1883 
Jany 1st Bright mild day. A highhole to-day; a kingfisher the 23d at foot of Dry Brook. Many pine grosbeaks from the North again here; eating up all the maple buds; the snow beneath some trees covered with bud scales. The past summer has been a famous one for worms; many oak and other trees were completely denuded of their foliage. Great numbers of black and yellow hornets nests also. 
No severe cold yet. Days remarkably calm. A singular spectacle on the river almost daily. The great black pool lies 
still and calm, when a vast field of ice comes drifting slowly along. One day it was the shape of a half moon and it had decidedly an astronomic effect. The ice was of the same silvery whiteness as the moon, and marked with similar lines and depressions. The river was the still, dark, fathomless sky; a small bit of ice here and there shone like a star. The motion was hardly perceptable and a veritable moon, enormously magnified, seemed to be passing my window. At other times a vast field of ice will take the form of some the continents -- one day it is Africa, another North or South America that drifts into my field of vision, with bays, capes, peninsulas, rivers, mountains all clearly sketched. The absence of wind for the past ten days causes the ice to mass in this way and assume these suggestive forms. I have never seen it so before. 
The river has just pulled his icy coverlet over him again and is in for a nap. How I miss his bright sparkling face before my window! The white plain down there looks more like a grave than a bed. 
9 Winter grows more and more severe. Yet a dozen or more bluebirds here yesterday and to-day, also a "highhole" again to-day. The pine grosbeaks in great numbers; the extremes meet. 10 Thermometer down to 4 above with driving wind and snow. 
25 To N.Y. this morning, wife and J follow in the afternoon. Feb. 13 Back home again. A miserable time in N.Y. Could I ever live in and get attached to such a city? Hard, flat garish, materialistic -- no sign of heart or soul there. 
(1883 Feb 13) 
All of us sick with severe influenza; wife still very bad. 
Much disturbed by the doctors diagnosis of my case -- a hardening of the arteries -- means death sooner or later, I suppose. How my heart turned to Father and Mother as I walked those streets with that thought upon me. I seemed to see them afar off side by side, perhaps in a wagon or sleigh, as if on a journey, doubtless some image or impression I had got of them in youth, and now under the strain of this feeling it came to the surface again. 
How beautiful and pathetic their simple self-denying lives seemed to me, beside all the vanity and glitter of New York! Day after day, that image of them arose before me always the same. Oh if I could have gone to them as in youth and again claimed their care and protection! Nothing in the world can take the place of ones father and mother. 
18 Today they bury poor Oscar Ames, cut off in his middle life with drink. A generous, jovial man. Many a day have we spent together fishing. 
once 3 days [crossed out: at] over on the head of the Rondout in June 1879. I went up this morning and looked into his open grave and thought of my own. The sexton was keeping the water out till the procession should arrive. Few of his neighbors, I imagine, will think of him oftener than I shall as I pass his last resting place.
 A winter of floods and destruction both in Europe and in this country. 
26 The first chipmunk today. The amorous spring warble of a blue-bird yesterday. On the 19th went to Andes and to fathers at 
night. Father pretty well and hearty -- much better than at my last visit. Ice men finished on the river Sat. 24th. Mch 1 Cleared off about noon and became spring like: a soft white film in the air and a gentle southwest wind 2 A real spring day, slight showers in the morning, and then a warm dreaming sun; all the features of yesterday 
afternoon more pronounced. Snow running fast bees very lively; 
blue-birds warbling and calling in true spring fashion, a gentle warm south wind. 
If a man can live without God in this world there not the slightest doubt but that he can live without him in the next, and have just as good a time. How childish this talk is that we can be nearer God, nearer Heaven in some other world than we are here; what irreligion and atheism it is. The child in its mothers wom[b] is no nearer its mother than I and you and all men at all times are near god. Does not the Book say "In him we live, and move and have our being" This is the literal truth, whoever says it or denies it. Tht great embosoming Power and Life of the universe. Call it God or call it what you will, we can no more escape from or live independent of than we can escape from the air. Out of this mountain races and peoples and sects carve their gods and make them in their own images, and set them up on various pedestals, far or near. The God of the Christian Church is only an idol, a long way above the langerbush, but essentially the same -- a creation of man. There are gods and gods, but Nature -- the All changes not -- is not in one place and absent from another; is omnipotent and omnipresent, makes heaven everywhere and hell everywhere. 
I can hardly tell which is the least desirable, the Christian Hell or the Christian Heaven. I think one would be about as unendurable as the other. Would not a perpetual prayer meeting be the worst kind of hell? Oh. my brothers and sisters 
what a mess you have made of it! Do you really think that God is as fond of praise, as you are; that he is the vain coxcomb you make him out to be? All the great souls I most love, should according to orthodoxy, be in Hell; I think therefore I should elect to go there. I rather suspect God himself will be there. 
Julian is full of unanswerable questions "Where is the end of the world, Papa?" "I thought at the end of the world there would be a high wall reaching up to the 
clouds etc" "Do we live in the middle of the world?" "Can man make wood" [crossed out: Who] "God can make wood" "Who made God?" "I wish God would make people so that they would not begin to get old as soon as he made them!" After many awkward questions it came out that he wanted to know who fed and took care of the first pair of young birds -- the Adam and Eve of the bird tribe when they were little! A more active child, both mentally and bodily I never saw. 
Mch 9 Little wood pecker drumming this morning with mercury at zero. A plucky bird. Clear sky smoky horizon like Indian summer, very cold. 
10 A driving snow storm It is said that one can swallow the venom of the viper without injury. The stomach digests certain poisons, others digest it. 
21 Still cold and wintery. Several days of malaria Unhappy. Robins, sparrows, and blackbirds here. The bird will come no matter how Spring delays. 
22 Start for homc today, via PoÕkeepsie, Lizzie, out Scotch lassie, with us on her way to N.Y. No longer our Lizzie. Hired her in Glasgow July 26/82. Very sorry to see her depart. An honest, comely, faithful girl, a sort of epitome of Scotland to me; delicious brogue; a silent girl. An unhappy time here, very lonely and homesick, tho' not willing to own it. Sharply and unkindly dealt with by Mrs. B. I shall see her no more. 
Reached home a t 8 P.M. father pretty well. 
In age as in youth the changes are rapid. Of a 
child we say "how fast he grows" and an old man seems to fail from hour to hour. At sun rise and at sun-set how fast the orb seems to travel! In the morning if he had had a good sleep, father looked quite himself, but sometimes in the afternoon he looked strange to me, blank, expressionless etc. He is beginning to stand with his mouth open in a helpless stupid kind of way. He cannot hear understandingly ordinary conversation, and is constantly asking and coaxing them to tell him what they are talking about at the table or elsewhere. He gets few kind words or attentions. All answer him grudgingly and curtly, but he regards it not. It is not pleasant to shout "Oh nothing father, only that heifer has got a bull calf," or "The old sow has just ate up one of her pigs" etc. I usually helped him off with his boots and his coat at night and tucked him up in his bed. 
April 3 My 46th birth day this time: passed amid the old scenes. At 8 in the evening after I had helped father to bed as usual. I stood a few moments in the darkness by his bed side while he talked of mother. (talk started by some allusion to my birthday) How vividly his loss came back to him at that moment! how all the past rushed upon him! They had been young together (what pathos in those words) They came upon the farm near 60 years ago; they had little or nothing, but he was never so rich as then, if he had only known it and now her race was run and he was alone! 
Early in April tapped Gillis sugar bush and tried to make some sugar for her. But little sap in the trees; in some none at all; trees standing in wet places do pretty well. The dry fall and winter, no doubt, is 
the cause of the short supply of sap. The first hepatica began to show its petals on the 10th. 19 A bouquet of sweet-scented hepaticas to-day, also the first claytonia in bloom. No yellow violets visible anywhere 
yet. I searched closely for them. Back home this afternoon. While at Roxbury I daily saw and heard the shore lark. They were in pairs and small flocks about the hill pastures. 
Above the house on the hill they soared and sang. The flight 
and manner on such occasions is like that of the sky-lark. The bird mounts up and up on ecstatic wing till it becomes a mere speck against the sky where it drifts to and fro and utters at intervals its song-- mere fraction or rudiment of the sky lark song -- a few lisping sharp, unmelodious notes -- heard a long distance but insignificant a mere germ of the larks song, as it were the first rude attempt of nature in this direction. After due trial and waiting she develops the larks song itself. 
22 A great bright day. Such days seem large, ample, high-domed, the sunlight is so strong and no screen of foliage yet to shut it out. The few clouds float high, the crows fly high, the mountain wall looks high, the sail vessels going by spread all their canvass. The eye takes in a long distance; space is clear, the altitude of all things seems exalted. 
First swallow. 
27 Drove up for Ida Terpenning; dont get her. On my way back heard ahead of me as I supposed the brown thrasher pouring out his rich strong meddley of notes 
from the top of a tall tree by the roadside; Am greatly astonished to find the songster a robin when I would have sworn it was a brown thrasher. The robin flies down to a low apple tree a few rods distant and preens its plumage while I stop to observe it and hear its song again. But it will not tune up again as long as I watch and wait. After I have gone on it (or she, for it looked like a female) flies back to the same perch again and tunes up as before. I stop and listen. Not a robin note in the song. Loud, varied, ejaculatory, nearly iden.ticle with that of the brown thrasher, tho' perhaps richer and more melodious. I recognize the note of the yellow bird in it and suggestions of some other bird notes. A curious instance. The bird, when young, must have heard at the right moment, the song of the thrasher, or was the impression ante natal? 
May 1st Bright day -- a little blurred -- with strong wind from the South making the white caps show on the river. Buds big and fat on the maples; a mist of foliage just touching the currant bushes. Wife off to R for a girl. Season slow -- no heat yet. 
