

It takes some time to wear off the trivial impression which the day has

made, and thus the first hours of night are sometimes lost.

There were two hen-hawks soared and circled for our entertainment, when

we were in the woods on that Boon Plain the other day, crossing each

other’s orbits from time to time, alternating like the squirrels of the

morning, till, alarmed by our imitation of a hawk’s shrill cry, they

gradually inflated themselves, made themselves more aerial, and rose

higher and higher into the heavens, and were at length lost to sight;

yet all the while earnestly looking, scanning the surface of the earth

for a stray mouse or rabbit.[361]

_Sept. 8._ No fog this morning. Shall I not have words as fresh as

my thoughts? Shall I use any other man’s word? A genuine thought

or feeling can find expression for itself, if it have to invent

hieroglyphics. It has the universe for type-metal. It is for want of

original thought that one man’s style is like another’s.

* * * * *

Certainly the voice of no bird or beast can be compared with that of

man for true melody. All other sounds seem to be hushed, as if their

possessors were attending, when the voice of man is heard in melody.

The air gladly bears the burden. It is infinitely significant. Man only

sings in concert. The bird’s song is a mere interjectional shout of

joy; man’s a glorious expression of the foundations of his joy.

Do not the song of birds and the fireflies go with the grass? While

the grass is fresh, the earth is in its vigor. The greenness of the

grass is the best symptom or evidence of the earth’s youth or health.

Perhaps it will be found that when the grass ceases to be fresh and

green, or after June, the birds have ceased to sing, and that the

fireflies, too, no longer in _myriads_ sparkle in the meadows. Perhaps

a history of the year would be a history of the grass, or of a leaf,

regarding the grass-blades as leaves, for it is equally true that the

leaves soon lose their freshness and soundness, and become the prey

of insects and of drought. Plants commonly soon cease to grow for the

year, unless they may have a fall growth, which is a kind of second

spring. In the feelings of the man, too, the year is already past, and

he looks forward to the coming winter. His occasional rejuvenescence

and faith in the current time is like the aftermath, a scanty crop.

The enterprise which he has not already undertaken cannot be undertaken

this year. The period of youth is past. The year may be in its summer,

in its manhood, but it is no longer in the flower of its age. It is a

season of withering, of dust and heat, a season of small fruits and

trivial experiences. Summer thus answers to manhood. But there is

an aftermath in early autumn, and some spring flowers bloom again,

followed by an Indian summer of finer atmosphere and of a pensive

beauty. May my life be not destitute of its Indian summer, a season of

fine and clear, mild weather in which I may prolong my hunting before

the winter comes, when I may once more lie on the ground with faith, as

in spring, and even with more serene confidence. And then I will [wrap

the] drapery of summer about me and lie down to pleasant dreams. As one

year passes into another through the medium of winter, so does this our

life pass into another through the medium of death.

De Quincey and Dickens have not moderation enough. They never stutter;

they flow too readily.

The tree-primrose and the dwarf ditto and epilobium still. Locust is

heard. _Aster amplexicaulis_, beautiful blue, purplish blue (?), about

twenty-four rayed. _Utricularia vulgaris_, bladderwort. Dandelion and

houstonia.

_Sept. 9._ 2 A. M.—The moon not quite full. To Conantum _via_ road.

There is a low vapor in the meadows beyond the depot, dense and

white, though scarcely higher than a man’s head, concealing the stems

of the trees. I see that the oaks, which are so dark and distinctly

outlined, are illumined by the moon on the opposite side. This as

I go up the back road. A few thin, ineffectual clouds in the sky. I

come out thus into the moonlit night, where men are not, as if into a

scenery anciently deserted by men. The life of men is like a dream.

It is three thousand years since night has had possession. Go forth

and hear the crickets chirp at midnight. Hear if their dynasty is not

an ancient one and well founded. I feel the antiquity of the night.

She surely repossesses herself of her realms, as if her dynasty were

uninterrupted, or she had underlain the day. No sounds but the steady

creaking of crickets and the occasional crowing of cocks.

I go by the farmer’s houses and barns, standing there in the dim light

under the trees, as if they lay at an immense distance or under a veil.

The farmer and his oxen now all asleep. Not even a watch-dog awake. The

human slumbers. There is less of man in the world.

The fog in the lowlands on the Corner road is never still. It now

advances and envelops me as I stand to write these words, then clears

away, with ever noiseless step. It covers the meadows like a web. I

hear the clock strike three.

Now at the clayey bank. The light of Orion’s belt seems to show traces

of the blue day through which it came to us. The sky at least is

lighter on that side than in the west, even about the moon. Even by

night the sky is blue and not black, for we see through the veil of

night into the distant atmosphere of day. I see to the plains of the

sun, where the sunbeams are revelling. The cricket’s (?) song, on the

alders of the causeway, not quite so loud at this hour as at evening.

The moon is getting low. I hear a wagon cross one of the bridges

leading into the town. I see the moonlight at this hour on a different

side of objects. I smell the ripe apples many rods off beyond the

bridge. A sultry night; a thin coat is enough.

On the first top of Conantum. I hear the farmer harnessing his horse

and starting for the distant market, but no man harnesses himself, and

starts for worthier enterprises. One cock-crow tells the whole story of

the farmer’s life. The moon is now sinking into clouds in the horizon.

I see the glow-worms deep in the grass by the little brookside in midst

of Conantum. The moon shines dun and red. A solitary whip-poor-will

sings.

The clock strikes four. A few dogs bark. A few more wagons start for

market, their faint rattling heard in the distance. I hear my owl

without a name; the murmur of the slow-approaching freight-train, as

far off, perchance, as Waltham; and one early bird.

The round, red moon disappearing in the west. I detect a whiteness in

the east. Some dark, massive clouds have come over from the west within

the hour, as if attracted by the approaching sun, and have arranged

themselves raywise about the eastern portal, as if to bar his coming.

They have moved suddenly and almost unobservedly quite across the sky

(which before was clear) from west to east. No trumpet was heard which

marshalled and advanced these dark masses of the west’s forces thus

rapidly against the coming day. Column after column the mighty west

sent forth across the sky while men slept, but all in vain.

The eastern horizon is now grown dun-colored, showing where the

advanced guard of the night are already skirmishing with the vanguard

of the sun, a lurid light tingeing the atmosphere there, while a

dark-columned cloud hangs imminent over the broad portal, untouched by

the glare. Some bird flies over, making a noise like the barking of a

puppy.[362] It is yet so dark that I have dropped my pencil and cannot

find it.

The sound of the cars is like that of a rushing wind. They come

on slowly. I thought at first a morning wind was rising. And now

(perchance at half-past four) I hear the sound of some far-off

factory-bell arousing the operatives to their early labors. It sounds

very sweet here. It is very likely some factory which I have never

seen, in some valley which I have never visited; yet now I hear this,

which is its only matin bell, sweet and inspiring as if it summoned

holy men and maids to worship and not factory girls and men to resume

their trivial toil, as if it were the summons of some religious or even

poetic community. My first impression is that it is the matin bell of

some holy community who in a distant valley dwell, a band of spiritual

knights,—thus sounding far and wide, sweet and sonorous, in harmony

with their own morning thoughts. What else could I suppose fitting this

earth and hour? Some man of high resolve, devoted soul, has touched the

rope; and by its peals how many men and maids are waked from peaceful

slumbers to fragrant morning thoughts! Why should I fear to tell that

it is Knight’s factory-bell at Assabet? A few melodious peals and all

is still again.

