1893 January 1st Sunday, overcast, begins to snow at 9, one inch of snow and then rain. Rains hard in afternoon and night, a down pour.
 A weather spasm, mercury jumps up. I fear it means a mortal wound to winter. Spasms are always a sign of weakness in nature or in man. Steadiness means strength. Abrupt and extreme changes mark open winters. We shall see.
 A Happy New Year. The word has not passed my lips to-day, and no one has saluted me thus. 
2d Mild, soft, warm-looking clouds, ground full of water or covered with water which can't get in for the frost. Ice soft on top, but skaters and ice-boats out. 
3d Colder, nearly clear. Ice good. Julian out with his sai. --On my way home from the P.O. to-night something suddenly brought into my head the vision of the corn-shelling at home in my boyhood, the great splint basket with the long frying pan handle thrust through its handles across the top, held down by two chairs on either side, and my two brothers [crossed out: scraping] sitting in the chairs and scraping the ears of corn against the handle. I hear the kernels rattle, a shower of them falling in the basket, with now and then one flying out in the room. With the cobs which [crossed out: are] lay in piles beside the basket I build cob-houses, carrying them up till they topple, or till one of the shellers hits them with a cob. Mother is sitting by her tallow dip hung on the back of a chair sewing. Winter reigns without. How it all comes up before me! Soon will it be 50 years ago. Gone, all gone. 
5 Go to Camden to-day to the Whitman re-union. Reach there at 6 [crossed out: A] P.M. Not very satisfactory, rather a common place swell affair, not a bit Whitmanesque. Do not get a chance to fire off the speech I am laded with. A heavy snow storm -- about 10 inches in C. and more farther south, less up the Hudson. 
6 Spend the day in Phil. with Harned and Johnson; both nights at Traubel. 7 Pretty cold. Back to Po'keepsie where Julian and wife are boarding. 9 Snow and cold. 10 Up home to-day. Can't stand P. Set up housekeeping, the cat and I. 
11 Cold wave, mercury down to 6 degrees below this morning. The white plain of the river once more dotted with ice men scraping off the snow; ice 9 or 10 inches. Fathers funeral day, nine years ago. 
12 Mercury at zero this morning, a fine snow falling out of a thin seamless cloud -- can see blue sky through it. A busy scene on the ice in front of my window, just opening the canal. Poor sleep last night. --If our senses were fine enough to detect it, we should probably find we are living in a sea of forces and influences that is continuous with the solar system, or with the whole universe, [crossed out: out of]and which is really the source of our lives. The visible, material part of us comes out of the earth, but whence comes that which selects and uses these earth elements? The earth is obviously an apple on a tree, and is fed and held by forces we reck not of. The tree of life itself, we see not. 
20 At P. the past week; weather heroic; quiet, steady, persistent cold mercury below zero nearly every morning -- from 4 to 16 below -- Very dry -- the light snow like chaf; ice 14 inches on the river. Pretty well these days and fairly happy.
 The sudden spasm of rain January 1st did not mean much after all, or else meant the opposite of my interpretation. 
--The nectar of flowers, or cane sugar which the bee gathers, he makes into honey by reducing the sugar and adding formic acid and other elements from his own stomach. It is believed that it is mainly the young bees that transform the nectar into honey, "that possibly they swallow and regurgitate it several times that the ferment from the head glands may the more perfectly transform the nectar." 
27 Much milder the past week, a little snow -- frost down as usual, plucked from the breasts of the clouds -- and much sunshine. Not lower than 22 for several days, and up to 35 and 40. A remarkable absence of wind all winter. No bluster about such artic weather as we have had; the cold was so great that it easily triumphed. "I came, I saw, I conquered." 
31. Weather still mild; rain two days ago. Light snow last night. Met a boy yesterday walking in from the country on the R.R. track, with a live crow in his hands. He had picked the crow up about 4 miles out. It was blind, both eyes with a milky film over them. It was in a flock of other crows. How had it lived. It was poor. Had the other crows fed it? --Last year was the year of red apples -- very few greenings, or other light-colored sorts, but orchards rosy with Kings and Baldwins and all crimson kinds. 
-- Giants and athletes are not long-lived. Philip Brooks was a giant in stature and in strength. His feat of thinking and speaking 250 or 300 words a minute was gigantic -- the work of an athlete. He died at 57, apparently worm out -- the heart failed. 
Feb 5. Rain and sleet past week and snow. Cold wave yesterday; mercury down to zero this morning. --Why should I have such an aversion to Swinburne? If I read him two minutes I am fairly gasping for breath; his page is a kind of intellectual vacum --writing tangible in it, written thought nor feeling but words, words words. It is like a moonlight shadow dance. His seems like a castrated mind and soul, a [crossed out: ???] one of the neuter gender. He is neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. I should think that certain brain diseases, like hydrocephalous (ophalous), might give rise to such a flux of words. I tried to read his poem on the death of Tennyson, and though I went over it twice, I got not the least breath of meaning. --I suspect that Tennyson was unconscious of the softer, over-ripe, over melodious character of his poetry. In reading it, they say, he took that element out, and made it wild and almost savage. As a man he seems to have been like a loaf with a rather hard bake on it, crusty, forbidding [???] and rough of speech, slovenly [crossed out: shabby] in dress, abrupt in manners, willful, ungrateful and exclusive -- not at all the melodious, conventional, slightly effeminate character he appears in his poems, the product of an old, rich, over-ripe civilization. 
-- 10 Very icy. much rain the past few days, followed by cold wave. Mercury down to 4 degrees below 3 days ago. Raining this morning. 
14 Clear and bright and mild, after the biggest snow storm of the winter -- about 10 inches of snow yesterday. --What you will least find in Whitman is the excitement of the literary sense; what 
you will least find in him is the excitement of the sense of life and things. --Cameo carving is not sculpture. Great artists are distinguished from small by the majesty of their conceptions. The little man lays all the stress upon finish, upon form and detail. --Symond's mind has not the clear strong stamp of Arnold's. He will not leave so definite and indellible a mark upon literature. In power of appreciation he is greater than Arnold -- has wider sympathies, etc. but has not his singleness and directness. Arnold -- has wider sympathies, etc. but has not his singleness and directness. A's thougts are more spinal and typical. 
--The great artist is identified with his subject; it is his subject. He does not merely write about it, he is it; it fuses and blends with his personality. The lesser poets search for a subject; to the great poet the subject comes; he stands in his place and it finds him. 
18. 
Came up home yesterday to stay a few days. Began snowing last night and has continued nearly all to-day, 9 or 10 inches -- about 21 or 22 inches of snow this week, and some rain. 