Julian says [crossed out: that] heaven is the top world. and this is the bottom world. "How does green get into white" he asked this morning as he was drinking his milk. "The cows eat green grass and they make white milk out of it." 
The willows wear a thin veil of light yellow green. The soft maple below my study is covered with tufts of [crossed out: cocks ]cocks comb red as blood. Langdons woods show little puffs of incipient foliage, buds nearly ready to open. 
Is the soul a mode and not a something. as heat 
is a mode of motion, and is not itself an entity? [This page appears to be part of a later entry; See pages 74-80 and 82] 
Indeed C. was not a philosopher at all, a reconciler and systemizer, but [crossed out: essentially ??? ] an artist in the most deep and radical sense -- a man of action, of deeds, whose leading impulse was a sense of duty, full of prejudices, partialities, hatreds, full of passion and wrath, vehement, one-sided and unreasonable. He shows the same intensity and blindness that men of great deeds like Luther, Cromwell, etc show. Indeed, the quality of action, of concrete performance and duty that are in his books is unique. He has not as much written as spoken. Without aiming at art, he is to the last drop of his blood an artist. Duty, heroism, self sacrifice etc how he unconsciously loves the light and shade, the picturesque elements they afford. The flat, prosy, and scientific modern world, how he hated it. He did not want things explained, he wanted them done. Your thought must become a deed or a thing. 
May 1st/83 Tuesday What is the complexion of the day? Bright, threatening to put on a veil of thin clouds by and by. Wind in the south, blowing strong, putting white caps on the river waves. Buds plump and full on the maple in front of my window: a mist of foliage just tinging the currant bushes. The willows down by Mannings wear a thin veil of light yellow green; a soft maple here in the fence covered with tufts of cocks-comb-red as blood. Across in Langdons woods one sees little yellow puffs of incipient-foliage-buds ready to take wing and swarm. Crows, wrens, robins, and phoebe birds with building material in their beaks. Passed the vacant Frothingham house this morning; saw where a high hole had drilled into the tall wooden Grecian pillars -.(May 1, 1883) 
Into one he had fairly gained an entrance through the smooth band at the top, and was busy in the interior as I approached. Seeing me he hastened out and off. I never knew the like before. How he or she came to avail himself or herself of that great hollow interior for nesting is a mystery. When the bird was at work the blows could be distinctly felt by putting the hand on the base of the column. What a touchstone these early spring days are to reveal the most warm and moist, the most genial spots in the fields. How they are touched and streaked with green! The turf awakening earliest upon the most fertile places [crossed out: usually in] or near the spring runs and along the stone fences. 
2nd Another fair day, slightly veiled -- like yesterday but with more heat and less wind. At sun rise this morning the 
river was like a mirror, duplicating the opposite shore perfectly. Presently a breeze came and tarnished it, or made it white like ground glass. The river idealizes the landscape. It multiplies and [crossed out: enhances] hightens the beauty of the day and season: a fair day it makes more fair, and a tempestuous day it makes more wild. The face of winter it makes doubly rigid and corpse-like; and to the face of spring [crossed out: and summer] it adds new youth and sparkle. 
3 A delicious day from the south, borne hither on a soft gentle south wind. A day like a bride, smiling with a 
sweet happy pensiveness. Every bud swelled perfectly to-day; the maples just ready to shake out their tassels. The catbird here this morning, full of song. The wood-thrush due, but not yet heard by me. Last night saw the first bumble bee gathering pollen from the dicentra. She did not bite through the spurs for this but went in at the throat. She had probably gathered the honey from the spurs by slitting them in the morning. These southern days blow the shad up the rivers; they come with the same breeze that brings the birds. They are probably just as sensitive to the heat or cold of the day, as are the creatures of the air. 
4th What a chorus of bird-music this morning just at day break; robins, wrens, sparrows, phoebes, and purple-finches. Birds appear to sing devote the time between their first waking and [crossed out: the] when it is light enough to see to gather food, to song. As the light gets strong and the sun is about to appear, the birds are suddenly silent. Work now begins, -- building and breakfasting. The weather waves are reversed to-day -- wind from the north -- a northern day, not so soft and wooing, but still fair with whitish sky. We seem to have entered upon one of those rare spells of weather to which Emerson refers : 
"The wind may alter twenty ways A tempest cannot blow." 
P.M steady north wind to which the southward-bound schooners open their great sails, one slanting each way like butterflies wings. A line of white foam visible along this side like a broad chalk [crossed out: line] mark nearly a mile long. Singular, why the foam should disperse itself in such a straight line, and maintain that position for hours. 
5 Threatens rain which all things need. Heavy, moisture laden air from the south, with soft indistinguishable clouds. This afternoon the river a great softly crinkling lake or pool, full of soft [crossed out: li] gray light. Just one year ago to.night we left home for our Atlantic voyage. 
6th Sunday Fine rain last night, a slow, dripping May rain -- an English or Scotch rain, that has imparted an English vividness of green to the grass. The season somewhat more advanced than last year at this time. 
Why does one always think of the cat-bird as feminine? The song of the male is like the vivacious conversation of a proud and sprightly w woman of the world. 
Finished Mrs. Carlyles letters last night. Have hardly skipped a page altogether. Why does one read them so entirely? Probably because there is not a dull line in them -- not a false note in the matter of style or rhetoric. A more clear, incisive, telling way of putting things would be hard to find. Yet there is nothing in the letters -- merely a record of her own ups and downs -- not a ray of light cast upon anything but her own personal matters and feelings -- very little upon Carlyle himself and none at all upon his works and thoughts and genius. It is the sprightly and charming gossip of a life long invalid, to whom the great problem is how she is going to live from day to day in this miserable world of nerves and kitchen maids, and be as a buffer between her husband and everything that might, could or would annoy him. Unless she can receive every blow upon herself, unless she can gather every shaft into her own bosom she is wretched. When she cannot aid him, she is more worried than he is. When she hears him jump out of bed at night above her head, because the demon of sleeplessness has posssed him, it brings her heart into her throat, and she agonizes until she hears him return to his couch [crossed out: again]. When he is on a journey, she is made sick by her mental wrry. Most wives of authors are probably jealous of their husbands tasks; they are kind of rivals upon which they rarely look kindly. Mrs. C. was no exception to this rule. Frederick and Cromwell were her enemies. She wanted a famous husband, but did not seem willing to pay the price. She married for ambition but was not content with its fruits. She pitched her tent upon the mountain tops and then sighed for the cozy valley. Did she expect ambition would breed love: That the Cedars of Lebanon would bear roses? Carlyle loved her, but it seems to have been a kind of neuter-gender love. He was probably deficient in a wholesome human sexuality; not a woman hater, or man-hater properly speaking, but a despiser of all human weaknesses and frailties. He wanted just that kind of charity -- and sympathy, [crossed out: which] and just that tact and divination with women, and [crossed out: which] tenderness toward men, which the alloy of a softer metal with his splendid genius, would have begotten. To the arts and instincts, and insight of the sexes, he was a stranger. Tis a pity had he had not a little more of the Burns in his composition, he was Scotch in everything but this very Scotch trait; while Mrs C seems to have been eminently Scotch in this respect, 7th The fern when it first comes up, looks like a creature just born still wrapped in the placental membranes. It looks as if it needed some maternal tongue to lick it into shape. Discovered yesterday that the hickory, with its swelling [crossed out: gummy] buds, gives out a pleasing gummy odor at a few rods distance. What a perfume a forest of them would emit! No peach [crossed out: or cherry] (yes) blossoms yet. Shad-tree in blow. Cool, good grass weather. 
8 The warmest day yet, almost passes for hot with ones winter clothing on. A sky white and full of vapor like the English. Near1y all the birds here. The bobolink and king birds this morning. The woods full of warblers -- nearly all kinds. The swampy places in the woods yellow with marsh marigolds. How gay they look seen through and beneath the leafless under-brush; thick sprinkled stars of gold. I notice that our short tailed meadow and field mouse is quite at home in the water -- nearly as much the muskrat. Yesterday I saw one swimming beside the trunk of a tree that lay half submerged in a large pool; When he saw me he dived beneath the tree as if the water was his proper element. At another time one came out from under a wall on the current of a swollen spring run, and seeing me near at hand dove [crossed out: into the water and] disappeared into the water just as the muskrat would have done. 
Sugar maples in bloom and the honey bees busy. The soft maple blooms have turned brown. A pleasant ride to Rondout and ret. on the little boat. Also a good walk back in the woods to Martin's. Water thrush in song. Great crested flycatcher [crossed out: in blo] here in afternoon. Seven years ago and also eight years ago noted the arrival of same birds on 8th and 9th. The "punctual birds" indeed. They seldom vary but a day or two in their arrivals from year to year. 
9. Bright most of the day; wind north; getting rather dry. No thoughts or impressions to-day. At work all fore-noon laying stone about the house. 
10 Partly over cast, but with dry clouds. The river full of gray light, light as the sky. Each seperate tree across in Langdons woods is now fainty sketched by its opening foliage, as if a painters brush had just touched the neutral canvass with light yellow-green paint, suggesting each individual tree. Such a variety of tints too at this season of May! every species of tree showing its kind from afar, as much so as in autumn. By and by, all individuality of colors, forms etc. will be lost in the mass. 
The yellow fringe of the sugar maples, the brown and red of the soft, the mingled white and brown of the shad trees, the deep, pea-green of the poplars, the vague misty tops of the oaks etc. 
11 A day of slight rain from the S and S.W. clearing in the if afternoon. An English or Scotch day in the forenoon; American in the afternoon; That line of blue sky in the west which increased, pushing the clouds back and defining the fair weather and the foul as sharply as land and sea, was American. I saw nothing like that abroad. 