The whip-poor-wills now begin to sing in earnest about half an hour

before sunrise, as if making haste to improve the short time that is

left them. As far as my observation goes, they sing for several hours

in the early part of the night, are silent commonly at midnight,—though

you may meet [them] then sitting on a rock or flitting silently

about,—then sing again just before sunrise. It grows more and more red

in the east—a fine-grained red under the overhanging cloud—and lighter

too, and the threatening clouds are falling off to southward of the

sun’s passage, shrunken and defeated, leaving his path comparatively

clear. The increased light shows more distinctly the river and the fog.

5 o’clock.—The light now reveals a thin film of vapor like a gossamer

veil cast over the lower hills beneath the Cliffs and stretching to the

river, thicker in the ravines, thinnest on the even slopes. The distant

meadows towards the north beyond Conant’s Grove, full of fog, appear

like a vast lake out of which rise Annursnack and Ponkawtasset like

rounded islands. Nawshawtuct is a low and wooded isle, scarcely seen

above the waves. The heavens are now clear again. The vapor, which was

confined to the river and meadows, now rises and creeps up the sides

of the hills. I see it in transparent columns advancing down the valley

of the river, ghost-like, from Fair Haven, and investing some wooded or

rocky promontory, before free. So ghosts are said to advance.

Annursnack is exactly like some round, steep, distant hill on the

opposite shore of a large lake (and Tabor on the other side), with here

and there some low Brush Island in middle of the waves (the tops of

some oaks or elms). Oh, what a sail I could take, if I had the right

kind of bark, over to Annursnack! for there she lies four miles from

land as sailors say. And all the farms and houses of Concord are at

bottom of that sea. So I forget them, and my thought sails triumphantly

over them. As I looked down where the village of Concord lay buried in

fog, I thought of nothing but the surface of a lake, a summer sea over

which to sail; no more than a voyager on the Dead Sea who had not read

the Testament would think of Sodom and Gomorrah, once cities of the

plain. I only wished to get off to one of the low isles I saw in midst

of the [sea] (it may have been the top of Holbrook’s elm), and spend

the whole summer day there.

Meanwhile the redness in the east had diminished and was less deep.

(The fog over some meadows looked green.) I went down to Tupelo Cliff

to bathe. A great bittern, which I had scared, flew heavily across

the stream. The redness had risen at length above the dark cloud, the

sun approaching. And next the redness became a sort of yellowish or

fawn-colored light, and the sun now set fire to the edges of the broken

cloud which had hung over the horizon, and they glowed like burning

turf.

_Sept. 10._ As I watch the groves on the meadow opposite our house, I

see how differently they look at different hours of the day, _i. e._

in different lights, when the sun shines on them variously. In the

morning, perchance, they seem one blended mass of light green. In the

afternoon, distinct trees appear, separated by heavy shadows, and in

some places I can see quite through the grove.

3 P. M.—To the Cliffs and the Grape Cliff beyond.

Hardhack and meadow-sweet are now all dry. I see the smoke of burning

brush in the west horizon this dry and sultry afternoon, and wish to

look off from some hill. It is a kind of work the farmer cannot do

without discovery. Sometimes I smell these smokes several miles off,

and by the odor know it is not a burning building, but withered leaves

and the rubbish of the woods and swamp. As I go through the woods, I

see that the ferns have turned brown and give the woods an autumnal

look. The boiling spring is almost completely dry. Nothing flows (I

mean without the shed), but there are many hornets and yellow wasps

apparently buzzing and circling about in jealousy of one another,

either drinking the stagnant water, which is the most accessible this

dry parching day, or it may be collecting something from the slime,—I

think the former.

As I go up Fair Haven Hill, I see some signs of the approaching fall

of the white pine. On some trees the old leaves are already somewhat

reddish, though not enough to give the trees a parti-colored look, and

they come off easily on being touched,—the old leaves on the lower part

of the twigs.

Some farmers are sowing their winter rye? I see the fields smoothly

rolled. (I hear the locust still.) I see others plowing steep rocky

and bushy fields, apparently for the same purpose. How beautiful

the sprout-land (burnt plain) seen from the Cliff! No more cheering

and inspiring sight than a young wood springing up thus over a large

tract, when you look down on it, the light green of the maples shaded

off into the darker oaks; and here and there a maple blushes quite

red, enlivening the scene yet more. Surely this earth is fit to be

inhabited, and many enterprises may be undertaken with hope where so

many young plants are pushing up. In the spring I burned over a hundred

acres till the earth was sere and black, and by midsummer this space

was clad in a fresher and more luxuriant green than the surrounding

even. Shall man then despair? Is he not a sprout-land too, after

never so many searings and witherings?[363] If you witness growth and

luxuriance, it is all the same as if you grew luxuriantly.

I see three smokes in Stow. One sends up dark volumes of wreathed

smoke, as if from the mouth of Erebus. It is remarkable what

effects so thin and subtile a substance as smoke produces, even at a

distance,—dark and heavy and powerful as rocks at a distance.

The woodbine is red on the rocks.

The poke is a very rich and striking plant. Some which stand under the

Cliffs quite dazzled me with their now purple stems gracefully drooping

each way, their rich, somewhat yellowish, purple-veined leaves, their

bright purple racemes,—peduncles, and pedicels, and calyx-like petals

from which the birds have picked the berries (these racemes, with their

petals now turned to purple, are more brilliant than anything of the

kind),—flower-buds, flowers, ripe berries and dark purple ones, and

calyx-like petals which have lost their fruit, all on the same plant. I

love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It is

the richest color. I love to press these berries between my fingers and

see their rich purple wine staining my hand. It asks a bright sun on it

to make it show to best advantage, and it must be seen at this season

of the year. It speaks to my blood. Every part of it is flower, such is

its superfluity of color,—a feast of color. That is the richest flower

which most abounds in color. What need to taste the fruit, to drink the

wine, to him who can thus taste and drink with his eyes? Its boughs,

gracefully drooping, offering repasts to the birds. It is cardinal in

its rank, as in its color. Nature here is full of blood and heat and

luxuriance. What a triumph it appears in Nature to have produced and

perfected such a plant,—as if this were enough for a summer.[364]

The downy seeds of the groundsel are taking their flight here. The

calyx has dismissed them and quite curled back, having done its part.

_Lespedeza sessiliflora_, or reticulated lespedeza on the Cliffs now

out of bloom. At the Grape Cliff, the few bright-red leaves of the

tupelo contrast with the polished green ones. The tupelos with drooping

branches.

The grape-vines overrunning and bending down the maples form little

arching bowers over the meadow, five or six feet in diameter, like

parasols held over the ladies of the harem, in the East. _Cuscuta

Americana_, or dodder, in blossom still. The _Desmodium paniculatum_ of

De Candolle and Gray (_Hedysarum paniculatum_ of Linnæus and Bigelow),

tick-trefoil, with still one blossom, by the path-side up from the

meadow. The rhomboidal joints of its loments adhere to my clothes. One

of an interesting family that thus disperse themselves. The oak-ball of

dirty drab now.[365]

_Sept. 11._ Every artisan learns positively something by his trade.

