[This chapter consists of paragraphs (chiefly undated) taken from a

large commonplace-book containing transcripts from earlier journals.

Thoreau drew largely from this book in writing the "Week," and to a less

extent in writing "Walden." Passages used in these volumes (as far as

noted), and those duplicating earlier journal entries already printed

in the preceding pages, have been omitted. All the matter in the book

appears to have been written before 1847.]

I was born upon thy bank, river,

My blood flows in thy stream,

And thou meanderest forever

At the bottom of my dream.

This great but silent traveller which had been so long moving past my

door at three miles an hour,—might I not trust myself under its escort?

* * * * *

In friendship we worship moral beauty without the formality of religion.

* * * * *

Consider how much the sun and the summer, the buds of spring and the

sered leaves of autumn, are related to the cabins of the settlers which

we discover on the shore,—how all the rays which paint the landscape

radiate from them. The flight of the crow and the gyrations of the hawk

have reference to their roofs.

* * * * *

Friends do not interchange their common wealth, but each puts his

finger into the private coffer of the other. They will be most familiar,

they will be most unfamiliar, for they will be so one and single that

common themes will not have to be bandied between them, but in silence

they will digest them as one mind; but they will at the same time be

so two and double that each will be to the other as admirable and as

inaccessible as a star. He will view him as it were through "optic

glass,"—"at evening from the top of Fesolé." And after the longest

earthly period, he will still be in apogee to him.

* * * * *

It [the boat] had been loaded at the door the evening before, half a

mile from the river, and provided with wheels against emergencies, but,

with the bulky cargo which we stevedores had stowed in it, it proved

but an indifferent land carriage. For water and water-casks there was

a plentiful supply of muskmelons from our patch, which had just begun

to be ripe, and chests and spare spars and sails and tent and guns and

munitions for the galleon. And as we pushed it through the meadows to

the river's bank, we stepped as lightly about it as if a portion of

our own bulk and burden was stored in its hold. We were amazed to find

ourselves outside still, with scarcely independent force enough to push

or pull effectually.

The robin is seen flying directly and high in the air at this season,

especially over rivers, where in the morning they are constantly passing

and repassing in company with the blackbird.

* * * * *

I have never insisted enough on the nakedness and simplicity of

friendship, the result of all emotions, their subsidence, a fruit of the

temperate zone. The friend is an unrelated man, solitary and of distinct

outline.

* * * * *

Must not our whole lives go unexplained, without regard to us,

notwithstanding a few flourishes of ours, which themselves need

explanation?

* * * * *

Yet a friend does not afford us cheap contrasts or encounters. He

forbears to ask explanations, but doubts and surmises with full

faith, as we silently ponder our fates. He is vested with full powers,

plenipotentiary, all in all.

* * * * *

"Plato gives science sublime counsels, directs her toward the regions

of the ideal; Aristotle gives her positive and severe laws, and directs

her toward a practical end."—DEGERANDO.

* * * * *

All day the dark blue outline of Crotched mountain in Goffstown skirted

the horizon. We took pleasure in beholding its outline, because at this

distance our vision could so easily grasp the design of the founder. It

was a pretty victory to conquer the distance and dimensions so easily

with our eyes, which it would take our feet so long to traverse.

* * * * *

Notwithstanding the unexplained mystery of nature, man still pursues

his studies with confidence, ever ready to grasp the secret, as if the

truth were only contained, not withheld; as one of the three circles on

the cocoanut is always so soft that it may be pierced with a thorn, and

the traveller is grateful for the thick shell which held the liquor so

faithfully.

* * * * *

Gracefulness is undulatory like these waves, and perhaps the sailor

acquires a superior suppleness and grace through the planks of his ship

from the element on which he lives.

* * * * *

The song sparrow, whose voice is one of the first heard in the spring,

sings occasionally throughout the season, from a greater depth in the

summer, as it were behind the notes of other birds.

* * * * *

As the temperature and density of the atmosphere, so the aspects of our

life vary.

In this bright and chaste light the world seemed like a pavilion made

for holidays and washed in light. The ocean was a summer's lake, and

the land a smooth lawn for disport, while in the horizon the sunshine

seemed to fall on walled towns and villas, and the course of our lives

was seen winding on like a country road over the plain.[486]

* * * * *

When we looked out from under our tent, the trees were seen dimly

through the mist, and a cool dew hung upon the grass, and in the damp

air we seemed to inhale a solid fragrance.

* * * * *

Communicating with the villas and hills and forests on either hand,

by the glances we sent them, or the echoes we awakened. We glanced up

many a pleasant ravine with its farmhouse in the distance, where some

contributory stream came in; again the site of a sawmill and a few

forsaken eel-pots were all that greeted us.[487]

* * * * *

While we sail here we can remember unreservedly those friends who dwell

far away on the banks and by the sources of this very river, and people

this world for us, without any harsh and unfriendly interruptions.

* * * * *

At noon his horn[488] is heard echoing from shore to shore to give

notice of his approach to the farmer's wife with whom he is to take

his dinner, frequently in such retired scenes that only muskrats and

kingfishers seem to hear.

* * * * *

If ever our idea of a friend is realized it will be in some broad and

generous natural person, as frank as the daylight, in whose presence

our behavior will be as simple and unconstrained as the wanderer amid

the recesses of these hills.

* * * * *

I who sail now in a boat, have I not sailed in a thought? _Vide_

Chaucer.

* * * * *

The hardest material obeys the same law with the most fluid. Trees

are but rivers of sap and woody fibre flowing from the atmosphere and

emptying into the earth by their trunks, as their roots flow upward

to the surface. And in the heavens there are rivers of stars and milky

ways. There are rivers of rock on the surface and rivers of ore in the

bowels of the earth. And thoughts flow and circulate, and seasons lapse

as tributaries of the current year.

* * * * *

Consider the phenomena of morn, or eve, and you will say that Nature

has perfected herself by an eternity of practice,—evening stealing over

the fields, the stars coming to bathe in retired waters, the shadows of

the trees creeping farther and farther into the meadows, and a myriad

phenomena beside.

* * * * *

Occasionally we had to muster all our energy to get round a point

where the river broke rippling over rocks and the maples trailed their

branches in the stream.

* * * * *

The future reader of history will associate this generation with the

red man in his thoughts, and give it credit for some sympathy with

that race. Our history will have some copper tints and reflections, at

least, and be read as through an Indian-summer haze; but such were not

our associations. But the Indian is absolutely forgotten but by some

persevering poets.

The white man has commenced a new era. What do our anniversaries

commemorate but white men's exploits? For Indian deeds there must be

an Indian memory; the white man will remember his own only. We have

forgotten their hostility as well as friendship. Who can realize that,

within the memory of this generation, the remnant of an ancient and

dusky race of mortals called the Stockbridge Indians, within the limits

of this very State, furnished a company for the war, on condition only

that they should not be expected to fight white man's fashion, or to

train, but Indian fashion. And occasionally their wigwams are seen on

the banks of this very stream still, solitary and inobvious, like the

cabins of the muskrats in the meadows.

They seem like a race who have exhausted the secrets of nature, tanned

with age, while this young and still fair Saxon slip, on whom the sun

has not long shone, is but commencing its career.

* * * * *

Their memory is in harmony with the russet hue of the fall of the

year.[489]

For the Indian there is no safety but in the plow. If he would not be

pushed into the Pacific, he must seize hold of a plow-tail and let go

his bow and arrow, his fish-spear and rifle. This the only Christianity

that will save him.[490]

His fate says sternly to him, "Forsake the hunter's life and enter into

the agricultural, the second, state of man. Root yourselves a little

deeper in the soil, if you would continue to be the occupants of the

country." But I confess I have no little sympathy with the Indians and

hunter men. They seem to me a distinct and equally respectable people,

born to wander and to hunt, and not to be inoculated with the twilight

civilization of the white man.

Father Le Jeune, a French missionary, affirmed "that the Indians were

superior in intellect to the French peasantry of that time," and advised

"that laborers should be sent from France in order to work for the

Indians."

The Indian population within the present boundaries of New Hampshire,

Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut has been estimated not to

have exceeded 40,000 "before the epidemic disease which preceded the

landing of the Pilgrims," and it was far more dense here than elsewhere;

yet they had no more land than they wanted. The present white population

is more than 1,500,000 and two thirds of the land is unimproved.

The Indian, perchance, has not made up his mind to some things which the

white man has consented to; he has not, in all respects, stooped so low;

and hence, though he too loves food and warmth, he draws his tattered

blanket about him and follows his fathers, rather than barter his

birthright. He dies, and no doubt his Genius judges well for him. But

he is not worsted in the fight; he is not destroyed. He only migrates

beyond the Pacific to more spacious and happier hunting-grounds.

A race of hunters can never withstand the inroads of a race of

husbandmen. The latter burrow in the night into their country and

undermine them; and [even] if the hunter is brave enough to resist,

his game is timid and has already fled. The rifle alone would never

exterminate it, but the plow is a more fatal weapon; it wins the country

inch by inch and holds all it gets.

What detained the Cherokees so long was the 2923 plows which that

people possessed; and if they had grasped their handles more firmly,

they would never have been driven beyond the Mississippi. No sense of

justice will ever restrain the farmer from plowing up the land which

is only hunted over by his neighbors. No hunting-field was ever well

fenced and surveyed and its bounds accurately marked, unless it were an

English park. It is a property not held by the hunter so much as by the

game which roams it, and was never well secured by warranty deeds. The

farmer in his treaties says only, or means only, "So far will I plow

this summer," for he has not seed corn enough to plant more; but every

summer the seed is grown which plants a new strip of the forest.

The African will survive, for he is docile, and is patiently learning

his trade and dancing at his labor; but the Indian does not often dance,

unless it be the war dance.

* * * * *

In whatever moment we awake to life, as now I this evening, after

walking along the bank and hearing the same evening sounds that were

heard of yore, it seems to have slumbered just below the surface, as in

the spring the new verdure which covers the fields has never retreated

far from the winter.

All actions and objects and events lose their _distinct_ importance in

this hour, in the brightness of the vision, as, when sometimes the pure

light that attends the setting sun falls on the trees and houses, the

light itself is the phenomenon, and no single object is so distinct to

our admiration as the light itself.

* * * * *

If criticism is liable to abuse, it has yet a great and humane apology.

When my sentiments aspire to be universal, then my neighbor has an equal

interest to see that the expression be just, with myself.

My friends, why should we live?

Life is an idle war, a toilsome peace;

To-day I would not give

One small consent for its securest ease.

Shall we outwear the year

In our pavilions on its dusty plain,

And yet no signal hear

To strike our tents and take the road again?

Or else drag up the slope

The heavy ordnance of religion's train?

Useless, but in the hope

Some far remote and heavenward hill to gain.

* * * * *

The tortoises rapidly dropped into the water, as our boat ruffled the

surface amid the willows. We glided along through the transparent water,

breaking the reflections of the trees.

* * * * *

Not only are we late to find our friends, but mankind are late, and

there is no record of a great success in history.

* * * * *

My friend is not chiefly wise or beautiful or noble. At least it is not

for me to know it. He has no visible form nor appreciable character. I

can never praise him nor esteem him praiseworthy, for I should sunder

him from myself and put a bar between us. Let him not think he can

please me by any behavior or even treat me well enough. When he treats,

I retreat.[491]

* * * * *

I know of no rule which holds so true as that we are always paid

for our suspicion by finding what we suspect. There can be no fairer

recompense than this. Our suspicions exercise a demoniacal power over

the subject of them. By some obscure law of influence, when we are

perhaps unconsciously the subject of another's suspicion, we feel a

strong impulse, even when it is contrary to our nature, to do that which

he expects but reprobates.

* * * * *

No man seems to be aware that his influence is the result of his entire

character, both that which is subject and that which is superior to

his understanding, and what he really means or intends it is not in his

power to explain or offer an apology for.