Johnson and his boy came today at 2 P.M. Feel like a boy again; the face of Nature has an added charm. So much for this brief feeling of companionship 
12 Brilliant day; with drifts of cherry blossoms against the fresh new green. We lounge about, listen, talk, and admire, absorbing the May beauty at every pore. J. says the sugar maple blooms [crossed out: isnt] clusters of delicate yellowish-green fringes, depending from little canopies of just hatched leaves, in some way suggest oriental decoration. There is much more grace and delicacy in the bloom of our maple than in that of the European.
 The soft maples were loaded with bunches of scarlet keys, a lovely mass of color against say mingled larches [crossed out: and] spruces and hard maples. The leaves but just out and not yet shining (on soft maple).
 Such a clear day! The masses of snow white cherry blossoms, the tender new green of the grass 
the pure blue of the sky, the clear sunlight flooding all. Everything in May has the freshness of a child just clad in simple new garments. The light pea green of the poplar, how pleasing. 
The elm and the soft maple form and mature (?) their seeds before their foliage is fully out. 
13. A bright day, rather cold. A walk to the woods, all of us. Columbine nodding from the rocks. A mink fishing in the water at the middle falls. In the afternoon with J. to Milton to call on Mrs. Foote, a charming woman. 
14 Frost last night. J. leaves today. Peach trees just opening. 
(May 1883) 
15 Quite a heavy rain last night with thunder. Cool -- to day and cloudy. A rose-breasted grosbeak in song nearly all day in the fruit trees, a rich mellow warble like the robins but finer. For three successive days I have seen the grosbeak .
-probably the same bird. On Sunday he snipped off the cherry blossoms and devoured the ovary, or germ of the fruit. It was a pretty sight to see him reaching for the white blossoms between snatches of his song, the blush rose upon his showy breast showing finely. 
16 8 A.M. This is one of the mornings when the river seems more than usually alive -- all sparkle and animation. There is a play and shimmer of sunbeams upon its surface that is like the dancing and mingling of ten thousand silver fireflies; or is it like the incessant patter of great rain drops, each one making a little spark of silver light. Beneath all there seems an electric tremulousness and vibration in the body of the river itself --only an illusion of the eye, I suppose. 
Air, water, earth -- fluid, liquid, solid -- a gas, a solvent, a salt -- of these we are made. 
17 Another brilliant day. Spend it in Olive, whither I went yesterday in search of a horse. A slight frost last night at Father Norths. Up early in the morning, and after breakfast start for the mountain. Reach Winchels, the last house under the shadow of Tice Ten Yke about 8 a.m. What a view beneath me, nearly half the county of Ulster like an open map at my feet. The mountains bear and leafless yet; a mist of foliage and banks of cherry and plum blooms in the lowlands; the sky hard and brilliant. A little cemetery on a knoll, its ranks of white tombstones shine from afar; as I saw it from beneath, I thought some one had just been hanging out their washing. The most sightly place I ever saw for a graveyard. In reply to my remark about the view etc, the old farmer (born and reared on the spot) said yes, he looked off nearly every day, liked to look off and around to see what folks were doing, who was plowing, sowing, etc. Bought the little horse -- a bright bay, my third horse, and brought him home to his stall at eve, walking in all about 16 miles. What a change from his mountain perch to these low lands! From the field where he was plowing you could look right up into the rough bearded face of Tice Ten Yck, and almost count the trees and the rocks. 
At Father Norths found the fringed polygala in bloom on mossy knolls in the fields; also the anemone, also mitrewort. Father North well, but getting yearly more lame and used up. 
A great many little pewees in Olive; and Hurley, never saw so many before. Common as sparrows. One pair building a nest in an apple tree nearly above the house-roof.
 Birds that sing occasionally on the wing: 
Song sparrow (rarely) 
Purple finch (frequently) 
Oriole ( " ) 
Meadow-lark (rarely) 
Indigo-bird (not so rare) 
Golden crowned thrush (often) 
Bokolink ( " ) 
Shore lark (in April) 
Yellow bird (often) 
Maryland yellow throat (occasionally) 
On a bright day like this just one year ago, I first set eyes on Scotland a day never to be forgotten. 
18 Still brilliant; no softness yet in [crossed out: nature] the air. The carpenter bees at work and climbing in mid air about their holes. 
Oh, for a soft wet spell. Oh, for the liquid side of May. One hates to see the ground bake or freeze this month. 
19 Still bright, a little warmer, Now at 8 a.m. a soft, bluish vapor -- the vapor of morning, fills the river valley and dims the opposite shore. The Mary Powell goes by -- her first trip of the season, flags flying, smashing the glassy surface and making a big noise in the morning stillness. The trains glancing through the cool deep shadows of the opposite shore, their plume of steam, most visible are agreeable to me. [crossed out: Now at 8] 19 Now at 8.25 the morning dance and sparkle of the river has just begun to go on till the sun is an hour higher and or till the breeze becomes too strong. 
Indigo-bird, wren, cat-bird, oriole, and sparrow, the principal songsters this morning. One year ago this morning walked from Ayr to Alloway in Burn's country, and first heard the English song birds. What a morning! 
A remark of Julian: "The heaven-world owns this world," spoken as he lay meditating on the sofa. 
20A quiet, overcast Sunday. A swam of Italian bees yesterday in the old apple tree. The rich waxy smell of the balm of Gilead, is now upon the air. 
21Overcast -- wind in the S.W. Leaves nearly all out; the plane tree and the chestnut the most tardy. It seems there is one case in which a half is equal to the whole -- contradicting all laws of quantity. The past is an eternity; the future is an eternity; one is equal to the other, and either is equal to both. One eternity is equal to any number of eternities. This is Bacons idea. The way out of the dilemna is that time does not really exist; it is not a quantity, a thing, but a law or a mode of the mind. Space is a negation, so is time, else there is no immortality. 
22. May turns her cold wet side to us this morning. Heavy rain last night with thunder and lightning; kept me from sleep. Wind north or N.E. this morning with spirts of big dropped rain; river streaked with broad chalk marks of foam. The pedals of apple blossoms lay like unmelted flakes upon the grass and gravel. 
23 Clearing to-day, after a good rain. Weather warm and 'kind o' thundery' looking this morning. Clears off in the afternoon. 
24 Cool and nearly clear, wind North. Foliage pretty well out, but very pale and tender looking yet. Leaves of the apple-blossoms drive by like snow flakes. LangdonÕs woods seem in a state of ebulition. Some of the tree tops seem to boil up through the mass. 
"Knowtst thou what made yon wood-birds nest Of leaves and feathers from her breast." 
Says the Emersonian calendar of this date. Now it is not true as here implied that the wood bird or field bird either, feathers her nest from her own breast. But few birds, aside 
from the water fowls, feather their neat at all. The house-wren and swallow and [crossed out: occas] feather their nests [marginal note: Kinglets, Winter wren and chickadee also. Found a feather or two in phoebes nest.] but not from their own bodies; they pick up henÕs or other feathers when they can find them. The domestic g hen and goose seem to shed a few feathers from their own bodies to line their nests with. In England I noticed that the willow wren used a good many feathers from the poultry yard in its nest. Our birds make the interior of their nests soft with moss, hair, fine grass etc. Many wood birds use leaves, but not one uses feathers. But this kind of liberty with facts the poet is perhaps permitted to take? since he but uses a symbol or form of speech as old as literature itself. The bird models her nest with her breast. 
An old French poet, Pierre d'Auvergne, said in the 12th century: "Never was a song good or beautiful. which resembled any other." Quoted by Emerson in "Letters and Social Aims" 
Perceive that a handful of the wild geranium blossom has a faint odor like apple-bloom, a mere hint. A bumble-bee may be caught for a moment in a spiders web, but it will not hold him. The spider flees on beholding the big game he has caught, and from a corner watches the ruin of his fabric. 
4 P.M. A strangely bright afternoon. One of those washed and c1eansed days -- the river a deep steel blue, 
On this day last year in Scotland the trees were heavy with foliage, except the ash, which is tardy there as here. A few apple blossoms lingered on the trees. The grass was much higher than here -- high enough to hide the corn-craik. Many birds had young nearly grown -- the Starling, the blue bonnet etc. Potatoes were several inches high, oats hid the ground etc. Young crows were nearly ready to leave the nest. 
25. Bright day -- getting warm. The hot spell of last May near at hand. To Coxsackie to the bank. The sugar berry tree -- Celtis -- is one of the last to leave out, and it does so in spots and by sperts, a twig here and there in full leaf while the rest of the tree shows no sign. At first you think the tree dead or dying it acts so strangely, but by and by the branches all wake up and clothe themselves. 
The rain of a few days ago caused that green uncanny blossoming of the cedar-plums -- a sort of mock ugly bloom. These "plums" are a morbific growth or excrescence -- a fibrous tumor -- and a jealatinous or fungus growth springs from them like long yellow petals. They are cold and clammy and show amid the foliage like fruit or flowers. When the rain ceases, they dry up and disappear (the central neucleus or fibrous growth remains of course) and revive again the next rain 26. Go home to-day. Bright and pleasant. Walk up from the depot with a basket of shad. The boys milking, Eden and Willie just home from looking at farms. Father well; greets me without his accustomed tears, because he is so well. Says he feels nearly as well at heart as ever he did. He looks strong and more himself than a long time before. 
Only slight signs of buds and foliage on the tops of the mountains. 
27 Sunday. To Abigails; then to the hemlocks; in the afternoon in the sapbush and above the woods with Hiram. 
Day bright after last night's rain. The painted trillium out in the deacon woods -- very pretty. One of the handsomest of our wild flowers. 