Each craft is familiar with a few simple, well-known, well-established

facts, not requiring any genius to discover, but mere use and

familiarity. You may go by the man at his work in the street every

day of your life, and though he is there before you, carrying into

practice certain essential information, you shall never be the wiser.

Each trade is in fact a craft, a cunning, a covering an ability;

and its methods are the result of a long experience. There sits a

stone-mason, splitting Westford granite for fence-posts. Egypt has

perchance taught New England something in this matter. His hammer,

his chisels, his wedges, his shims or half-rounds, his iron spoon,—I

suspect that these tools are hoary with age as with granite dust. He

learns as easily where the best granite comes from as he learns how

to erect that screen to keep off the sun. He knows that he can drill

faster into a large stone than a small one, because there is less jar

and yielding. He deals in stone as the carpenter in lumber. In many of

his operations only the materials are different. His work is slow and

expensive. Nature is here hard to be overcome. He wears up one or two

drills in splitting a single stone. He must sharpen his tools oftener

than the carpenter. He fights with granite. He knows the temper of

the rocks. He grows stony himself. His tread is ponderous and steady

like the fall of a rock. And yet by patience and art he splits a

stone as surely as the carpenter or woodcutter a log. So much time and

perseverance will accomplish. One would say that mankind had much less

moral than physical energy, that any day you see men following the

trade of splitting rocks, who yet shrink from undertaking apparently

less arduous moral labors, the solving of moral problems. See how

surely he proceeds. He does not hesitate to drill a dozen holes, each

one the labor of a day or two for a savage; he carefully takes out the

dust with his iron spoon; he inserts his wedges, one in each hole, and

protects the sides of the holes and gives resistance to his wedges

by thin pieces of half-round iron (or shims); he marks the red line

which he has drawn, with his chisel, carefully cutting it straight; and

then how carefully he drives each wedge in succession, fearful lest he

should not have a good split!

The habit of looking at men in the gross makes their lives have less

of human interest for us. But though there are crowds of laborers

before us, yet each one leads his little epic life each day. There is

the stone-mason, who, methought, was simply a stony man that hammered

stone from breakfast to dinner, and dinner to supper, and then went to

his slumbers. But he, I find, is even a man like myself, for he feels

the heat of the sun and has raised some boards on a frame to protect

him. And now, at mid-forenoon, I see his wife and child have come and

brought him drink and meat for his lunch and to assuage the stoniness

of his labor, and sit to chat with him.

There are many rocks lying there for him to split from end to end,

and he will surely do it. This only at the command of luxury, since

stone posts are preferred to wood. But how many moral blocks are lying

there in every man’s yard, which he surely will not split nor earnestly

endeavor to split. There lie the blocks which will surely get split,

but here lie the blocks which will surely not get split. Do we say

it is too hard for human faculties? But does not the mason dull a

basketful of steel chisels in a day, and yet, by sharpening them again

and tempering them aright, succeed? Moral effort! Difficulty to be

overcome!!! Why, men work in stone, and sharpen their drills when they

go home to dinner!

Why should Canada, wild and unsettled as it is, impress one as an

older country than the States, except that her institutions are old.

All things seem to contend there with a certain rust of antiquity,

such as forms on old armor and iron guns, the rust of conventions and

formalities. If the rust was not on the tinned roofs and spires, it was

on the inhabitants.[366]

* * * * *

2 P. M.—To Hubbard’s Meadow Grove.

The skunk-cabbage’s checkered fruit (spadix), one three inches long;

all parts of the flower but the anthers left and enlarged. _Bidens

cernua_, or nodding burr-marigold, like a small sunflower (with rays)

in Heywood Brook, _i. e._ beggar-tick. _Bidens connata_ (?), without

rays, in Hubbard’s Meadow. Blue-eyed grass still. Drooping neottia

very common. I see some yellow butterflies and others occasionally and

singly only. The smilax berries are mostly turned dark. I started a

great bittern from the weeds at the swimming-place.

It is very hot and dry weather. We have had no rain for a week, and

yet the pitcher-plants have water in them. Are they ever quite dry?

Are they not replenished by the dews always, and, being shaded by the

grass, saved from evaporation? What wells for the birds!

The white-red-purple-berried bush in Hubbard’s Meadow, whose berries

were fairest a fortnight ago, appears to be the _Viburnum nudum_,

or withe-rod. Our cornel (the common) with berries blue one side,

whitish the other, appears to be either the _Cornus sericea_ or _C.

stolonifera_ of Gray, _i. e._ the silky, or the red-osier cornel

(_osier rouge_), though its leaves are neither silky nor downy nor

rough.

This and the last four or five nights have been perhaps the most sultry

in the year thus far.

_Sept. 12._ Not till after 8 A. M. does the fog clear off so much that

I see the sun shining in patches on Nawshawtuct. This is the season of

fogs.

Like knight, like esquire. When Benvenuto Cellini was attacked by the

constables in Rome, his boy Cencio assisted him, or at least stood by,

and afterward related his master’s exploits; “and as they asked him

several times whether he had been afraid, he answered that they should

propose the question to me, for he had been affected upon the occasion

just in the same manner that I was.”

Benvenuto Cellini relates in his memoirs that, during his confinement

in the castle of St. Angelo in Rome, he had a terrible dream or vision

in which certain events were communicated to him which afterward

came to pass, and he adds: “From the very moment that I beheld the

phenomenon, there appeared (strange to relate!) a resplendent light

over my head, which has displayed itself conspicuously to all that

I have thought proper to show it to, but those were very few. This

shining light is to be seen in the morning over my shadow till two

o’clock in the afternoon, and it appears to the greatest advantage when

the grass is moist with dew: it is likewise visible in the evening

at sunset. This phenomenon I took notice of when I was at Paris,

because the air is exceedingly clear in that climate, so that I could

distinguish it there much plainer than in Italy, where mists are much

more frequent; but I can still see it even here, and show it to others,

though not to the same advantage as in France.” This reminds me of

the halo around my shadow which I notice from the causeway in the

morning,—also by moonlight,—as if, in the case of a man of an excitable

imagination, this were basis enough for his superstition.[367]

After I have spent the greater part of a night abroad in the moonlight,

I am obliged to sleep enough more the next night to make up for

it,—_Endymionis somnum dormire_ (to sleep an Endymion sleep), as the

ancients expressed it.[368] And there is something gained still by

thus turning the day into night. Endymion is said to have obtained of

Jupiter the privilege of sleeping as much as he would. Let no man be

afraid of sleep, if his weariness comes of obeying his Genius. He who

has spent the night with the gods sleeps more innocently by day than

the sluggard who has spent the day with the satyrs sleeps by night.

He who has travelled to fairyland in the night sleeps by day more

innocently than he who is fatigued by the merely trivial labors of the

day sleeps by night. That kind of life which, sleeping, we dream that

we live awake, in our walks by night, we, waking, live, while our daily

life appears as a dream.