* * * * *

No man was ever party to a secure and settled friendship. It is no

more a constant phenomenon than meteors and lightning. It is a war of

positions, of silent tactics.

* * * * *

I mark the summer's swift decline;

The springing sward its grave-clothes weaves.[492]

Oh, could I catch the sounds remote!

Could I but tell to human ear

The strains which on the breezes float

And sing the requiem of the dying year!

* * * * *

_Sept. 29, 1842._ To-day the lark sings again down in the meadow, and

the robin peeps, and the bluebirds, old and young, have revisited their

box, as if they would fain repeat the summer without the intervention

of winter, if Nature would let them.

* * * * *

Beauty is a finer utility whose end we do not see.

* * * * *

_Oct. 7, 1842._ A little girl has just brought me a purple finch or

American linnet. These birds are now moving south. It reminds me of the

pine and spruce, and the juniper and cedar on whose berries it feeds.

It has the crimson hues of the October evenings, and its plumage still

shines as if it had caught and preserved some of their tints (beams?).

We know it chiefly as a traveller. It reminds me of many things I had

forgotten. Many a serene evening lies snugly packed under its wing.

Gower writes like a man of common sense and good parts who has

undertaken with steady, rather than high, purpose to do narrative with

rhyme. With little or no invention, following in the track of the old

fablers, he employs his leisure and his pen-craft to entertain his

readers and speak a good word for the right. He has no fire, or rather

blaze, though occasionally some brand's end peeps out from the ashes,

especially if you approach the heap in a dark day, and if you extend

your hands over it you experience a slight warmth there more than

elsewhere. In fair weather you may see a slight smoke go up here and

there. He narrates what Chaucer sometimes sings. He tells his story with

a fair understanding of the original, and sometimes it gains a little

in blunt plainness and in point in his hands. Unlike the early Saxon

and later English, his poetry is but a plainer and directer speech than

other men's prose. He might have been a teamster and written his rhymes

on his wagon-seat as he went to mill with a load of plaster.

* * * * *

The banks by retired roadsides are covered with asters, hazels, brakes,

and huckleberry bushes, emitting a dry, ripe scent.[493]

* * * * *

Facts must be learned directly and personally, but principles may be

deduced from information. The collector of facts possesses a perfect

physical organization, the philosopher a perfect intellectual one. One

can walk, the other sit; one acts, the other thinks. But the poet in

some degree does both, and uses and generalizes the results of both; he

generalizes the widest deductions of philosophy.[494]

* * * * *

_Oct. 21, 1842._ The atmosphere is so dry and transparent and, as it

were, inflammable at this season that a candle in the grass shines

white and dazzling, and purer and brighter the farther off it is. Its

heat seems to have been extracted and only its harmless refulgent light

left. It is a star dropped down. The ancients were more than poetically

true when they called fire Vulcan's flower. Light is somewhat almost

moral. The most intense—as the fixed stars and our own sun—has an

unquestionable preëminence among the elements. At a certain stage in the

generation of all life, no doubt, light as well as heat is developed.

It guides to the first rudiments of life. There is a vitality in heat

and light.

* * * * *

Men who are felt rather than understood are being most rapidly

developed. They stand many deep.

* * * * *

In many parts the Merrimack is as wild and natural as ever, and the

shore and surrounding scenery exhibit only the revolutions of nature.

The pine stands up erect on its brink, and the alders and willows fringe

its edge; only the beaver and the red man have departed.

* * * * *

My friend knows me face to face, but many only venture to meet me under

the shield of another's authority, backed by an invisible _corps du

réserve_ of wise friends and relations. To such I say, "Farewell, we

cannot dwell alone in the world."

* * * * *

Sometimes, by a pleasing, sad wisdom, we find ourselves carried beyond

all counsel and sympathy. Our friends' words do not reach us.

* * * * *

The truly noble and settled character of a man is not put forward, as

the king or conqueror does not march foremost in a procession.

* * * * *

Among others I have picked up a curious spherical stone, probably

an implement of war, like a small paving-stone about the size of a

goose egg, with a groove worn quite round it, by which it was probably

fastened to a thong or a withe and answered to strike a severe blow like

a shotted colt. I have since seen larger ones of the same description.

These arrowheads are of every color and of various forms and materials,

though commonly made of a stone which has a conchoidal fracture. Many

small ones are found, of white quartz, which are mere equilateral

triangles, with one side slightly convex. These were probably small shot

for birds and squirrels. The chips which were made in their manufacture

are also found in large numbers wherever a lodge stood for any length

of time. And these slivers are the surest indication of Indian ground,

since the geologists tell us that this stone is not to be found in this

vicinity.

The spear-heads are of the same form and material only larger.

Some are found as perfect and sharp as ever, for time has not the effect

of blunting them, but when they break they have a ragged and cutting

edge. Yet they are so brittle that they can hardly be carried in the

pocket without being broken.

It is a matter of wonder how the Indians made even those rude implements

without iron or steel tools to work with. It is doubtful whether one of

our mechanics, with all the aids of Yankee ingenuity, could soon learn

to copy one of the thousands under our feet. It is well known the art of

making flints with a cold chisel, as practiced in Austria, requires long

practice and knack in the operator, but the arrowhead is of much more

irregular form, and, like the flint, such is the nature of the stone,

must be struck out by a succession of skillful blows.

An Indian to whom I once exhibited some, but to whom they were objects

of as much curiosity as [to] myself, suggested that, as white men

have but one blacksmith, so Indians had one arrowhead-maker for many

families. But there are the marks of too many forges—unless they were

like travelling cobblers—to allow of this.

I have seen some arrowheads from the South Seas which were precisely

similar to those from here, so necessary, so little whimsical is this

little tool.

So has the steel hatchet its prototype in the stone one of the Indian,

as the stone hatchet in the necessities of man.

Venerable are these ancient arts, whose early history is lost in that

of the race itself.

Here, too, is the pestle and mortar,—ancient forms and symbols older

than the plow or the spade.

The invention of that plow which now turns them up to the surface marks

the era of their burial. An era which can never have its history, which

is older than history itself. These are relics of an era older than

modern civilization, compared with which Greece and Rome and Egypt are

modern. And still the savage retreats and the white man advances.

I have the following account of some relics in my possession which

were brought from Taunton [?] in Bristol County. A field which had been

planted with corn for many years. The sod being broken, the wind began

to blow away the soil and then the sand, for several years, until at

length it was blown away to the depth of several feet, where it ceased,

and the ground appeared strewed with the remains of an Indian village,

with regular circles of stones which formed the foundation of their

wigwams, and numerous implements beside.

* * * * *

Commonly we use life sparingly, we husband it as if it were scarce,

and admit the right of prudence; but occasionally we see how ample and

inexhaustible is the stock from which we so scantily draw, and learn

that we need not be prudent, that we may be prodigal, and all expenses

will be met.

* * * * *

Am I not as far from those scenes, though I have wandered a different

route, as my companion who has finished the voyage of life? Am I not

most dead who have not life to die, and cast off my sere leaves?

* * * * *

It seemed the only right way to enter this country, borne on the bosom

of the flood which receives the tribute of its innumerable vales. The

river was the only key adequate to unlock its maze. We beheld the hills

and valleys, the lakes and streams, in their natural order and position.

* * * * *

A state should be a complete epitome of the earth, a natural

principality, and by the gradations of its surface and soil conduct

the traveller to its principal marts. Nature is stronger than law, and

the sure but slow influence of wind and water will balk the efforts of

restricting legislatures. Man cannot set up bounds with safety but where

the revolutions of nature will confirm and strengthen, not obliterate,

them.

* * * * *

Every man's success is in proportion to his _average_ ability. The

meadow flowers spring and bloom where the waters annually deposit

their slime, not where they reach in some freshet only. We seem to do

ourselves little credit in our own eyes for our performance, which all

know must ever fall short of our aspiration and promise, which only we

can know entirely; as a stick will avail to reach further than it will

strike effectually, since its greatest momentum is a little short of

its extreme end. But we do not disappoint our neighbors. A man is not

his hope nor his despair, nor his past deed.[495]

* * * * *

But it is in the order of destiny that whatever is remote shall be

near. Whatever the eyes see, the hands shall touch. The sentinels upon

the turret and at the window and on the wall behold successively the

approaching traveller whom the host will soon welcome in the hall.

* * * * *

It is not to be forgotten that the poet is innocent; but he is

young, he is not yet a parent or a brother to his race. There are

a thousand degrees of grace and beauty before absolute humanity and

disinterestedness.

The meanest man can easily test the noblest. Is he embraced? Does he

find him a brother?

* * * * *

I am sometimes made aware of a kindness which may have long since been

shown, which surely memory cannot retain, which reflects its light long

after its heat. I realize, my friend, that there have been times when

thy thoughts of me have been of such lofty kindness that they passed

over me like the winds of heaven unnoticed, so pure that they presented

no object to my eyes, so generous and universal that I did not detect

them. Thou hast loved me for what I was not, but for what I aspired to

be. We shudder to think of the kindness of our friend which has fallen

on us cold, though in some true but tardy hour we have awakened. There

has just reached me the kindness of some acts, not to be forgotten,

not to be remembered. I wipe off these scores at midnight, at rare

intervals, in moments of insight and gratitude.

Far o'er the bow,

Amid the drowsy noon,

Souhegan, creeping slow,

Appeareth soon.[496]

Methinks that by a strict behavior

I could elicit back the brightest star

That hides behind a cloud.

I have rolled near some other spirit's path,

And with a pleased anxiety have felt

Its purer influence on my opaque mass,

But always was I doomed to learn, alas!

I had scarce changèd its sidereal time.

Gray sedulously cultivated poetry, but the plant would not thrive. His

life seems to have needed some more sincere and ruder experience.

* * * * *

Occasionally we rowed near enough to a cottage to see the sunflowers

before the door, and the seed-vessels of the poppy, like small goblets

filled with the waters of Lethe, but without disturbing the sluggish

household.

Driving the small sandpiper before us.

FOG[497]

Thou drifting meadow of the air,

Where bloom the daisied banks and violets,

And in whose fenny labyrinths

The bittern booms and curlew peeps,

The heron wades and boding rain-crow clucks;

Low-anchored cloud,

Newfoundland air,

Fountain-head and source of rivers,

Ocean branch that flowest to the sun,

Diluvian spirit, or Deucalion shroud,

Dew-cloth, dream drapery,

And napkin spread by fays,

Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers,

Sea-fowl that with the east wind

Seek'st the shore, groping thy way inland,

By whichever name I please to call thee,

Bear only perfumes and the scent

Of healing herbs to just men's fields.

I am amused with the manner in which Quarles and his contemporary poets

speak of Nature,—with a sort of gallantry, as a knight of his lady,—not

as lovers, but as having a thorough respect for her and some title to

her acquaintance. They speak manfully, and their lips are not closed by

affection.

"The pale-faced lady of the black-eyed night."

Nature seems to have held her court then, and all authors were

her gentlemen and esquires and had ready an abundance of courtly

expressions.

Quarles is never weak or shallow, though coarse and untasteful. He

presses able-bodied and strong-backed words into his service, which

have a certain rustic fragrance and force, as if now first devoted

to literature after having served sincere and stern uses. He has the

pronunciation of a poet though he stutters. He certainly speaks the

English tongue with a right manly accent. To be sure his poems have

the[498] musty odor of a confessional.

How little curious is man,

Who hath not searched his mystery a span,

But dreams of mines of treasure

Which he neglects to measure,

For threescore years and ten

Walks to and fro amid his fellow men

O'er this small tract of continental land,

His fancy bearing no divining wand.

Our uninquiring corpses lie more low

Than our life's curiosity doth go;

Our most ambitious steps climb not so high

As in their hourly sport the sparrows fly.

Yonder cloud's blown farther in a day

Than our most vagrant feet may ever stray.

Surely, O Lord, he hath not greatly erred

Who hath so little from his birthplace stirred.