28 To Stamford to examine the bank; then to Homer's. After supper go up in the cedar swamp. Find Labrador tea in bloom -- flower like the laurel, not white as Gray says, but purple-pink. The painted trillium everywhere in the dark, mossy spongy woods. The hermit thrush singing divinely. 
29 Rain and wind in morning walk up from depot. 
30 To Roses brook with Curtis fishing. Take 32 trout in the old stream of my boy hood. Bobolinks with peculiar song, two or three notes like rapid picking of guitar or violin string. Several with that peculiarity in adjoining meadows, noe like them [crossed out: at] in home meadows. Sparrow's nest with young, and one with 5 eggs. Day bright and lovely with rain at night. Painted trillium again as we cross mountain. Apple trees in bloom. 
31st Rain in morning; clearing in after noon. Come back home. Domestic skies still dark and lowering, with spurts of rain and forked lightning. Life would not be worth if I was obliged to please Mrs B. 
June 1 A peaceful June day; perfect in temper, in mood, in everything. Foliage all out except on button balls and celtis, and with its dark green summer color. A few indolent summer clouds here and there; little breezes that hardly make the bows wag, or hardly tarnish the deep blue of the river -- clean, bright tranquil day -- the full grown rye heads nodding or gently stirring like the crowded figures at a reception. The vireos cheerful warble echoes in the leafy maples; the branches of the Norway spruces and hemlocks [crossed out: are tipped with] have got themselves new light green tips; the dandelion sphere of ethereal down rises above the grass; the first red and white clover heads are just out; the bird choir still full and animated. (Yellow rock rose in bloom down near the river). The keys of the red-maple strew the ground; the early everlasting is shedding its cotton and with the down of the dandelion, drifts on the air. 
2d Another faultless June day. Solid shadows under the trees or stretching down the slopes. A day of gently rustling and curtseying leaves, when the [crossed out: ge] breezes almost seem to blow upward. The grain slowly stirs and sways like a vast assembly. How the chimney swallows chipper as they sweep past! Found two in my Study on my return, one dead, the other clinging to the wall with half outstretched wings, nearly senseless. I took it to the open door when it seemed to revive and flew slowly away. I now see the explanation of that stiff, curious, jointless flight of theirs, the forearm of the wing is so long, and the other joint: so short; apparently the wing bends only at the [crossed out: shoulder] wrist. How does this help them in their cork-skrew descent into chimneys etc? 
In the afternoon came Miss T. my Po'keepeie correspondent, and we had a delightful walk and saunter in the woods, ladies slipper, aplectrum and pogonia in bloom. Found the domed nest of the golden crowned thrush with 5 eggs. 
3 Calm, overcast, the river a great black shadow. leaves stir, but branches do not. A cool, moist freshness in the air. 
Both soft maple and elm shed their seeds by 1st of June. 
A long walk north along the river bank, the river brimming full, the top of the tide, the water gently lapping the shore, hardly audible here and there. Can hear the bobolinks and brown thrasher sing on the other side. A phoebe-birds nest on the face of a slanting rock above the reach of the waves. Sweet viburnum and [crossed out: maple leaved] downy viburnum in bloom. 
4 Rain last night from S.W. Warm, cloudy, breezy, threatening this morning. A green snake yesterday looked as if he had just sprung up like the grass, or like the new shoots of the trees, not yet hardened and browned. As he coiled mid the live-for-ever one could hardly distinguish him from the plant. A city girl in the country, on being showed a nest of young chippies recoiled from her first enthusiasms with the remark "Why, they are all moldy" mistaking the [crossed out: mould] down for mould! 
5 Days of wondrous beauty. Heat at last that penetrates every nook and corner. 
A long walk back through Brookmans woods to near Black Creek. How unspeakably fresh and full the world looked from his hill at 9 a.m. The morning shadows yet everywhere, even in the sunshine a kind of blue coolness and freshness, the vapor of dew tinting the air, the hue of the river over all the landscape. No new thing in the woods, but medeola, Indian cucumber root. A wood thrushs nest with 4 eggs. Yellow cypripedium fading. Daisies opening in the fields. 
6 Great heat, ground getting dry. Day more ruffled and rumpled than yesterday; not so matchless and pristine -- the second brewing as it were, of the same elements. Thunder showers in the distance over the Catskills. 
The first cup of wild strawberries to-day. Whistling quails yesterday and to-day. Heat about 88. Ended with heavy thunder-shower at 7 P.M. Big fall of water and all heavens artillery , mortars and all, in full chorus. The honey locust in bloom and its rich perfume on every breeze. No plant or tree in England or Scotland with such a perfume. 
7. The day after the rain, still hot, but breezy. The sap of all vegetation reinforced. Heat and moisture, both in ample measure the father and mother of all that lives. Now let the increase come. 
In May, a girl in Ohio sent me a blue wild flower, fragrant, she said. It was polemorium reptans, nearly related to phlox. I had said in "Signs and Seasons" we had no blue wild flower that was fragrant, Hamersville, Ohio -- a timely blow. Early yellow flowers too I said wer not fragrant, when along comes yellow violets from California, fragrant, and yellow Jasmine from Georgia do -- all from women. Hit him again! 
Male wren feeds female while setting. Sings with food in his beak. Most birds chirp and call with loaded beaks. Hence the old fable that made the crow drop her [crossed out: f] morsel of food when she opened her mouth to sing does not seem well founded, though it is certain that [crossed out: some] birds usually open the beak while in song. Swarm of bees in chimney. -- unused flew. 
8 More rain last night. Succulent June, indeed. S. berries blushing under the green leaves. 
A book to be worthy the name must do one of two things, increase our knowledge, or increase our love. The best books, books of true literature do both but a book that does neither? like most of the novels of the day. It seems to me that neither [crossed out: Howells or] James or Aldrich add one particle to our know1edge or to our love of anything [crossed out: in] under the sun. Their people -- what do we care for their people? Sweep them all into the dust bin together. Has my love for anything, for my kind, for truth, for nature etc, been stimulated or added to? The only thing admirable is the workmanship, the deft handling, like fine penmanship, but the thing penned -- What do I or you care for it? Works of science, for instance, add to our knowledge; but knowledge without love is barren. Only the literary treatment of these things can add to our love. 
Does the preacher, or moralist make us love virtue and truth? No, but the poet does. and Emerson and Carlyle do. 
Two little social sparrows (chippies) under my window; the female making , her breakfast off the seeds of a dandelion head; the male treads her 9 times in less than two minutes; but a few seconds intervene between the acts, the female keeping on with her breakfast, the male flying up to a near twig each time. The tenth time she refuses him; will not put herself in the right attitude; seems to say "dear, decency forbids" 9 The perfection of June days. The earlier grasses in bloom, the rye beginning to nod; the motionless stalks have a reflective, meditative air; the brilliant birds, like the tanager and indigo-bird sing from the tops of the trees. The foliage glistens; the white clover and blackberry in bloom -- a month earlier than in England. 
Last night near sundown a purple finch sang most copiously, full half a minute without a break or pause -- the longest strain of any of our birds known to me. First brood of robins, phoebes, blue-birds, nuthatches, sparrows etc out of the nest. 
[See also page 26 for a possible additional section of this entry] 
10 Getting toward high tide of summer. The air well warmed up. Things tender and moist still; no hardening yet. The moist, hot fragrant breath of the fields, -- mingled odor of blooming grasses, clover, rye, etc. The locust blossoms dropping. What a humming about the hives, what freshness in the shade of every tree, what contentment in the flocks and herds. The springs yet full and cold; the shaded water courses or pond margins begin to draw one. 
Finished Carlyles "Cromwell" today in the shade of my summer-house. No such histories as this man writes. How omnipotent his eye, how keen and sure his scent! That turn for the higher mathematics which he early showed, doubtless stood him in hand in sifting such a rubbish heap and tracing [crossed out: the] and mending the threads of meaning, He could solve the problem; he could set the equation upon its feet again. 
The best thing about C's contempt is its perfect sincerity and inevitableness. He cannot help it. It is genuine and had a kind of felicity. Then there is no malice in it, but pity rather; and pity springs from love. His contempt is the negative pole and measure the force of the positive, strong as it is strong. Such quick love. sympathy, tenderness few men have had. He cannot be indifferent. 
[ See page 26 for a possible conclusion to this entry] 
Here I sit and see the early summer days go by, playing the old game with nature and life, and making few new points, hardly any I may say. The same old story. But the air tastes sweet and I love to be here. It is a good time to loiter and see the procession pass. Read a little every day, walk a little, work a little, doze a little and half think and half dream a good deal. Nature is in her juiciest mood now -- all sap and leaf. The days are idyllic. I lie on my back on the grass in the shade of the house and look up to the sof and slowly-moving clouds and to the swallows (chimney) disporting themselves up there in the breezy depths. 
Not always happy; who is? So much of life, with the best of us is mere negative happiness, a neutral ground. Only at rare intervals are we positively happy. 
As we grow old life becomes more and more [crossed out: a] background or middle distance; [crossed out: very] the foreground dwindles; the present moment has less and less power to absorb us and hold us. Alas! Alas! 