* * * * *

2 P. M.—To the Three Friends’ Hill beyond Flint’s Pond, _via_ railroad,

R. W. E.’s wood-path south side Walden, George Heywood’s cleared lot,

and Smith’s orchard; return _via_ east of Flint’s Pond, _via_ Goose

Pond and my old home to railroad.

I go to Flint’s Pond for the sake of the mountain view from the hill

beyond, looking over Concord. I have thought it the best, especially

in the winter, which I can get in this neighborhood. It is worth the

while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day. I have thus seen

some earth which corresponds to my least earthly and trivial, to my

most heavenward-looking, thoughts. The earth seen through an azure, an

ethereal, veil. They are the natural _temples_, elevated brows, of the

earth, looking at which, the thoughts of the beholder are naturally

elevated and sublimed,—etherealized. I wish to see the earth through

the medium of much air or heaven, for there is no paint like the air.

Mountains thus seen are worthy of worship. I go to Flint’s Pond also to

see a rippling lake and a reedy island in its midst,—Reed Island. A man

should feed his senses with the best that the land affords.[369]

At the entrance to the Deep Cut, I heard the telegraph-wire vibrating

like an æolian harp. It reminded me suddenly,—reservedly, with a

beautiful paucity of communication, even silently, such was its

effect on my thoughts,—it reminded me, I say, with a certain pathetic

moderation, of what finer and deeper stirrings I was susceptible,

which grandly set all argument and dispute aside, a triumphant

though transient exhibition of the truth. It told me by the faintest

imaginable strain, it told me by the finest strain that a human ear can

hear, yet conclusively and past all refutation, that there were higher,

infinitely higher, planes of life which it behooved me never to forget.

As I was entering the Deep Cut, the wind, which was conveying a message

to me from heaven, dropped it on the wire of the telegraph which it

vibrated as it passed. I instantly sat down on a stone at the foot of

the telegraph-pole, and attended to the communication. It merely said:

“Bear in mind, Child, and never for an instant forget, that there are

higher planes, infinitely higher planes, of life than this thou art

now travelling on. Know that the goal is distant, and is upward, and is

worthy all your life’s efforts to attain to.” And then it ceased, and

though I sat some minutes longer I heard nothing more.

There is every variety and degree of inspiration from mere fullness

of life to the most rapt mood. A human soul is played on even as

this wire, which now vibrates slowly and gently so that the passer

can hardly hear it, and anon the sound swells and vibrates with such

intensity as if it would rend the wire, as far as the elasticity and

tension of the wire permits, and now it dies away and is silent, and

though the breeze continues to sweep over it, no strain comes from

it, and the traveller hearkens in vain. It is no small gain to have

this wire stretched through Concord, though there may be no office

here. Thus I make my own use of the telegraph, without consulting the

directors, like the sparrows, which I perceive use it extensively

for a perch. Shall I not go to this office to hear if there is

any communication for me, as steadily as to the post-office in the

village?[370]

I can hardly believe that there is so great a difference between one

year and another as my journal shows. The 11th of this month last

year, the river was as high as it commonly is in the spring, over the

causeway on the Corner road. It is now quite low. Last year, October

9th, the huckleberries were fresh and abundant on Conantum. They are

now already dried up.

We yearn to see the mountains daily, as the Israelites yearned for the

promised land, and we daily live the fate of Moses, who only looked

into the promised land from Pisgah before he died.

On Monday, the 15th instant, I am going to perambulate the bounds of

the town. As I am partial to across-lot routes, this appears to be a

very proper duty for me to perform, for certainly no route can well

be chosen which shall be more across-lot, since the roads in no case

run round the town but ray out from its centre, and my course will lie

across each one. It is almost as if I had undertaken to walk round the

town at the greatest distance from its centre and at the same time from

the surrounding villages. There is no public house near the line. It

is a sort of reconnoissance of its frontiers authorized by the central

government of the town, which will bring the surveyor in contact with

whatever wild inhabitant or wilderness its territory embraces.

This appears to be a very ancient custom, and I find that this word

“perambulation” has exactly the same meaning that it has at present in

Johnson and Walker’s dictionary. A hundred years ago they went round

the towns of this State every three years. And the old selectmen tell

me that, before the present split stones were set up in 1829, the

bounds were marked by a heap of stones, and it was customary for each

selectman to add a stone to the heap.

Saw a pigeon-place on George Heywood’s cleared lot,—the six dead trees

set up for the pigeons to alight on, and the brush house close by to

conceal the man. I was rather startled to find such a thing going now

in Concord. The pigeons on the trees looked like fabulous birds with

their long tails and their pointed breasts. I could hardly believe

they were alive and not some wooden birds used for decoys, they sat

so still; and, even when they moved their necks, I thought it was the

effect of art. As they were not catching then, I approached and scared

away a dozen birds who were perched on the trees, and found that they

were freshly baited there, though the net was carried away, perchance

to some other bed. The smooth sandy bed was covered with buckwheat,

wheat or rye, and acorns. Sometimes they use corn, shaved off the ear

in its present state with a knife. There were left the sticks with

which they fastened the nets. As I stood there, I heard a rushing sound

and, looking up, saw a flock of thirty or forty pigeons dashing toward

the _trees_, who suddenly whirled on seeing me and circled round and

made a new dash toward the bed, as if they would fain alight if I had

not been there, then steered off. I crawled into the bough house and

lay awhile looking through the leaves, hoping to see them come again

and feed, but they did not while I stayed. This net and bed belong to

one Harrington of Weston, as I hear. Several men still take pigeons in

Concord every year; by a method, methinks, extremely old and which I

seem to have seen pictured in some old book of fables or symbols, and

yet few in Concord know exactly how it is done. And yet it is all done

for money and because the birds fetch a good price, just as the farmers

raise corn and potatoes. I am always expecting that those engaged in

such a pursuit will be somewhat less grovelling and mercenary than the

regular trader or farmer, but I fear that it is not so.

Found a violet, apparently _Viola cucullata_, or hood-leaved violet,

in bloom in Baker’s Meadow beyond Pine Hill; also the _Bidens cernua_,

nodding burr-marigold, with five petals, in same place. Went through

the old corn-field on the hillside beyond, now grown up to birches and

hickories,—woods where you feel the old corn-hills under your feet;

for these, not being disturbed or levelled in getting the crop, like

potato-hills, last an indefinite while; and by some they are called

Indian corn-fields, though I think erroneously, not only from their

position in rocky soil frequently, but because the squaws probably,

with their clamshells or thin stones or wooden hoes, did not hill their

corn more than many now recommend.

What we call woodbine is the _Vitis hederacea_, or common creeper, or

American ivy.

When I got into the Lincoln road, I perceived a singular sweet scent

in the air, which I suspected arose from some plant now in a peculiar

state owing to the season, but though I smelled everything around,

I could not detect it, but the more eagerly I smelled, the further

I seemed to be from finding it; but when I gave up the search, again

it would be wafted to me. It was one of the sweet scents which go to

make the autumn air, which fed my sense of smell rarely and dilated

my nostrils. I felt the better for it. Methinks that I possess the

sense of smell in greater perfection than usual, and have the habit

of smelling of every plant I pluck. How autumnal is the scent of ripe

grapes now by the roadside![371]

From the pond-side hill I perceive that the forest leaves begin to look

rather rusty or brown. The pendulous, drooping barberries are pretty

well reddened. I am glad when the berries look fair and plump. I love

to gaze at the low island in the pond,—at any island or inaccessible

land. The isle at which you look always seems fairer than the mainland

on which you stand.

