CHAPTER IX. 1837-1847 (ÆT. 20-30) 438

Friends—The Loading and Launching of the

Boat—Gracefulness—On the Merrimack—The Era

of the Indian—Fate of the Indian—Criticism's

Apology—Life—Suspicion—The Purple Finch—Gower's

Poetry—Light—Indian Implements—Success in Proportion

to Average Ability—Kindness—Fog—The Attitude of

Quarles and his Contemporaries towards Nature—The

Mystery of Life—Three-o'clock-in-the-Morning Courage—A

Recent Book—Museums—Some Old English Poets—Our

Kindred—Friendship—Skating after a Fox—To a Marsh Hawk

in the Spring—The Gardener—A Fisherman's Account at

the Store—Finny Contemporaries—Marlowe—Thaw—Modern

Nymphs—Living by Self-Defense—The Survival of

the Birds—The Slaughter-House—The Tragedy of the

Muskrat—Carlyle not to be Studied—The Subject of the

Lecture—The Character of our Life—The Sovereignty

of the Mind—Coöperation.

ILLUSTRATIONS

WHITE VIOLETS, Carbon photograph (page 304) Frontispiece

VIEW FROM ANNURSNACK HILL Colored plate

HENRY DAVID THOREAU IN 1854, FROM THE

ROWSE CRAYON IN THE CONCORD PUBLIC

LIBRARY 1

FROST CRYSTALS AT THE MOUTH OF A HOLE

IN A BANK 22

VIEW FROM ANNURSNACK HILL 84

TREES REFLECTED IN THE RIVER 140

WINTER LANDSCAPE FROM FAIRHAVEN HILL 296

INTRODUCTION

Thoreau was a man of his own kind. Many things may be said of him,

favorable and unfavorable, but this must surely be said first,—that,

taken for all in all, he was like nobody else. Taken for all in all,

be it remarked. Other men have despised common sense; other men have

chosen to be poor, and, as between physical comfort and better things,

have made light of physical comfort; other men, whether to their credit

or discredit, have held and expressed a contemptuous opinion of their

neighbors and all their neighbors' doings; others, a smaller number,

believing in an absolute goodness and in a wisdom transcending human

knowledge, have distrusted the world as evil, accounting its influence

degrading, its prudence no better than cowardice, its wisdom a kind

of folly, its morality a compromise, its religion a bargain, its

possessions a defilement and a hindrance, and so judging of the world,

have striven at all cost to live above it and apart. And some, no doubt,

have loved Nature as a mistress, fleeing to her from less congenial

company, and devoting a lifetime to the observation and enjoyment of her

ways. In no one of these particulars was the hermit of Walden without

forerunners; but taken for all that he was, poet, idealist, stoic,

cynic, naturalist, spiritualist, lover of purity, seeker of perfection,

panegyrist of friendship and dweller in a hermitage, freethinker and

saint, where shall we look to find his fellow? It seems but the plainest

statement of fact to say that, as there was none before him, so there

is scanty prospect of any to come after him.

His profession was literature; as to that there is no sign that he was

ever in doubt; and he understood from the first that for a writing man

nothing could take the place of practice, partly because that is the one

means of acquiring ease of expression, and partly because a man often

has no suspicion of his own thoughts until his pen discovers them; and

almost from the first—a friend (Emerson or another) having given him

the hint—he had come to feel that no practice is better or readier than

the keeping of a journal, a daily record of things thought, seen, and

felt. Such a record he began soon after leaving college, and (being

one of a thousand in this respect as in others) he continued it to the

end. By good fortune he left it behind him, and, to complete the good

fortune, it is at last printed, no longer in selections, but as a whole;

and if a man is curious to know what such an original, plain-spoken,

perfection-seeking, convention-despising, dogma-disbelieving,

wisdom-loving, sham-hating, Nature-worshipping, poverty-proud genius

was in the habit of confiding to so patient a listener at the close of

the day, he has only to read the book.

The man himself is there. Something of him, indeed, is to be discovered,

one half imagines, in the outward aspect of the thirty-nine manuscript

volumes: ordinary "blank-books" of the sort furnished by country

shopkeepers fifty or sixty years ago, larger or smaller as might

happen, and of varying shapes (a customer seeking such wares must not

be too particular; one remembers Thoreau's complaint that the universal

preoccupation with questions of money rendered it difficult for him

to find a blank-book that was not ruled for dollars and cents), still

neatly packed in the strong wooden box which their owner, a workman

needing not to be ashamed, made with his own hands on purpose to hold

them.

A pretty full result of a short life they seem to be, as one takes up

volume after volume (the largest are found to contain about a hundred

thousand words) and turns the leaves: the handwriting strong and rapid,

leaning well forward in its haste, none too legible, slow reading at

the best, with here and there a word that is almost past making out;

the orthography that of a naturally good speller setting down his

thoughts at full speed and leaving his mistakes behind him; and the

punctuation, to call it such, no better than a makeshift,—after the

model of Sterne's, if one chooses to say so: a spattering of dashes,

and little else.[1]

As for the matter, it is more carefully considered, less strictly

improvised, than is customary with diarists. It is evident, in fact,

from references here and there, that many of the entries were copied

from an earlier pencilled draft, made presumably in the field, "with

the eye on the object," while the work as a whole has been more or less

carefully revised, with erasures, emendations, and suggested alternative

readings.

As we have said, if a man wishes to know Thoreau as he was, let him

read the book. One thing he may be sure of: he will find himself in

clean, self-respecting company, with no call to blush, as if he were

playing the eavesdropper. Of confessions, indeed, in the spicy sense of

the word, Thoreau had none to make. He was no Montaigne, no Rousseau,

no Samuel Pepys. How should he be? He was a Puritan of Massachusetts,

though he kept no Sabbath, was seen in no church,—being very different

from Mr. Pepys in more ways than one,—and esteemed the Hebrew scriptures

as a good book like any other. Once, indeed, when he was thirty-four

years old, he went to a "party." For anything we know, that (with a

little sowing of wild oats in the matter of smoking dried lily-stems

when a boy) was as near as he ever came to dissipation. And he did

not like it. "It is a bad place to go to," he says,—"thirty or forty

persons, mostly young women, in a small room, warm and noisy." One of

the young women was reputed to be "pretty-looking;" but he scarcely

looked at her, though he was "introduced," and he could not hear what

she said, because there was "such a clacking." "I could imagine better

places for conversation," he goes on, "where there should be a certain

degree of silence surrounding you, and less than forty talking at once.

Why, this afternoon, even, I did better. There was old Mr. Joseph Hosmer

and I ate our luncheon of cracker and cheese together in the woods. I

heard all he said, though it was not much, to be sure, and he could hear

me. And then he talked out of such a glorious repose, taking a leisurely

bite at the cracker and cheese between his words; and so some of him

was communicated to me, and some of me to him, I trust."

He entertains a shrewd suspicion that assemblies of this kind are got

up with a view to matrimonial alliances among the young people! For

his part, at all events, he doesn't understand "the use of going to

see people whom yet you never see, and who never see you." Some of

his friends make a singular blunder. They go out of their way to talk

to pretty young women _as such_. Their prettiness may be a reason

for looking at them, so much he will concede,—for the sake of the

antithesis, if for nothing else,—but why is it any reason for talking to

them? For himself, though he may be "lacking a sense in this respect,"

he derives "no pleasure from talking with a young woman half an hour

simply because she has regular features."

How crabbed is divine philosophy! After this we are not surprised

when he concludes by saying: "The society of young women is the most

unprofitable I have ever tried." No, no; he was nothing like Mr. Samuel

Pepys.

The sect of young women, we may add, need not feel deeply affronted by

this ungallant mention. It is perhaps the only one of its kind in the

journal (by its nature restricted to matters interesting to the author),

while there are multitudes of passages to prove that Thoreau's aversion

to the society of older people taken as they run, men and women alike,

was hardly less pronounced. In truth (and it is nothing of necessity

against him), he was not made for "parties," nor for clubs, nor even for

general companionship. "I am all without and in sight," said Montaigne,

"born for society and friendship." So was not Thoreau. He was all

within, born for contemplation and solitude. And what we are born for,

that let us be,—and so the will of God be done. Such, for good or ill,

was Thoreau's philosophy. "We are constantly invited to be what we are,"

he said. It is one of his memorable sentences; an admirable summary of

Emerson's essay on Self-Reliance.

His fellow mortals, as a rule, did not recommend themselves to him. His

thoughts were none the better for their company, as they almost always

were for the company of the pine tree and the meadow. Inspiration, a

refreshing of the spiritual faculties, as indispensable to him as daily

bread, that his fellow mortals did not furnish him. For this state of

things he sometimes (once or twice at least) mildly reproaches himself.

It may be that he is to blame for so commonly skipping humanity and its

affairs; he will seek to amend the fault, he promises. But even at such

a moment of exceptional humility, his pen, reversing Balaam's rôle,

runs into left-handed compliments that are worse, if anything, than

the original offense. Hear him: "I will not avoid to go by where those

men are repairing the stone bridge. I will see if I cannot see poetry

in that, if that will not yield me a reflection. It is narrow to be

confined to woods and fields and grand aspects of nature only.... Why

not see men standing in the sun and casting a shadow, even as trees?...

I will try to enjoy them as animals, at least."

This is in 1851. A year afterward we find him concerned with the same

theme, but in a less hesitating mood. Now he is on his high horse,

with apologies to nobody. "It appears to me," he begins, "that to one

standing on the heights of philosophy mankind and the works of man will

have sunk out of sight altogether." Man, in his opinion, is "too much

insisted upon. The poet says, 'The proper study of mankind is man.'

I say, Study to forget all that. Take wider views of the universe....

What is the village, city, state, nation, aye, the civilized world, that

it should concern a man so much? The thought of them affects me, in my

wisest hours, as when I pass a woodchuck's hole."

A high horse, indeed! But his comparison is really by no means so

disparaging as it sounds; for Thoreau took a deep and lasting interest

in woodchucks. At one time and another he wrote many good pages about

them; for their reappearance in the spring he watched as for the return

of a friend, and once, at least, he devoted an hour to digging out a

burrow and recording with painstaking minuteness the course and length

of its ramifications. A novelist, describing his heroine's boudoir,

could hardly have been more strict with himself. In fact, to have

said that one of Thoreau's human neighbors was as interesting to him

as a woodchuck would have been to pay that neighbor a rather handsome

compliment. None of the brute animals, so called,—we have it on his own

authority,—ever vexed his ears with pomposity or nonsense.

But we have interrupted his discourse midway. "I do not value any view

of the universe into which man and the institutions of man enter very

largely," he continues.... "Man is a past phenomenon to philosophy."

Then he descends a little to particulars. "Some rarely go outdoors,

most are always at home at night,"—Concord people being uncommonly well

brought up, it would appear,—"very few indeed have stayed out all night

once in their lives; fewer still have gone behind the world of humanity

and seen its institutions like toadstools by the wayside."

And then, having, with this good bit of philosophical "tall talk,"

brushed aside humanity as a very little thing, he proceeds to chronicle

the really essential facts of the day: that he landed that afternoon on

Tall's Island, and to his disappointment found the weather not cold or

windy enough for the meadow to make "its most serious impression;" also,

that the staddles from which the hay had been removed were found to

stand a foot or two above the water; besides which, he saw cranberries

on the bottom (although he forgot to mention them in their proper

place), and noticed that the steam of the engine looked very white that

morning against the hillside.

All which setting of ordinary valuations topsy-turvy, the lords of

creation below the beasts that perish, may lead an innocent reader to

exclaim with one of old, "Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of

him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?"

Nevertheless, we must not treat the matter too lightly, easily as it

lends itself to persiflage. Even in this extreme instance it is not to

be assumed that Thoreau was talking for the sake of talking, or merely

keeping his hand in with his favorite rhetorical weapon, a paradox.

That desiderated "serious impression," at all events, was no laughing

matter; rather it was to have been the chief event of the day; of more

account to Thoreau than dinner and supper both were likely to be to his

farmer neighbor. As for the woodchuck, its comparative rank in the scale

of animal existence, be it higher or lower, is nothing to the purpose.

For Thoreau it was simple truth that, on some days, and in some states

of mind, he found the society of such a cave-dweller more acceptable,

or less unacceptable, than that of any number of his highly civilized

townsmen. Nor is the statement one to be nervously concerned about.

Any inveterate stroller, the most matter-of-fact man alive (though

matter-of-fact men are not apt to be strollers), might say the same, in

all soberness, with no thought of writing himself down a misanthrope,

or of setting himself up as a philosopher.

For one thing, the woodchuck is sure to be less intrusive, less

distracting, than the ordinary human specimen; he fits in better with

solitude and the solitary feeling. He is never in the way. Moreover,

you can say to a woodchuck anything that comes into your head, without

fear of giving offense; a less important consideration than the other,

no doubt, woodchucks as a class not being remarkably conversable, but

still worthy of mention. For, naturally enough, an outspoken freethinker

like Thoreau found the greater number of men not so very different from

"ministers," of whom he said, in a tone of innocent surprise, that they

"could not bear all kinds of opinions,"—"as if any sincere thought were

not the best sort of truth!"

He walked one afternoon with Alcott, and spent an agreeable hour, though

for the most part he preferred having the woods and fields to himself.

Alcott was an ineffectual genius, he remarks, "forever feeling about

vainly in his speech, and touching nothing" (one thinks of Arnold's

characterization of Shelley as a "beautiful and ineffectual angel,

beating in the void his luminous wings in vain," which, in its turn,

may call to mind Lowell's comparison of Shelley's genius to a St. Elmo's

fire, "playing in ineffectual flame about the points of his thought"),

but after all, he was good company; not quite so good as none, of

course, but on the whole, as men go, rather better than most. At least,

he would listen to what you had to offer. He was open-minded; he wasn't

shut up in a creed; an honest man's thought would not shock him. You

could talk to him without running up against "some institution." In a

word,—though Thoreau doesn't say it,—he was something like a woodchuck.