I am at a loss to know if Carlyle was really so wretched after all tried by the ordinary standard; his books abound in such felicities, such happiness of of thought and expression. He communicates no gloom to the reader, quite the reverse. Probably because no good reason is shown for his gloom or misery. The happiest minds and tempers bear no more wholesome and fortunate fruit no more inspiring and encouraging. 'Tis the most tonic despair ever printed. For one their is nothing malicious or wicked in it -- nothing satanic and destructive corrosive, as in Byron and Heine. It sprang from no personal disappointment or selfishness. It is grand and noble always. In a letter to Emerson he speaks of a "kind of imperial sorrow that is almost like felicity -- so completely and composedly wretched, one is equal to the very gods." His wretchedness was a kind of sorrow, and this is the saving feature. One's unhappiness may be selfish and ignoble, or it may be noble and inspiring. Men selfishly wretched never laugh. He was a man of sorrow, and sorrow springs from sympathy and love. A sorrowing man is a loving man. It was an old world sorrow, the inheritance of the ages. the accumulation of centuries of wrong and oppression, that became a kind of soil, a kind of mould that issues at last in positive bloom and verdure. That ever recurring mournful retrospect, that tender, wistful gaze, that burden of the inexorible conscience not happiness, but a kind of blessedness he aspires to; the satisfaction of suffering and well-doing. How he loves Cromwell and Luther and Knox, and all struggling heroic souls. It was his glory that he never flinched that his despair only nerved him to work; that the thicker the gloom, the more his light shone. Hope and heart never left him; [crossed out: he was] they were of the unquenchable kind like a torch in a tempest which the tempest cannot blow out, so tenaciously and desparately does the flame cling. 
11 Warm, tempestuous, a flapping, big-winged day from the S.W. About noon a violent squall rain pours, trees wring and twist as if in mortal agony. In a few minutes the [crossed out: sto] meteor is miles away and the sun is shining; so swift it flies. At 4 P.M. a terrible blow without rain, as if a wind cloud had burst -- The leaves are torn from the trees, and in many cases the trees from the ground. 
12 Bright and warm. A picnic up near Staatsburgh. 
13 Still, overcast, and hot. Juno and Mercury in the woods, panting with passion, a page from one of the old Greek poets. 
14 A change last night, wind blowing like great guns this morning from the north; river as rough as in the wildest March weather. P.M. A winnowed day, every film and vapor blown away. A great bright day, [crossed out: burnished] its toilet completed, washed by the rains, combed by the winds. 
15 Very fair; A frost last night in some places, I reckon. The cotton of the poplars strewing the ground. 
16 Cut out here and sent to the Critic a little essay on Carlyle and Emerson. Cool last night. The fields milk white with new daisies and their agreeable odor comes over the fence to me as I skirt the meadow. The wild-grape, too, perfumes the twilight air along the woods. A page from the classics again this morning under the evergreens, a blue-jay in low-voiced admiration and approval. Was it Catullus or Aspulius, or Theocritus that I read? Those lips would have satisfied either. 
Dr Angell and Mrs B. came last night. 
17 A breezy vapory day from the S.W, Sun shining in the afternoon. The summit of the strawberry days. 'Tis singular how with fly-catchers like the phoebe the head is still while the body sways with the swaying branch. This helps the eye be sure of its aim. Is it so with all birds? Must investigate. 
18 Slow rain from the south. In the morning Dr. Angel1 asked me if it would rain. I said wait till 10 o 'clock; the weather will declare itself then, as it did in rain. 
19 Weather declared itself again about ten A.M. and sun came out. Hot and muggy in the afternoon. A tremendous shower came upon us in the woods -- a novel experience to the women. 
The lunar moth out; wild roses in bloom, honey bees upon the it gathering pollen. 
20 Bright and delightful. Dr A. amd Mrs B. off to-day. A call from a young Mr. Tremper of Rhinebeck, a collector of birds, eggs, insects, etc. Wants to see the golden winged warbler. Rather an awkward youth, but singularly honest and simple and fresh. Has an eye for birds-nests; has found them nearly all. Induced a high-hole to lay 29 eggs by removing one from the nest every day; the eggs grew small by degrees and beautifully less; in fact, tapered down to the size of a chippies eggs. Kingfisher lines its nest with feathers, apparently duck 
21 A day of peculiar complexion: high, heavy, slow-moving clouds, black-and-blue -- great mass and dignity, river placid -- all nature placid and full. 
22d, 23d, 24th Days of wondrous beauty -- equable -- the maturity of June -- perfect as a full blown rose. 
25 To N.Y. on my way to visit Gilder. 
26 To Fall River last night by boat. [crossed out: Slept all] Passed the night on two chairs -- rooms all taken. The hills and shores along the bay below F.R. have quite a foreign look to me, treeless and grassy. Take train to Marion. See a purple flower in the wet places, as we whirl along, that is new to me: it is probably the arathusa -- called Indian pink, swamp pink, etc. My first view of the plant. The country about Marion low, sandy, swampy, strewn with huge gray granite boulders, with pine barrens here and there. Spend the day at Gilders. The smell of the salt sea shore in the air. Profusion of wild roses; their fragrance very obvious along the highways; more odorous than with us. We bathe, wander along the bay, then into the pine woods. Birds the same as at home, but find the Calopogen and Arathusea, both new, the latter fragrant like sweet violets -- very delicious. 
27 To Boston with Gilder, then to Cambridge; hear some of the graduating class discourse their pieces not so pertinent nor alive as those I heard a few years ago at Vassar. 
A long walk by Longfellows house, then by Lowells. --all stately, mellow and home-like. English elms in Lowells grounds. Caught in a shower. A long walk to the station (Porter) then take train to Concord. Some fine English views here and there. New England, truly, At Concord we wrap a t the door of an empty hotel. "Been closed for over a year" said a passing girl. She showed us a boarding house; good quarters. At Sanborns in the evening; much talk. Then to Dr Emersons; a worthy son of his father, stamped mentally and physically with the Emersonian stamp: eye, mouth, etc all Emersonian. A fine fellow. Talked well about Thoreau. Said Channing drove away away his family; then drove away his dog. This last act angered Thoreau much. 
28 A pleasant breakfast at Sanborns. His new house the most courageously plain and therefore the most pleasing of any recent house in Concord. No airing of "architecture" in it. A combination of brick and wood; great success. Gilder and I walk to Walden Pond; much talk and loitering by the way. Walden a clean bright pond, not very wild. 
Look in vain for the cite of Thoreaus hut. Two boys in a boat row up and ask us the question we have on our tongues to ask them. Day hot. We sit in the woods and try to talk about immortality; donÕt get very near together on such a theme, like ships at sea, we soon part company. Words have no meaning when we leave the solid ground of earth. The Language is for this life -- not for the next. (There! what does that next mean? It is false as it stands.) In after noon call on Mrs Emerson, and Ellen, Mrs E. a fine, stately old lady, not decrepit at all. Eye clear, face shapely, mouth good. Would have taken her for the wife of Emerson anywhere, looks distinguished and very spiritual. Talked well, no signs of age but in her snow white hair. Emersons mark was upon her too. It seemed as if she had been embalmed [crossed out: in] by his mind and influence, thoÕ she by no means shares his way of thinking 
Something fine about Ellen, a kind of Emersonian Amazon, brow classical 
dress loose and shapeless, form tall. Mrs Forbs, more like her brother, the Dr in look. Her children, (four of them) conduct us to the cemetery. I correct the boys ornithology in one or two points as we pass along, bright lad of 10 or 11. At Emersons grave amid the pines, we linger long. Then walk to the old Manse, etc, then to Sanborns to tea. 
3 I saw nothing in Concord that recalled Thoreau except that his ripe culture, and tone might well date from such a place. On the whole 
Concord is the most pleasing country village I ever saw Nothing like it in England, where only the poor live in villages. It impressed me much. Its amplitude, its mellowness, its homelike air, its great trees, its broad avenues, its good houses, etc, Emerson and Hawthorne are its best expression in literature. It seems fit that they should come from this place. 
29 A long drive through the country to Tukesbury with Sanborn; day hot; thence to Boston when I part with G. -- then home next day. 
July 1st Hot day. 
2d Hot " showery. Ship currants. 3d Showers nearly every day. Aaron came today. Much pleased to see him 4th Hot, hot, and showery, 5 " " " 6 Start for Furlow lake this afternoon with A. 7 Reach Furlow to-day. Spend nearly a week there (till July 12th). have a good time; must see if I can write it up. 
14 Aaron left for home to-day and left me sad and regretful. 'Tis a genuine friendship I feel for him. 
Mid-summer days; the rye tangled by the late storms, is ripe for the cradle. Most of the birds still in full song. Plenty of rain -- three or four heavy showers a week. A great season for white-clover -- never saw so much of it in my life. 16 First cicada to-day. Heavy rain last night. 
18 The heights of mid-summer. All things green and fresh. In the morning the river surface sown with great flashing diamonds of light. The loosened bark dropping from the plane-trees, the neud limbs as clean and smooth and white as a maidens. Steeple-bush in bloom, swamp-milkweed ditto. 
19 Cool and bright. Start for home today. Drive Major. People laugh and scoff at the Darwinian theory of the descent of man, but the 
fact that each one of us sprang from a little wriggling animalcula, a little fish that wriggled itself into a little cell and was thence developed, or evolved, is just as incredible to me as Darwins theory. No doubt at all that back in the womb of time, man was equally low and rudimental and that he has been developed through the ages, as every child is developed today from the ovum of its mother. No more did God create man than he created you and me. He created us slowly from very simple beginnings, and he created man in the same way. How absurd any other view is when one comes to think of it. He created him from the dust of the earth, truly, just as you and me are created daily. 
30. At sister Abigails since the 2lst. Weather cool and rather wet. 
Extract from a letter to Wm G Barton, Salem, Mass: "Remember that Whitman assumes and maintains a certain typical character throughout his poems, a character whose chief traits are love, charity, acceptance, and the largest and most intense democratic comradeship towards all persons and things. 