I had already bathed in Walden as I passed, but now I forgot that I had

been wetted, and wanted to embrace and mingle myself with the water of

Flint’s Pond this warm afternoon, to get wet inwardly and deeply.

Found on the shore of the pond that singular willow-like herb in

blossom, though its petals were gone. It grows up two feet from

a large woody horizontal root, and droops over to the sand again,

meeting which, it puts out a myriad rootlets from the side of its stem,

fastens itself, and curves upward again to the air, thus spanning or

looping itself along. The bark just above the ground thickens into a

singular cellular or spongy substance, which at length appears to crack

nearer the earth, giving that part of the plant a winged and somewhat

four-sided appearance. It appears to be the cellular tissue, or what

is commonly called the green bark, and likewise invests the root to a

great thickness, somewhat like a fungus, and is of a fawn-color. The

_Lythrum verticillatum_, or swamp loosestrife, or grass poly, but I

think better named, as in Dewey, swamp-willow-herb.

The prinos berries are pretty red. Any redness like cardinal-flowers,

or poke, or the evening sky, or cheronæa, excites us as a red flag does

cows and turkeys.

_Sept. 13._ Railroad causeway, before sunrise.

Here is a morning after a warm, clear, moonlight night almost entirely

without dew or fog. It has been a little breezy through the night, it

is true; but why so great a difference between this and other mornings

of late? I can walk in any direction in the fields without wetting my

feet.

I see the same rays in the dun, buff, or fawn-colored sky now, just

twenty minutes before sunrise, though they do not extend quite so far

as at sundown the other night. Why these rays? What is it divides the

light of the sun? Is it thus divided by distant inequalities in the

surface of the earth, behind which the other parts are concealed, and

since the morning atmosphere is clearer they do not reach so far? Some

small island clouds are the first to look red.

The cross-leaved polygala emits its fragrance as if at will. You are

quite sure you smelled it and are ravished with its sweet fragrance,

but now it has no smell. You must not hold it too near, but hold it on

all sides and at all distances, and there will perchance be wafted to

you sooner or later a very sweet and penetrating fragrance. What it is

like you cannot surely tell, for you do not enjoy it long enough nor

in volume enough to compare it. It is very likely that you will not

discover any fragrance while you are rudely smelling at it; you can

only remember that you once perceived it. Both this and the caducous

polygala are now somewhat faded.

Now the sun is risen. The sky is almost perfectly clear this morning;

not a cloud in the horizon. The morning is not pensive like the

evening, but joyous and youthful, and its blush is soon gone. It is

unfallen day. The Bedford sunrise bell rings sweetly and musically at

this hour, when there is no bustle in the village to drown it. Bedford

deserves a vote of thanks from Concord for it. It is a great good at

these still and sacred hours, when towns can hear each other. It would

be nought at noon.

_Sept. 14._ A great change in the weather from sultry to cold, from one

thin coat to a thick coat or two thin ones.

2 P. M.—To Cliffs.

The dry grass yields a crisped sound to my feet. The white oak

which appears to have made part of a hedge fence once, now standing

in Hubbard’s fence near the Corner road, where it stretches along

horizontally, is (one of its arms, for it has one running each way)

two and a half feet thick, with a sprout growing perpendicularly out

of it eighteen inches in diameter. The corn-stalks standing in stacks,

in long rows along the edges of the corn-fields, remind me of stacks of

muskets.

[Illustration]

As soon as berries are gone, grapes come. The chalices of the

_Rhexia Virginica_, deer-grass or meadow-beauty, are literally little

reddish chalices now, though many still have petals,—little cream

pitchers.[372] The caducous polygala in cool places is faded almost

white. I see the river at the foot of Fair Haven Hill running up-stream

before the strong cool wind, which here strikes it from the north. The

cold wind makes me shudder after my bath, before I get dressed.

_Polygonum aviculare_—knot-grass, goose-grass, or door-grass—still in

bloom.

_Sept. 15. Monday._ Ice in the pail under the pump, and quite a frost.

Commenced perambulating the town bounds. At 7.30 A. M. rode in company

with —— and Mr. —— to the bound between Acton and Concord near Paul

Dudley’s. Mr. —— told a story of his wife walking in the fields

somewhere, and, to keep the rain off, throwing her gown over her head

and holding it in her mouth, and so being poisoned about her mouth from

the skirts of her dress having come in contact with poisonous plants.

At Dudley’s, which house is handsomely situated, with five large elms

in front, we met the selectmen of Acton, —— —— and —— ——. Here were

five of us. It appeared that we weighed, — —— I think about 160, ——

155, —— about 140, —— 130, myself 127. —— described the wall about

or at Forest Hills Cemetery in Roxbury as being made of stones upon

which they were careful to preserve the moss, so that it cannot be

distinguished from a very old wall.

Found one intermediate bound-stone near the powder-mill drying-house on

the bank of the river. The workmen there wore shoes without iron tacks.

He said that the kernel-house was the most dangerous, the drying-house

next, the press-house next. One of the powder-mill buildings in

Concord? The potato vines and the beans which were still green are now

blackened and flattened by the frost.

END OF VOLUME II

The Riverside Press

H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY

CAMBRIDGE

MASSACHUSETTS

FOOTNOTES

[1] [A new book is begun here, but the first date is that of May

12, 1850, on p. 7 (p. 8 of the original). The first entries may or

may not belong to this year.]

[2] [See _Excursions_, p. 228; Riv. 280.]

[3] [_Walden_, p. 27; Riv. 41, 42.]

[4] [See _Walden_, p. 185; Riv. 262.]

[5] [_Walden_, p. 241; Riv. 340.]

[6] [_Cape Cod_, p. 121; Riv. 143, 144.]

[7] [_Walden_, p. 126; Riv. 178.]

[8] [_Walden_, p. 145; Riv. 206.]

[9] [See _Journal_, vol. i, p. 475.]

[10] [Channing, p. 298.]

[11] [See _Journal_, vol. v, June 10, 1853.]

[12] [_Excursions_, p. 234; Riv. 287.]

[13] [_Excursions_, p. 225; Riv. 276.]

[14] [_Walden_, p. 284; Riv. 399.]

[15] [This in regard to Breed and Newell is written in a fine hand

at the top of the page, and probably belonged with something on

the part torn out.]

[16] [See p. 40.]

[17] [Where Captain Samuel Wadsworth fell in a battle with the

Indians, April 18, 1676.]

[18] [_Walden_, p. 130; Riv. 184, 185.]

[19] [_Excursions_, p. 226; Riv. 277.]

[20] I find that they are last year’s. The white pine has not

blossomed.

[21] [_Walden_, p. 366; Riv. 513.]

[22] [_Excursions_, pp. 244, 245; Riv. 300.]

[23] [_Walden_, pp. 224, 225; Riv. 316.]

[24] [_Cape Cod_, p. 54; Riv. 62.]

[25] _Vide_ Kirby and Spence, vol. i.