He wanders through this low and shallow world,

Scarcely his bolder thoughts and hopes unfurled,

Through this low wallèd world, which his huge sin

Hath hardly room to rest and harbor in.

Bearing his head just o'er some fallow ground,

Some cowslip'd meadows where the bitterns sound,

He wanders round until his end draws nigh,

And then lays down his aged head to die.

And this is life! this is that famous strife!

His head doth court a fathom from the land,

Six feet from where his grovelling feet do stand.

What is called talking is a remarkable though I believe universal

phenomenon of human society. The most constant phenomenon when men or

women come together is talking. A chemist might try this experiment in

his laboratory with certainty, and set down the fact in his journal.

This characteristic of the race may be considered as established. No

doubt every one can call to mind numerous conclusive instances. Some

nations, it is true, are said to articulate more distinctly than others;

yet the rule holds with those who have the fewest letters in their

alphabet. Men cannot stay long together without talking, according

to the rules of polite society. (As all men have two ears and but one

tongue, they must spend the extra and unavoidable hours of silence in

listening to the whisperings of genius, and this fact it is that makes

silence always respectable in my eyes.) Not that they have anything to

communicate, or do anything quite natural or important to be done so,

but by common consent they fall to using the invention of speech, and

make a conversation, good or bad. They say things, first this one and

then that. They express their "opinions," as they are called.

By a well-directed silence I have sometimes seen threatening and

troublesome people routed. You sit musing as if you were in broad

nature again. They cannot stand it. Their position becomes more and more

uncomfortable every moment. So much humanity over against one without

any disguise,—not even the disguise of speech! They cannot stand it nor

sit against it.

Not only must men talk, but for the most part must talk about talk,—even

about books, or dead and buried talk. Sometimes my friend expects a

few periods from me. Is he exorbitant? He thinks it is my turn now.

Sometimes my companion thinks he has said a good thing, but I don't see

the difference. He looks just as he did before. Well, it is no loss. I

suppose he has plenty more.

Then I have seen very near and intimate, very old friends introduced

by very old strangers, with liberty given to talk. The stranger, who

knows only the countersign, says, "Jonas—Eldred," giving those names

which will make a title good in a court of law. (It may be presumed

that God does not know the Christian names of men.) Then Jonas, like

a ready soldier, makes a remark,—a benediction on the weather it may

be,—and Eldred swiftly responds, and unburdens his breast, and so the

action begins. They bless God and nature many times gratuitously, and

part mutually well pleased, leaving their cards. They did not happen to

be present at each other's christening.

Sometimes I have listened so attentively and with so much interest

to the whole expression of a man that I did not hear one word he was

saying, and saying too with the more vivacity observing my attention.

But a man may be an object of interest to me though his tongue is pulled

out by the roots.

* * * * *

Men sometimes do as if they could eject themselves like bits of

pack-thread from the end of the tongue.

* * * * *

Scholars have for the most part a diseased way of looking at the world.

They mean by it a few cities and unfortunate assemblies of men and

women, who might all be concealed in the grass of the prairies. They

describe this world as old or new, healthy or diseased, according to the

state of their libraries,—a little dust more or less on their shelves.

When I go abroad from under this shingle or slate roof, I find several

things which they have not considered. Their conclusions seem imperfect.

* * * * *

As with two eyes we see and with two ears we hear, with the like

advantage is man added to man. Making no complaint, offering no

encouragement, one human being is made aware of the neighboring

and contemporaneous existence of another. Such is the tenderness of

friendship. We never recognize each other as finite and imperfect

beings, but with a smile and as strangers. My intercourse with men is

governed by the same laws with my intercourse with nature.

* * * * *

Buonaparte said that the three-o'clock-in-the-morning courage was the

rarest, but I cannot agree with him.[499] Fear does not awake so early.

Few men are so degenerate as to balk nature by not beginning the day

well.

* * * * *

I hold in my hands a recent volume of essays and poems, in its outward

aspect like the thousands which the press sends forth, and, if the gods

permitted their own inspiration to be breathed in vain, this might be

forgotten in the mass, but the accents of truth are as sure to be heard

on earth as in heaven. The more I read it the more I am impressed by its

sincerity, its depth and grandeur. It already seems ancient and has lost

the traces of its modern birth. It is an evidence of many virtues in the

writer. More serenely and humbly confident, this man has listened to the

inspiration which all may hear, and with greater fidelity reported it.

It is therefore a true prophecy, and shall at length come to pass. It

has the grandeur of the Greek tragedy, or rather its Hebrew original,

yet it is not necessarily referred to any form of faith. The slumbering,

heavy depth of its sentences is perhaps without recent parallel. It

lies like the sward in its native pasture, where its roots are never

disturbed, and not spread over a sandy embankment.

On fields o'er which the reaper's hand has passed,

Lit by the harvest moon and autumn sun,

My thoughts like stubble floating in the wind

And of such fineness as October airs,

There, after harvest, could I glean my life,

A richer harvest reaping without toil,

And weaving gorgeous fancies at my will,

In subtler webs than finest summer haze.

In October the air is really the fine element the poets describe.[500]

The fields emit a dry and temperate odor. There is something in the

refined and elastic air which reminds us of a work of art. It is like

a verse of Anacreon or a tragedy of Æschylus.

* * * * *

All parts of nature belong to one head, as the curls of a maiden's hair.

How beautifully flow the seasons as one year, and all streams as one

ocean!

* * * * *

I hate museums; there is nothing so weighs upon my spirits. They are the

catacombs of nature. One green bud of spring, one willow catkin, one

faint trill from a migrating sparrow would set the world on its legs

again. The life that is in a single green weed is of more worth than

all this death. They are dead nature collected by dead men. I know not

whether I muse most at the bodies stuffed with cotton and sawdust or

those stuffed with bowels and fleshy fibre outside the cases.

Where is the proper herbarium, the true cabinet of shells, and museum of

skeletons, but in the meadow where the flower bloomed, by the seaside

where the tide cast up the fish, and on the hills and in the valleys

where the beast laid down its life and the skeleton of the traveller

reposes on the grass? What right have mortals to parade these things on

their legs again, with their wires, and, when heaven has decreed that

they shall return to dust again, to return them to sawdust? Would you

have a dried specimen of a world, or a pickled one?

Embalming is a sin against heaven and earth,—against heaven, who has

recalled the soul and set free the servile elements, and against the

earth, which is thus robbed of her dust. I have had my right-perceiving

senses so disturbed in these haunts as to mistake a veritable living

man for a stuffed specimen, and surveyed him with dumb wonder as the

strangest of the whole collection. For the strangest is that which,

being in many particulars most like, is in some essential particular

most unlike.

* * * * *

It is one great and rare merit in the old English tragedy that it says

something. The words slide away very fast, but toward some conclusion.

It has to do with things, and the reader feels as if he were advancing.

It does not make much odds what message the author has to deliver at

this distance of time, since no message can startle us, but how he

delivers it,—that it be done in a downright and manly way. They come to

the point and do not waste the time.

* * * * *

They say that Carew was a laborious writer, but his poems do not show

it. They are finished, but do not show the marks of the chisel. Drummond

was indeed a quiddler, with little fire or fibre, and rather a taste

_for_ poetry than a taste _of_ it.

* * * * *

After all, we draw on very gradually in English literature to

Shakespeare, through Peele and Marlowe, to say nothing of Raleigh and

Spenser and Sidney. We hear the same great tone already sounding to

which Shakespeare added a serener wisdom and clearer expression. Its

chief characteristics of reality and unaffected manliness are there.

The more we read of the literature of those times, the more does

acquaintance divest the genius of Shakespeare of the in some measure

false mystery which has thickened around it, and leave it shrouded in

the grander mystery of daylight. His critics have for the most part made

their [_sic_] contemporaries less that they might make Shakespeare more.

The distinguished men of those times had a great flow of spirits, a

cheerful and elastic wit far removed from the solemn wisdom of later

days. What another thing was fame and a name then than now! This is seen

in the familiar manner in which they were spoken of by each other and

the nation at large,—_Kit_ Marlowe, and _George_ (Peele), and _Will_

Shakespeare, and _Ben_ Jonson,—great _fellows_,—_chaps_.

* * * * *

We pass through all degrees of life from the least organic to the most

complex. Sometimes we are mere pudding-stone and scoriæ.

* * * * *

The present is the instant work and near process of living, and will be

found in the last analysis to be nothing more nor less than digestion.

Sometimes, it is true, it is indigestion.

* * * * *

Daniel deserves praise for his moderation, and sometimes has risen

into poetry before you know it. Strong sense appears in his epistles,

but you have to remember too often in what age he wrote, and yet that

Shakespeare was his contemporary. His style is without the tricks of

the trade and really in advance of his age. We can well believe that he

was a retired scholar, who would keep himself shut up in his house two

whole months together.

* * * * *

Donne was not a poet, but a man of strong sense, a sturdy English

thinker, full of conceits and whimsicalities, hammering away at his

subject, be it eulogy or epitaph, sonnet or satire, with the patience

of a day laborer, without taste but with an occasional fine distinction

or poetic phrase. He was rather _Doctor_ Donne, than the _poet_ Donne.

His letters are perhaps best.

* * * * *

Lovelace is what his name expresses,—of slight material to make a poet's

fame. His goings and comings are of no great account. His taste is not

so much love of excellence as fear of failure, though in one instance

he has written fearlessly and memorably.

* * * * *

How wholesome are the natural laws to contemplate, as gravity, heat,

light, moisture, dryness. Only let us not interfere. Let the soul

withdraw into the chambers of the heart, let the mind reside steadily

in the labyrinth of the brain, and not interfere with hands or feet more

than with other parts of nature.

* * * * *

Thomson was a true lover of nature and seems to have needed only a

deeper human experience to have taken a more vigorous and lofty flight.

He is deservedly popular, and has found a place on many shelves and in

many cottages. There are great merits in "The Seasons"—and the almanac.

In "Autumn:"—

"Attemper'd suns arise,

* * * * *

... while broad and brown, below,

Extensive harvests hang the heavy head.

Rich, silent, deep, they stand."

The moon in "Autumn:"—

"Her spotted disk,

Where mountains rise, umbrageous dales descend,

* * * * *

... gives all his blaze again,

Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day.

Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop,

Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime.

* * * * *

The whole air whitens with a boundless tide

Of silver radiance, trembling round the world."

My friend, thou art not of some other race and family of men;—thou art

flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. Has not nature associated us in

many ways?[501] Water from the same fountain, lime from the same quarry,

grain from the same field compose our bodies. And perchance our elements

but reassert their ancient kindredship. Is it of no significance that

I have so long partaken of the same loaf with thee, have breathed the

same air summer and winter, have felt the same heat and cold, the same

fruits of summer have been pleased to refresh us both, and thou hast

never had a thought of different fibre from my own?[502]

Our kindred, of one blood with us. With the favor and not the

displeasure of the gods, we have partaken the same bread.

* * * * *

It is hard to know rocks. They are crude and inaccessible to our nature.

We have not enough of the stony element in us.

* * * * *

It is hard to know men by rumor only. But to stand near somewhat living

and conscious. Who would not sail through mutiny and storm farther than

Columbus, to reach the fabulous retreating shores of some continent man?

* * * * *

My friend can only be in any measure my foe, because he is fundamentally

my friend; for everything is after all more nearly what it should

rightfully be, than that which it is simply by failing to be the other.

* * * * *

It [friendship] cannot be the subject of reconciliation or the theme of

conversation ever between friends. The true friend must in some sense

disregard all professions of friendship and forget them.

* * * * *

It is as far from pity as from contempt. I should hesitate even to call

it the highest sympathy, since the word is of suspicious origin and

suggests suffering rather than joy. It was established before religion,

for men are not friends in religion, but over and through it; and it

records no apostasy or repentance, but there is a certain divine and

innocent and perennial health about it.