With all his passion for "that glorious society called solitude," and

with all his feeling that mankind, as a "past phenomenon," thought

far too highly of itself, it is abundantly in evidence that Thoreau,

in his own time and on his own terms, was capable of a really human

delight in familiar intercourse with his fellows. Channing, who should

have known, speaks, a little vaguely, to be sure, of his "fine social

qualities." "Always a genial and hospitable entertainer," he calls him.

And Mr. Ricketson, who also should have known, assures us that "no man

could hold a finer relationship with his family than he." But of this

aspect of his character, it must be acknowledged, there is comparatively

little in the journal. What is very constant and emphatic there—emphatic

sometimes to the point of painfulness—is the hermit's hunger and thirst

after friendship; a friendship the sweets of which, so far as appears,

he was very sparingly to enjoy. For if he was at home in the family

group and in huckleberry excursions with children, if he relished to

the full a talk with a stray fisherman, a racy-tongued woodchopper, or

a good Indian, something very different seems to have been habitual with

him when it came to intercourse with equals and friends.

Here, even more than elsewhere, he was an uncompromising idealist. His

craving was for a friendship more than human, friendship such as it was

beyond any one about him to furnish, if it was not, as may fairly be

suspected, beyond his own capacity to receive. In respect to outward

things, his wealth, he truly said, was to want little. In respect to

friendship, his poverty was to want the unattainable. It might have

been retorted upon him in his own words, that he was like a man who

should complain of hard times because he could not afford to buy himself

a crown. But the retort would perhaps have been rather smart than

fair. He, at least, would never have acquiesced in it. He confided to

his journal again and again that he asked nothing of his friends but

honesty, sincerity, a grain of real appreciation, "an opportunity once

in a year to speak the truth;" but in the end it came always to this,

that he insisted upon perfection, and, not finding it, went on his way

hungry. Probably it is true—one seems to divine a reason for it—that

idealists, claimers of the absolute, have commonly found their fellow

men a disappointment.

In Thoreau's case it was his best friends who most severely tried his

patience. They invite him to see them, he complains, and then "do not

show themselves." He "pines and starves near them." All is useless. They

treat him so that he "feels a thousand miles off." "I leave my friends

early. I go away to cherish my idea of friendship." Surely there is no

sentence in all Thoreau's books that is more thoroughly characteristic

than that. And how neatly it is turned! Listen also to this, which is

equally bitter, and almost equally perfect in the phrasing: "No fields

are so barren to me as the men of whom I expect everything, but get

nothing. In their neighborhood I experience a painful yearning for

society."

It is all a mystery to him. "How happens it," he exclaims, "that I

find myself making such an enormous demand on men, and so constantly

disappointed? Are my friends aware how disappointed I am? Is it all my

fault? Am I incapable of expansion and generosity? I shall accuse myself

of anything else sooner." And again he goes away sorrowful, consoling

himself, as best he can, with his own paradox,—

"I might have loved him, had I loved him less."

Strange that he should have suffered in this way, many will think,

with Emerson himself for a friend and neighbor! Well, the two men were

friends, but neither was in this relation quite impeccable (which is

as much as to say that both were human), and to judge by such hints

as are gatherable on either side, their case was not entirely unlike

that of Bridget Elia and her cousin,—"generally in harmony, with

occasional bickerings, as it should be among near relations;" though

"bickerings" is no doubt an undignified term for use in this connection.

It is interesting, some may deem it amusing, to put side by side the

statements of the two men upon this very point; Emerson's communicated

to the public shortly after his friend's death, Thoreau's intrusted nine

years before to the privacy of his journal.

Emerson's speech is the more guarded, as, for more reasons than one, it

might have been expected to be. His friend, he confesses, "was somewhat

military in his nature ... always manly and able, but rarely tender, as

if he did not feel himself except in opposition. He wanted a fallacy

to expose, a blunder to pillory, I may say required a little sense of

victory, a roll of the drum, to call his powers into full exercise....

It seemed as if his first instinct on hearing a proposition was to

controvert it, so impatient was he of the limitations of our daily

thought. This habit, of course, is a little chilling to the social

affections; and though the companion would in the end acquit him of any

malice or untruth, yet it mars conversation. Hence no equal companion

stood in affectionate relations with one so pure and guileless."

Thoreau's entry is dated May 24, 1853. "Talked, or tried to talk, with

R. W. E. Lost my time, nay, almost my identity. He, assuming a false

opposition where there was no difference of opinion, talked to the

wind, told me what I knew, and I lost my time trying to imagine myself

somebody else to oppose him."

It is the very same picture, drawn by another pencil, with a different

placing of the shadows; and since the two sketches were made so many

years apart and yet seem to be descriptive of the same thing, it is

perhaps fair to conclude that this particular interview, which appears

to have degenerated into something like a dispute about nothing (a

very frequent subject of disputes, by the way), was not exceptional,

but rather typical. Without doubt this was one of the occasions when

Thoreau felt himself treated as if he were "a thousand miles off," and

went home early to "cherish his idea of friendship." Let us hope that

he lost nothing else along with his time and identity.

But here, again, we are in danger of an unseasonable lightness.

Friendship, according to Thoreau's apprehension of it, was a thing

infinitely sacred. A _friend_ might move him to petulance, as the best

of friends sometimes will; but _friendship_, the ideal state shown to

him in dreams, for speech concerning that there was nowhere in English,

nor anywhere else, a word sufficiently noble and unsoiled. And even

his friends he loved, although, tongue-tied New-Englander that he was,

he could never tell them so. He loved them best (and this, likewise,

was no singularity) when they were farthest away. In company, even in

their company, he could never utter his truest thought. So it is with us

all. It was a greater than Thoreau who said, "We descend to meet;" and

a greater still, perhaps (and he also a Concord man), who confessed at

fifty odd: "I doubt whether I have ever really talked with half a dozen

persons in my life."

As for Thoreau, he knew at times, and owned as much to himself, that

his absorption in nature tended to unfit him for human society. But so

it was; he loved to be alone. And in this respect he had no thought of

change,—no thought nor wish. Whatever happened, he would still belong

to no club but the true "country club," which dined "at the sign of

the Shrub Oak." The fields and the woods, the old road, the river, and

the pond, these were his real neighbors. Year in and year out, how near

they were to him!—a nearness unspeakable; till sometimes it seemed as if

their being and his were not two, but one and the same. With them was no

frivolity, no vulgarity, no changeableness, no prejudice. With them he

had no misunderstandings, no meaningless disputes, no disappointments.

They knew him, and were known of him. In their society he felt himself

renewed. There he lived, and loved his life. There, if anywhere, the

Spirit of the Lord came upon him. Hear him, on a cool morning in August,

with the wind in the branches and the crickets in the grass, and think

of him, if you can, as a being too cold for friendship!

"My heart leaps out of my mouth at the sound of the wind in the woods.

I, whose life was but yesterday so desultory and shallow, suddenly

recover my spirits, my spirituality, through my hearing.... Ah! if I

could so live that there should be no desultory moments ... I would

walk, I would sit and sleep, with natural piety. What if I could pray

aloud, or to myself, as I went along by the brookside, a cheerful

prayer, like the birds! For joy I could embrace the earth. I shall

delight to be buried in it. And then, to think of those I love among

men, who will know that I love them, though I tell them not.... I thank

you, God. I do not deserve anything; I am unworthy of the least regard;

and yet the world is gilded for my delight, and holidays are prepared

for me, and my path is strewn with flowers.... O keep my senses pure!"

Highly characteristic is that concluding ejaculation. For Thoreau the

five senses were not organs or means of sensuous gratification, but the

five gateways of the soul. He would have them open and undefiled. Upon

that point no man was ever more insistent. Above all, no sense must be

pampered; else it would lose its native freshness and delicacy, and so

its diviner use. That way lay perdition. When a woman came to Concord to

lecture, and Thoreau carried her manuscript to the hall for her, wrapped

in its owner's handkerchief, he complained twenty-four hours afterward

that his pocket "still exhaled cologne." Faint, elusive outdoor odors

were not only a continual delight to him, but a positive means of grace.

So, too, he would rather not see any of the scenic wonders of the world.

Only let his sense of beauty remain uncorrupted, and he could trust his

Musketaquid meadows, and the low hills round about, to feed and satisfy

him forever.

Because of his jealousy in this regard, partly,—and partly from

ignorance, it may be, just as some of his respectable village

acquaintances would have found the Iliad, of which he talked so much,

duller than death in comparison with the works of Mr. Sylvanus Cobb,—he

often spoke in slighting terms of operas and all the more elaborate

forms of music. The ear, he thought, if it were kept innocent, would

find satisfaction in the very simplest of musical sounds. For himself,

there was no language extravagant enough to express his rapturous

delight in them. Now "all the romance of his youthfulest moment" came

flooding back upon him, and anon he was carried away till he "looked

under the lids of Time,"—all by the humming of telegraph-wires or, at

night especially, by the distant baying of a hound.

To the modern "musical person" certain of his confessions under this

head are of a character to excite mirth. He is "much indebted," for

instance, to a neighbor "who will now and then, in the intervals of his

work, draw forth a few strains from his accordion." The neighbor is only

a learner, but, says Thoreau, "I find when his strains cease that I have

been elevated." His daily philosophy is all of a piece, one perceives:

plain fare, plain clothes, plain company, a hut in the woods, an old

book,—and for inspiration the notes of a neighbor's accordion.

More than once, too, he acknowledges his obligation to that famous rural

entertainer and civilizer, the hand-organ. "All Vienna" could not do

more for him, he ventures to think. "It is perhaps the best instrumental

music that we have," he observes; which can hardly have been true, even

in Concord, one prefers to believe, while admitting the possibility. If

it is heard far enough away, he goes on, so that the creaking of the

machinery is lost, "it serves the grandest use for me,—it deepens my

existence."

We smile, of course, as in duty bound, at so artless an avowal; but,

having smiled, we are bound also to render our opinion that the most

_blasé_ concert-goer, if he be a man of native sensibility, will readily

enough discern what Thoreau has in mind, and with equal readiness will

concede to it a measure of reasonableness; for he will have the witness

in himself that the effect of music upon the soul depends as much upon

the temper of the soul as upon the perfection of the instrument. One

day a simple air, simply sung or played, will land him in heaven; and

another day the best efforts of the full symphony orchestra will leave

him in the mire. And after all, it is possibly better, albeit in "poorer

taste," to be transported by the wheezing of an accordion than to be

bored by finer music. As for Thoreau, he studied to be a master of the

art of living; and in the practice of that art, as of any other, it is

the glory of the artist to achieve extraordinary results by ordinary

means. To have one's existence deepened—there cannot be many things more

desirable than that; and as between our unsophisticated recluse and the

average "musical person" aforesaid, the case is perhaps not so one-sided

as at first sight it looks; or, if it be, the odds are possibly not

always on the side of what seems the greater opportunity.

His life, the quality of his life, that for Thoreau was the paramount

concern. To the furthering of that end all things must be held

subservient. Nature, man, books, music, all for him had the same use.

This one thing he did,—he cultivated himself. If any, because of his

so doing, accused him of selfishness, preaching to him of philanthropy,

almsgiving, and what not, his answer was already in his mouth. Mankind,

he was prepared to maintain, was very well off without such helps, which

oftener than not did as much harm as good (though the concrete case at

his elbow—half-clad Johnny Riordan, a fugitive slave, an Irishman who

wished to bring his family over—appealed to him as quickly as to most,

one is glad to notice); and, however that might be, the world needed a

thousand times more than any so-called charity the sight of a man here

and there living for higher ends than the world itself knows of. His

own course, at any rate, was clear before him: "What I am, I am, and

say not. Being is the great explainer."

His life, his _own_ life, that he must live; and he must be in earnest

about it. He was no indifferent, no little-carer, no skeptic, as

if truth and a lie were but varying shades of the same color, and

virtue, according to the old phrase, "a mean between vices." You would

never catch him sighing, "Oh, well!" or "Who knows?" Qualifications,

reconciliations, _rapprochements_, the two sides of the shield, and all

that,—these were considerations not in his line. Before everything else

he was a believer,—an idealist, that is,—the last person in the world to

put up with half-truths or half-way measures. If "existing things" were

thus and so, that was no reason why, with the sect of the Sadducees, he

should make the best of them. What if there _were_ no best of them? What

if they were all bad? And anyhow, why not begin new? It was conceivable,

was it not, that a man should set his own example, and follow his own

copy. General opinion,—what was that? Was a thing better established

because ten thousand fools believed it? Did folly become wisdom by being

raised to a higher power? And antiquity, tradition,—what were they?

Could a blind man of fifteen centuries ago see farther than a blind man

of the present time? And if the blind led the blind, then or now, would

not both fall into the ditch?

Yes, he was undoubtedly peculiar. As to that there could never be

anything but agreement among practical people. In a world where

shiftiness and hesitation are the rule, nothing looks so eccentric

as a straight course. It must be acknowledged, too, that a man whose

goodness has a strong infusion of the bitter, and whose opinions turn

out of the way for nobody, is not apt to be the most comfortable kind of

neighbor. We were not greatly surprised, lately, to hear an excellent

lady remark of Thoreau that, from all she had read about him, she

thought he must have been "a very disagreeable gentleman." It could

hardly be said of him, as Mr. Birrell says of Matthew Arnold, who was

himself a pretty serious person, and, after a way of his own, a preacher

of righteousness, that he "conspired and contrived to make things

pleasant."