[26] [_Walden_, p. 242; Riv. 341.]

[27] [_Excursions_, p. 234; Riv. 287.]

[28] [_Walden_, p. 216; Riv. 305.]

[29] [_Walden_, p. 190; Riv. 268.]

[30] [_Excursions_, pp. 326-328; Riv. 401-403.]

[31] [In July, 1850, Thoreau went to Fire Island with other

friends of Margaret Fuller to search for her remains. See _Cape

Cod_, pp. 107, 108; Riv. 126, 127. See also next page.]

[32] [Part of draft of a letter to H. G. O. Blake, dated Aug. 9,

1850. Other parts follow. _Familiar Letters._]

[33] [See _Cape Cod_, p. 108; Riv. 127. See also p. 80 of this

volume.]

[34] [_Familiar Letters_, Aug. 9, 1850.]

[35] [_Cape Cod_, p. 155; Riv. 185.]

[36] [_Cape Cod_, p. 225; Riv. 271.]

[37] [_Familiar Letters_, Aug. 9, 1850.]

[38] [Blake was at the time living in Milton, Mass.]

[39] [_Familiar Letters_, Aug. 9, 1850.]

[40] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 478; _Misc._, Riv. 282,

283.]

[41] [_Familiar Letters_, Aug. 9, 1850.]

[42] [Channing, p. 78.]

[43] [_Familiar Letters_, Aug. 9, 1850.]

[44] [Channing, pp. 36, 37.]

[45] [See pp. 78, 79.]

[46] [An example of Thoreau’s practice work,—the same story told

in two forms. For its final form see _Cape Cod_, p. 88; Riv. 103,

104.]

[47] [_Excursions_, p. 212; Riv. 260.]

[48] [_Excursions_, pp. 212, 213; Riv. 260, 261.]

[49] [_Excursions_, p. 215; Riv. 263.]

[50] [_Excursions_, pp. 214-216; Riv. 263, 264.]

[51] [_Walden_, pp. 209, 210; Riv. 296.]

[52] [_Walden_, p. 215; Riv. 303.]

[53] [_Walden_, pp. 135, 136; Riv. 192.]

[54] Wild holly?

[55] [Charles Dunbar was Thoreau’s uncle. See Sanborn, pp. 21-23,

92, 93; also _Journal_, vol. iv, Jan. 1, 1853, and vol. viii, Apr.

3, 1856.]

[56] [Channing, p. 293 (as prose).]

[57] [Channing, pp. 76, 77; Sanborn, pp. 258, 259.]

[58] [See _Walden_, p. 315; Riv. 441.]

[59] [_Walden_, p. 240; Riv. 338.]

[60] [_Walden_, p. 240; Riv. 338.]

[61] [_Three Years in California_, 1850.]

[62] [_Excursions_, p. 3; Riv. 3.]

[63] [_Walden_, p. 361; Riv. 505, 506.]

[64] [_Walden_, p. 362; Riv. 507.]

[65] [_Excursions_, p. 100; Riv. 124.]

[66] [_Excursions_, p. 15; Riv. 18.]

[67] [Channing, pp. 70, 71; Sanborn, pp. 259, 260.]

[68] [See pp. 49-51.]

[69] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 107, 108; Riv. 126, 127. See also pp. 49-51

of this volume.]

[70] [_Walden_, pp. 346, 347; Riv. 484, 485.]

[71] [_Walden_, pp. 20, 21; Riv. 32.]

[72] [_Walden_, p. 265 (Riv. 372, 373), where October is the month

named.]

[73] It reached its height in ’52, and has now fallen decidedly in

the fall of ’53.

[74] [See _Excursions_, p. 48; Riv. 59.]

[75] [See pp. 499, 500.]

[76] [_Walden_, p. 257; Riv. 361, 362.]

[77] [_Excursions_, p. 99; Riv. 123.]

[78] [_Excursions_, p. 309; Riv. 379.]

[79] [_Excursions_, p. 315; Riv. 387.]

[80] [_Excursions_, p. 246; Riv. 302.]

[81] [_Excursions_, p. 247; Riv. 303.]

[82] [_Excursions_, p. 247; Riv. 303.]

[83] [_Excursions_, p. 212; Riv. 259, 260.]

[84] [_Excursions_, p. 231; Riv. 283.]

[85] [_Excursions_, p. 217; Riv. 266.]

[86] [_Excursions_, p. 217; Riv. 265, 266.]

[87] [_Excursions_, p. 321; Riv. 394, 395.]

[88] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 480, 481; _Misc._, Riv.

285, 286.]

[89] [_Excursions_, p. 91; Riv. 113.]

[90] [_Excursions_, p. 304; Riv. 373.]

[91] [_Excursions_, p. 235; Riv. 287, 288.]

[92] [See p. 161.]

[93] [_Excursions_, p. 219; Riv. 268.]

[94] [_Excursions_, p. 319; Riv. 392.]

[95] [_Ibid._]

[96] [_Excursions_, p. 319; Riv. 392.]

[97] [_Excursions_, p. 211; Riv. 258, 259.]

[98] [_Maine Woods_, p. 153; Riv. 187.]

[99] [_Ibid._]

[100] [_Ibid._]

[101] [See _Journal_, vol. iii, pp. 149, 150, 241-244.]

[102] Panicled andromeda.

[103] [Evidently cocoons of the Promethea moth.]

[104] [_Excursions_, p. 320; Riv. 393.]

[105] [_Excursions_, pp. 319, 320; Riv. 392-394.]

[106] [See _Journal_, vol. i, p. 338.]

[107] [_Five Years of a Hunter’s Life in the Far Interior of South

Africa_, 1850.]

[108] [_Excursions_, p. 225; Riv. 275, 276.]

[109] [_Excursions_, p. 225; Riv. 276.]

[110] [Thoreau supplies the word.]

[111] [_Walden_, p. 11; Riv. 19.]

[112] [_Excursions_, p. 206; Riv. 253.]

[113] [The brackets are Thoreau’s.]

[114] [_Excursions_, p. 205; Riv. 251.]

[115] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 460, 461; _Misc._, Riv.

260.]

[116] [_Excursions_, p. 220; Riv. 269, 270.]

[117] [The bracketed words are Thoreau’s.]

[118] [_Excursions_, p. 231; Riv. 283, 284.]

[119] [_Excursions_, p. 232; Riv. 284.]

[120] [_Excursions_, pp. 232, 233; Riv. 285.]

[121] The fresh ruins of Nauvoo, the bright brick towns.

Davenport?

[122] [_Excursions_, pp. 223, 224; Riv. 274.]

[123] [Arnold Guyot, _The Earth and Man_. Translated by C. C.

Felton.]

[124] My own.

[125] [Guyot, _op. cit._]

[126] [Guyot, _op. cit._]

[127] [_Excursions_, p. 239; Riv. 293.]

[128] [_Excursions_, p. 240; Riv. 294.]

[129] [_Excursions_, p. 240; Riv. 294.]

[130] [_Excursions_, p. 241; Riv. 295.]

[131] [_Excursions_, pp. 224, 225; Riv. 275.]

[132] [_Excursions_, p. 241; Riv. 296.]

[133] [_Excursions_, p. 232; Riv. 284, 285.]