* * * * *

Its charity is generosity, its virtue nobleness, its religion trust. We

come nearer to friendship with flowers and inanimate objects than with

merely affectionate and loving men. It is not for the friend to be just

even,—at least he is not to be lost in this attribute,—but to be only

a large and free existence, representative of humanity, its general

court. Admirable to us as the heavenly bodies, but like them affording

rather a summer heat and daylight,—the light and fire of sunshine and

stars,—rather than the intense heats and splendors which our weakness

and appetite require.

* * * * *

Yesterday I skated after a fox over the ice. Occasionally he sat on his

haunches and barked at me like a young wolf. It made me think of the

bear and her cubs mentioned by Captain Parry, I think. All brutes seem

to have a genius for mystery, an Oriental aptitude for symbols and the

language of signs; and this is the origin of Pilpay and Æsop. The fox

manifested an almost human suspicion of mystery in my actions. While

I skated directly after him, he cantered at the top of his speed; but

when I stood still, though his fear was not abated, some strange but

inflexible law of his nature caused him to stop also, and sit again on

his haunches. While I still stood motionless, he would go slowly a rod

to one side, then sit and bark, then a rod to the other side, and sit

and bark again, but did not retreat, as if spellbound. When, however, I

commenced the pursuit again, he found himself released from his durance.

Plainly the fox belongs to a different order of things from that which

reigns in the village. Our courts, though they offer a bounty for his

hide, and our pulpits, though they draw many a moral from his cunning,

are in few senses contemporary with his free forest life.

* * * * *

To the poet considered as an artist, his words must be as the relation

of his oldest and finest memory, and wisdom derived from the remotest

experience.

* * * * *

I have thought, when walking in the woods through a certain retired

dell, bordered with shrub oaks and pines, far from the village and

affording a glimpse only through an opening of the mountains in the

horizon, how my life might pass there, simple and true and natural, and

how many things would be impossible to be done there. How many books I

might not read!

* * * * *

Why avoid my friends and live among strangers? Why not reside in my

native country?

* * * * *

Many a book is written which does not necessarily suggest or imply the

phenomenon or object to explain which it professes to have been written.

* * * * *

Every child should be encouraged to study not man's system of nature

but nature's.

* * * * *

Giles Fletcher knew how to write, and has left English verses behind.

He is the most valuable imitator of the Spenserian stanza, and adds a

moral tone of his own.

TO A MARSH HAWK IN SPRING

There is health in thy gray wing,

Health of nature's furnishing.

Say, thou modern-winged antique,

Was thy mistress ever sick?

In each heaving of thy wing

Thou dost health and leisure bring,

Thou dost waive disease and pain

And resume new life again.

Man walks in nature still alone,

And knows no one,

Discovers no lineament nor feature

Of any creature.

Though all the firmament

Is o'er me bent,

Yet still I miss the grace

Of an intelligent and kindred face.

I still must seek the friend

Who does with nature blend.

Who is the person in her mask,

He is the friend I ask;

Who is the expression of her meaning,

Who is the uprightness of her leaning,

Who is the grown child of her weaning.

We twain would walk together

Through every weather,

And see this aged Nature

Go with a bending stature.

The centre of this world,

The face of Nature,

The site of human life,

Some sure foundation

And nucleus of a nation,

At least, a private station.

It is the saddest thought of all, that what we are to others, that we

are much more to ourselves,—avaricious, mean, irascible, affected,—we

are the victims of these faults. If our pride offends our humble

neighbor, much more does it offend ourselves, though our lives are never

so private and solitary.

* * * * *

If the Indian is somewhat of a stranger in nature, the gardener is too

much a familiar. There is something vulgar and foul in the latter's

closeness to his mistress, something noble and cleanly in the former's

distance. Yet the hunter seems to have a property in the moon which

even the farmer has not. Ah! the poet knows uses of plants which are

not easily reported, though he cultivates no parterre. See how the sun

smiles on him while he walks in the gardener's aisles, rather than on

the gardener.

* * * * *

Not only has the foreground of a picture its glass of transparent

crystal spread over it, but the picture itself is a glass or transparent

medium to a remoter background. We demand only of all pictures that they

be perspicuous, that the laws of perspective have been truly observed.

It is not the fringed foreground of the desert nor the intermediate

oases that detain the eye and the imagination, but the infinite, level,

and roomy horizon, where the sky meets the sand, and heavens and earth,

the ideal and actual, are coincident, the background into which leads

the path of the pilgrim.

* * * * *

All things are in revolution; it is the one law of nature by which order

is preserved, and time itself lapses and is measured. Yet some things

men will do from age to age, and some things they will not do.

"Fisherman's Acct. for 1805[503] Began March 25

cts.

Dd Mr. Saml Potter 2 qts W I 3/ 1 lb sugar 10d $0.64

One Cod line 5/ 84

April 8 Qt W I 1/6 & 1 lb Sugar 10d & Brown Mug 48

9 Qt N E rum 1/ 10th Do. of Do 1/ 33

13 Qt N E rum & 1 lb Sugar 15th 2 Qts N E rum 2/ 62

17 Qt W I 1/6 Do N E 1/ lb Sugar 9d & Qt N E Rum 71

22 Qt N E rum 1/ lb sugar 9d & Qt N E rum 1/ 44½

23 Qt N E rum 1/ Do of Do & sugar 5d 39

24 Qt N E rum 1/ lb sugar 9d 28½

29 Qt N E rum 1/ & lb sugar 9d—30th Rum 1/ 44½

May first Qt rum ½ lb Sugar 1/5d 22

Qt N E rum 1/ & ½ lb Loaf Sugar 9d 29

4 Qt rum 1/ Sugar 5d 22

6 Qt N E rum 1/ & lb good sugar 11d 31

7 Qt N E rum 1/8th Qt N E rum 1/ & ½ lb Sugar 5d 40

11 Qt N E rum 11d lb Sugar 10d 29

15 Qt rum & lb Sugar 1/9 & Qt N E rum 44

16 To a Line for the Sceene 3/ 0.50

20 To Qt N E rum 11d lb Sugar 10d 0.29

21 To Qt N E rum 11d & lb Sugar 10d 0.29

27 To Qt W I 1/6 & lb Sugar 10d 0.39

June 5th 1805 Settled this acct by Recev.g Cash in Full $8.82½

How many young finny contemporaries of various character and destiny,

form and habits, we have even in this water! And it will not be

forgotten by some memory that we _were_ contemporaries. It is of _some_

import. We shall be some time friends, I trust, and know each other

better. Distrust is too prevalent now. We are so much alike! have so

many faculties in common! I have not yet met with the philosopher who

could, in a quite conclusive, undoubtful way, show me _the_, and, if

not _the_, then how _any_, difference between man and a fish. We are so

much alike! How much could a really tolerant, patient, humane, and truly

great and natural man make of them, if he should try? For they are to

be understood, surely, as all things else, by no other method than that

of sympathy. It is easy to say what they are not to us, _i. e._, what

we are not to them; but what we might and ought to be is another affair.

* * * * *

In the tributaries the brook minnow and the trout. Even in the rills

emptying into the river, over which you stride at a step, you may see

small trout not so large as your finger glide past or hide under the

bank.

* * * * *

The character of this [the horned pout], as indeed of all fishes,

depends directly upon that of the water it inhabits, those taken in

clear and sandy water being of brighter hue and cleaner and of firmer

and sweeter flesh. It makes a peculiar squeaking noise when drawn out,

which has given it the name of the minister or preacher.

* * * * *

The bream is the familiar and homely sparrow, which makes her nest

everywhere, and is early and late.

The pickerel is the hawk, a fish of prey, hovering over the finny broods.

The pout is the owl, which steals so noiselessly about at evening with

its clumsy body.

The shiner is the summer yellowbird, or goldfinch, of the river.

The sucker is the sluggish bittern, or stake-driver.

The minnow is the hummingbird.

The trout is the partridge woodpecker.

The perch is the robin.[504]

* * * * *

We read Marlowe as so much poetical pabulum. It is food for poets, water

from the Castalian Spring, some of the atmosphere of Parnassus, raw and

crude indeed, and at times breezy, but pure and bracing. Few have so

rich a phrase! He had drunk deep of the Pierian Spring, though not deep

enough, and had that fine madness, as Drayton says,

"Which justly should possess a poet's brain."

We read his "Dr. Faustus," "Dido, Queen of Carthage," and "Hero and

Leander," especially the last, without being wearied. He had many of

the qualities of a great poet, and was in some degree worthy to precede

Shakespeare. But he seems to have run to waste for want of seclusion

and solitude, as if mere pause and deliberation would have added a new

element of greatness to his poetry. In his unquestionably fine, heroic

tone it would seem as if he had the rarest part of genius, and education

could have added the rest. The "Hero and Leander" tells better for his

character than the anecdotes which survive.

I fain would stretch me by the highway-side,

To thaw and trickle with the melting snow,

That mingled soul and body with the tide

I too might through the pores of Nature flow,[505]

Might help to forward the new spring along,

If it were mine to choose my toil or day,

Scouring the roads with yonder sluice-way throng,

And so work out my tax on _Her_ highway.

* * * * *

Yet let us thank the purblind race

Who still have thought it good

With lasting stone to mark the place

Where braver men have stood.

In Concord, town of quiet name

And quiet fame as well, ...

* * * * *

I've seen ye, sisters, on the mountain-side,

When your green mantles fluttered in the wind;

I've seen your footprints on the lake's smooth shore,

Lesser than man's, a more ethereal trace;

I have heard of ye as some far-famed race,

Daughters of gods, whom I should one day meet,

Or mothers, I might say, of all our race.

I reverence your natures, so like mine

Yet strangely different, like but still unlike.

Thou only stranger that hast crossed my path,

Accept my hospitality; let me hear

The message which thou bring'st.

Made different from me,

Perchance thou'rt made to be

The creature of a different destiny.

I know not who ye are that meekly stand

Thus side by side with man in every land.

When did ye form alliance with our race,

Ye children of the moon, who in mild nights

Vaulted upon the hills and sought this earth?

Reveal that which I fear ye cannot tell,

Wherein ye are not I, wherein ye dwell

Where I can never come.

What boots it that I do regard ye so?

Does it make suns to shine or crops to grow?

What boots [it] that I never should forget

That I have sisters sitting for me yet?

And what are sisters?

The robust man, who can so stoutly strive,

In this bleak world is hardly kept alive.

And who is it protects _ye_, smooths _your_ way?

We can afford to lend a willing ear occasionally to those earnest

reformers of the age. Let us treat them hospitably. Shall we be

charitable only to the poor? What though they are fanatics? Their errors

are likely to be generous errors, and these may be they who will put to

rest the American Church and the American government, and awaken better

ones in their stead.

Let us not meanly seek to maintain our delicate lives in chambers or in

legislative halls by a timid watchfulness of the rude mobs that threaten

to pull down our baby-houses. Let us not think to raise a revenue

which shall maintain our domestic quiet by an impost on the liberty

of speech. Let us not think to live by the principle of self-defense.

Have we survived our accidents hitherto, think you, by virtue of our

good swords,—that three-foot lath that dangles by your side, or those

brazen-mouthed pieces under the burying hill which the trainers keep

to hurrah with in the April and July mornings? Do our protectors burrow

under the burying-ground hill, on the edge of the bean-field which you

all know, gorging themselves once a year with powder and smoke, and kept

bright and in condition by a chafing of oiled rags and rotten stone?

Have we resigned the protection of our hearts and civil liberties to

that feathered race of wading birds and marching men who drill but

once a month?—and I mean no reproach to our Concord train-bands, who

certainly make a handsome appearance—and dance well. Do we enjoy the

sweets of domestic life undisturbed, because the naughty boys are all

shut up in that whitewashed "stone-yard," as it is called, and see the

Concord meadows only through a grating.

No, let us live amid the free play of the elements. Let the dogs bark,

let the cocks crow, and the sun shine, and the winds blow!

Ye do commend me to all virtue ever,

And simple truth, the law by which we live.

Methinks that I can trust your clearer sense

And your immediate knowledge of the truth.