Being a consistent idealist, he was of course an extremist, falling in

that respect little behind the man out of Nazareth, whose hard sayings,

by all accounts, were sometimes less acceptable than they might have

been, and of whom Thoreau asserted, in his emphatic way, that if his

words were really read from any pulpit in the land, "there would not be

left one stone of that meeting-house upon another." Thoreau worshipped

purity, and the every-day ethical standards of the street were to him

an abomination. "There are certain current expressions and blasphemous

moods of viewing things," he declares, "as when we say 'he is doing

a good business,' more profane than cursing and swearing. There is

death and sin in such words. Let not the children hear them." That

innocent-sounding phrase about "a good business"—as if a business

might be taken for granted as good because it brought in money—was as

abhorrent to him as the outrageous worldly philosophy of an old castaway

like Major Pendennis is to the ordinarily sensitive reader.

He was constitutionally earnest. There are pages of the journal, indeed,

which make one feel that perhaps he was in danger of being too much so

for his own profit. Possibly it is not quite wholesome, possibly, if

one dares to say it, it begets a something like priggishness, for the

soul to be keyed up continually to so strenuous a pitch. In Thoreau's

case, at all events, one is glad for every sign of a slackening of the

tension. "Set the red hen to-day;" "Got green grapes to stew;" "Painted

the bottom of my boat;" trivialities like these, too far apart (one is

tempted to colloquialize, and call them "precious few," finding them so

infrequent and so welcome), strike the reader with a sudden sensation of

relief, as if he had been wading to the chin, and all at once his feet

had touched a shallow.

So, too, one is thankful to come upon a really amusing dissertation

about the tying of shoe-strings, or rather about their too easy untying;

a matter with which, it appears, Thoreau had for years experienced "a

great deal of trouble." His walking companion (Channing, presumably) and

himself had often compared notes about it, concluding after experiments

that the duration of a shoe-tie might be made to serve as a reasonably

accurate unit of measure, as accurate, say, as a stadium or a league.

Channing, indeed, would sometimes go without shoe-strings, rather than

be plagued so incessantly by their dissolute behavior. Finally Thoreau,

being then thirty-six years old, and always exceptionally clever with

his hands, set his wits seriously at work upon knots, and by a stroke

of good fortune (or a stroke of genius) hit upon one which answered

his end; only to be told, on communicating his discovery to a third

party, that he had all his life been tying "granny knots," never having

learned, at school or elsewhere, the secret of a square one! It might be

well, he concludes, if all children were "taught the accomplishment."

Verily, as Hosea Biglow did not say, they didn't know everything down

in Concord.

More refreshing still are entries describing hours of serene communion

with nature, hours in which, as in an instance already cited, the

Spirit of the Lord blessed him, and he forgot even to be good. These

entries, likewise, are less numerous than could be wished, though

perhaps as frequent as could fairly be expected; since ecstasies, like

feasts, must in the nature of things be somewhat broadly spaced; and

it is interesting, not to say surprising, to see how frankly he looks

upon them afterward as subjects on which to try his pen. In these

"seasons when our genius reigns we may be powerless for expression," he

remarks; but in calmer hours, when talent is again 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." But, in truth, the

whole journal, some volumes of which are carefully indexed in his own

hand, is quite undisguisedly a collection of thoughts, feelings, and

observations, out of which copy is to be extracted. In it, he says,

"I wish to set down such choice experiences that my own writings may

inspire me, and at last I may make wholes of parts.... Each thought that

is welcomed and recorded is a nest-egg by the side of which more will

be laid."

A born writer, he is "greedy of occasions to express" himself. He

counts it "wise to write on many subjects, that so he may find the right

and inspiring one." "There are innumerable avenues to a perception of

the truth," he tells himself. "Improve the suggestion of each object,

however humble, however slight and transient the provocation. What else

is there to be improved?"

The literary diarist, like the husbandman, knows not which shall

prosper. Morning and evening, he can only sow the seed. So it was with

Thoreau. "A strange and unaccountable thing," he pronounces his journal.

"It will allow nothing to be predicated of it; its good is not good, nor

its bad bad. If I make a huge effort to expose my innermost and richest

wares to light, my counter seems cluttered with the meanest homemade

stuffs; but after months or years I may discover the wealth of India,

and whatever rarity is brought overland from Cathay, in that confused

heap, and what seemed a festoon of dried apple or pumpkin will prove a

string of Brazilian diamonds, or pearls from Coromandel."

Well, we make sure that whoever tumbles the heap over now, more than

forty years after the last object was laid upon it, will be rewarded

with many and many a jewel. Here, for his encouragement, are half a

dozen out of the goodly number that one customer has lately turned up,

in a hasty rummaging of the counter:—

"When a dog runs at you, whistle for him."

"We must be at the helm at least once a day; we must feel the tiller

rope in our hands, and know that if we sail, we steer."

"In composition I miss the hue of the mind."

"After the era of youth is past, the knowledge of ourselves is an alloy

that spoils our satisfactions."

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."

"Silence is of various depths and fertility, like soil."

"Praise should be spoken as simply and naturally as a flower emits its

fragrance."

Here, again, is a mere nothing, a momentary impression caught,

in ball-players' language, on the fly; nothing like a pearl from

Coromandel, if you will, but at the worst a toothsome bite out of

a wild New England apple. It is winter. "I saw a team come out of a

path in the woods," says Thoreau, "as though it had never gone in, but

belonged there, and only came out like Elisha's bears." There will be

few country-bred Yankee boys, we imagine, who will not remember to

have experienced something precisely like that, under precisely the

same circumstances, though it never occurred to them to put the feeling

into words, much less to preserve it in a drop of ink. That is one of

the good things that a writer does for us. And our country-bred boy,

if we mistake not, is likely to consider this one careless sentence

of Thoreau, which adds not a cent's worth to the sum of what is

called human knowledge, as of more value than any dozen pages of his

painstaking botanical records.

Thoreau the naturalist appears in the journal, not as a master, but as

a learner. It could hardly be otherwise, of course, a journal being

what it is. There we see him conning by himself his daily lesson,

correcting yesterday by to-day, and to-day by to-morrow, progressing,

like every scholar, over the stepping-stones of his own mistakes. Of

the branches he pursued, as far as the present writer can presume to

judge, he was strongest in botany; certainly it was to plants that

he most persistently devoted himself; but even there he had as many

uncertainties as discoveries to set down; and he set them down with

unflagging zeal and unrestrained particularity. The daily account

is running over with question-marks. His patience was admirable; the

more so as he worked entirely by himself, with few of the helps that

in this better-furnished time almost belie the old proverb, and make

even the beginner's path a kind of royal road to learning. The day of

"How-to-Know" handbooks had not yet dawned.

Of his bird-studies it would be interesting, if there were room, to

speak at greater length. Here, even more than in botany, if that were

possible, he suffered for lack of assistance, and even in his later

entries leaves the present-day reader wondering how so eager a scholar

could have spent so many years in learning so comparatively little. The

mystery is partly cleared, however, when it is found that until 1854—say

for more than a dozen years—he studied without a glass. He does not

buy things, he explains, with characteristic self-satisfaction, till

long after he begins to want them, so that when he does get them he is

"prepared to make a perfect use of them." It was wasteful economy. He

might as well have botanized without a pocket-lens.

But glass or no glass, how could an ornithological observer, whose

power—so Emerson said—"seemed to indicate additional senses," be in the

field daily for ten or fifteen years before setting eyes upon his first

rose-breasted grosbeak?—which memorable event happened to Thoreau on

the 13th of June, 1853! How could a man who had made it his business

for at least a dozen years to "name all the birds without a gun," stand

for a long time within a few feet of a large bird, so busy that it

could not be scared far away, and then go home uncertain whether he had

been looking at a woodcock or a snipe? How could he, when thirty-five

years old, see a flock of sparrows, and hear them sing, and not be

sure whether or not they were chipping sparrows? And how could a man

so strong in times and seasons, always marking dates with an almanac's

exactness, how could he, so late as '52, inquire concerning the downy

woodpecker, one of the more familiar and constant of year-round birds,

"Do we see him in the winter?" and again, a year later, be found asking

whether he, the same downy woodpecker, is not the first of our woodland

birds to arrive in the spring? At thirty-six he is amazed to the extent

of double exclamation points by the sight of a flicker so early as March

29.

It fills one with astonishment to hear him (May 4, 1853) describing

what he takes to be an indigo-bird after this fashion: "Dark throat

and light beneath, and white spot on wings," with hoarse, rapid notes,

a kind of _twee, twee, twee,_ not musical. The stranger may have

been—most likely it was—a black-throated blue warbler; which is as

much like an indigo-bird as a bluebird is like a blue jay,—or a yellow

apple like an orange. And the indigo-bird, it should be said, is a

common New-Englander, such as one of our modern schoolboy bird-gazers

would have no difficulty in getting into his "list" any summer day in

Concord; while the warbler in question, though nothing but a migrant,

and somewhat seclusive in its habits, is so regular in its passage and

so unmistakably marked (no bird more so), that it seems marvellous how

Thoreau, prowling about everywhere with his eyes open, should year after

year have missed it.

The truth appears to be that even of the commoner sorts of birds that

breed in eastern Massachusetts or migrate through it, Thoreau—during

the greater part of his life, at least—knew by sight and name only a

small proportion, wonderful as his knowledge seemed to those who, like

Emerson, knew practically nothing.[2]

Not that the journal is likely to prove less interesting to bird-loving

readers on this account. On the contrary, it may rather be more so, as

showing them the means and methods of an ornithological amateur fifty

years ago, and, especially, as providing for them a desirable store of

ornithological nuts to crack on winter evenings. Some such reader, by

a careful collation of the data which the publication of the journal

as a whole puts at his disposal, will perhaps succeed in settling the

identity of the famous "night-warbler;" a bird which some, we believe,

have suspected to be nothing rarer than the almost superabundant

oven-bird, but which, so far as we ourselves know, may have been almost

any one (or any two or three) of our smaller common birds that are given

to occasional ecstatic song-flights.[3] Whatever it was, it was of use

to Thoreau for the quickening of his imagination, and for literary

purposes; and Emerson was well advised in warning him to beware of

booking it, lest life henceforth should have so much the less to show

him.

It must be said, however, that Thoreau stood in slight need of such

a caution. He cherished for himself a pretty favorable opinion of

a certain kind and measure of ignorance. With regard to some of

his ornithological mysteries, for example,—the night-warbler, the

seringo-bird (which with something like certainty we may conjecture to

have been the savanna sparrow), and others,—he flatters himself that his

good genius had withheld their names from him that he might the better

learn their character,—whatever such an expression may be supposed to

mean.

He maintained stoutly, from beginning to end, that he was not of the

ordinary school of naturalists, but "a mystic, a transcendentalist,

and a natural philosopher in one;" though he believed himself, in his

own words, "by constitution as good an observer as most." He will not

be one of those who seek facts as facts, studying nature as a dead

language. He studies her for purposes of his own, in search of the "raw

material of tropes and figures." "I pray for such experience as will

make nature significant," he declares; and then, with the same penful of

ink, he asks: "Is that the swamp gooseberry of Gray now just beginning

to blossom at Saw-Mill Brook? It has a divided style and stamens,

etc., as yet not longer than the calyx, though my slip has no thorns

nor prickles," and so on, and so on. Pages on pages of the journal

are choke-full, literally, of this kind of botanical interrogation,

till the unsympathetic reader will be in danger of surmising that the

mystical searcher after tropes and symbols is sometimes not so utterly

unlike the student of the dead language of fact. But then, it is one

of the virtues of a journal that it is not a work of art, that it has

no form, no fashion (and so does not go out of fashion), and is always

at liberty to contradict itself. As Thoreau said, he tumbled his goods

upon the counter; no single customer is bound to be pleased with them

all; different men, different tastes; let each select from the pile the

things that suit his fancy.

For our own part, we acknowledge,—and the shrewd reader may already

have remarked the fact,—we have not been disinclined to choose here and

there a bit of some less rare and costly stuff. The man is so sternly

virtuous, so inexorably in earnest, so heart-set upon perfection,

that we almost like him best when for a moment he betrays something

that suggests a touch of human frailty. We prick up our ears when he

speaks of a woman he once in a while goes to see, who tells him to

his face that she thinks him self-conceited. Now, then, we whisper

to ourselves, how will this man who despises flattery, and, boasting

himself a "commoner," professes that for him "there is something

devilish in manners,"—how will this candor-loving, truth-speaking,

truth-appreciating man enjoy the rebuke of so unmannered a mentor? And

we smile and say Aha! when he adds that the lady wonders why he does

not visit her oftener.

We smile, too, when he brags, in early February, that he has not yet put

on his winter clothing, amusing himself the while over the muffs and

furs of his less hardy neighbors, his own "simple diet" making him so

tough in the fibre that he "flourishes like a tree;" and then, a week

later, writes with unbroken equanimity that he is down with bronchitis,

contenting himself to spend his days cuddled in a warm corner by the

stove.

Trifles of this kind encourage a pleasant feeling of brotherly

relationship. He is one of us, after all, with like passions. But

of course we really like him best when he is at his best,—as in some

outpouring of his love for things natural and wild. Let us have one

more such quotation: "Now I yearn for one of those old, meandering, dry,

uninhabited roads, which lead away from towns, which lead us away from

temptation, which conduct us to the outside of earth, over its uppermost

crust; where you may forget in what country you are travelling; where

your head is more in heaven than your feet are on earth; where you can

pace when your breast is full, and cherish your moodiness.... There I

can walk and recover the lost child that I am without any ringing of a

bell."

For real warmth, when once the fire burns, who can exceed our stoic?