[134] [_Excursions_, p. 223; Riv. 273.]

[135] [_Excursions_, p. 225; Riv. 275.]

[136] [See _Excursions_, p. 319; Riv. 392.]

[137] [See p. 300.]

[138] [W. E. Channing, “Walden Spring.”]

[139] [_Excursions_, p. 216; Riv. 264, 265.]

[140] [_Excursions_, p. 238; Riv. 291.]

[141] [_Excursions_, p. 238; Riv. 292.]

[142] [See p. 107.]

[143] [_Excursions_, p. 225; Riv. 275, 276.]

[144] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 476-478; _Misc._, Riv.

280-282.]

[145] [_Cape Cod and Miscellanies_, p. 462; _Misc._, Riv. 262.]

[146] [_Excursions_, p. 238; Riv. 292.]

[147] [_Excursions_, p. 240; Riv. 294.]

[148] [_Excursions_, p. 244; Riv. 299.]

[149] [_Excursions_, p. 225; Riv. 276.]

[150] [_Excursions_, p. 240; Riv. 295.]

[151] [_Excursions_, p. 225; Riv. 276.]

[152] [In _The Cæsars_.]

[153] [Supplied by Thoreau.]

[154] [Blackwell, _Court of Augustus_; quoted by De Quincey in a

note.]

[155] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 390; _Misc._, Riv. 174.]

[156] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 392-394; _Misc._, Riv.

177-179.]

[157] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 394, 395; _Misc._, Riv.

179, 180.]

[158] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 397; _Misc._, Riv. 183.]

[159] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 397-399; _Misc._, Riv.

183-185.]

[160] [The brackets are Thoreau’s.]

[161] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 396; _Misc._, Riv. 181.]

[162] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 399, 400; _Misc._, Riv.

185, 186.]

[163] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 393; _Misc._, Riv. 177,

178.]

[164] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 473; _Misc._, Riv. 275,

276.]

[165] [_Walden_, p.72; Riv. 103.]

[166] [_Excursions_, pp. 235, 236; Riv. 288, 289.]

[167] [_Excursions_, p. 328; Riv. 403.]

[168] [Supplied by Thoreau.]

[169] [The bracketed portions in both cases are Thoreau’s.]

[170] [Toads. See p. 250.]

[171] [_Excursions_, p. 236; Riv. 289.]

[172] [_Excursions_, pp. 236, 237; Riv. 289-291.]

[173] [_Excursions_, p. 237; Riv. 290.]

[174] [_Excursions_, p. 301; Riv. 370.]

[175] [_Excursions_, p. 316; Riv. 388.]

[176] [_Excursions_, p. 294; Riv. 361.]

[177] [_Excursions_, p. 301; Riv. 369.]

[178] [_Excursions_, p. 316; Riv. 388, 389.]

[179] _Vide_ [p. 286].

[180] Ivy?

[181] Golden senecio.

[182] Corydalis.

[183] [Doubtless Blue Hill is meant, not the lower eminence known

as Milton Hill.]

[184] [Toads. See p. 250.]

[185] [Supplied by Thoreau.]

[186] Bigelow got this from Kalm. _Vide_ extract from Kalm.

[187] _Parietes_, _sepes_, _sepimenta_ [alternatives for _septa_].

[188] [_Excursions_, p. 316; Riv. 388, 389.]

[189] [_Walden_, p. 308; Riv. 432.]

[190] [_Excursions_, p. 316; Riv. 389.]

[191] [Bigelow, _American Medical Botany_, vol. i.]

[192] [Bigelow, _American Medical Botany_, vol. i.]

[193] [_Excursions_, p. 221; Riv. 271.]

[194] [_Excursions_, p. 328; Riv. 403.]

[195] [The first mention in the Journal of a bird the identity of

which Thoreau seems never to have made out. See _Journal_, vol. i,

Introduction, p. xlvi.]

[196] [That is, Darwin.]

[197] [_Walden_, p. 14; Riv. 22.]

[198] [The brackets are Thoreau’s.]

[199] [The word is supplied by Thoreau.]

[200] [Channing, p. 78.]

[201] Toad.

[202] [See _Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 471, 472; _Misc._,

Riv. 274.]

[203] [Otherwise spelled “cucuyo,” a West Indian firefly.]

[204] [Toads. See p. 250.]

[205] How quietly we entertain the possibility of joy, of

recreation, of light into [_sic_] our souls! We should be more

excited at the pulling of a tooth.

[206] [_Excursions_, p. 111; Riv. 137.]

[207] [No water is used in producing the sound. Thoreau had been

misinformed by one of his neighbors. See _Excursions_, p. 111;

Riv. 137.]

[208] Toad?

[209] [_Excursions_, p. 326; Riv. 401.]

[210] [_Rough Notes of Journeys in the Pampas and Andes._]

[211] [Supplied by Thoreau.]

[212] [Bigelow, in his _Florula Bostoniensis_, says of this plant,

now generally called the evening-primrose, “In the country it is

vulgarly known by the name of _Scabish_, a corruption probably

of _Scabious_, from which however it is a very different plant.”

Josselyn gives a quaint description of it under the name of

Lysimachus or Loose-strife in his _Two Voyages_, and says it “is

taken by the English for Scabious.”]

[213] I have since heard some complete strains.

[214] Pale lobelia.

[215] [Evidently not _Aster miser_, or, as it is now called _A.

lateriflorus_, which flowers much later in the season.]

[216] [See p. 252.]

[217] [Night of June 12. See p. 249.]

[218] [See pp. 213, 214.]

[219] [Channing, p. 85.]

[220] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 473-476; _Misc._, Riv.

276-279.]

[221] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 475, 476; _Misc._, Riv.

279.]

[222] Rue [_i. e._ meadow-rue].

[223] [See _Journal_, vol. i, p. 59.]

[224] [Thoreau’s name for the field sparrow (_Spizella pusilla_,

or, as it was called by Nuttall, _Fringilla juncorum_). He had the

name from his old friend Minott.]

[225] [_Excursions_, p. 327; Riv. 402.]

[226] [_Excursions_, p. 327; Riv. 402.]

[227] [See p. 155.]

[228] [See _Walden_, pp. 140, 141; Riv. 199.]

[229] [_Excursions_, p. 327; Riv. 403.]

[230] [See _Excursions_, p. 326; Riv. 401.]

[231] _Vide_ [p. 337.]

[232] [The field sparrow. See _Journal_, vol. i, p. 252, note.]

[233] [_Excursions_, p. 323; Riv. 398.]

[234] [Channing, p. 84.]

[235] [This is queried in pencil. See p. 278.]

[236] [_Excursions_, p. 294; Riv. 361.]

[237] [His birthday was July 12.]

[238] [_Walden_, pp. 358, 359; Riv. 502.]

[239] [_Walden_, p. 77; Riv. 110, 111.]

[240] [So Channing (p. 128), who calls it “one of Thoreau’s names

for some bird, so named by the farmers.” The word as written is

far from clear.]

[241] _Vide_ p. [373.]

[242] [Channing, pp. 126-128.]

[243] [Channing, pp. 128, 129.]

[244] [See Hawthorne’s story “The Minister’s Black Veil” and

footnote to the title, _Twice-Told Tales_, Riverside Edition, p.