I would obey your influence, one with fate.

There is a true march to the sentence, as if a man or a body of men were

actually making progress there step by step, and these are not the mere

_disjecta membra_, the dispersed and mutilated members though it were of

heroes, which can no longer walk and join themselves to their comrades.

They are not perfect nor liberated pieces of art for the galleries, yet

they stand on the natural and broad pedestal of the living rock, but

have a principle of life and growth in them still, as has that human

nature from which they spring.[506]

* * * * *

It is a marvel how the birds contrive to survive in this world. These

tender sparrows that flit from bush to bush this evening, though it is

so late, do not seem improvident, [but appear] to have found a roost for

the night. They must succeed by weakness and reliance, for they are not

bold and enterprising, as their mode of life would seem to require, but

very weak and tender creatures. I have seen a little chipping sparrow,

come too early in the spring, shivering on an apple twig, drawing in

its head and striving to warm it in its muffled feathers; and it had no

voice to intercede with nature, but peeped as helpless as an infant,

and was ready to yield up its spirit and die without any effort. And

yet this was no new spring in the revolution of the seasons.

* * * * *

Our offense is rank, it smells to heaven. In the midst of our village,

as in most villages, there is a slaughterhouse, and throughout the

summer months, day and night, to the distance of half a mile, which

embraces the greater part of the village, the air [is] filled with such

scents as we instinctively avoid in a woodland walk; and doubtless, if

our senses were once purified and educated by a simpler and truer life,

we should not consent to live in such a neighborhood.

* * * * *

George Melvin, our Concord trapper, told me that in going to the spring

near his house, where he kept his minnows for bait, he found that they

were all gone, and immediately suspected that a mink had got them;

so he removed the snow all around and laid open the trail of a mink

underneath, which he traced to his hole, where were the fragments of his

booty. There he set his trap, and baited it with fresh minnows. Going

again soon to the spot, he found one of the mink's fore legs in the trap

gnawed off near the body, and, having set it again, he caught the mink

with his three legs, the fourth having only a short bare bone sticking

out.

When I expressed some surprise at this, and said that I heard of such

things but did not know whether to believe them, and was now glad to

have the story confirmed, said he: "Oh, the muskrats are the greatest

fellows to gnaw their legs off. Why I caught one once that had just

gnawed his third leg off, this being the third time he had been

trapped; and he lay dead by the trap, for he couldn't run on one leg."

Such tragedies are enacted even in this sphere and along our peaceful

streams, and dignify at least the hunter's trade. Only courage does

anywhere prolong life, whether of man or beast.

When they are caught by the leg and cannot get into the water to drown

themselves, they very frequently gnaw the limb off. They are commonly

caught under water or close to the edge, and dive immediately with the

trap and go to gnawing and are quackled and drowned in a moment, though

under other circumstances they will live several minutes under water.

They prefer to gnaw off a fore leg to a hind leg, and do not gnaw off

their tails. He says the wharf rats are very common on the river and

will swim and cross it like a muskrat, and will gnaw their legs and even

their tails off in the trap.

These would be times that tried men's souls, if men had souls to be

tried; aye, and the souls of brutes, for they must have souls as well

as teeth. Even the water-rats lead sleepless nights and live Achillean

lives. There are the strong will and the endeavor. Man, even the hunter,

naturally has sympathy with every brave effort, even in his game, to

maintain that life it enjoys. The hunter regards with awe his game, and

it becomes at last his medicine.[507]

* * * * *

Of Cadew or Case worms there are the Ruff-coats or Cockspurs, whose

cases are rough and made of various materials, and the Piper Cadis or

Straw-worm, made of reed or rush, and straight and smooth.

* * * * *

Carlyle's works are not to be studied,—hardly re-read. Their first

impression is the truest and the deepest. There is no reprint. If you

look again, you will be disappointed and find nothing answering to the

mood they have excited. They are true natural products in this respect.

All things are but once, and never repeated. The first faint blushes

of the morning gilding the mountain-tops, with the pale phosphorus

and saffron-colored clouds,—they verily transport us to the morning of

creation; but what avails it to travel eastward, or look again there an

hour hence. We should be as far in the day ourselves, mounting toward

our meridian. There is no _double entendre_ for the alert reader; in

fact the work was designed for such complete success that it serves

but for a single occasion. It is the luxury of wealth and art when for

every deed its own instrument is manufactured. The knife which sliced

the bread of Jove ceased to be a knife when that service was rendered.

* * * * *

For every inferior, earthly pleasure we forego, a superior, celestial

one is substituted.

To purify our lives requires simply to weed out what is foul and noxious

and the sound and innocent is supplied, as nature purifies the blood if

we will but reject impurities.

Nature and human life are as various to our several experiences as

our constitutions are various. Who shall say what prospect life offers

to another? Could a greater miracle take place than if we should look

through each other's eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages

of the world in an hour,—aye, in all the worlds of the ages. What I have

read of rhapsodists, of the primitive poets, Argonautic expeditions,

the life of demigods and heroes, Eleusinian mysteries, etc., suggests

nothing so ineffably grand and informing as this would be.

* * * * *

The phœbe came into my house to find a place for its nest, flying

through the windows.

* * * * *

It was a bright thought, that of man's to have bells; no doubt the birds

hear them with pleasure.

* * * * *

To compete with the squirrels in the chestnut harvest, picking ofttimes

the nuts that bear the mark of their teeth.

* * * * *

I require of any lecturer that he will read me a more or less simple and

sincere account of his own life, of what he has done and thought,—not

so much what he has read or heard of other men's lives and actions,

but some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant

land,—and if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land

to me,—describing even his outward circumstances and what adventures

he has had, as well as his thoughts and feelings about them. He who

gives us only the results of other men's lives, though with brilliant

temporary success, we may in some measure justly accuse of having

defrauded us of our time. We want him to give us that which was most

precious to him,—not his life's blood but even that for which his life's

blood circulated, what he has got by living. If anything ever yielded

him pure pleasure or instruction, let him communicate it. Let the

money-getter tell us how much he loves wealth, and what means he takes

to accumulate it. He must describe those facts which he knows and loves

better than anybody else. He must not write on foreign missions. The

mechanic will naturally lecture about his trade, the farmer about his

farm, and every man about that which he, compared with other men, knows

best. Yet incredible mistakes are made. I have heard an owl lecture with

perverse show of learning upon the solar microscope, and chanticleer

upon nebulous stars, when both ought to have been sound asleep, the one

in a hollow tree, the other on his roost.

After I lectured here before, this winter, I heard that some of my

townsmen had expected of me some account of my life at the pond. This

I will endeavor to give to-night.

* * * * *

I know a robust and hearty mother who thinks that her son, who died

abroad, came to his end by living too low, as she had since learned

that he drank only water. Men are not inclined to leave off hanging

men to-day, though they will be to-morrow. I heard of a family in

Concord this winter which would have starved, if it had not been for

potatoes—and tea and coffee.

It has not been my design to live cheaply, but only to live as I could,

not devoting much time to getting a living. I made the most of what

means were already got.

* * * * *

To determine the character of our life and how adequate it is to its

occasion, just try it by any test, as for instance that this same sun is

seen in Europe and in America at the same time, that these same stars

are visible in twenty-four hours to two thirds the inhabitants of the

globe, and who knows how many and various inhabitants of the universe.

What farmer in his field lives according even to this somewhat trivial

material fact.

I just looked up at a fine twinkling star and thought that a voyager

whom I know, now many days' sail from this coast, might possibly be

looking up at that same star with me. The stars are the apexes of what

triangles! There is always the possibility—the possibility, I say—of

being _all_, or remaining a particle, in the universe.

* * * * *

In these days and in this country, a few implements, as the axe, shovel,

etc., and, to the studious, light and stationery and access to a few

books, will rank next to necessaries, but can all be obtained at a very

trifling cost. Under the head of clothing is to be ranked bedding, or

night-clothes.

We are very anxious to keep the animal heat in us. What pains we take

with our beds! robbing the nests of birds and their breasts, this

shelter within a shelter, as the mole has a bed of leaves and grass at

the end of its burrow.

* * * * *

In the summer I caught fish occasionally in the pond, but since

September have not missed them.

* * * * *

In a man or his work, over all special excellence or failure, prevails

the general authority or value.

* * * * *

Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows

how to spend it. If he had known so much as this, he would never have

earned it.

* * * * *

All matter, indeed, is capable of entertaining thought.

* * * * *

The complete subjugation of the body to the mind prophesies the

sovereignty of the latter over the whole of nature. The instincts are

to a certain extent a sort of independent nobility, of equal date with

the mind, or crown,—ancient dukes and princes of the regal blood. They

are perhaps the mind of our ancestors subsided in us, the experience of

the race.

A small sum would really do much good, if the donor spent himself

with it and did not merely relinquish it to some distant society whose

managers do the good or the evil with it. How much might be done for

this town with a hundred dollars! I could provide a select course of

lectures for the summer or winter with that sum, which would be an

incalculable benefit to every inhabitant. With a thousand dollars

I could purchase for this town a more complete and select library

than exists in the State out of Cambridge and Boston, perhaps a more

available one than any. Men sit palsied and helpless by the side of

their buried treasures.[508]

After all those who do most good with money, do it with the least,

because they can do better than to acquire it.

_March 13, 1846._ The song sparrow and blackbird heard to-day. The snow

going off. The ice in the pond one foot thick.

* * * * *

Men talk much of coöperation nowadays, of working together to some

worthy end; but what little coöperation there is, is as if it were

not, being a simple result of which the means are hidden, a harmony

inaudible to men. If a man has faith, he will coöperate with equal faith

everywhere. If he has not faith he will continue to live like the rest

of the world, whatever company he is joined to. To coöperate thoroughly

implies to get your living together. I heard it proposed lately that

two young men should travel together over the world, the one earning his

means as he went, the other carrying a bill of exchange in his pocket.

It was easy to see that they could not long be companions, or coöperate,

since one would not operate at all. They would part company at the first

and most interesting crisis in their adventures.

END OF VOLUME I

The Riverside Press

H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY

CAMBRIDGE

MASSACHUSETTS

FOOTNOTES

[1] In many cases the punctuation seems to be absolutely

without significance; as if the writer had simply fallen into

the habit of dropping dashes in an absent-minded way as he

passed along. The following examples (the longest an extreme

case) will show what is meant:—

"I heard from time to time—a new note."

"The _Equisetum sylvaticum_—there is now of a reddish cast."

"It is very difficult—to find a suitable place to camp near

the road—affording—water—a good—prospect and retirement."

"Another alighted near—by—and a third a little further off."

[2] Under date of June 9, 1854, we find him writing: "I

should like to know the birds of the woods better. What birds

inhabit our woods? I hear their various notes ringing through

them. What musicians compose our woodland quire? They must be

forever strange and interesting to me." Even the glass that

he finally bought was not an opera-glass, but a "spy-glass"

(monocular) so called, and must have been of comparatively

little help in the identification of woodland species.

[3] Once he saw it (August 3, 1858), and then it proved to

be a Maryland yellow-throat. At other times it was almost

certainly an oven-bird.

[4] [_Week_, p. 375; Riv. 464.]

[5] [_Week_, p. 314; Riv. 390.]

[6] [_Week_, p. 352; Riv. 435, 436.]

[7] [_Week_, p. 348; Riv. 430.]

[8] [_Week_, p. 383; Riv. 473.]

[9] [_Week_, p. 417; Riv. 515.]

[10] [_Week_, p. 93; Riv. 116. _Excursions_, p. 138; Riv.

169.]

[11] [_Week_, p. 373; Riv. 461.]

[12] [_Excursions_, pp. 126, 127; Riv. 155, 156.]

[13] [_Week_, pp. 347, 348; Riv. 429, 430.]

[14] [Later.] We must consider war and slavery, with many

other institutions and even the best existing governments,

notwithstanding their apparent advantages, as the abortive

rudiments of nobler institutions such as distinguish man in

his savage and half-civilized state.