We like, also, his bits of prettiness, things in which he is second to

nobody, though prettiness, again, is not supposed to be the stoic's

"note;" and they are all the prettier, as well as ten times more

welcome, because he has the grace—and the sound literary sense—to drop

them here and there, as it were casually, upon a ground of simple,

unaffected prose. Here, now, is a sentence that by itself is worth a

deal of ornithology: "The song sparrow is heard in fields and pastures,

setting the midsummer day to music,—as if it were the music of a mossy

rail or fence-post." Of dragon-flies he says: "How lavishly they are

painted! How cheap was the paint! How free was the fancy of their

Creator!" In early June, when woods are putting forth leaves, "the

summer is pitching its tent." He finds the dainty fringed polygala

(whose ordinary color is a lovely rose-purple) sporting white blossoms,

and remarks: "Thus many flowers have their nun sisters, dressed in

white." Soaring hawks are "kites without strings;" and when he and his

companion are travelling across country, keeping out of the sight of

houses, yet compelled to traverse here and there a farmer's field, they

"shut every window with an apple tree."

Gems like these one need not be a connoisseur to appreciate, and they

are common upon his counter. It was a good name that Channing gave him:

"The Poet-Naturalist."

But there are better things than flowers and jewels to be found in

Thoreau's stock. There are cordials and tonics there, to brace a man

when he is weary; eye-washes, to cleanse his vision till he sees the

heights above him and repents the lowness of his aims and the vulgarity

of his satisfactions; blisters and irritant plasters in large variety

and of warranted strength; but little or nothing, so far as the present

customer has noticed, in the line of anodynes and sleeping-powders.

There we may buy moral wisdom, which is not only the "foundation and

source of good writing," as one of the ancients said, but of the arts in

general, especially the art of life. If the world is too much with us,

if wealth attracts and the "rust of copper" has begun to eat into the

soul, if we are in danger of selling our years for things that perish

with the using, here we may find correctives, and go away thankful,

rejoicing henceforth to be rich in a better coinage than any that bears

the world's stamp. The very exaggerations of the master—if we call them

such—may do us good like a medicine; for there are diseased conditions

which yield to nothing so quickly as to a shock.

As for Thoreau himself, life might have been smoother for him had he

been less exacting in his idealism, more tolerant of imperfection in

others and in himself; had he taken his studies, and even his spiritual

aspirations, a grain or two less seriously. A bit of boyish play now

and then, the bow quite unbent, or a dose of novel-reading of the

love-making, humanizing (Trollopean) sort, could one imagine it, with

a more temperate cherishing of his moodiness, might have done him no

harm. It would have been for his comfort, so much may confidently be

said, whether for his happiness is another question, had he been one

of those gentler humorists who can sometimes see themselves, as all

humorists have the gift of seeing other people, funny side out. But

then, had these things been so, had his natural scope been wider, his

genius, so to say, more tropical, richer, freer, more expansive, more

various and flexible, more like the spreading banyan and less like the

soaring, sky-pointing spruce,—why, then he would no longer have been

Thoreau; for better or worse, his speech would have lost its distinctive

tang; and in the long run the world, which likes a touch of bitter and

a touch of sour, would almost certainly have found the man himself less

interesting, and his books less rememberable. And made as he was, "born

to his own affairs," what else could he do but stick to himself? "We

are constantly invited to be what we are," he said. The words might

fittingly have been cut upon his gravestone.

B. T.

HENRY D. THOREAU

GLEANINGS

OR WHAT TIME

HAS NOT REAPED

OF MY

JOURNAL

[The small manuscript volume bearing on its first fly-leaf the legend

printed on the preceding page is evidently a transcript of unused

passages in the early journals, and this is also the case with several

succeeding small volumes. See note on page 342. The following mottoes

occupy the next three pages of the book.]

"By all means use sometimes to be alone.

Salute thyself: see what thy soul doth wear.

Dare to look in thy chest; for 'tis thine own:

And tumble up and down what thou find'st there.

Who cannot rest till he good fellows find,

He breaks up house, turns out of doors his mind."

HERBERT, _The Church Porch_.

"Friends and companions, get you gone!

'Tis my desire to be alone;

Ne'er well, but when my thoughts and I

_Do domineer in privacy_."

BURTON, _Anatomy of Melancholy_.

"Two Paradises are in one,

To live in Paradise alone."

MARVELL, _The Garden_.

[Illustration: _Henry David Thoreau in 1854, from the Rowse Crayon in

the Concord Public Library_]

THE JOURNAL OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I

1837

(ÆT. 20)

_Oct 22._ "What are you doing now?" he asked. "Do you keep a journal?"

So I make my first entry to-day.

SOLITUDE

To be alone I find it necessary to escape the present,—I avoid myself.

How could I be alone in the Roman emperor's chamber of mirrors? I seek

a garret. The spiders must not be disturbed, nor the floor swept, nor

the lumber arranged.

The Germans say, "Es ist alles wahr wodurch du besser wirst."

THE MOULD OUR DEEDS LEAVE

_Oct. 24._ Every part of nature teaches that the passing away of one

life is the making room for another. The oak dies down to the ground,

leaving within its rind a rich virgin mould, which will impart a

vigorous life to an infant forest. The pine leaves a sandy and sterile

soil, the harder woods a strong and fruitful mould.

So this constant abrasion and decay makes the soil of my future growth.

As I live now so shall I reap. If I grow pines and birches, my virgin

mould will not sustain the oak; but pines and birches, or, perchance,

weeds and brambles, will constitute my second growth.[4]

SPRING

_Oct 25._ She appears, and we are once more children; we commence again

our course with the new year. Let the maiden no more return, and men

will become poets for very grief. No sooner has winter left us time

to regret her smiles, than we yield to the advances of poetic frenzy.

"The flowers look kindly at us from the beds with their child eyes,

and in the horizon the snow of the far mountains dissolves into light

vapor."—GOETHE, _Torquato Tasso_.

THE POET

"He seems to avoid—even to flee from us,—

To seek something which we know not,

And perhaps he himself after all knows not."—_Ibid._

_Oct 26._

"His eye hardly rests upon the earth;

His ear hears the one-clang of nature;

What history records,—what life gives,—

Directly and gladly his genius takes it up:

His mind collects the widely dispersed,

And his feeling animates the inanimate.

Often he ennobles what appeared to us common,

And the prized is as nothing to him.

In his own magic circle wanders

The wonderful man, and draws us

With him to wander, and take part in it:

He seems to draw near to us, and remains afar from us:

He seems to be looking at us, and spirits, forsooth,

Appear to him strangely in our places."—_Ibid._

HOW MAN GROWS

"A noble man has not to thank a private circle for his culture.

Fatherland and world must work upon him. Fame and infamy must he learn

to endure. He will be constrained to know himself and others. Solitude

shall no more lull him with her flattery. The foe _will_ not, the

friend _dares_ not, spare him. Then, striving, the youth puts forth his

strength, feels what he is, and feels himself soon a man."

"A talent is builded in solitude,

A character in the stream of the world."

"He only fears man who knows him not, and he who avoids him will soonest

misapprehend him."—_Ibid._

ARIOSTO

"As nature decks her inward rich breast in a green variegated dress,

so clothes he all that can make men honorable in the blooming garb of

the fable.... The well of superfluity bubbles near, and lets us see

variegated wonder-fishes. The air is filled with rare birds, the meads

and copses with strange herds, wit lurks half concealed in the verdure,

and wisdom from time to time lets sound from a golden cloud sustained

words, while frenzy wildly seems to sweep the well-toned lute, yet holds

itself measured in perfect time."

BEAUTY

"That beauty is transitory which alone you seem to honor."—GOETHE,

_Torquato Tasso_.

THE FOG

_Oct. 27._ The prospect is limited to Nobscot and Annursnack. The trees

stand with boughs downcast like pilgrims beaten by a storm, and the

whole landscape wears a sombre aspect.

So when thick vapors cloud the soul, it strives in vain to escape from

its humble working-day valley, and pierce the dense fog which shuts out

from view the blue peaks in its horizon, but must be content to scan

its near and homely hills.

DUCKS AT GOOSE POND

_Oct 29._ Two ducks, of the summer or wood species, which were merrily

dabbling in their favorite basin, struck up a retreat on my approach,

and seemed disposed to take French leave, paddling off with swan-like

majesty. They are first-rate swimmers, beating me at a round pace,

and—what was to me a new trait in the duck character—dove every

minute or two and swam several feet under water, in order to escape

our attention. Just before immersion they seemed to give each other

a significant nod, and then, as if by a common understanding, 'twas

heels up and head down in the shaking of a duck's wing. When they

reappeared, it was amusing to observe with what a self-satisfied,

darn-it-how-he-nicks-'em air they paddled off to repeat the experiment.

THE ARROWHEAD

A curious incident happened some four or six weeks ago which I think

it worth the while to record. John and I had been searching for Indian

relics, and been successful enough to find two arrowheads and a pestle,

when, of a Sunday evening, with our heads full of the past and its

remains, we strolled to the mouth of Swamp Bridge Brook. As we neared

the brow of the hill forming the bank of the river, inspired by my

theme, I broke forth into an extravagant eulogy on those savage times,

using most violent gesticulations by way of illustration. "There on

Nawshawtuct," said I, "was their lodge, the rendezvous of the tribe, and

yonder, on Clamshell Hill, their feasting ground. This was, no doubt,

a favorite haunt; here on this brow was an eligible lookout post. How

often have they stood on this very spot, at this very hour, when the

sun was sinking behind yonder woods and gilding with his last rays

the waters of the Musketaquid, and pondered the day's success and the

morrow's prospects, or communed with the spirit of their fathers gone

before them to the land of shades!

"Here," I exclaimed, "stood Tahatawan; and there" (to complete the

period) "is Tahatawan's arrowhead."

We instantly proceeded to sit down on the spot I had pointed to, and I,

to carry out the joke, to lay bare an ordinary stone which my whim had

selected, when lo! the first I laid hands on, the grubbing stone that

was to be, proved a most perfect arrowhead, as sharp as if just from

the hands of the Indian fabricator!!!

SUNRISE

_Oct. 30._ First we have the gray twilight of the poets, with dark and

barry clouds diverging to the zenith. Then glows the intruding cloud in

the east, as if it bore a precious jewel in its bosom; a deep round gulf

of golden gray indenting its upper edge, while slender rules of fleecy

vapor, radiating from the common centre, like light-armed troops, fall

regularly into their places.

SAILING WITH AND AGAINST THE STREAM

_Nov. 3._ If one would reflect, let him embark on some placid stream,

and float with the current. He cannot resist the Muse. As we ascend the

stream, plying the paddle with might and main, snatched and impetuous

thoughts course through the brain. We dream of conflict, power, and

grandeur. But turn the prow down stream, and rock, tree, kine, knoll,

assuming new and varying positions, as wind and water shift the scene,

favor the liquid lapse of thought, far-reaching and sublime, but ever

calm and gently undulating.

TRUTH

_Nov. 5._ Truth strikes us from behind, and in the dark, as well as from

before and in broad daylight.

STILL STREAMS RUN DEEPEST

_Nov. 9._ It is the rill whose "silver sands and pebbles sing eternal

ditties with the spring." The early frosts bridge its narrow channel,

and its querulous note is hushed. Only the flickering sunlight on its

sandy bottom attracts the beholder. But there are souls whose depths

are never fathomed,—on whose bottom the sun never shines. We get a

distant view from the precipitous banks, but never a draught from their

mid-channels. Only a sunken rock or fallen oak can provoke a murmur,

and their surface is a stranger to the icy fetters which bind fast a

thousand contributory rills.[5]

DISCIPLINE

_Nov. 12._ I yet lack discernment to distinguish the whole lesson of

to-day; but it is not lost,—it will come to me at last. My desire is to

know _what_ I have lived, that I may know _how_ to live henceforth.

SIN DESTROYS THE PERCEPTION OF THE BEAUTIFUL

_Nov. 13._ This shall be the test of innocence—if I can hear a taunt,

and look out on this friendly moon, pacing the heavens in queen-like

majesty, with the accustomed yearning.

TRUTH

Truth is ever returning into herself. I glimpse one feature to-day,

another to-morrow; and the next day they are blended.

GOETHE

_Nov. 15._ "And now that it is evening, a few clouds in the mild

atmosphere rest upon the mountains, more stand still than move in the

heavens, and immediately after sunset the chirping of crickets begins to

increase; then feels one once more at home in the world, and not as an

alien,—an exile. I am contented as though I had been born and brought

up here, and now returned from a Greenland or whaling voyage. Even the

dust of my Fatherland, as it is whirled about the wagon, which for so

long a time I had not seen, is welcome. The clock-and-bell jingling

of the crickets is very agreeable, penetrating, and not without a

meaning. Pleasant is it when roguish boys whistle in emulation of a

field of such songstresses. One imagines that they really enhance each

other. The evening is perfectly mild as the day. Should an inhabitant

of the south, coming from the south, hear of my rapture, he would deem

me very childish. Alas! what I here express have I long felt under an

unpropitious heaven. And now this joy is to me an exception, which I am

henceforth to enjoy,—a necessity of my nature."—_Italiänische Reise._[6]

PONKAWTASSETT

_Nov. 16._ There goes the river, or rather is, "in serpent error

wandering," the jugular vein of Musketaquid. Who knows how much of

the proverbial moderation of the inhabitants was caught from its dull

circulation?

The snow gives the landscape a washing-day appearance,—here a streak

of white, there a streak of dark; it is spread like a napkin over the

hills and meadows. This must be a rare drying day, to judge from the

vapor that floats over the vast clothes-yard.

A hundred guns are firing and a flag flying in the village in

celebration of the whig victory. Now a short dull report,—the mere disk

of a sound, shorn of its beams,—and then a puff of smoke rises in the

horizon to join its misty relatives in the skies.

GOETHE

He gives such a glowing description of the old tower, that they who

had been born and brought up in the neighborhood must needs look over

their shoulders, "that they might behold with their eyes, what I had

praised to their ears, ... and I added nothing, not even the ivy which

for centuries had decorated the walls."—_Italiänische Reise._[7]

SUNRISE

_Nov. 17._ Now the king of day plays at bo-peep round the world's

corner, and every cottage window smiles a golden smile,—a very picture

of glee. I see the water glistening in the eye. The smothered breathings

of awakening day strike the ear with an undulating motion; over hill

and dale, pasture and woodland, come they to me, and I am at home in

the world.