[this sheet of paper may or not be from 1883. The chronology is not perfect, and the events do not line up perfectly. We believe that it was placed here by Betty Kelley whose handwriting in pencil and in black ball point pen are found in the upper left hand corner] 
Year? July and August 1883 29 Home to-day, light showers. Found MissT. had been here yesterday. 30 Heavy rain to-day, 3 inches of water with but little thunder. 31 Bright day, not a cloud i n the sky, but all cloud and gloom in my heart. Aug 1st Warm, partly overcast, a ray of light pierces my gloom. 2 Sunday. Lovely tranquil day. Julian [written in a different pen] and I have delicious time down [crossed out: by] on 
the river bank under the trees. Early grapes coloring up. 6 Warm, moist, muggy past 3 days; grape rot starting up quite alarmingly. melancholy days to me. Life is getting quite stale again. 
The poem that so troubles you (To a Common Prostitute) seems to me perfectly consistent with this character, and one of his most significant. I can conceive such a character as he portrays in his poems -- one embracing not only the divine, the spiritual, but in equal measured the human, the emotional, the sexual, meeting a prostitute and being kind and affectionate to her, pitying her, loving her, and buoying her up by his tremendous sympathy and brotherly love, She is not unclean to him. She is a woman, a betrayed and soiled angel; he understands her and he at least will not "exclude" her. If he had pitched his poem in the key of high conventional and ecclesiastical morality or in any other key than the one of absolute acceptance and affiliation, it would have been false and out of keeping with the rest of his book. It is just that tone of unworldly equality and comradeship in sin, backed up as it is by his enormous spiritual and redeeming power that so delights me in the poem." Perhaps no other poet of modern times, dare place himself along side of a woman of the street in that way. But when W.W. says that he is "no stander apart from men", he means it. All his poems are to be read in the light of that fact. He touches the lowest and has an actual feeling of kinship with them. Only so can he reach and lift them. This poem is the seal of his Love for woman, and gives meaning to all his eloquent boasting on behalf of the sex. 
Aug 6th Roxbury. Finished Darwins Decent of Man this morning. A model of patient, tireless, sincere inquiry, such candor, such love of truth; such keen insight into the methods of nature, such singleness of purpose, and such nobility of mind could not be easily matched. [crossed out: I have n] The book convinces like nature herself. I have no more doubt of its main conclusions than I have of my own existence. 
Following same incompetent observer, he makes a curious mistake about our native grouse, namely, that the sound it makes in drumming is produced by the bird striking its wings together above its back. If Darwin could ever have heard the sound, he would have known better than that. Darwins tone and habit of mind is always that of the master. 
6th Very cold the past week and squally, so cool that one needed on a coat most of the time, and frost was threatened. The air full of yellow mid-summer butterflies. The bobolinks drifting about, their ties to the meadows at last broken, ready to depart. I hear their call notes and see them high in the air. Many or the most of them seem already to have gone. To escape danger, real or apprehended, as to avoid a stone thrown at them, bobolinks dive into the grass. You hurl a stone to start them up as they sit about on the tops of the weeds and grass, and they all dive like frogs into the water. Sitting on a tree, they dive into it in the same manner. They are probably the most successful breeders of any of our birds - nothing seems to find or rob their nests. 
A gold-finches nest in the maple tree near the window where I write; the female sitting on 4 pale blue eggs; the male feeds her on the nest; whenever she hears his voice, she calls incessantly, much after the manner of the young birds 
-- the only case known to me of the sitting bird calling while in the act of incubation. The male evidently brings the food in his crop, and not in his beak, as he is several moments in delivering it to the female, and does so by several morsels. The male when disturbed by a rival, utters the same note, as he pursues him from point to point, that the female does when calling to him. It does not sound like a note of anger, but of love and confidence. 
Downy wood pecker trying to break into the cocoon of some species of of butterfly, securely fastened to the limb of a wild cherry tree. Downy alights upon it and assaults it vigorously. "rattle,' 'rattle,' 'rattle' but has to give it up. If it was firmly fixed he could penetrate it, but its long pliant strap, by which it is held to the tree, makes it pendent, and it yields to every blow of the bird. The case is so tough that it requires sharp knife to open it. The butterfly it yields is dark brown with spots on its wings. 
The flight of a butterfly is so tortuous and zigzag, that rarely can a bird capture one; rarely do they attempt it. It is apparently impossible for a butterfly to fly in a straight line, or any species of moth, except perhaps, the humming-bird moths. 
A farmer, whom I know heard, a queer growling sound in the grass; on approaching the spot he saw two weasels contending over a mouse. Each had hold of the-mouse pulling in opposite 
directions, and were so absorbed that the farmer cautiously put his hands down and grabbed them both by the back of the neck. He put them in a cage and offered them cake, bread, etc. This they did not eat, but in a few days, one ate the other up, picking his bones clean and leaving nothing but the skeleton. 
7 Very cool last night suggesting a frost. A thin film over the sky today that slightly dims the suns rays. Now at 11 
a.m. a few fog clouds begin to develop themselves here and there, springing up like mushrooms, apparently stationary, but growing. A fitful breeze now and then. Does it bode rain? We shall see. My impression is that it will not rain. The boys cutting the last of the hay in the old meadow 
I hear the rattle and whirr of the machine. Julian and I go berrying to-day over by the woods. Julian said he had a little 
cloud of a headache. 8 Thermometer down to 40 last night. The film still over the sky to-day but sun a little brighter. No signs of rain, but of a drought. 
Birds still in song: song-sparrow, vesper-sparrow, indigo-bird, gold-finch, red-eyed vireo, scarlet tanager. The August days already whisper of autumn. Just up from the meadow where I have been cocking and pitching on hay, as in the old days. 
Aug 11. No sign of rain. Clear and getting warm. This morning all the valley full of fog, level and still as a lake. As the sun came up it began to stir as if to escape his beams. Presently it came surging up the hills, and then ebbed again. Then it began to disintegrate, flecks of it reached upward. Now, at [crossed out: 10] 9 a.m. the sun has licked it all up. A phoebe-bird calls out on the "new" barn, and I hear and see the swallows, in flocks about it. They are getting ready to leave. Gray bobolinks, too, in troops flying about and calling uneasily. The boys in haying down at Abigails. I hear the shuffle of the flying grasshoppers poised above the dusty road. Hens carol, crows caw, sparrows sing, the yellow butterfly dances by, the big house fly hums, the yellow bird circles and calls, the bull bellows in the pasture. A long dreamy August day is at hand. The last day at the old home. Father well but his mind slowly failing him. 
12. m. We go over to the old house together, the house grand-father built. Father in a kind of dazed condition, points out to me the different rooms, and tells some incident of each. The first night he and mother passed there they slept in the entry of the west door. Hiram was born in the room on the west corner. When grand-mother was dying they sent for Father and mother in the morning, just at or before daylight. "Chancy" she said, "I have but a little while longer to stay with you" as indeed it proved, for she died in about an hour. 
12 At Sister Janes; with Homer in the spruce swamp, picking huckleberries; gather a fine lot. The hermit thrush in song about 6 o'clock. The spruce swamp probably not 10 acres in extent, the site of an ancient lake, a bit of Maine, or Canada, the plants and trees nearly the same; Labrador tea, pitcher plant, spruce, and a thick carpet of moss, in places a "quaking sphagum." 
13 Drive through Lexington -- mot before in 26 years; the old scenes where Olly Ann and Walker used to live; stop at Walkers grave by the road side but cant make out the house 
where they lived when I last visited them in 1855, and where Olly Ann died; all is changed. Through a deep defile in the mountains called the "Narrow Notch." Stay at Phoencia over night. 
14 To Olive; get lost in the woods, in trying to take a short-cut. Father North pretty feeble; says his work is about done. We go blackberrying; he picks a few, but it is painful work for him, he is so lame. 
15 Drive home through a purgatory of dust and stone. A young cow-bunting being fed by its foster mother, a chippie, and by a voluntary nurse, an English sparrow. The greedy creature acts as if it could swallow both of them. (noticed in July) 
15 In my old shoes again: dry, cool August days. The liquid splash of the boats on the river again; the shrill note of the cicada, the trill of the song sparrow etc. 
Darwin says he has no proof that cultivated plants, when escaped from the garden or left to run wild, relapse to their more primitive condition. I notice that flowers that are double in cultivation, like "bouncing bet" and the roses, become single when run wild. The wild carrot has become a vile weed, and has degenerated from the cultivated species; it all runs to top and seed; so with the wild onion. Our improved fruits -- the apple, peach, etc will not commonly reproduce [crossed out:their] the like kind from the seed, but an inferior. 
Aug 17, '83 
Probably a part of the melancholy view one is apt to take of his own death, arises from the fact that he unconsciously makes himself one of the mourners he loses his dearest friend, himself. But he is just the member of the family [crossed out: that] who will not be present at the funeral; [crossed out: that] who will never hear the sad news, who will shed no tears and heave no sighs. Grief is for the living alone. For alas, the dead do not know that they are dead. Dear friends, I could weep with the best of you, I loved life, but behold my eyes are tearless. I have dropped back into the great ocean of nature, as the wave drops back into the sea, not lost but submerged and still -- no longer a separate identity. 
Sunday, Aug 19 A fine shower last night; the thunder peals kept us from sleep. It breaks, for the moment, the spell of the dry parched, dusty August days, the winter of summer. The waysides are weedy, the fields and lanes are weedy; the crops are gone except the maize, and the weeds usurp the land; the grass droops, the hidden rocks parch the thin soil and verdure on their backs, as if they were concealed ovens. The shrill brassy crescendo of the cicada fills the air Darwins theory of the origin and descent of man, adds immensely to the mystery of nature, and to the glory of the race. Mans greatness then was not thrust upon him but is his own achievement. We respect him less who is set up in business with a fortune at his disposal than he who from humble beginnings, achieves his own success. Then the theory so ties man to the system of things, and makes his appearance not arbitrary or accidental, but a vital and inevitable result. Who has not felt what a mechanical, unartistic view of creation that which the churches have so long held is. But that all these vast complex results and forms of life were enfolded in the first germ -- that view makes the universe alive -- the veritable body of God, the organism of a vast, mysterious all embracing, eternal power, impersonal, unhuman in its general workings, but manifesting [crossed out: these traits and attributes] conscience and beneficence mainly through the human race. 