[15] [_Excursions_, pp. 127, 128; Riv. 157.]

[16] [_Week_, p. 186; Riv. 231. _The Service_, Boston, 1902,

p. 21]

[17] [A fanciful derivation of the word "Saxons"?]

[18] [_Excursions_, p. 128; Riv. 158.]

[19] [_Excursions_, p. 128; Riv. 157, 158.]

[20] [_Familiar Letters_, Sept. 8, 1841.]

[21] [_Week_, p. 163; Riv. 203.]

[22] [_Excursions_, p. 141; Riv. 173.]

[23] [_Excursions_, p. 127; Riv. 156.]

[24] [_Excursions_, p. 112; Riv. 138.]

[25] [_Week_, pp. 347, 348; Riv. 429-431.]

[26] [_Week_, p. 66; Riv. 82, 83.]

[27] [_Week_, p. 66; Riv. 83.]

[28] [_Week_, p. 96; Riv. 119, 120.]

[29] [_Week_, p. 65; Riv. 81.]

[30] [_Week_, p. 96; Riv. 120.]

[31] ["Carlyleish" is written in the margin against this

passage.]

[32] [The word seems to be a new one, but its meaning is

clear.]

[33] [_Week_, p. 129; Riv. 161.]

[34] [_Excursions_, p. 108; Riv. 133.]

[35] [_Week_, p. 78; Riv. 97.]

[36] [_Week_, pp. 94, 95; Riv. 117, 119.]

[37] [_Week_, p. 79; Riv. 98, 99. _The Service_, p. 4.]

[38] [_Week_, pp. 9-11; Riv. 11, 13.]

[39] [_Week_, p. 96; Riv. 120.]

[40] [_Week_, p. 319; Riv. 395.]

[41] [See _Week_, p. 95 (Riv. 118), where the passages

referred to appear in translation.]

[42] [_Excursions_, pp. 181, 182; Riv. 221, 222.]

[43] [All but the last stanza, somewhat revised and without

title, appears in _Excursions_, pp. 176, 177; Riv. 215, 216.]

[44] [Cf. _Week_, pp. 417-420; Riv. 515-518.]

[45] [_Excursions_, p. 108; Riv. 133. "Drinking" for "Sipping"

in l. 3 is the only change.]

[46] [_Excursions_, pp. 109, 110; Riv. 135.]

[47] [_Week_, p. 244; Riv. 302. Lines 2 and 3 are altered.]

[48] [_Excursions_, p. 112; Riv. 138.]

[49] [_Excursions, and Poems_, pp. 120 and 409; _Excursions_,

Riv. 147.]

[50] [_Week_, p. 180; Riv. 224.]

[51] [_Week_, pp. 364, 365; Riv. 451, 452.]

[52] [This poem will be found in _Excursions, and Poems_, p.

417, under the title "Ding Dong," somewhat revised and without

the last stanza.]

[53] [_Excursions_, p. 109; Riv. 134.]

[54] [_Walden_, p. 8; Riv. 14, 15.]

[55] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 278; _Misc._, Riv. 36,

37. _The Service_, pp. 5, 6.]

[56] [_Week_, pp. 276, 277; Riv. 343, 344.]

[57] [_Week_, p. 188; Riv. 234.]

[58] [_Week_, p. 188; Riv. 234.]

[59] [_Week_, p. 200; Riv. 248.]

[60] [_Week_, pp. 302, 303; Riv. 375, 376.]

[61] [_Week_, p. 38; Riv. 47.]

[62] [_Week_, p. 38; Riv. 47.]

[63] [_Week_, p. 39; Riv. 48.]

[64] [_Week_, p. 39; Riv. 48, 49.]

[65] [_Week_, p. 39; Riv. 49.]

[66] [_Week_, p. 43; Riv. 54.]

[67] [_Week_, p. 118; Riv. 147.]

[68] [_Week_, p. 179; Riv. 222.]

[69] [_Week_, p. 248; Riv. 307.]

[70] [_Week_, p. 309; Riv. 383.]

[71] [See_ Week_, pp. 318-322; Riv. 394-399.]

[72] [The original name of Woodstock, N. H.]

[73] [See _Week_, pp. 335-353; Riv. 414-437.]

[74] [See _Week_, pp. 356-420; Riv. 442-518.]

[75] [_Week_, pp. 110, 111; Riv. 137.]

[76] [_Week_, p. 110; Riv. 137.]

[77] [_Excursions_, p. 107; Riv. 132.]

[78] [_Excursions_, p. 107; Riv. 131, 132.]

[79] [This comes at the end of the first book of Journal

transcripts (1837-39) and follows immediately a bit of verse

dated Oct. 16, 1838, which has been included in its proper

chronological place.]

[80] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 277: _Misc._, Riv. 35.

_The Service_, p. 1.]

[81] [_Excursions_, p. 107; Riv. 132.]

[82] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 277; _Misc._, Riv. 35.

_The Service_, p. 1.]

[83] [_Week_, p. 376; Riv. 465. _The Service_, pp. 8, 9.]

[84] [Plutarch's _Morals_, "Roman Questions," lxviii.]

[85] [_The Service_, p. 9.]

[86] [_The Service_, p. 12.]

[87] [A pencil interlineation in this paragraph is as

follows:] The soldier is the degenerate hero, as the priest

is the degenerate saint; and the soldier and the priest are

related as the hero and [the] saint. The one's virtue is

bravery, the other's bravery virtue. Mankind still pay to the

soldier the honors due only to the hero. They delight to do

him honor. He is adorned with silver and gold and the colors

of the rainbow, invested with outward splendor; music is for

him especially, and his life is a holiday.

[88] [_The Service_, p. 11.]

[89] [_Week_, p. 183; Riv. 228.]

[90] [_The Service_, p. 11.]

[91] [_The Service_, p. 12.]

[92] [_Week_, p. 183; Riv. 228.]

[93] [_Week_, p. 183; Riv. 227. _The Service_, p. 13.]

[94] [_Week_, p. 183; Riv. 228. _The Service_, p. 14.]

[95] [_The Service_, p. 14. See also p. 151 of this volume.]

[96] [_The Service_, p. 15.] [In pencil on a fly-leaf of the

Journal:] The coward substitutes for this thrilling sphere

music a universal wail, for this melodious chant a nasal cant,

and but whistles to keep his courage up. He blows a feeble

blast of slender melody and can compel his neighborhood only

into a partial concord with himself, because nature has but

little sympathy with such a soul. Hence he hears no accordant

note in the universe, and is a coward, or consciously outcast

and deserted man. But the brave man, without drum or trumpet,

compels concord everywhere by the universality and tunefulness

of his soul.

[97] [_The Service_, p. 13.]

[98] [_Week_, pp. 183, 184; Riv. 228. _The Service_, p. 13.

The quotation is from Plutarch's _Morals_, "Of Superstition."]

[99] [_The Service_, pp. 7, 8. See p. 154 of this volume.]

[100] [_The Service_, pp. 23, 24.]

[101] [Cf. _Week_, pp. 274-307; Riv. 341-381.]

[102] [_Excursions_, p. 108; Riv. 133.]

[103] [Stanzas 8, 10, 11, 12, with revision, _Week_, p.

255; Riv. 317. Stanzas 2-5, 9, 13, _Familiar Letters,

Introduction_.]

[104] [Week, p. 93; Riv. 116.]

[105] [_Week_, p. 93; Riv. 116.]

[106] [_Week_, p. 132; Riv. 164.]

[107] [_Week_, p. 132; Riv. 165.]

[108] [The criticism was not transcribed here. The title was

inserted doubtless as a memorandum and to record the date of

its composition. See Week, p. 327; Riv. 405.]

[109] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 279; _Misc._, Riv.

37.]

[110] [_The Service_, p. 20.]

[111] [_Week_, p. 351; Riv. 434.]

[112] [_Week_, p. 351; Riv. 434. A sheet with specimens of

this familiar school-boy amusement is slipped into one of the

manuscript Journal volumes.]

[113] [_Excursions_, p. 118; Riv. 146.]

[114] [_Week_, p. 406; Riv. 501.]

[115] [_Excursions_, p. 114; Riv. 141.]

[116] [_Excursions_, pp. 120, 121; Riv. 148, 149.]

[117] [See pp. 174 and 263.]

[118] [_Week_, p. 300; Riv. 373.]

[119] [_Excursions_, p. 114; Riv. 140.]

[120] [_Excursions_, pp. 119, 120; Riv. 147, 148.]

[121] [Stanzas 3, 2, and 5, in this order, with slight

alterations, are printed in _Week_, p. 366 (Riv. 453), under

the title of "The Poet's Delay."]

[122] [_Walden_, p. 352; Riv. 493.]

[123] [_Week_, p. 383; Riv. 474.]

[124] [_The Service_, p. 15.]

[125] [_Week_, p. 12; Riv. 15.]

[126] [_Week_, p. 17; Riv. 21.]

[127] [T. finally sold this boat to Hawthorne, who changed the

name from Musketaquid to Pond-Lily; and later it passed into

Channing's hands. See Hawthorne's _American Note-Books_, Riv.

pp. 318-321, and Channing, p. 13.]

[128] [_Week_, pp. 12, 13; Riv. 15-17.]

[129] [_Week_, p. 19; Riv. 24.]

[130] [_Week_, p. 37; Riv. 47.]

[131] [_Week_, p. 17; Riv. 21.]

[132] [_Week_, p. 250; Riv. 310, 311.]

[133] [This was Thoreau's first journal, from which he made

the transcripts which are now the only representatives of his

early diarizing. See p. 188, where Journal of 396 pages ends.]

[134] [_Week_, p. 386; Riv. 476.]

[135] [Wordsworth, incorrectly quoted. The line reads,—

"Following his plough, along the mountain-side."]

[136] [_Week_, pp. 44, 45; Riv. 56.]

[137] [_Week_, pp. 37, 38; Riv. 47.]

[138] [_Week_, p. 38; Riv. 47, 48.]

[139] [_Week_, pp. 319, 320; Riv. 395, 396.]

[140] [_Week_, p. 45; Riv. 56, 57.]

[141] [_The Service_, p. 6.]

[142] [_Week_, p. 280; Riv. 347.]

[143] [_Week_, p. 163; Riv. 203.]

[144] [_Week_, p. 45; Riv. 57.]

[145] [_The Service_, p. 14.]

[146] [_Week_, p. 181; Riv. 224, 225.]

[147] [_Week_, pp. 39, 40; Riv. 49, 50.]

[148] [_Week_, p. 304; Riv. 378.]

[149] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 277; _Misc._, Riv.

35.]

[150] [_The Service_, p. 2.]

[151] [_The Service_, p. 13.]

[152] [_The Service_, p. 24.]

[153] [_Week_, pp. 93, 94; Riv. 116, 117.]

[154] [See p. 104.]

[155] [See p. 106.]

[156] [See p. 106.]

[157] [_The Service_, p. 12.]

[158] [_Week_, pp. 384, 385; Riv. 475.]

[159] [_The Service_, pp. 15, 16.]

[160] [_The Service_, p. 23.]

[161] [_The Service_, p. 23.]

[162] [_The Service_, p. 23.]

[163] [_The Service_, p. 23.]

[164] [_The Service_, p. 23.]

[165] [_The Service_, pp. 25, 26.]

[166] [_The Service_, pp. 21, 22.]

[167] [_The Service_, p. 22.]

[168] [_The Service_, p. 14.]

[169] [_The Service_, p. 12.]

[170] I have heard a strain of music issuing from a soldiers'

camp in the dawn, which sounded like the morning hymn

of creation. The birches rustling in the breeze and the

slumberous breathing of the crickets seemed to hush their

murmuring to attend to it. [Written in pencil on a fly-leaf

of the Journal.]