THE SKY

If there is nothing new on earth, still there is something new in the

heavens. We have always a resource in the skies. They are constantly

turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types in this blue ground,

and the inquiring may always read a new truth.[8]

VIRGIL

_Nov. 18._ "Pulsae referunt ad sidera valles"[9] is such a line as would

save an epic; and how finely he concludes his "agrestem musam," now that

Silenus has done, and the stars have heard his story,—

"Cogere donec oves stabulis, numerumque referre

Jussit, et invito processit Vesper Olympo."

HARMONY

Nature makes no noise. The howling storm, the rustling leaf, the

pattering rain are no disturbance, there is an essential and unexplored

harmony in them. Why is it that thought flows with so deep and sparkling

a current when the sound of distant music strikes the ear? When I

would muse I complain not of a rattling tune on the piano—a Battle of

Prague even—if it be harmony, but an irregular, discordant drumming is

intolerable.

SHADOWS

When a shadow flits across the landscape of the soul, where is the

substance? Has it always its origin in sin? and is that sin in me?

VIRGIL

_Nov. 20._ I would read Virgil, if only that I might be reminded of the

identity of human nature in all ages. I take satisfaction in "jam laeto

turgent in palmite gemmae," or "Strata jacent passim sua quaeque sub

arbore poma." It was the same world, and the same men inhabited it.[10]

NAWSHAWTUCT

_Nov. 21._ One must needs climb a hill to know what a world he inhabits.

In the midst of this Indian summer I am perched on the topmost rock of

Nawshawtuct, a velvet wind blowing from the southwest. I seem to feel

the atoms as they strike my cheek. Hills, mountains, steeples stand out

in bold relief in the horizon, while I am resting on the rounded boss

of an enormous shield, the river like a vein of silver encircling its

edge, and thence the shield gradually rises to its rim, the horizon.

Not a cloud is to be seen, but villages, villas, forests, mountains,

one above another, till they are swallowed up in the heavens.[11] The

atmosphere is such that, as I look abroad upon the length and breadth

of the land, it recedes from my eye, and I seem to be looking for the

threads of the velvet.

Thus I admire the grandeur of my emerald carriage, with its border of

blue, in which I am rolling through space.

THOUGHTS

_Nov. 26._ I look around for thoughts when I am overflowing myself.

While I live on, thought is still in embryo,—it stirs not within me.

Anon it begins to assume shape and comeliness, and I deliver it, and

clothe it in its garment of language. But alas! how often when thoughts

choke me do I resort to a spat on the back, or swallow a crust, or do

anything but expectorate them!

HOAR FROST AND GREEN RIVER

_Nov. 28._ Every tree, fence, and spire of grass that could raise its

head above the snow was this morning covered with a dense hoar frost.

The trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping. On

this side they were huddled together, their gray hairs streaming, in a

secluded valley which the sun had not yet penetrated, and on that they

went hurrying off in Indian file by hedgerows and watercourses, while

the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to

hide their diminished heads in the snow.

The branches and taller grasses were covered with a wonderful

ice-foliage, answering leaf for leaf to their summer dress. The centre,

diverging, and even more minute fibres were perfectly distinct and the

edges regularly indented.

These leaves were on the side of the twig or stubble opposite to the sun

(when it was not bent toward the east), meeting it for the most part at

right angles, and there were others standing out at all possible angles

upon these, and upon one another.

It struck me that these ghost leaves and the green ones whose forms they

assume were the creatures of the same law. It could not be in obedience

to two several laws that the vegetable juices swelled gradually into the

perfect leaf on the one hand, and the crystalline particles trooped to

their standard in the same admirable order on the other.

The river, viewed from the bank above, appeared of a yellowish-green

color, but on a nearer approach this phenomenon vanished; and yet the

landscape was covered with snow.[12]

ICE-HARP

_Dec. 5._ My friend tells me he has discovered a new note in nature,

which he calls the Ice-Harp. Chancing to throw a handful of pebbles upon

the pond where there was an air chamber under the ice, it discoursed a

pleasant music to him.

Herein resides a tenth muse, and as he was the man to discover it

probably the extra melody is in him.

GOETHE

_Dec. 8._ He is generally satisfied with giving an exact description

of objects as they appear to him, and his genius is exhibited in the

points he seizes upon and illustrates. His description of Venice and

her environs as seen from the Marcusthurm is that of an unconcerned

spectator, whose object is faithfully to describe what he sees, and

that, too, for the most part, in the order in which he saw it. It

is this trait which is chiefly to be prized in the book; even the

reflections of the author do not interfere with his descriptions.

It would thus be possible for inferior minds to produce invaluable

books.[13]

MEASURE

_Dec. 10._ Not the carpenter alone carries his rule in his pocket.

Space is quite subdued to us. The meanest peasant finds in a hair of

his head, or the white crescent upon his nail, the unit of measure for

the distance of the fixed stars. His middle finger measures how many

_digits_ into space; he extends a few times his thumb and finger, and

the continent is _spanned_; he stretches out his arms, and the sea is

_fathomed_.

THOUGHT

_Dec. 12._ There are times when thought elbows her way through the

underwood of words to the clear blue beyond;

"O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,

With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues _her_ way,

And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies;..."

but let her don her cumbersome working-day garment, and each sparkling

dewdrop will seem a "slough of despond."

PECULIARITY

When we speak of a peculiarity in a man or a nation, we think to

describe only one part, a mere mathematical point; but it is not so. It

pervades all. Some parts may be further removed than others from this

centre, but not a particle so remote as not to be either shined on or

shaded by it.

THORNS

No faculty in man was created with a useless or sinister intent; in no

respect can he be wholly bad, but the worst passions have their root

in the best,—as anger, for instance, may be only a perverted sense of

wrong which yet retains some traces of its origin.[14] So a spine is

proved to be only an abortive branch, "which, notwithstanding, even as

a spine, bears leaves, and, in _Euphorbia heptagona_, sometimes flowers

and fruit."

JACK FROST

_Dec. 15._ As further confirmation of the fact that vegetation is a kind

of crystallization, I observe that upon the edge of the melting frost

on the windows, Jack is playing singular freaks,—now bundling together

his needle-shaped leaves so as to resemble fields waving with grain, or

shocks of wheat rising here and there from the stubble. On one side the

vegetation of the torrid zone is presented you,—high-towering palms,

and widespread banyans, such as we see in pictures of Oriental scenery;

on the other are arctic pines, stiff-frozen, with branches downcast,

like the arms of tender men in frosty weather.[15] In some instances

the panes are covered with little feathery flocks, where the particles

radiate from a common centre, the number of radii varying from three

to seven or eight. The crystalline particles are partial to the creases

and flaws in the glass, and, when these extend from sash to sash, form

complete hedgerows, or miniature watercourses, where dense masses of

crystal foliage "high over-arched imbower."

FROZEN MIST

_Dec. 16._ The woods were this morning covered with thin bars of

vapor,—the evaporation of the leaves according to Sprengel,—which

seemed to have been suddenly stiffened by the cold. In some places it

was spread out like gauze over the tops of the trees, forming extended

lawns, where elves and fairies held high tournament;

"before each van

Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears,

Till thickest legions close."[16]

The east was glowing with a narrow but ill-defined crescent of light,

the blue of the zenith mingling in all possible proportions with the

salmon-color of the horizon. And now the neighboring hilltops telegraph

to us poor crawlers of the plain the Monarch's golden ensign in the

east, and anon his "long levelled rules" fall sector-wise, and humblest

cottage windows greet their lord.

FACTS

How indispensable to a correct study of Nature is a perception of her

true meaning. The fact will one day flower out into a truth. The season

will mature and fructify what the understanding had cultivated. Mere

accumulators of facts—collectors of materials for the master-workmen—are

like those plants growing in dark forests, which "put forth only leaves

instead of blossoms."

DRUIDS

_Dec. 17._ In all ages and nations we observe a leaning towards a right

state of things. This may especially be seen in the history of the

priest, whose life approaches most nearly to that of the ideal man. The

Druids paid no taxes, and "were allowed exemption from warfare and all

other things." The clergy are even now a privileged class.

In the last stage of civilization Poetry, Religion, and Philosophy will

be one; and this truth is glimpsed in the first. The druidical order was

divided into Druids, Bards, and Ouates. "The Bards were the poets and

musicians, of whom some were satirists, and some encomiasts. The Ouates

sacrificed, divined, and contemplated the nature of things. The Druids

cultivated physiology and moral philosophy; or, as Diodorus says, were

their philosophers and theologians."

GOETHE

_Dec. 18._ He required that his heroine, Iphigenia, should say nothing

which might not be uttered by the holy Agathe, whose picture he

contemplated.

IMMORTALITY POST

The nations assert an immortality _post_ as well as _ante_. The

Athenians wore a golden grasshopper as an emblem that they sprang from

the earth, and the Arcadians pretended that they were προσέληνοι, or

before the moon.

The Platos do not seem to have considered this back-reaching tendency

of the human mind.

THE PRIDE OF ANCESTRY

Men are pleased to be called the sons of their fathers,—so little truth

suffices them,—and whoever addresses them by this or a similar title is

termed a poet. The orator appeals to the sons of Greece, of Britannia,

of France, or of Poland; and our fathers' homely name acquires some

interest from the fact that Sakai-suna means sons-of-the-Sakai.[17]

HELL

_Dec. 19._ Hell itself may be contained within the compass of a spark.

SAXONS

The fact seems at first an anomalous one that the less a people have

to contend for the more tenacious they are of their rights. The Saxons

of Ditmarsia contended for a principle, not for their sterile sands and

uncultivated marshes.

We are on the whole the same Saxons that our fathers were, when it was

said of them, "They are emulous in hospitality, because to plunder and

to lavish is the glory of an Holsatian; not to be versed in the science

of depredation is, in his opinion, to be stupid and base."

The French are the same Franks of whom it is written, "Francis familiare

est ridendo fidem frangere;" "Gens Francorum infidelis est. Si perjeret

Francus quid novi faciet, qui perjuriam ipsam sermonis genus putat esse

non criminis."

CRYSTALS

I observed this morning that the ice at Swamp Bridge was checkered with

a kind of mosaic-work of white creases or channels; and when I examined

the under side, I found it to be covered with a mass of crystallizations

from three to five inches deep, standing, or rather depending, at right

angles to the true ice, which was about an eighth of an inch thick.

There was a yet older ice six or eight inches below this. The crystals

were for the most part triangular prisms with the lower end open,

though, in some cases, they had run into each other so as to form four

or five sided prisms. When the ice was laid upon its smooth side, they

resembled the roofs and steeples of a Gothic city, or the vessels of a

crowded haven under a press of canvas.

I noticed also that where the ice in the road had melted and left

the mud bare, the latter, as if crystallized, discovered countless

rectilinear fissures, an inch or more in length—a continuation, as it

were, of the checkered ice.[18]

_Dec. 22._ About a year ago, having set aside a bowl which had contained

some rhubarb grated in water, without wiping it, I was astonished to

find, a few days afterward, that the rhubarb had crystallized, covering

the bottom of the bowl with perfect cubes, of the color and consistency

of glue, and a tenth of an inch in diameter.

CRYSTALS

_Dec. 23._ Crossed the river to-day on the ice. Though the weather is

raw and wintry and the ground covered with snow, I noticed a solitary

robin, who looked as if he needed to have his services to the Babes in

the Woods speedily requited.

In the side of the high bank by the Leaning Hemlocks, there were some

curious crystallizations. Wherever the water, or other causes, had

formed a hole in the bank, its throat and outer edge, like the entrance

to a citadel of the olden time, bristled with a glistening ice armor.

In one place you might see minute ostrich feathers, which seemed the

waving plumes of the warriors filing into the fortress, in another the

glancing fan-shaped banners of the Lilliputian host, and in another the

needle-shaped particles, collected into bundles resembling the plumes

of the pine, might pass for a phalanx of spears.[19] The whole hill

was like an immense quartz rock, with minute crystals sparkling from

innumerable crannies. I tried to fancy that there was a disposition in

these crystallizations to take the forms of the contiguous foliage.

REVOLUTIONS

_Dec. 27._ Revolutions are never sudden. Not one man, nor many men, in a

few years or generations, suffice to regulate events and dispose mankind

for the revolutionary movement. The hero is but the crowning stone

of the pyramid,—the keystone of the arch. Who was Romulus or Remus,

Hengist or Horsa, that we should attribute to them Rome or England?

They are famous or infamous because the progress of events has chosen

to make them its stepping-stones. But we would know where the avalanche

commenced, or the hollow in the rock whence springs the Amazon. The most

important is apt to be some silent and unobtrusive fact in history. In

449 three Saxon cyules arrived on the British coast,—"Three scipen gode

comen mid than flode, three hundred cnihten."[20] The pirate of the

British coast was no more the founder of a state than the scourge of

the German shore.

HEROES

The real heroes of minstrelsy have been ideal, even when the names of

actual heroes have been perpetuated. The real Arthur, who "not only

excelled the experienced past, but also the possible future," of whom it

was affirmed for many centuries that he was not dead, but "had withdrawn

from the world into some magical region; from which at a future crisis

he was to reappear, and lead the Cymri in triumph through the island,"

whose character and actions were the theme of the bards of Bretagne

and the foundation of their interminable romances, was only an ideal

impersonation.

[Illustration: _Frost Crystals_]

Men claim for the ideal an actual existence also, but do not often

expand the actual into the ideal. "If you do not believe me, go into

Bretagne, and mention in the streets or villages, that Arthur is really

dead like other men; you will not escape with impunity; you will be

either hooted with the curses of your hearers, or stoned to death."