19. 
Bright to-day, and not very cold. What a white world! Oh! the thoughts and memories that find me out here in my solitude! Some sweet, some bitter. 


20 An old fashioned winter day -- a roaring wind and sheeted ghosts of snow stalking through the air. The most blustery day of the season. Clear, cold with the driving wind, drifts forming everywhere. Alone in the house and not unhappy. 
21. 
Clear, still, cold, mercury about 2 below zero. Hard drifts crunch under ones feet this morning. 

22. 
Another raging snow storm -- the worst of the season; began in the night, a north Easter. Air full of driving whirling snow; up to my knees all the way to the P.O. this morning; falling at the rate of an inch or more an hour, I think. 


 Snowed till noon, and then wind and flying snow. Snow leg deep nearly everywhere. -- "An inevitable ear
 And an eye practiced like a blind man's touch" -- this is the equipment of the true observer. 
25 -- Walk up to the corner in afternoon in a still silent falling snow, a ghostly rain that makes no sound. Coming back it fell very think and fast, quite shutting out the landscape. In such a storm or snow shower one feels as if walking in the woods, or in a jungle; there is a privacy and shut in feeling about it. 
26. Clear, white and blue still world. Snow three feet deep all the trees outlined in snow. An engine stand over to Hyde Park and the column of the steam goes straight up from it, casting a long dark shadow out on the white surface of the river. Only the tops of the currant bushes visible. 
March 1st In N.Y. attended the dinner of the Authors Club last night. Spoke for the first time and did fairly well. Papers say my speech and Jeffersons were the speeches of the evening. With practice I think I could beat any 
 of them. Too much chaff in the speeches -- no serious word. Another big snow storm. 
2d Start for Washington to-day at 11 A.M. Reach there at 7 at night. Mild and really spring like. The great avenue crowded with people. Breathe the atmosphere of the beautiful city once more. Stop with Frank Baker on the Corcoran St. 
3d Mild with sprinkles of rain. A fearful head ache last night, probably the result of the dinner and speech making at Authors Club.
 Walk up to my old house on V. Street in morning and stand as long as I dare at the gate looking in. Place much neglected and in need of repairs. The brick walk I laid is still in good condition, as is part of the fence I built. What a host of thoughts and memories crowd in upon me! 
4 Snow and cold; a villainous day for the inauguration of Cleveland. We start at 11 in a covered wagon; See [crossed out: ???] C. and Harrison pass up the Avenue in a carriage; throngs of shivering people; slush on the streets; snow in the air. At the Capitol, after long waiting we witness the ceremonies in front, jumping and slapping to keep warm. Then C steps forward and speaks his piece, with uncovered head. "Grover, put on your hat," we all feel like shouting. I only hear his strong manly voice buffeted by the wind. Then we drive home and stay in rest of the day. 
5th Clear and cold and windy. Dine at Maj. Saxtons and have a pleasant time. 
6. Warmer. Go to the old office in Treasury and look up old friends. Only a few left. At night dine with Theodore Roosevelt and then witness grand fire works 
near monument. 7 Bakers people give me a reception in evening, as they did on Sunday evening. 8 Mild and spring like. Speak before a class of young ladies in Normal school; talk about birds and things. In afternoon 
go out to Chevy Chase with them and walk through the fields. A pleasant time. (7.) Mrs. Philling drives me about the country. Visit Rock Creek cemetary and am deeply impressed with St. Gaudens figure at the Adams grave. The best art I have yet seen of the kind, wonderful 
9 Warm, clear, and really spring like. Visit Oak Hill cemetery and stand long and long at the grave of Wm O'Connor. Crows caw, hens cackle in the distance. The Carolina wren is vociferous near by. A beautiful spot on the side of the norhtern slope of the hill. Nearly all the land about occupied with graves. Jeannies grave and that of his infant son Phillip, at the foot of his. How his presence and voice come back to me! An April like day. I doubt if Wm would ever have visited my grave had he outlived me. A remarkable talent, nearly thrown away. He lacked the saving grace of perfect sanity. 
Visited the grave Mr. Knox also, as yet unmarked by a stone. Friday and Saturday I poked about town. 
12. 
Fine day. Go with Frank to zoological park, in my old stamping grounds on back of Rock Creek. What memories the old scenes call up!