[171] [_The Service_, p. 7. Mr. Sanborn, in a note to this

passage, says, "The allusion here is to the extraordinary

sight of the gravest citizens of Concord, in that summer

[1840], ... turning out to roll a huge ball, emblematic of

the popular movement against President Van Buren, from the

battle-ground of Concord to that of Bunker Hill, singing as

they rolled:—

'It is the Ball a-rolling on

For Tippecanoe and Tyler too.'"]

[172] [_Week_, p. 129; Riv. 161.]

[173] [_Week_, p. 129; Riv. 160, 161.]

[174] [_Week_, p. 129; Riv. 161.]

[175] [_Excursions_, p. 119; Riv. 146.]

[176] [_The Service_, p. 13.]

[177] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 277; _Misc._, Riv.

36.]

[178] [_The Service_, pp. 3, 4.]

[179] [_Week_, p. 265; Riv. 329.]

[180] [_Week_, p. 79; Riv. 99. _The Service_, p. 5.]

[181] [_Week_, p. 301; Riv. 374.]

[182] [_The Service_, p. 24.]

[183] [_The Service_, p. 26.]

[184] [_The Service_, p. 23.]

[185] [_The Service_, p. 10.]

[186] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 277; _Misc._, Riv.

36. _The Service_, p. 3.]

[187] [_The Service_, p. 3.]

[188] [_Week_, p. 407; Riv. 502. _The Service_, p. 17.]

[189] [_The Service_, p. 17.]

[190] [_Week_, p. 407; Riv. 502. _The Service_, p. 17.]

[191] [_The Service_, p. 9.]

[192] [The last two sentences appear also in pencil on a

fly-leaf, preceded by, "It sleeps securely within its camp,

not even dreaming of a foe."]

[193] [_Week_, p. 230; Riv. 285.]

[194] [_Week_, p. 229; Riv. 284, 285.]

[195] [_Week_, p. 229; Riv. 285. See also p. 124 of this

volume.]

[196] [_Excursions_, p. 106; Riv. 131.]

[197] [See _Excursions_, p. 110; Riv. 135.]

[198] [_Week_, p. 315; Riv. 390, 391. See also below.]

[199] [See above.]

[200] [_Week_, p. 304; Riv. 377, 378. See also p. 205.]

[201] _Excursions_, p. 117; Riv. 144.

[202] [_Excursions_, p. 117; Riv. 144.]

[203] [_Excursions_, pp. 117, 118; Riv. 144, 145.]

[204] [_Week_, p. 184; Riv. 228.]

[205] [See Emerson's Journal (1841), quoted in E. W. Emerson's

_Emerson in Concord_, p. 99.]

[206] [_Walden_, p. 28; Riv. 43.]

[207] [_Week_, p. 415; Riv. 512.]

[208] [See p. 214,—bronchitis!]

[209] [_Excursions_, p. 167; Riv. 203, 204.]

[210] [_Excursions_, p. 173; Riv. 211.]

[211] [_Week_, p. 289; Riv. 359.]

[212] [See p. 180.]

[213] [_Week_, p. 236; Riv. 293.]

[214] [_Week_, p. 50; Riv. 63.]

[215] [_Week_, p. 305; Riv. 379.]

[216] [_Week_, p. 406; Riv. 501.]

[217] [_Excursions_, p. 182; Riv. 222.]

[218] [_Week_, p. 288; Riv. 358.]

[219] [See his sister's account of his last sickness in

Sanborn's _Thoreau_, pp. 310-313.]

[220] [_Week_, p. 106; Riv. 132.]

[221] [_Week_, p. 157; Riv. 195.]

[222] [_Excursions_, p. 182; Riv. 223.]

[223] [See _Week_, p. 45; Riv. 57.]

[224] [_Week_, p. 40; Riv. 50.]

[225] [An interpretation of Emerson's poem. The numbers refer

to the stanzas.]

[226] [The italics are Thoreau's.]

[227] [_Week_, pp. 111, 112; Riv. 138-140.]

[228] [_Week_, p. 108; Riv. 134.]

[229] [_Week_, p. 79; Riv. 98.]

[230] [_Week_, p. 283; Riv. 351.]

[231] [See p. 299.]

[232] [_Walden_, p. 25; Riv. 39.]

[233] [_Week_, p. 54; Riv. 67, 68.]

[234] [See _Week_, p. 131; Riv. 163.]

[235] [_Week_, p. 131; Riv. 163.]

[236] [_Week_, p. 129; Riv. 161.]

[237] [_Week_, pp. 318, 319; Riv. 395. Tree sparrow = chipping

sparrow? The "hair-bird" of _Week_, p. 317 (Riv. 393), is

called tree sparrow in the commonplace-book referred to on p.

438.]

[238] [Field sparrow, Nuttall's _Fringilla juncorum_. Nuttall

gives both field sparrow and rush sparrow as its vernacular

names.]

[239] [_Week_, p. 336; Riv. 416.]

[240] [_Week_, p. 336; Riv. 416.]

[241] [_Week_, p. 54; Riv. 67.]

[242] [In _Excursions_, p. 135 (Riv. 165), these lines are

printed as part of a poem beginning, "With frontier strength

ye stand your ground." The poem appears also, in extended

form, in _Week_, pp. 170-173; Riv. 212-215.]

[243] [_Week_, p. 132; Riv. 164.]

[244] [_Week_, p. 132; Riv. 164.]

[245] [_Excursions_, p. 133; Riv. 163.]

[246] [This poem appears in _Week_, p. 50 (Riv. 62), with some

variations and without title.]

[247] [_Walden_, p. 354; Riv. 496.]

[248] [See _Week_, p. 154; Riv. 192.]

[249] [_Week_, p. 140; Riv. 174, 175.]

[250] [See pp. 124 and 174.]

[251] [_Week_, p. 155; Riv. 193.]

[252] [_Week_, p. 12; Riv. 15.]

[253] [_Week_, p. 394; Riv. 486.]

[254] [_Week_, p. 155; Riv. 193.]

[255] [_Week_, p. 109; Riv. 136.]

[256] [_Week_, p. 157; Riv. 195, 196.]

[257] [_Week_, p. 157; Riv. 195.]

[258] [_Week_, pp. 161-163; Riv. 200-204.]

[259] [_Excursions_, p. 148; Riv. 181.]

[260] [_Week_, p. 339; Riv. 419. The "double spruce" is now

generally known as the black spruce. Thoreau makes it "single

spruce" (_i. e._, white spruce) in the book, but the tree he

was familiar with was the black. He confused these two species

for a time, but eventually discovered his error.]

[261] [_Excursions_, pp. 125, 126; Riv. 154, 155.]

[262] [_Week_, p. 363; Riv. 449.]

[263] [_Week_, p. 56; Riv. 70.]

[264] [_Week_, p. 341; Riv. 422.]

[265] [_Week_, p. 229; Riv. 284.]

[266] [_Week_, p. 341; Riv. 421, 422.]

[267] [_Week_, p. 353; Riv. 436, 437.]

[268] [_Week_, p. 363; Riv. 450.]

[269] [_Week_, p. 365; Riv. 453.]

[270] [_Week_, p. 159; Riv. 198.]

[271] [_Week_, p. 159; Riv. 199.]

[272] [_Week_, p. 155; Riv. 194.]

[273] [_Week_, p. 155; Riv. 193.]

[274] [_Week_, p. 155; Riv. 194.]

[275] [_Week_, p. 156; Riv. 195.]

[276] [_Week_, p. 159; Riv. 198.]

[277] [_Week_, p. 402; Riv. 496.]

[278] [_Week_, p. 159; Riv. 198.]

[279] [_Week_, p. 156; Riv. 194.]

[280] [_Week_, p. 156; Riv. 195.]

[281] [_Week_, p. 358; Riv. 443.]

[282] [_Week_, p. 155; Riv. 193.]

[283] [_Excursions_, p. 119; Riv. 146, 147.]

[284] [_Excursions_, pp. 331, 332; Riv. 408.]

[285] [_Week_, p. 358; Riv. 443.]

[286] [_Week_, p. 48; Riv. 60.]

[287] [_Week_, p. 393; Riv. 486.]

[288] [_Week_, pp. 393, 394; Riv. 486.]

[289] [_Week_, p. 394; Riv. 486.]

[290] [_Week_, p. 111; Riv. 138.]

[291] [See p. 213 for the possible origin of this figure.]

[292] [On the back lining-page of the manuscript Journal

volume which ends with this date are the following sentences

in pencil:

There is another young day let loose to roam the earth.

Happiness is very unprofitable stock.

The love which is preached nowadays is an ocean of new milk

for a man to swim in. I hear no surf nor surge, but the winds

coo over it.]

[293] [See _Week_, pp. xx, xxi; _Misc._, Riv. 8, 9 (Emerson's

Biographical Sketch of Thoreau).]

[294] [_Week_, p. 291; Riv. 361.]

[295] [_Week_, p. 363; Riv. 450.]

[296] [_Week_, p. 395; Riv. 488.]

[297] [_Week_, p. 395; Riv. 488.]

[298] [This poem, with the four additional stanzas of the

next date, appears in the _Week_, pp. 313, 314 (Riv. 388, 389)

under the title of "The Inward Morning." The second stanza is

there omitted and there are other alterations.]

[299] [_Familiar Letters_, Sept., 1852.]

[300] [See p. 347.]

[301] [_Week_, p. 373; Riv. 461.]

[302] [_Week_, p. 54; Riv. 67.]

[303] [_Excursions_, p. 174; Riv. 212.]

[304] [Written in pencil on a fly-leaf of the Journal:] A man

might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of

nature by being buried in it.

[305] [Channing, p. 241.]

[306] [See p. 244.]

[307] [_Excursions_, p. 173; Riv. 212.]

[308] [_Week_, p. 314; Riv. 389.]

[309] [_Week_, p. 133; Riv. 166.]

[310] [_Week_, p. 280; Riv. 347.]

[311] [_Week_, p. 314; Riv. 390.]

[312] [_Week_, p. 384; Riv. 474.]

[313] [_Week_, p. 396; Riv. 489.]

[314] [_Week_, p. 397; Riv. 490.]

[315] [_Week_, p. 398; Riv. 491.]

[316] [_Week_, p. 397; Riv. 490.]

[317] [_Week_, p. 398; Riv. 491, 492.]

[318] [_Excursions_, pp. 103, 104; Riv. 127, 128.]

[319] [_Excursions_, pp. 103-105; Riv. 127-129.]

[320] [_Week_, p. 362; Riv. 449.]

[321] [_Excursions_, p. 105; Riv. 129, 130.]

[322] [_Week_, pp. 77, 78; Riv. 96, 97.]

[323] [_Week_, p. 396; Riv. 489.]

[324] [_Week_, p. 398; Riv. 492.]

[325] [_Week_, p. 396; Riv. 489, 490.]

[326] [_Week_, pp. 237, 238; Riv. 294, 295.]

[327] [_Week_, pp. 108-110; Riv. 134-136.]

[328] [_Week_, p. 110; Riv. 136, 137.]

[329] [_Excursions_, p. 104; Riv. 128.]

[330] [_Week_, p. 184; Riv. 228.]

[331] [_Week_, p. 182; Riv. 226.]

[332] [_Week_, p. 183; Riv. 227.]

[333] [It was about a year after the date of this entry that

Richard F. Fuller made Thoreau a present of a music-box (see

_Familiar Letters_, March 2, 1842, and Jan. 16 and 24, 1843),

which a few months later, on departing for Staten Island, he

lent to Hawthorne (_American Note-Books_, Riv. pp. 333, 338).]

[334] [_Week_, p. 184; Riv. 228.]

[335] [_Week_, p. 184; Riv. 228.]

[336] [_Week_, p. 303; Riv. 377.]

[337] [Thoreau's brother John died Jan. 11, 1842.]

[338] [Two lines missing from the manuscript here.]

[339] [_Week_, p. 398; Riv. 492.]

[340] [_Week_, p. 397; Riv. 490.]

[341] [_Week_, p. 288; Riv. 357.]