HOMESICKNESS

The most remarkable instance of homesickness is that of the colony of

Franks transplanted by the Romans from the German Ocean to the Euxine,

who at length resolving to a man to abandon the country, seized the

vessels which carried them out, and reached at last their native shores,

after innumerable difficulties and dangers upon the Mediterranean and

Atlantic.

THE INTERESTING FACTS IN HISTORY

How cheering is it, after toiling through the darker pages of

history,—the heartless and fluctuating crust of human rest and

unrest,—to alight on the solid earth where the sun shines, or rest

in the checkered shade. The fact that Edwin of Northumbria "caused

stakes to be fixed in the highways where he had seen a clear spring,"

and that "brazen dishes were chained to them, to refresh the weary

sojourner, whose fatigues Edwin had himself experienced," is worth all

Arthur's twelve battles.[21] The sun again shines along the highway, the

landscape presents us sunny glades and occasional cultivated patches as

well as dark primeval forests, and it is merry England after all.

_Dec. 31._ As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the

least particle of truth colors our whole life. It is never isolated, or

simply added as treasure to our stock. When any real progress is made,

we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before. We go picking

up from year to year and laying side by side the _disjecta membra_ of

truth, as he who picked up one by one a row of a hundred stones, and

returned with each separately to his basket.

II

1838

(ÆT. 20-21)

HEAVEN ON EARTH

_Jan. 6._ As a child looks forward to the coming of the summer, so

could we contemplate with quiet joy the circle of the seasons returning

without fail eternally. As the spring came round during so many years

of the gods, we could go out to admire and adorn anew our Eden, and yet

never tire.

SAXONS

_Jan. 15._ After all that has been said in praise of the Saxon race, we

must allow that our blue-eyed and fair-haired ancestors were originally

an ungodly and reckless crew.

WE MAKE OUR OWN FORTUNE

_Jan. 16._ Man is like a cork which no tempest can sink, but it will

float securely to its haven at last. The world is never the less

beautiful though viewed through a chink or knot-hole.

_Jan. 21._ Man is the artificer of his own happiness. Let him beware

how he complains of the disposition of circumstances, for it is his own

disposition he blames. If this is sour, or that rough, or the other

steep, let him think if it be not his work. If his look curdles all

hearts, let him not complain of a sour reception; if he hobble in his

gait, let him not grumble at the roughness of the way; if he is weak

in the knees, let him not call the hill steep. This was the pith of the

inscription on the wall of the Swedish inn: "You will find at Trolhate

excellent bread, meat, and wine, provided you bring them with you!"[22]

HOAR FROST

Every leaf and twig was this morning covered with a sparkling ice

armor; even the grasses in exposed fields were hung with innumerable

diamond pendants, which jingled merrily when brushed by the foot of

the traveller. It was literally the wreck of jewels and the crash of

gems. It was as though some superincumbent stratum of the earth had been

removed in the night, exposing to light a bed of untarnished crystals.

The scene changed at every step, or as the head was inclined to the

right or the left. There were the opal and sapphire and emerald and

jasper and beryl and topaz and ruby.[23]

Such is beauty ever,—neither here nor there, now nor then,—neither in

Rome nor in Athens, but wherever there is a soul to admire. If I seek

her elsewhere because I do not find her at home, my search will prove

a fruitless one.

ZENO

_Feb. 7._ Zeno, the Stoic, stood in precisely the same relation to

the world that I do now. He is, forsooth, bred a merchant—as how many

still!—and can trade and barter, and perchance higgle, and moreover he

can be shipwrecked and cast ashore at the Piræus, like one of your Johns

or Thomases.

He strolls into a shop and is charmed by a book by Xenophon—and

straightway he becomes a philosopher. The sun of a new life's day rises

to him,—serene and unclouded,—which looks over στοά. And still the

fleshly Zeno sails on, shipwrecked, buffeted, tempest-tossed; but the

true Zeno sails ever a placid sea. Play high, play low,—rain, sleet,

or snow,—it's all the same with the Stoic. "Propriety and decorum" were

his Palinurus,—not the base progeny of fashion, but the suggestions of

an experienced taste.

When evening comes he sits down unwearied to the review of his

day,—what's done that's to be undone,—what not done at all still

to be done. Himself Truth's unconcerned helpmate. Another system of

book-keeping this than that the Cyprian trader to Phœnicia practiced!

This was he who said to a certain garrulous young man, "On this account

have we two ears and but one mouth, that we may hear more, and speak

less."

That he had talked concerned not our philosopher, but his audience;

and herein we may see how it is more noble to hear than to speak. The

wisest may apologize that he only said so to hear himself talk, for if

he _heard_ not, as well for him had he never spoken. What is all this

gabble to the _gabbler_? Only the silent reap the profit of it.

SOCIETY

_Feb. 9._ It is wholesome advice,—"to be a man amongst folks." Go into

society if you will, or if you are unwilling, and take a human interest

in its affairs. If you mistake these Messieurs and Mesdames for so many

men and women, it is but erring on the safe side,—or, rather, it is

their error and not yours. Armed with a manly sincerity, you shall not

be trifled with, but drive this business of life. It matters not how

many men are to be addressed,—rebuked,—provided one man rebuke them.

SMALL TALK

To manage the small talk of a party is to make an effort to do what was

at first done, admirably because naturally, at your fireside.

INFLUENCE

_Feb. 13._ It is hard to subject ourselves to an influence. It must

steal upon us when we expect it not, and its work be all done ere we

are aware of it. If we make advances, it is shy; if, when we feel its

presence, we presume to pry into its free-masonry, it vanishes and

leaves us alone in our folly,—brimful but stagnant,—a full channel, it

may be, but no inclination.

FEAR

All fear of the world or consequences is swallowed up in a manly anxiety

to do Truth justice.

OLD BOOKS

_Feb. 15._ The true student will cleave ever to the good, recognizing

no Past, no Present; but wherever he emerges from the bosom of time,

his course is not with the sun,—eastward or westward,—but ever towards

the seashore. Day and night pursues he his devious way, lingering by how

many a Pierian spring, how many an Academus grove, how many a sculptured

portico!—all which—spring, grove, and portico—lie not so wide but he

may take them conveniently in his way.

GREECE

_Feb. 16._ In imagination I hie me to Greece as to enchanted ground.

No storms vex her coasts, no clouds encircle her Helicon or Olympus,

no tempests sweep the peaceful Tempe or ruffle the bosom of the

placid Ægean; but always the beams of the summer's sun gleam along

the entablature of the Acropolis, or are reflected through the mellow

atmosphere from a thousand consecrated groves and fountains; always her

sea-girt isles are dallying with their zephyr guests, and the low of

kine is heard along the meads, and the landscape sleeps—valley and hill

and woodland—a dreamy sleep. Each of her sons created a new heaven and

a new earth for Greece.

SUNDAY

_Feb. 18._ Rightly named Suna-day, or day of the sun. One is satisfied

in some angle by wood-house and garden fence to bask in his beams—to

exist barely—the livelong day.

SPRING

I had not been out long to-day when it seemed that a new Spring was

already born,—not quite weaned, it is true, but verily entered upon

existence. Nature struck up "the same old song in the grass," despite

eighteen inches of snow, and I contrived to smuggle away a grin of

satisfaction by a smothered "Pshaw! and is that all?"

_Feb. 19._

Each summer sound

Is a summer round.[24]

GOETHE

_Feb. 27._ He jogs along at a snail's pace, but ever mindful that the

earth is beneath and the heavens above him. His Italy is not merely

the fatherland of lazzaroni and maccaroni but a solid turf-clad

soil, daily illumined by a genial sun and nightly gleaming in the

still moonshine,—to say nothing of the frequent showers which are

so faithfully recorded. That sail to Palermo was literally a plowing

through of the waves from Naples to Trinacria,—the sky overhead, and

the sea with its isles on either hand.

His hearty good-will to all men is most amiable; not one cross word

has he spoken, but on one occasion, the post boy snivelling, "Signore,

perdonate! quésta è la mia patria," he confesses, "to me poor northerner

came something tear-like into the eyes."[25]

SPRING

_March 1._ March fans it, April christens it, and May puts on its jacket

and trousers. It never grows up, but Alexandrian-like "drags its slow

length along," ever springing, bud following close upon leaf, and when

winter comes it is not annihilated, but creeps on mole-like under the

snow, showing its face nevertheless occasionally by fuming springs and

watercourses.

So let it be with man,—let his manhood be a more advanced and still

advancing youth, bud following hard upon leaf. By the side of the

ripening corn let's have a second or third crop of peas and turnips,

decking the fields in a new green. So amid clumps of sere herd's-grass

sometimes flower the violet and buttercup spring-born.

HOMER

_March 3._ Three thousand years and the world so little changed! The

Iliad seems like a natural sound which has reverberated to our days.

Whatever in it is still freshest in the memories of men was most

childlike in the poet. It is the problem of old age,—a second childhood

exhibited in the life of the world. Phœbus Apollo went like night,—ὁ

δ' ἤιε νυκτὶ ἐοικώς. This either refers to the gross atmosphere of the

plague darkening the sun, or to the crescent of night rising solemn and

stately in the east while the sun is setting in the west.

Then Agamemnon darkly lowers on Calchas, prophet of evil,—ὄσσε δέ οἱ

πυρὶ λαμπετόωντε ἐΐκτην,—such a fire-eyed Agamemnon as you may see at

town meetings and elections, as well here as in Troy neighborhood.

A SUNDAY SCENE

_March 4._ Here at my elbow sit five notable, or at least noteworthy,

representatives of this nineteenth century,—of the gender feminine.

One a sedate, indefatigable knitter, not spinster, of the old school,

who had the supreme felicity to be born in days that tried men's souls,

who can, and not unfrequently does, say with Nestor, another of the old

school: "But you are younger than I. For time was when I conversed with

greater men than you. For not at any time have I seen such men, nor

shall see them, as Perithous, and Dryas, and ποιμένα λαῶν," or, in one

word, sole "shepherd of the people," Washington.

And when Apollo has now six times rolled westward, or seemed to roll,

and now for the seventh time shows his face in the east, eyes well-nigh

glazed, long glassed, which have fluctuated only between lamb's wool and

worsted, explore ceaseless some good sermon book. For six days shalt

thou labor and do all thy knitting, but on the seventh, forsooth, thy

reading.[26]

Opposite, across this stone hearth, sits one of no school, but rather

one who schools, a spinster who spins not, with elbow resting on the

book of books, but with eyes turned towards the vain trumpery of that

shelf,—trumpery of sere leaves, blossoms, and waxwork, built on sand,

that presumes to look quite as gay, smell quite as earthy, as though

this were not by good rights the sun's day. I marked how she spurned

that innocent every-day book, "Germany by De Staël," as though a viper

had stung her;—better to rest the elbow on The Book than the eye on such

a page. Poor book! this is thy last chance.

Happy I who can bask in this warm spring sun which illumines all

creatures, as well when they rest as when they toil, not without a

feeling of gratitude! whose life is as blameless—how blameworthy soever

it be—on the Lord's Mona-day as on his Suna-day![27]

Thus much at least a man may do: he may not impose on his

fellows,—perhaps not on himself. Thus much _let_ a man do: confidently

and heartily live up to his thought; for its error, if there be any,

will soonest appear in practice, and if there be none, so much he may

reckon as actual progress in the way of living.

HOMER

The poet does not leap, even in imagination, from Asia to Greece through

mid-air, neglectful of the fair sea and still fairer land beneath him,

but jogs on humanly observant over the intervening segment of a sphere,—

ἐπειὴ μάλα πολλὰ μεταξύ

Οὔρεά τε σκιόεντα, θάλασσά τε ἠχήεσσα,—

for there are very many

Shady mountains, and resounding seas between.[28]

_March 5._ How often, when Achilles like one διάνδιχα μερμήριξεν whether

to retaliate or suppress his wrath, has his good Genius, like Pallas

Athene, gliding down from heaven, θυμῷ φιλέουσά τε, κηδομένη τε, stood

behind him, and whispered peace in his ear![29]

Men may dispute about the fact whether a goddess did actually come down

from heaven, calling it a poet's fancy, but was it not, considering the

stuff that gods are made of, a very truth?

THE AGE OF HONEY

"And to them rose up the sweet-worded Nestor, the shrill orator of

the Pylians,

And words _sweeter than honey_ flowed from his tongue."[30]

E'en in old Homer's day was honey sweet,—not yet is sour,—tickling the

palate of the blind old man, forsooth, with fresher sweet; then, as now,

whene'er from leaky jar or drivelling lips it daubed the festive board,

proving a baneful lure to swarms of parasites, Homer's cotemporaries,

but alas! like Phthian hero, vulnerable in heel.

WHAT TO DO

But what does all this scribbling amount to? What is now scribbled

in the heat of the moment one can contemplate with somewhat of

satisfaction, but alas! to-morrow—aye, to-night—it is stale, flat, and

unprofitable,—in fine, is not, only its shell remains, like some red

parboiled lobster-shell which, kicked aside never so often, still stares

at you in the path.

What may a man do and not be ashamed of it? He may not do nothing

surely, for straightway he is dubbed Dolittle—aye! christens himself

first—and reasonably, for he was first to duck. But let him do

something, is he the less a Dolittle? Is it actually something done, or

not rather something undone; or, if done, is it not badly done, or at

most well done comparatively?

Such is man,—toiling, heaving, struggling ant-like to shoulder some

stray unappropriated crumb and deposit it in his granary; then runs

out, complacent, gazes heavenward, earthward (for even pismires can look

down), heaven and earth meanwhile looking downward, upward; there seen

of men, world-seen, deed-delivered, vanishes into all-grasping night.