It is a new sensation to come to see man as an animal, the master animal of the world; the outcome and crown of all the rest. We have long been taught to regard ourselves as something apart and 
exceptional, differing not merely in degree, but in kind, from the rest of creation, in no sense a part of nature, something whose origin and destiny are peculiar and not those of the commonality of the animal kingdom, that this view shocks many. But it is full of deepest meaning to the thoughtful and impartial. The story of Adam and Eve is a beautiful myth. There is an Adam and Eve in Darwins plan too, but they were not set up in business on the home-farm, their garden ready planted, etc. They made their own garden and knew how they came by their acres. There was a long line of humble and still more humble progenitors back of them, toiling, sorrowing, fighting, breeding, Grandfather Adam, who ate his steak raw, and great grandfather Adam, who had a tail and lived in trees, and [crossed out: was] had a coat of hair. The fear and love and wonder and terror of God of the old Hebrews seems not misplaced when held by the modern man toward this mystery we call Nature. Science is revealing this terrible Jehovah, not afar off, but here near at hand. Beware how you offend or belie him. Verily, there is no God but God. 
Aug. 20 A splendid rain again yesterday afternoon. It did me as much good as it did the ground. How the river glints and sparkles this [crossed out: afternoon] morning. The air still full of vapor and haze; another shower may be expected today. 
August is the month of the yellow-bird. While most of the other birds have gone silent, their work done, their broods flown, the yellow-bird comes to the front and is the most musical, active, and conspicuous. It is his turn now. It is the first bird I hear in the morning, circling and swinging through the air in that peculiar undulating flight and calling out on the crest of each wave, "here we go, here we go." The rival males pursue each other about in the most courtly high-bred manner, uttering the most conciliatory, cheerful, even gleeful protestations possible. It has the effect of saying with pleased and happy surprise, "Why, my dear sir, this is my territory, permit me to salute you and to escort you over the line," while the other gleefully assures him that it is all right, and that he would not have any hard feeling aroused for [crossed out: nothing] anything in the world. Yet he does not always leave, and the two do not always separate amicably, occasionally they have a brief sparring match in the air, and mount up and up, beak to beak to a considerable height, but rarely ever actually coming to blows. 
The opinion of De Saporta (I do not know who he is) that the earth was peopled from the north, in fact that all forms of life, both animal and vegetable, radiated from a common centre in the arctic regions, is the most plausible yet expressed. It alone accounts for the wide divergence of species. They could not, man could not have crossed the primitive oceans from East to West, or vice versa, but given the region of the pole as the centre, when a warmer climate prevailed there, and species have only to move north in different directions to cover the earth. It is singular and con.firmatory, that the races of man found in the extreme southern points of the continents, are the lowest and are much alike, as if our barbarian ancestors had been crowded to these extreme points. 
I am glad to know that the crust of the earth throbs and palpitates like the belly of a baby. It seems that some English scientists, in trying to determine the influence of the moon upon the crust of the earth, could not find a solid or motionless place to plant their instruments. As soon as their machinery was was sensitive enough to [crossed out: record] respond to the moons influence, etc. [crossed out: they] in came many other influences for record. There were tremblings and perturbations and oscillations everywhere. The tides depressed the crust; it was depressed on a high barometer; in fact [crossed out: seemed] the solid ground seemed in perpetual tilt and oscillated like a paper globe. 
There is no bird that uses its tail in flying so much as the humming bird. How flexible and alert it seems as the bird darts and hovers around the flowers 
It is its rudder. By its aid it flies backward and turns this way and that. 
Aug 21st An oriole in a tree in front of my study, rehearsing in a low tone and as if practicing its instrument, its amorous ecstatic song, very rapid, intricate, copious and varied. Is this only a reminiscence, or is the bird really practicing? It is hidden in the leaves, and I cannot see if it be old or young. 
24 A beautiful, bright cool day after yesterdays heat and shower. On the whole this has been one of the greenest seasons I remember. Just as the 
four weeks drought began to pinch pretty sharply, the welcome rains returned, and all things are again fresh and green. 
25 Thermometer down this morning to 55. August days of great brilliancy and composure; the reposing [crossed out: of the?] season, dreaming of fall. Yonder in the mountains my boys are cradling the oats. I see them delivering their strokes with great deliberation, their white shirt-sleeves glancing in the sun. The long fingers of the cradle seize the grain by great handsfull, the high stubble crackles under their feet. I would I was with them. 
30 Cool, brilliant August days. In the morning, the monotonous ticking and chirping of crickets; by and by the shrill note of the cicada is heard. As the sun goes down the katy-dids and the nocturnal tree crickets take up the strain, and the night pulses with sound. 
31 Last of the August days. Wind in the north; Thermometer 78. Getting pretty dry. [Crossed out: Five] Four broods of young birds here yet from a week to 10 days old. Chippie with 3, robin with two, cedar bird three or four, gold-finch with three or four. 
Sept 1 Dry and bright. Peach-crop a great failure. Have written two short articles, eight pages of the Century in all, during the past two weeks: "Birds' Eggs" and "A Glance at British Wild Flowers." 
6 Dry and dry and dry -- besides being cool. Two frosts this month severe enough to cut the corn in the interior. Peaches presenting old. Father North came yesterday and returned today. A good deal of pluck and vim in the old man yet, in his 83rd year. 
9 Still cool and dry. A goldfinch's nest with young just hatched. The old blue-bird carrying the excrement of the young (her third brood, I think) from the old apple tree. The young cedar birds left their nest yesterday, three of them, 
11 Mothers birthday. Had she lived she would have been 75 today. Five years ago [crossed out: she] today she came to see me for the last time. I met her at the boat just in the dusk of the evening. I can see her now as she appeared when she stepped upon the plank to come ashore. 
A bright, cool day; spent it picking peaches and grapes 
with many many thoughts of Mother.
 "And weep because thou canst not weep,
 And grieve that all thy briefs are o'er." 
15 Warm and moist after the rain of two days ago The first autumn tints appearing -- the sumac begins to burn along the ridges; the scarlet and green purple of the wood bine creeps up the trees and along the rocks. The purple asters, too, just appearing. On the sides of the wooded slope faint dabs of color begin to show. Birds are very numerous and hilarious. Most birds seem to enjoy a sort of autumn holiday. Their cares and troubles of nesting, etc. are over; food is plenty; the old birds enjoy the society of their young and all goes merry as May day. 
The orthodox scheme of creation and plan of salvation that is called religion, is just as artificial and arbitrary as a Sunday house, as on any social or civic ceremony. How, then can it be universal, perennial, in fact, true, and affect or concern the soul at all? Have the constellations or signs of the zodiac any foundation in nature? Mathematics are true; they are founded on the laws of the mind; they are grounded in nature, but this stuff called religion and believed in by many of the best souls living, or that have lived, has no more countenance or support in Nature and the laws of the mind, than has the latest fashion in dress, or the latest catch-word in politics. That a man must perforce believe certain arbitrary things and perform certain ceremonies, or be damned in some other world, is the climax of the absurd. Why is he not damned in this world, where he could see and feel the damnation and others could see it. Why is the punishment postponed? The civil law does not go on this plan, and for good reasons; why should the Divine law? 
21st At Ocean Grove again since last Monday by the "cradle endlessly rocking." Alone, but pretty cheerful and well. Hardly speak to any one. Cannot herd promiscuously like most persons. The lady that sits beside me at table and who eats a pound of beef steak at each meal and nothing else - a consumptive recuperating on this beef-diet - why have not I spoken to her? I can hardly say. It required an effort to do so and I have not done it. Am I really unsocial, as these people probably think? No person can long more for companionship than I do, but I cannot mate right and left with this class of people. In fact, I generally separate from those of my countrymen such as I meet at summer hotels and on ocean steamers as oil separates from water. They leave me and I leave them. I am not the least bit of a cosmopolitan. I am at home no where but in my own nest and in my own thoughts. I am aware that I carry a shell; I have to, my meat is so tender. I cannot cross my thought except with a person much like myself; it must be a closely allied species. 
Long walks on the beach, on the embroidered marge of the sea; broad scalloped borders, vanishing and returning; frills of lace, sea-foam mantillas or 
shawls throw the sands perpetually at my feet, The waves are like great troughs that upset and spill as soon as they touch the sand. How they rock and ride far out but are capsized upon the beach. 
But few objects of interest upon the beach, or the land. No shells, no birds, except now and then a scared flock of the little beach snipe. A wild bean near the shore new to me. Note a few insects, the ticker. Tick, tick, tick, he goes, as if picking some fine string. The crickets have a little different [crossed out: chirp] voice - more silvery and free. Dug out several spiders from their deep holes in the sand; savage hairy fellows with enormous jaws, capable of drawing blood, I should think. When teased with a straw they spring upon it fiercely and fasten their fangs in it. Eight-eyed; two on the top of the head, two immediately in front, and a row of four small eyes beneath these; all round, black fierce, shining like small beads. Through my small pocket-glass the creature looks like a brown and gray hairy woodchuck. Their holes are a foot or more deep, lined with a web at the top, for an inch or two, that prevents the sand from falling in. 