52.]

[245] [_Excursions_, p. 305; Riv. 375.]

[246] [_Walden_, p. 355; Riv. 497.]

[247] _Harper’s New Monthly_, vol. i, p. 648, from _Chambers’

Edinburgh Journal_.

[248] [_Walden_, p. 355; Riv. 497.]

[249] [_Excursions_, pp. 56, 57; Riv. 69, 70.]

[250] [_Excursions_, p. 57; Riv. 71.]

[251] [_Excursions_, p. 88; Riv. 109, 110.]

[252] [_Excursions_, p. 57; Riv. 71.]

[253] [_Cape Cod_, p. 267; Riv. 323.]

[254] [_Cape Cod_, p. 14; Riv. 15.]

[255] [_Cape Cod_, p. 16; Riv. 17.]

[256] [_Cape Cod_, p. 14; Riv. 15.]

[257] [See _Excursions_, p. 79; Riv. 98.]

[258] [_Cape Cod_, p. 15; Riv. 15, 16.]

[259] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 14, 15; Riv. 15.]

[260] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 15, 16; Riv. 16.]

[261] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 16, 17; Riv. 17, 18.]

[262] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 16, 17; Riv. 17-19.]

[263] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 16, 18; Riv. 17, 19.]

[264] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 17, 18; Riv. 18, 19.]

[265] [Here he tells the story in a different form, showing an

intention of using it later.]

[266] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 182-184; Riv. 219-221.]

[267] [_Cape Cod_, p. 157; Riv. 187, 188.]

[268] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 109, 110; Riv. 129.]

[269] [See _Cape Cod_, pp. 97, 98; Riv. 115.]

[270] The nidus of the animal of _Natica_,—cells with eggs in

sand.

[271] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 109, 110; Riv. 129.]

[272] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 68, 69; Riv. 79.]

[273] [_Cape Cod_, pp. 141, 142; Riv. 168, 169.]

[274] [Marston Watson, Thoreau’s friend and correspondent. See

_Familiar Letters_, _passim_, and especially note to letter of

April 25, 1858.]

[275] [Sir Charles Lyell, _A Second Visit to the United States_.]

[276] [_Excursions_, pp. 329, 330; Riv. 405. See also pp. 383-385

of this volume.]

[277] [_Excursions_, p. 327; Riv. 402.]

[278] [_Excursions_ p. 317; Riv. 389.]

[279] [_Excursions_, p. 295; Riv. 362.]

[280] [_Excursions_, pp. 329, 330; Riv. 405, 406. See also p. 374

of this volume.]

[281] [_Excursions_, pp. 329, 330; Riv. 405, 406.]

[282] [See _Excursions_, p. 328; Riv. 403.]

[283] [_Walden_, p. 238; Riv. 336.]

[284] Stark and his companions met the enemy in the hay-field.

[285] Some were drawn out of the swamp behind Abiel Wheeler’s. Old

lady Potter tells me she cannot remember when they were not there.

[286] [See _Excursions_, pp. 16, 17; Riv. 20.]

[287] [_Excursions_, p. 79; Riv. 98.]

[288] [_Excursions_, p. 27; Riv. 32, 33.]

[289] [_Excursions_, pp. 29, 30; Riv. 36.]

[290] [_Excursions_, pp. 82, 83; Riv. 102.]

[291] [_Excursions_, pp. 77-79; Riv. 95-98.]

[292] [_Excursions_, p. 27; Riv. 33.]

[293] [_Excursions_, p. 78; Riv. 97.]

[294] [_Excursions_, p. 79; Riv. 98.]

[295] [See _Excursions_, p. 290; also _Journal_, vol. iii, p.

117.]

[296] A farmer tells me that he knows when his horse has eaten it,

because it makes him slobber badly.

[297] [_Excursions_, p. 83; Riv. 102, 103.]

[298] [Channing, pp. 85, 86.]

[299] [Channing, p. 214.]

[300] [Channing, p. 214.]

[301] [Channing, p. 74.]

[302] [Channing, p. 215.]

[303] [Channing, p. 74.]

[304] [Channing, p. 214.]

[305] [_Excursions_, p. 3; Riv. 3.]

[306] [Channing, pp. 229, 230.]

[307] [Channing, p. 77.]

[308] [_Excursions_, p. 88; Riv. 109.]

[309] [Channing, pp. 287, 288.]

[310] [The word “mulleins” is queried in pencil.]

[311] [Channing, p. 215.]

[312] Yes.

[313] [Channing, p. 215.]

[314] [Channing, p. 216.]

[315] [Channing, p. 87.]

[316] [_Excursions_, p. 81; Riv. 100, 101.]

[317] [Channing, p. 70.]

[318] [Channing, p. 74.]

[319] [Channing, pp. 74, 215.]

[320] [Channing, p. 249.]

[321] [Channing, pp. 75, 216.]

[322] [Channing, p. 216.]

[323] [Channing, pp. 301, 302.]

[324] [Channing, p. 301.]

[325] [Channing, p. 203.]

[326] [Channing, p. 86.]

[327] [Channing, p. 87.]

[328] [Channing, pp. 60, 61.]

[329] [Channing, pp. 60, 61.]

[330] [Channing, p. 60.]

[331] [Channing, p. 220.]

[332] [Channing, p. 78.]

[333] [Channing, pp. 173-175.]

[334] [Channing, p. 164.]

[335] [Channing, p. 199.]

[336] [Channing, p. 216.]

[337] [Channing, p. 222.]

[338] [Channing, p. 76.]

[339] [_Ibid._]

[340] [Channing, p. 175.]

[341] [Channing, p. 222.]

[342] [Channing, p. 69.]

[343] _Vide_ last journal for bare foot track in Corner road [p.

328 of this volume].

[344] [Channing, p. 70.]

[345] [Channing, p. 86.]

[346] By Second Division Brook.

[347] [Channing, p. 70.]

[348] _Vide_ hawks [p. 480].

[349] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 468; _Misc._, Riv. 270.]

[350] [See _Excursions_, p. 327; Riv. 403.]

[351] [Channing, pp. 251, 252.]

[352] [Channing, p. 90.]

[353] [_Excursions_, p. 324; Riv. 398.]

[354] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 456; _Misc._, Riv. 254,

255.]

[355] [_Excursions_, p. 209; Riv. 257.]

[356] [Channing, p. 115.]

[357] [Channing, p. 116.]

[358] [Channing, p. 116.]

[359] [_Excursions_, p. 323; Riv. 397, 398.]

[360] [Channing, pp. 116, 117.]

[361] _Vide_ back [p. 458].

[362] It was a cuckoo.

[363] [Channing, p. 217.]

[364] [_Excursions_, pp. 253-255; Riv. 311, 312.]

[365] [Channing, pp. 216, 217.]

[366] [_Excursions_, pp. 80, 81; Riv. 100.]

[367] [_Walden_, pp. 224, 225; Riv. 316, 317.]

[368] [_Excursions_, p. 331; Riv. 407.]

[369] [Channing, p. 163.]

[370] [Channing, pp. 199, 200.]

[371] [Channing, p. 217.]

[372] [Channing, p. 222.]