And is he doomed ever to run the same course? Can he not, wriggling,

screwing, self-exhorting, self-constraining, wriggle or screw out

something that shall live,—respected, intact, intangible, not to be

sneezed at?[31]

_March 6._ How can a man sit down and quietly pare his nails, while the

earth goes gyrating ahead amid such a din of sphere music, whirling him

along about her axis some twenty-four thousand miles between sun and

sun, but mainly in a circle some two millions of miles actual progress?

And then such a hurly-burly on the surface—wind always blowing—now a

zephyr, now a hurricane—tides never idle, ever fluctuating—no rest for

Niagara, but perpetual ran-tan on those limestone rocks—and then that

summer simmering which our ears are used to, which would otherwise be

christened confusion worse confounded, but is now ironically called

"silence audible," and above all the incessant tinkering named "hum of

industry," the hurrying to and fro and confused jabbering of men. Can

man do less than get up and shake himself?

COMPOSITION

_March 7._ We should not endeavor coolly to analyze our thoughts, but,

keeping the pen even and parallel with the current, make an accurate

transcript of them. Impulse is, after all, the best linguist, and for

his logic, if not conformable to Aristotle, it cannot fail to be most

convincing. The nearer we approach to a complete but simple transcript

of our thought the more tolerable will be the piece, for we can endure

to consider ourselves in a state of passivity or in involuntary action,

but rarely our efforts, and least of all our rare efforts.

SCRAPS FROM A LECTURE ON "SOCIETY" WRITTEN MARCH 14TH, 1838, DELIVERED

BEFORE OUR LYCEUM, APRIL 11TH

Every proverb in the newspapers originally stood for a truth. Thus the

proverb that man was made for society, so long as it was not allowed to

conflict with another important truth, deceived no one; but, now that

the same words have come to stand for another thing, it may be for a

lie, we are obliged, in order to preserve its significance, to write it

anew, so that properly it will read, Society was made for man.

* * * * *

Man is not at once born into society,—hardly into the world. The world

that he is hides for a time the world that he inhabits.

* * * * *

That which properly constitutes the life of every man is a profound

secret. Yet this is what every one would give most to know, but is

himself most backward to impart.

* * * * *

Hardly a rood of land but can show its fresh wound or indelible scar,

in proof that earlier or later man has been there.

* * * * *

The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the

contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest. As the reformers

say, it is a levelling down, not up. Hence the mass is only another

name for the mob. The inhabitants of the earth assembled in one place

would constitute the greatest mob. The mob is spoken of as an insane

and blinded animal; magistrates say it must be humored; they apprehend

it may incline this way or that, as villagers dread an inundation, not

knowing whose land may be flooded, nor how many bridges carried away.

* * * * *

One goes to a cattle-show expecting to find many men and women

assembled, and beholds only working oxen and neat cattle. He goes to

a commencement thinking that there at least he may find the men of the

country; but such, if there were any, are completely merged in the day,

and have become so many walking commencements, so that he is fain to

take himself out of sight and hearing of the orator, lest he lose his

own identity in the nonentities around him.

* * * * *

But you are getting all the while further and further from true society.

Your silence was an approach to it, but your conversation is only a

refuge from the encounter of men; as though men were to be satisfied

with a meeting of heels, and not heads.

Nor is it better with private assemblies, or meetings together, with a

sociable design, of acquaintances so called,—that is to say of men and

women who are familiar with the lineaments of each other's countenances,

who eat, drink, sleep, and transact the business of living within the

circuit of a mile.

With a beating heart he fares him forth, by the light of the stars, to

this meeting of gods. But the illusion speedily vanishes; what at first

seemed to him nectar and ambrosia, is discovered to be plain bohea and

short gingerbread.

Then with what speed does he throw off his strait-jacket of a godship,

and play the one-eared, two-mouthed mortal, thus proving his title

to the epithet applied to him of old by Homer of μέροψ ἄνθρωπος, or

that possesses an articulating voice. But unfortunately we have as yet

invented no rule by which the stranger may know when he has culminated.

We read that among the Finlanders when one "has succeeded in rendering

himself agreeable, it is a custom at an assemblage for all the women

present to give him on the back a sudden slap, when it is least

expected; and the compliment is in proportion to the weight of the

blow."

* * * * *

It is provoking, when one sits waiting the assembling together of his

neighbors around his hearth, to behold merely their clay houses, for the

most part newly shingled and clapboarded, and not unfrequently with a

fresh coat of paint, trundled to his door. He has but to knock slightly

at the outer gate of one of these shingle palaces, to be assured that

the master or mistress is not at home.

After all, the field of battle possesses many advantages over the

drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive

ceremony, no shaking of hands or rubbing of noses, which make one

doubt your sincerity, but hearty as well as hard hand-play. It at least

exhibits one of the faces of humanity, the former only a mask.

* * * * *

The utmost nearness to which men approach each other amounts barely to

a mechanical contact. As when you rub two stones together, though they

emit an audible sound, yet do they not actually touch each other.

* * * * *

In obedience to an instinct of their nature men have pitched their

cabins and planted corn and potatoes within speaking distance of one

another, and so formed towns and villages, but they have not associated,

they have only assembled, and society has signified only a _convention_

of men.

* * * * *

When I think of a playhouse, it is as if we had not time to appreciate

the follies of the day in detail as they occur, and so devoted an hour

of our evening to laughing or crying at them in the lump. Despairing

of a more perfect intercourse, or perhaps never dreaming that such is

desirable, or at least possible, we are contented to act our part in

what deserves to be called the great farce, not drama, of life, like

pitiful and mercenary stock actors whose business it is to keep up the

semblance of a stage.

* * * * *

Our least deed, like the young of the land crab, wends its way to the

sea of cause and effect as soon as born, and makes a drop there to

eternity.

* * * * *

Let ours be like the meeting of two planets, not hastening to confound

their jarring spheres, but drawn together by the influence of a subtile

attraction, soon to roll diverse in their respective orbits, from this

their perigee, or point of nearest approach.

* * * * *

If thy neighbor hail thee to inquire how goes the world, feel thyself

put to thy trumps to return a true and explicit answer. Plant the

feet firmly, and, will he nill he, dole out to him with strict and

conscientious impartiality his modicum of a response.

* * * * *

Let not society be the element in which you swim, or are tossed about at

the mercy of the waves, but be rather a strip of firm land running out

into the sea, whose base is daily washed by the tide, but whose summit

only the spring tide can reach.

* * * * *

But after all, such a morsel of society as this will not satisfy a

man. But like those women of Malamocco and Pelestrina, who when their

husbands are fishing at sea, repair to the shore and sing their shrill

songs at evening, till they hear the voices of their husbands in reply

borne to them over the water, so go we about indefatigably, chanting

our stanza of the lay, and awaiting the response of a kindred soul out

of the distance.

THE INDIAN AXE

_April 1._ The Indian must have possessed no small share of vital energy

to have rubbed industriously stone upon stone for long months till at

length he had rubbed out an axe or pestle,—as though he had said in the

face of the constant flux of things, I at least will live an enduring

life.

FRIENDSHIP

_April 8._

I think awhile of Love, and, while I think,

Love is to me a world,

Sole meat and sweetest drink,

And close connecting link

'Tween heaven and earth.

I only know it is, not how or why,

My greatest happiness;

However hard I try,

Not if I were to die,

Can I explain.

I fain would ask my friend how it can be,

But, when the time arrives,

Then Love is more lovely

Than anything to me,

And so I'm dumb.

For, if the truth were known, Love cannot speak,

But only thinks and does;

Though surely out 't will leak

Without the help of Greek,

Or any tongue.

A man may love the truth and practice it,

Beauty he may admire,

And goodness not omit,

As much as may befit

To reverence.

But only when these three together meet,

As they always incline,

And make one soul the seat

And favorite retreat

Of loveliness;

When under kindred shape, like loves and hates

And a kindred nature,

Proclaim us to be mates,

Exposed to equal fates

Eternally;

And each may other help, and service do,

Drawing Love's bands more tight,

Service he ne'er shall rue

While one and one make two,

And two are one;

In such case only doth man fully prove,

Fully as man can do,

What power there is in Love

His inmost soul to move

Resistlessly.

* * * * *

Two sturdy oaks I mean, which side by side

Withstand the winter's storm,

And, spite of wind and tide,

Grow up the meadow's pride,

For both are strong.

Above they barely touch, but, undermined

Down to their deepest source,

Admiring you shall find

Their roots are intertwined

Insep'rably.

CONVERSATION

_April 15._ Thomas Fuller relates that "in Merionethshire, in Wales,

there are high mountains, whose hanging tops come so close together

that shepherds on the tops of several hills may audibly talk together,

yet will it be a day's journey for their bodies to meet, so vast is

the hollowness of the valleys betwixt them." As much may be said in a

moral sense of our intercourse in the plains, for, though we may audibly

converse together, yet is there so vast a gulf of hollowness between

that we are actually many days' journey from a veritable communication.

STEAMSHIPS

_April 24._ Men have been contriving new means and modes of motion.

Steamships have been westering during these late days and nights on

the Atlantic waves,—the fuglers of a new evolution to this generation.

Meanwhile plants spring silently by the brooksides, and the grim woods

wave indifferent; the earth emits no howl, pot on fire simmers and

seethes, and men go about their business.

THE BLUEBIRDS

_April 26._

In the midst of the poplar that stands by our door

We planted a bluebird box,

And we hoped before the summer was o'er

A transient pair to coax.

One warm summer's day the bluebirds came

And lighted on our tree,

But at first the wand'rers were not so tame

But they were afraid of me.

They seemed to come from the distant south,

Just over the Walden wood,

And they skimmed it along with open mouth

Close by where the bellows stood.

Warbling they swept round the distant cliff,

And they warbled it over the lea,

And over the blacksmith's shop in a jiff

Did they come warbling to me.

They came and sat on the box's top

Without looking into the hole,

And only from this side to that did they hop,

As 'twere a common well-pole.

Methinks I had never seen them before,

Nor indeed had they seen me,

Till I chanced to stand by our back door,

And they came to the poplar tree.

In course of time they built their nest

And reared a happy brood,

And every morn they piped their best

As they flew away to the wood.

Thus wore the summer hours away

To the bluebirds and to me,

And every hour was a summer's day,

So pleasantly lived we.

They were a world within themselves,

And I a world in me,

Up in the tree—the little elves—

With their callow family.

One morn the wind blowed cold and strong,

And the leaves went whirling away;

The birds prepared for their journey long

That raw and gusty day.

Boreas came blust'ring down from the north,

And ruffled their azure smocks,

So they launched them forth, though somewhat loth,

By way of the old Cliff rocks.

Meanwhile the earth jogged steadily on

In her mantle of purest white,

And anon another spring was born

When winter was vanished quite.

And I wandered forth o'er the steamy earth,

And gazed at the mellow sky,

But never before from the hour of my birth

Had I wandered so thoughtfully.

For never before was the earth so still,

And never so mild was the sky,

The river, the fields, the woods, and the hill

Seemed to heave an audible sigh.

I felt that the heavens were all around,

And the earth was all below,

As when in the ears there rushes a sound

Which thrills you from top to toe.

I dreamed that I was a waking thought,

A something I hardly knew,

Not a solid piece, nor an empty nought,

But a drop of morning dew.

'Twas the world and I at a game of bo-peep,

As a man would dodge his shadow,

An idea becalmed in eternity's deep,

'Tween Lima and Segraddo.

Anon a faintly warbled note

From out the azure deep

Into my ears did gently float

As is the approach of sleep.

It thrilled but startled not my soul;

Across my mind strange mem'ries gleamed,

As often distant scenes unroll

When we have lately dreamed.

The bluebird had come from the distant South

To his box in the poplar tree,

And he opened wide his slender mouth

On purpose to sing to me.

JOURNEY TO MAINE

_May 3-4._ Boston to Portland.

What, indeed, is this earth to us of New England but a field for Yankee

speculation? The Nantucket whaler goes a-fishing round it, and so knows

it,—what it is, how long, how broad, and that no tortoise sustains

it. He who has visited the confines of his real estate, looking out on

all sides into space, will feel a new inducement to _be_ the lord of

creation.

We must all pay a small tribute to Neptune; the chief engineer must once

have been seasick.

Midnight—head over the boat's side—between sleeping and waking—with

glimpses of one or more lights in the vicinity of Cape Ann. Bright

moonlight—the effect heightened by seasickness. Beyond that light yonder

have my lines hitherto been cast, but now I know that there lies not

the whole world, for I can say it is there and not here.

_May 4._ Portland. There is a proper and only right way to enter a city,

as well as to make advances to a strange person; neither will allow of

the least forwardness nor bustle. A sensitive person can hardly elbow

his way boldly, laughing and talking, into a strange town, without

experiencing some twinges of conscience, as when he has treated a

stranger with too much familiarity.

_May 5._ Portland to Bath _via_ Brunswick; Bath to Brunswick.

Each one's world is but a clearing in the forest, so much open and

inclosed ground. When the mail coach rumbles into one of these, the

villagers gaze after you with a compassionate look, as much as to say:

"Where have you been all this time, that you make your début in the

world at this late hour? Nevertheless, here we are; come and study us,

that you may learn men and manners."

_May 6._ Brunswick to Augusta _via_ Gardiner and Hallowell.

_May 7._ We occasionally meet an individual of a character and

disposition so entirely the reverse of our own that we wonder if he

can indeed be another man like ourselves. We doubt if we ever could

draw any nearer to him, and understand him. Such was the old English

gentleman whom I met with to-day in H. Though I peered in at his eyes

I could not discern myself reflected therein. The chief wonder was how

we could ever arrive at so fair-seeming an intercourse upon so small

ground of sympathy. He walked and fluttered like a strange bird at my

side, prying into and making a handle of the least circumstance. The

bustle and rapidity of our communication were astonishing; we skated

in our conversation. All at once he would stop short in the path, and,

in an abstracted air, query whether the steamboat had reached Bath or

Portland, addressing me from time to time as his familiar genius, who

could understand what was passing in his mind without the necessity of

uninterrupted oral communication.