A whistling old woman in a room near mine; the first specimen of the kind I ever saw; whistles as well as a man. A short, fat, dumpy, jolly, outspoken woman; eats like a sailor, criticizes the victuals at the table 
and tells the waiters she will have to go into the kitchen and show the cook how to cook, etc., but all in a way not a bit offensive. Her husband a helpless invalid, apparently a paralytic. "I do wish the good Lord would take him," I heard her say, "but yet I must do everything I can for him." She whistles but one tune so far. 
23 Sunday. A walk to Elberon and back, up by the road and down by the beach, my shoes in my hand, Had a look at the house where Garfield died. Plenty of rose gerardia in bloom along the road, the prettiest of our late blooming flowers except the fringed gentian -- more beautiful than the British hair-bell. Have discovered that my ticking insect is a large green grasshopper like the katydid. Its instrument is in the same place. In making the sound it opens it wings on its back, and then slowly brings them together. 
26 Finished Darwin's 'Origin of the Species' last night. A true wonder book. Few pages in modern scientific literature so noble as 
those few last pages of the book. Everything about Darwin indicates the master. In reading him you breath the air of the largest and most serene mind. Every naturalist before him and with him, he lays under contribution, every competent observer in any field. Only the greatest mind can do this as he does it. He furnishes the key to every mans knowledge. Those that oppose his theory unwittingly bring some fact or observation that fits into his scheme. His theory has such a range; accounts for such a multitude of facts easily underruns and outruns the views of all other naturalists. 
He is in his way as great and as remarkable as Shakespeare, and utilizes the knowledge of mankind in the same way. His power of organization is prodigious. He has the candor, the tranquility, the sincerity, the single [???] of purpose that go with and are a promise of the highest achievement. He is the father of a new generation of naturalists. He is the first to open the doors into Nature's secret Senate chambers. His theory confronts and even demands the incalculable geological ages. It is as ample as the earth and as deep as time. It mates with and matches and is as grand as the nebular hypothesis and is in the same line of creative energy. 
27 My chubby energetic whistling woman has had her wish - the Lord has really taken her old man, the Doctor. He died this morning. It is evidently a great relief to her. She eats and gesticulates and belches wind as vigorously as ever, but I have not heard her whistle. While the Doctor lay dying a day or more, I saw and heard her showing people, who asked about him, how he lay and breathed. She would roll up her eyes, open her mouth, throw back her head, and give a sample of his attitude and breathing till one turned away in disgust. 
Walt Whitman came yesterday and [crossed out: the] his [crossed out: cordia] presence and companionship act like a cordial upon me that 
nearly turns my head. The great bard on my right hand and the sea upon my left -- the thoughts of the one are equally grand with the suggestions and elemental heave of the other. From any point of view WW is impressive. The slope of the back of his head and shoulders and back, how suggestive! You would know that was an extraordinary man. 
29 Long Autumn days by the sea with Whitman. Much and copious talk. His presence loosens any tongue, that has been so tied since I came here, in a remarkable manner. I feel as if under the effects of some rare tonic or cordial all the time. There is something grainy and saline in him as in the voice of the sea. Sometimes his talk is choppy and confused, or elliptical and unfinished, and then again there comes a long splendid roll of thought that bathes one from head to foot, or swings you quite from your moorings. I leave him and make long loops off down the coast or back inland, while he moves slowly along the beach, or sits, often with bare head, in some nook sheltered from the wind and sun. 
The grainy, saline voice of the sea. Shoveller of sands, moulder and carver of coasts, grinder of shells and rocks, beating them up with a pestle and mortar; washer and screener of soils, hoarder of silt, covering the sunken floors deep with the [crossed off: polleb if soils] earth-pollen, reservoir of all rivers; fountain of rains; purifier of climes -- the everlasting, insatiable, omnivorous, remorseless sea. 
The crescent-shaped waves reaping and reaping only shells and sand; yet I seem to hear the hiss of steel as of some giant cradler fronting waving fields; the rustle of sheaves, the pounding of flails, or whirr of cylinders, the shoveling and screening of grain. 
The finest, most pleasing surf is usually upon a calm day. You walk down to the beach of a still morning and find the sea has a swing that is epic and grand. It is beating its long roll [crossed out: in rhythmic succession] the polished waves come in running parallel with the coast, and burst like huge casks hurled upon the sand. 
[crossed out: How the adverse cri] I see new evidence every day how Whitman's name and fame are fairly rubbed into peoples minds. The adverse criticism, the savage attacks, seem like a part of his poetry, in keeping with it, and are probably welcome to him. His poems are not merely for pleasure, to soothe and titivate but for quite other things as well. He has chafed and irritated and aroused the literary mind of this age and put it in a more healthy condition -- made strong masculine types less offensive to it. I was led to this thought by thinking of the sea with its threatening forbidden aspect, its barren sandy stretches, etc. and yet its fascination and salty-tonic breath. Nearly all the people at the hotel knew of him and were eager to see and know him, while probably few of the few who had read his poetry really liked it. Yet they could not dismiss him from their minds, or ignore him. He did not represent a mere sweetness or elegance to them but a power, an elemental surge. 
30 Perfect days by the sea with W.W. A sort of realization of Homer to me. No man I have ever seen cuts such a figure on the beach as W.W. He looks at home there, is ample for such a setting. 
Oct. 1st A last look at the sea this morning with W.W. In the early gray light we stood upon the windy verge and saw "the foamy wrack of the stranded waves cover the shore." Looking down the beach the scene recalled November frost and snows, the waves all churned into foam and spume and blown by the winds, the rime of the sea. Great fluffy masses of sea-foam blew like wool far up the sands. The swells were not large and grand, but full of fury and anger. 
Return home today at 2 P.M. The crinkling and dimpling river looks tame enough. The sea is the place for large types. Hence Tennyson's "and breathe the large air." 
Oct. 10 The third of our matchless October days -- the ripest best fruit of the weather system of our clime; the likeness of a thousand days of the kind I have seen -- the perfect equipoise of the autumn. The early frosts are over, the fall heats are past, and the day is like a full-orbed mellow apple just clinging to the bough. The great moist shadows of the opposite shore I see through the tender medium of sunlit haze. The day broods and dreams. The hills are pillowed upon the mellow air. Chestnuts drop in the woods; their fresh [crossed out: glist] glowing coats show them amid the leaves. The birds are [crossed out: active] social, gregarious, sportful, inquisitive. One by one the leaves drop from the trees. A sloop goes drifting by part of her great sail in blue shadow. I can hear the ripple of the water about her bow. The day is retrospective and seems full of tender memories. The playful birds, the springing grass -- the falling leaf, the whispering of the coming night of things -- youth and age strangely blended. The honey bee goes forth from her hive in the true buccaneer spirit, but returns empty. But the squirrels, the jays, the crows, the grouse, find it a season of plenty. 
11 Nature has no voice this morning -- no motion; she sleeps in the soft haze; hardly a leaf moves. A bird calls or cheeps here and there, the infantile piping of the little frogs or newts comes up from the trees. The river slowly crawls and stirs. The ear is filled with the low purring and [crossed out: ???] pulsing sound of the crickets. Every tree has its own hue now as in spring. The glistening gossamer of the flying spiders like clouds that fly an invisible kite, drift through the air. 
The fluid snake, running as the brook runs. 
An open wood fire is a social fire; it is a companion that makes. 
demands upon you: you must play your part, keep the fuel supplied, the logs jostled together, the ashes brushed away. When I try to write by a wood fire I am perpetually interrupted, as by the conversation of a friend. I must add a stick, I lust nudge the burnt ends. It is the fire to sit before and muse before, and hold intercourse with. 
12 Muskrats nest nearly finished; The rat must have become alarmed by the cold and frost of the 4th and 5th, and at once set to work. They probably cannot forecast the weather any more than I can, but are influenced entirely by the temperature of the fall. The fall has been cold, hence the haste of this rat. 
1883 
Oct. 14 Moist sultry days. This morning like July in temperature. Rain last night; leaves all glistening this morning. Birds singing. Purple finch sings as in May. Song-sparrow also. Blue-birds calling high in air; little newts and pipers inflating their throats. The kinglet too in full song as in May. Temperature 80. 
The young bluebirds are inclined to be brown and speckled. According to Darwins rule [crossed out: ???] then some remote progenitor of the blue bird must have been speckled. Saw a couple of them today (young ones) playing in an old robins nest. They sat in it like two children and seemed to be having lots of fun. 
Oct 20 Those who preach the immortality of the soul, must face the past as well as the future, or perhaps must get rid of both. An immortal being can have neither beginning nor end. Where was I a century ago? Answer this question and the future is already disposed of. What begins must end. 
Oct 29 Go to N.Y. in the rain to meet Matthew Arnold at Gilders. Was cordially met by him; found he knew of me and was glad to see me. Liked him better than I expected to, a large tall man with nearly black hair, black close-cut side whiskers, prominent nose, large coarse (but pure) mouth and muscular neck. In fact a much coarser man than you would expect to see and stronger looking, a good specimen of the best English stock. A wholesome coarseness and open air look. They do not refine in looks as we do; they look like a bigger and more powerful race. Arnolds voice was more husky, more like a sailors, I thought, than the other voices I heard. But what is that look I see, or think I see at times, or in certain lights about his nose and upper lip? Just a faint suspicion of scorn. I was looking for this in his face; it is not in his brow; it is here if anywhere. The nose sniffs a bad smell or sniffs an affront and there hovers about it a little contempt. When he talks to you he throws his head back (the reverse of Emerson's manner) and looks out from under his eyelids, and sights you down his big nose -- draws off, as it were and gives you his chin. It is the critical attitude -- not the sympathetic. Yet he does not impress me as cold or haughty, but quite the contrary. He is too wise not to know what cards to play. In his writing his simplicity seems a little affected, at least conscious; but he knows that there is no card like simplicity.