[342] [_Week_, p. 288; Riv. 358.]

[343] [At the head of this paragraph appears the following in

pencil:

What has music to do with the lives of the Great Composers? It

is the great composer who is not yet dead whose life should

be written. Shall we presume to write such a history as the

former while the winds blow?]

[344] [_Week_, pp. 398, 399; Riv. 492.]

[345] [_Week_, p. 303; Riv. 377.]

[346] [_Week_, pp. 397, 398; Riv. 491.]

[347] [_Week_, pp. 397, 398; Riv. 491, 492.]

[348] [_Week_, p. 156; Riv. 195.]

[349] [_Week_, p. 157; Riv. 196.]

[350] [_Week_, pp. 339, 340; Riv. 420.]

[351] [_Week_, p. 138; Riv. 172, 173.]

[352] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 336; _Misc._, Riv.

106, 107.]

[353] [See pp. 443, 444.]

[354] [See _Journal_, vol. ii, p. 128.]

[355] [_Week_, p. 283; Riv. 351.]

[356] [_Week_, pp. 130, 131; Riv. 163.]

[357] Set the red hen, Sunday, March 21st [=20th]. [This

memorandum is written in the margin. It is pretty good proof

that by now we have come to the original Journal. Just where

the transcripts end, however, it seems to be impossible to

determine.]

[358] [_Week_, p. 107; Riv. 133.]

[359] [_Week_, p. 130; Riv. 162.]

[360] [_Week_, p. 160; Riv. 199.]

[361] [_Week_, p. 109; Riv. 135, 136.]

[362] [_Week_, p. 153; Riv. 191.]

[363] [_Week_, p. 153; Riv. 191.]

[364] [_Week_, p. 153; Riv. 191.]

[365] [_Week_, p. 105; Riv. 130.]

[366] [_Week_, p. 153; Riv. 191.]

[367] [See pp. 295, 296.]

[368] [_Week_, p. 137; Riv. 170.]

[369] [_Week_, p. 301; Riv. 374, 375.]

[370] [_Week_, p. 351; Riv. 434.]

[371] [_Week_, p. 130; Riv. 163.]

[372] [In _Excursions_, p. 110 (Riv. 136), what appears to be

the same bird is described, and is called the fish hawk.]

[373] [_Week_, pp. 105, 106; Riv. 131, 132.]

[374] [_Week_, pp. 34, 35; Riv. 42, 43.]

[375] [_Excursions_, p. 110; Riv. 136.]

[376] [_Week_, p. 110; Riv. 137.]

[377] [On the margin of this page appears the memorandum: "Set

the gray hen April 1st."]

[378] [_Week_, p. 397; Riv. 490, 491.]

[379] [_Excursions_, p. 111; Riv. 137.]

[380] [_Walden_, p. 94; Riv. 134.]

[381] [_Walden_, p. 106; Riv. 150.]

[382] [_Walden_, pp. 171, 172; Riv. 242.]

[383] [_Walden_, p. 145; Riv. 205.]

[384] [_Walden_, pp. 145, 146; Riv. 206.]

[385] [Plainly "neat" in Journal, though _Walden_ has

"great."]

[386] [_Walden_, pp. 159, 160; Riv. 224, 225.]

[387] [_Walden_, p. 161; Riv. 227.]

[388] [_Walden_, pp. 12, 13; Riv. 21.]

[389] [_Walden_, p. 39; Riv. 59.]

[390] [_Walden_, p. 41; Riv. 61.]

[391] [_Walden_, p. 41; Riv. 61.]

[392] [_Walden_, p. 309; Riv. 433.]

[393] [_Walden_, p. 250; Riv. 351.]

[394] [_Walden_, pp. 112-114; Riv. 159-161.]

[395] [_Walden_, p. 114; Riv. 162.]

[396] [See _Excursions_, p. 295; Riv. 362.]

[397] [Eight lines, somewhat altered, _Week_, pp. 407, 408;

Riv. 503.]

[398] [_Week_, p. 407; Riv. 503.]

[399] [By Eliot Warburton, London, 1844, and New York, 1845.]

[400] [_Week_, pp. 266, 267; Riv. 331.]

[401] [_Week_, pp. 266, 267; Riv. 330-332.]

[402] [_Walden_, p. 111; Riv. 157, 158.]

[403] [_Walden_, p. 127; Riv. 179, 180.]

[404] [_Walden_, pp. 137, 138; Riv. 194-196.]

[405] [_Walden_, pp. 139, 140; Riv. 197, 198.]

[406] [_Walden_, p. 242, where he makes his age four instead

of five at the time of this early visit.]

[407] [_Walden_, p. 139; Riv. 197.]

[408] [_Walden_, p. 181; Riv. 255.]

[409] [_Walden_, p. 182; Riv. 256.]

[410] [_The Legend of Good Women_, ll. 1218, 1219.]

[411] [_Walden_, pp. 225-227, 229, 231; Riv. 317-320, 322,

325, 326.]

[412] [_Walden_, p. 232; Riv. 327.]

[413] [_Walden_, pp. 230, 231; Riv. 323-325.]

[414] [See _Walden_, pp. 271, 272; Riv. 380, 381.]

[415] [_Walden_, p. 44; Riv. 65, 66.]

[416] [_Walden_, pp. 32, 33; Riv. 48, 49.]

[417] [_Walden_, pp. 33, 34; Riv. 50, 51.]

[418] [_Walden_, pp. 37, 38; Riv. 56.]

[419] [_Walden_, p. 34; Riv. 51, 52.]

[420] [_Walden_, p. 35; Riv. 53.]

[421] [_Walden_, p. 36; Riv. 55.]

[422] [_Walden_, p. 39; Riv. 58.]

[423] [_Week_, p. 264; Riv. 328.]

[424] [_Week_, p. 65; Riv. 81.]

[425] [_Week_, p. 58; Riv. 72.]

[426] [_Week_, p. 61; Riv. 76.]

[427] [_Week_, p. 136; Riv. 169.]

[428] [_Week_, p. 58; Riv. 72, 73.]

[429] [_Week_, p. 57; Riv. 72.]

[430] [_Walden_, p. 275; Riv. 386.]

[431] [_Walden_, p. 275; Riv. 386.]

[432] [_Walden_, p. 4; Riv. 9.]

[433] [_Walden_, p. 7; Riv. 12, 13.]

[434] [_Walden_, p. 301; Riv. 422.]

[435] [See _Journal_, vol. vii, Feb. 1, 1855.]

[436] [_Walden_, pp. 12, 13; Riv. 21.]

[437] [_Walden_, p. 306; Riv. 429.]

[438] [_Walden_, p. 162; Riv. 228.]

[439] [_Walden_, p. 304; Riv. 426.]

[440] [_Walden_, pp. 344, 345; Riv. 481, 482.]

[441] [_Walden_, pp. 183, 184; Riv. 258, 259.]

[442] [_Walden_, p. 345; Riv. 482.]

[443] [_Walden_, p. 345; Riv. 482, 483.]

[444] [Twenty-six lines of this, somewhat revised, appear

under the title of "Pilgrims" in _Excursions, and Poems_, p.

413.]

[445] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 352, 353; _Misc._,

Riv. 127, 128.]

[446] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 344; _Misc._, Riv.

116, 117.]

[447] [_Walden_, pp. 288, 289; Riv. 405.]

[448] [_Walden_, p. 289; Riv. 405, 406.]

[449] [_Walden_, pp. 24, 26; Riv. 36, 40.]

[450] [_Walden_, p. 24; Riv. 37.]

[451] [_Walden_, p. 25; Riv. 38.]

[452] [_Walden_, p. 25; Riv. 38, 39.]

[453] [_Walden_, pp. 283, 284, 287, 288; Riv. 397-400, 404.]

[454] [_Walden_, pp. 289-291; Riv. 406-408.]

[455] [_Walden_, pp. 282, 283; Riv. 396, 397.]

[456] [_Walden_, pp. 258, 259; Riv. 363, 364.]

[457] [_Walden_, p. 345; Riv. 483.]

[458] [_Walden_, p. 262; Riv. 368.]

[459] [_Walden_, p. 259; Riv. 364.]

[460] [_Walden_, p. 305; Riv. 428.]

[461] ["Hilda" was originally written where "Nutting" appears

on p. 420.]

[462] [_Walden_, p. 292; Riv. 408, 409.]

[463] [_Walden_, pp. 323, 324; Riv. 452, 453.]

[464] [_Walden_, p. 313; Riv. 438.]

[465] [_Walden_, pp. 289, 290; Riv. 406, 407.]

[466] [_Walden_, p. 285; Riv. 400.]

[467] [See _Week_, p. 102; Riv. 127.]

[468] [_Walden_, p. 280; Riv. 392, 393.]

[469] [_Walden_, p. 309; Riv. 434.]

[470] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 325-327; _Misc._,

Riv. 93-95 ("Thomas Carlyle and his Works").]

[471] [_Walden_, pp. 4, 5; Riv. 9, 10.]

[472] [_Walden_, pp. 6, 8; Riv. 11, 14.]

[473] [_Walden_, p. 8; Riv. 14, 15.]

[474] [_Walden_, pp. 5, 6; Riv. 10, 11.]

[475] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 327; _Misc._, Riv. 95

("Thomas Carlyle and his Works").]

[476] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 325; _Misc._, Riv. 93

("Thomas Carlyle and his Works").]

[477] [_Walden_, pp. 283-285, 287, 288; Riv. 397-400, 404.]

[478] [_Walden_, pp. 68, 69; Riv. 99, 100.]

[479] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 348; _Misc._, Riv.

121 ("Thomas Carlyle and his Works").]

[480] [_Walden_, p. 296; Riv. 415, 416.]

[481] [_Walden_, p. 296; Riv. 415.]

[482] [_Walden_, p. 310; Riv. 434, 435.]

[483] [_Walden_, pp. 19-21; Riv. 30-33.]

[484] [_Walden_, p. 12; Riv. 19, 20.]

[485] [_Walden_, p. 12; Riv. 20.]

[486] [_Week_, p. 45; Riv. 57.]

[487] [This follows matter used on p. 81 of _Week_ (Riv.

101).]

[488] [The boatman's. See _Week_, p. 222; Riv. 276.]

[489] [See p. 337.]

[490] [This and the succeeding paragraphs on the Indian were

written in pencil on loose sheets of paper and slipped between

the pages of the Journal.]

[491] [See _Week_, pp. 286, 287; Riv. 356.]

[492] _Vide_ the Fall of the Leaf poem. [This note is written

in pencil between this line and the following stanza. The poem

referred to is reprinted (without these lines) in _Excursions,

and Poems_, p. 407.]

[493] [This refers to the middle of September and follows

matter used in _Week_, on p. 357 (Riv. 443).]

[494] [_Week_, p. 387; Riv. 478.]

[495] [_Week_, p. 133; Riv. 166.]

[496] [The first four lines of a poem the rest of which

appears on pp. 234, 235 of _Week_ (Riv. 290, 291).]

[497] [This poem appears, slightly abridged and altered, in

_Week_, p. 201 (Riv. 249).]

[498] [There is a blank space here before "musty," as if

Thoreau had sought another adjective to go with it.]

[499] [See _Excursions_, p. 208; Riv. 255.]

[500] [_Week_, p. 377; Riv. 465.]

[501] [_Week_, p. 302; Riv. 375.]

[502] [_Week_, p. 302; Riv. 375.]

[503] [See _Week_, pp. 33, 34; Riv. 41, 42.]

[504] [This appears in pencil on a loose sheet of paper

inclosed between the pages of the Journal.]

[505] [_Excursions, and Poems_, p. 409. See also p. 71.]

[506] [Here follows matter printed on pp. 105, 106 of _Week_

(Riv. 130-132).]

[507] [See _Journal_, vol. vi, Feb. 5, 1854.]

[508] [See _Walden_, pp. 120, 121; Riv. 171, 172.]