_May 8._ Augusta to Bangor _via_ China.

_May 10._ Bangor to Oldtown.

The railroad from Bangor to Oldtown is civilization shooting off in

a tangent into the forest. I had much conversation with an old Indian

at the latter place, who sat dreaming upon a scow at the waterside and

striking his deer-skin moccasins against the planks, while his arms hung

listlessly by his side. He was the most communicative man I had met.

Talked of hunting and fishing, old times and new times. Pointing up the

Penobscot, he observed, "Two or three mile up the river one beautiful

country!" and then, as if he would come as far to meet me as I had

gone to meet him, he exclaimed, "Ugh! one very hard time!" But he had

mistaken his man.

_May 11._ Bangor to Belfast _via_ Saturday Cove.

_May 12._ Belfast.

_May 13._ To Castine by sailboat "Cinderilla [_sic_]."

_May 14._ Castine to Belfast by packet, Captain Skinner. Found the Poems

of Burns and an odd volume of the "Spectator" in the cabin.

_May 15._ Belfast to Bath _via_ Thomaston.

_May 16._ To Portland.

_May 17._ To Boston and Concord.

MAY MORNING

_May 21._

The school-boy loitered on his way to school,

Scorning to live so rare a day by rule.

So mild the air a pleasure 'twas to breathe,

For what seems heaven above was earth beneath.

Soured neighbors chatted by the garden pale,

Nor quarrelled who should drive the needed nail;

The most unsocial made new friends that day,

As when the sun shines husbandmen make hay.

How long I slept I know not, but at last

I felt my consciousness returning fast,

For Zephyr rustled past with leafy tread,

And heedlessly with one heel grazed my head.

My eyelids opened on a field of blue,

For close above a nodding violet grew;

A part of heaven it seemed, which one could scent,

Its blue commingling with the firmament.

WALDEN

_June 3._

True, our converse a stranger is to speech;

Only the practiced ear can catch the surging words

That break and die upon thy pebbled lips.

Thy flow of thought is noiseless as the lapse of thy own waters,

Wafted as is the morning mist up from thy surface,

So that the passive Soul doth breathe it in,

And is infected with the truth thou wouldst express.

E'en the remotest stars have come in troops

And stooped low to catch the benediction

Of thy countenance. Oft as the day came round,

Impartial has the sun exhibited himself

Before thy narrow skylight; nor has the moon

For cycles failed to roll this way

As oft as elsewhither, and tell thee of the night.

No cloud so rare but hitherward it stalked,

And in thy face looked doubly beautiful.

O! tell me what the winds have writ for the last thousand years

On the blue vault that spans thy flood,

Or sun transferred and delicately reprinted

For thy own private reading. Somewhat

Within these latter days I've read,

But surely there was much that would have thrilled the Soul,

Which human eye saw not.

I would give much to read that first bright page,

Wet from a virgin press, when Eurus, Boreas,

And the host of airy quill-drivers

First dipped their pens in mist.

_June 14._

Truth, Goodness, Beauty,—those celestial thrins,[32]

Continually are born; e'en now the Universe,

With thousand throats, and eke with greener smiles,

Its joy confesses at their recent birth.

Strange that so many fickle gods, as fickle as the weather,

Throughout Dame Nature's provinces should always pull together.

_June 16._

In the busy streets, domains of trade,

Man is a surly porter, or a vain and hectoring bully,

Who can claim no nearer kindredship with me

Than brotherhood by law.

CLIFFS

_July 8._

The loudest sound that burdens here the breeze

Is the wood's whisper; 'tis, when we choose to list,

Audible sound, and when we list not,

It is calm profound. Tongues were provided

But to vex the ear with superficial thoughts.

When deeper thoughts upswell, the jarring discord

Of harsh speech is hushed, and senses seem

As little as may be to share the ecstasy.

HEROISM

_July 13._ What a hero one can be without moving a finger! The world

is not a field worthy of us, nor can we be satisfied with the plains of

Troy. A glorious strife seems waging within us, yet so noiselessly that

we but just catch the sound of the clarion ringing of victory, borne

to us on the breeze. There are in each the seeds of a heroic ardor,

which need only to be stirred in with the _soil where they lie_, by an

inspired voice or pen, to bear fruit of a divine flavor.[33]

SUSPICION

_July 15._ What though friends misinterpret your conduct, if it is right

in sight of God and Nature. The wrong, if there be any, pertains only to

the wrongdoer, nor is the integrity of your relations to the universe

affected, but you may gather encouragement from their mistrust. If the

friend withhold his favor, yet does greater float gratuitous on the

zephyr.

TRUTH

_Aug. 4._ Whatever of past or present wisdom has published itself to the

world, is palpable falsehood till it come and utter itself by my side.

SPHERE MUSIC

_Aug. 5._ Some sounds seem to reverberate along the plain, and then

settle to earth again like dust; such are Noise, Discord, Jargon.

But such only as spring heavenward, and I may catch from steeples and

hilltops in their upward course, which are the more refined parts of

the former, are the true sphere music,—pure, unmixed music,—in which no

wail mingles.

DIVINE SERVICE IN THE ACADEMY HALL

In dark places and dungeons these words might perhaps strike root and

grow, but utter them in the daylight and their dusky hues are apparent.

From this window I can compare the written with the preached word:

within is weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth; without, grain

fields and grasshoppers, which give those the lie direct.

THE TIME OF THE UNIVERSE

_Aug. 10._ Nor can all the vanities that so vex the world alter one

whit the measure that night has chosen, but ever it must be short

particular metre. The human soul is a silent harp in God's quire,

whose strings need only to be swept by the divine breath to chime in

with the harmonies of creation. Every pulse-beat is in exact time with

the cricket's chant, and the tickings of the death-watch in the wall.

Alternate with these if you can.[34]

CONSCIOUSNESS

_Aug. 13._ If with closed ears and eyes I consult consciousness for a

moment, immediately are all walls and barriers dissipated, earth rolls

from under me, and I float, by the impetus derived from the earth and

the system, a subjective, heavily laden thought, in the midst of an

unknown and infinite sea, or else heave and swell like a vast ocean

of thought, without rock or headland, where are all riddles solved,

all straight lines making there their two ends to meet, eternity and

space gambolling familiarly through my depths. I am from the beginning,

knowing no end, no aim. No sun illumines me, for I dissolve all lesser

lights in my own intenser and steadier light. I am a restful kernel in

the magazine of the universe.

RESOURCE

Men are constantly dinging in my ears their fair theories and plausible

solutions of the universe, but ever there is no help, and I return again

to my shoreless, islandless ocean, and fathom unceasingly for a bottom

that will hold an anchor, that it may not drag.

SABBATH BELL

_Aug. 19._ The sound of the sabbath bell, whose farthest waves are

at this instant breaking on these cliffs, does not awaken pleasing

associations alone. Its muse is wonderfully condescending and

philanthropic. One involuntarily leans on his staff to humor the

unusually meditative mood. It is as the sound of many catechisms and

religious books twanging a canting peal round the world, and seems

to issue from some Egyptian temple, and echo along the shore of the

Nile, right opposite to Pharaoh's palace and Moses in the bulrushes,

startling a multitude of storks and alligators basking in the sun. Not

so these larks and pewees of Musketaquid. One is sick at heart of this

pagoda worship. It is like the beating of gongs in a Hindoo subterranean

temple.[35]

HOLY WAR

_Aug. 21._ Passion and appetite are always an unholy land in which

one may wage most holy war. Let him steadfastly follow the banner of

his faith till it is planted on the enemy's citadel. Nor shall he lack

fields to display his valor in, nor straits worthy of him. For when he

has blown his blast, and smote those within reach, invisible enemies

will not cease to torment him, who yet may be starved out in the

garrisons where they lie.

SCRIPTURE

_Aug. 22._ How thrilling a noble sentiment in the oldest books,—in

Homer, the Zendavesta, or Confucius! It is a strain of music wafted down

to us on the breeze of time, through the aisles of innumerable ages. By

its very nobleness it is made near and audible to us.

EVENING SOUNDS

_Aug. 26._ How strangely sounds of revelry strike the ear from over

cultivated fields by the woodside, while the sun is declining in the

west. It is a world we had not known before. We listen and are capable

of no mean act or thought. We tread on Olympus and participate in the

councils of the gods.

HOMER

It does one's heart good if Homer but say the sun sets,—or, "As when

beautiful stars accompany the bright moon through the serene heavens;

and the woody hills and cliffs are discerned through the mild light,

and each star is visible, and the shepherd rejoices in his heart."[36]

THE LOSS OF A TOOTH

_Aug. 27._ Verily I am the creature of circumstances. Here I have

swallowed an indispensable tooth, and so am no whole man, but a lame

and halting piece of manhood. I am conscious of no gap in my soul, but

it would seem that, now the entrance to the oracle has been enlarged,

the more rare and commonplace the responses that issue from it. I

have felt cheap, and hardly dared hold up my head among men, ever

since this accident happened. Nothing can I do as well and freely as

before; nothing do I undertake but I am hindered and balked by this

circumstance. What a great matter a little spark kindleth! I believe if

I were called at this moment to rush into the thickest of the fight, I

should halt for lack of so insignificant a piece of armor as a tooth.

Virtue and Truth go undefended, and Falsehood and Affectation are thrown

in my teeth,—though I am toothless. One does not need that the earth

quake for the sake of excitement, when so slight a crack proves such an

impassable moat. But let the lame man shake his leg, and match himself

with the fleetest in the race. So shall he do what is in him to do. But

let him who has lost a tooth open his mouth wide and gabble, lisp, and

sputter never so resolutely.

DEFORMITY

_Aug. 29._ Here at the top of Nawshawtuct, this mild August afternoon,

I can discern no deformed thing. The prophane hay-makers in yonder

meadow are yet the hay-makers of poetry,—forsooth Faustus and Amyntas.

Yonder schoolhouse of brick, than which, near at hand, nothing can be

more mote-like to my eye, serves even to heighten the picturesqueness

of the scene. Barns and outbuildings, which in the nearness mar by their

presence the loveliness of nature, are not only endurable, but, observed

where they lie by some waving field of grain or patch of woodland, prove

a very cynosure to the pensive eye. Let man after infinite hammering

and din of crows uprear a deformity in the plain, yet will Nature have

her revenge on the hilltop. Retire a stone's throw and she will have

changed his base metal into gold.

CRICKETS

The crackling flight of grasshoppers is a luxury; and pleasant is it

when summer has once more followed in the steps of winter to hear scald

cricket piping a Nibelungenlied in the grass. It is the most infinite

of singers. Wiselier had the Greeks chosen a golden cricket, and let

the grasshopper eat grass. One opens both his ears to the invisible,

incessant quire, and doubts if it be not earth herself chanting for all

time.

GENII

In the vulgar daylight of our self-conceit, good genii are still

overlooking and conducting us; as the stars look down on us by day as

by night—and we observe them not.

SPHERE MUSIC

_Sept. 2._ The cocks chant a strain of which we never tire. Some

there are who find pleasure in the melody of birds and chirping of

crickets,—aye, even the peeping of frogs. Such faint sounds as these are

for the most part heard above the weeping and wailing and gnashing of

teeth which so unhallow the Sabbath among us. The moan the earth makes

is after all a very faint sound, infinitely inferior in volume to its

creakings of joy and gleeful murmurs; so that we may expect the next

balloonist will rise above the utmost range of discordant sounds into

the region of pure melody. Never so loud was the wail but it seemed to

taper off into a piercing melody and note of joy, which lingered not

amid the clods of the valley.

CREEDS

_Sept. 3._ The only faith that men recognize is a creed. But the true

creed which we unconsciously live by, and which rather adopts us than we

it, is quite different from the written or preached one. Men anxiously

hold fast to their creed, as to a straw, thinking this does them good

service because their sheet anchor does not drag.[37]

RIVERS

_Sept. 5._ For the first time it occurred to me this afternoon what a

piece of wonder a river is,—a huge volume of matter ceaselessly rolling

through the fields and meadows of this substantial earth, making

haste from the high places, by stable dwellings of men and Egyptian

Pyramids, to its restless reservoir. One would think that, by a very

natural impulse, the dwellers upon the headwaters of the Mississippi

and Amazon would follow in the trail of their waters to see the end of

the matter.[38]

HOMER

_Sept. 7._ When Homer's messengers repair to the tent of Achilles, we do

not have to wonder how they get there, but step by step accompany them

along the shore of the resounding sea.[39]

FLOW OF SPIRITS IN YOUTH

_Sept. 15._ How unaccountable the flow of spirits in youth. You may

throw sticks and dirt into the current, and it will only rise the

higher. Dam it up you may, but dry it up you may not, for you cannot

reach its source. If you stop up this avenue or that, anon it will come

gurgling out where you least expected and wash away all fixtures. Youth

grasps at happiness as an inalienable right. The tear does no sooner

gush than glisten. Who shall say when the tear that sprung of sorrow

first sparkled with joy?

ALMA NATURA

_Sept. 20._ It is a luxury to muse by a wall-side in the sunshine of

a September afternoon,—to cuddle down under a gray stone, and hearken

to the siren song of the cricket. Day and night seem henceforth but

accidents, and the time is always a still eventide, and as the close of

a happy day. Parched fields and mulleins gilded with the slanting rays

are my diet. I know of no word so fit to express this disposition of

Nature as Alma Natura.

COMPENSATION

_Sept. 23._ If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find

compensation in every disappointment. If a shower drives us for shelter

to the maple grove or the trailing branches of the pine, yet in their

recesses with microscopic eye we discover some new wonder in the bark,

or the leaves, or the fungi at our feet. We are interested by some

new resource of insect economy, or the chickadee is more than usually

familiar. We can study Nature's nooks and corners then.[40]

MY BOOTS