 On a sunny slope in the woods find a solitary hepatica in bloom. Spend three or four nights with Aaron Johns, my old comrade. 

13. 
Start for home at 9 1/2. See the plough and cultivator going in Maryland. No snow visible till we near N.Y. Warm and delightful. 


14 Again in P. 
15. Back home to W.P. to-day, and settle down in my old tracks. 
18. Cold and clear. Robins and blue birds and sparrows and starlings here. Spotted fields, pied with white and brown like the sides of devonshire cattle, white predominating. In afternoon walk over the spotted fields, and sit a long time on a rock in the sun, shielded from the north wind by 
cedars. 
19 Still clear and cold. mercury down to 14 this morning. Alone in the house and pretty lonesome at times. When one has made up his mind to do a thing -- a dis.
agreeabe duty for instance -- how surely he gains strength to do it. The keeping up of the will brings strength. When I had resolved the other day to go to N.Y. and speak before the Authors Club to speak or pride, I found my courage and strength mouting all the time. There is in this fact an explanation of much religious experience of our fathers -- the divine aid and comfort they felt when they had resolved to do this or that -- when they threw themselves wholly upon God. The will rightly directed is God in man. Conscious, deliberate self-denial, too, brings strength, brings joy. 
21. 
Back home from P. this A.M. whither I went on Sunday. Light rain this morning clearing this P.M. and warmer. Bees out the hive and the sparrpws jubilant. Ice on the move this afternoon in front of us, moving up very slowly, outlining vast, irregular continents or islands by a white windrow of crusted ice. The river is in labor, behold by to.morrow morn the new dimpling smiling water once more. 

22. 
Overcast, but mild. The door stones covered with beautiful frost ferns this morning. The air vocal with bird voices. Turtle-dove yesterday P.M. and chip munk. 


--How blind and stupid nature is. She learns by experience, and only so. When a woman after a certain age has her first child, she usually has a very hard time. But her next child comes much easier. Nature has learned by experience. The body has been taught. One would have thought that nature would have made ready for the first delivery during the period of gestation. But the terrible experience was necessary. In all things God experiments and feels his way like a blind man. What endless experimenting and make-shifts all departments of organic life show[crossed out: s]. When the best way is hit upon, then that is adhered to. 
23 A miserable March storm, 6 inches of snow last night with rain and hail this morning. Dark without, dark within. 
25. 
Made my second after-dinner speech lst night at the dinner given by the Aldine Club to Mr. Aldrich. Did not do as well as at the Authors Club dinner. Ate too much and drank too much champagne -- fancied I would not be called upon etc. Yet I was the only speaker who repeated any of Mr. A's poetry -- and I did not learn it for the occasion either. Poor sleep, palpitation 

of the heart, etc. Return to P. in afternoon. Mild day. 

26. 
Mild spring day. Spend it in P. 

27. 
Return to W.P. to-day with wife and enter upon another campaign of housekeeping. Day mild and spring like. 

28. 
Bright and sharp, cutting north wind.


 A noble sight about 7 o'clock -- 11 swan pushing norward against the wind. Slow progress, a train of cars worth looking at. 
29 A day of great brightness and beauty -- not a cloud in the sky, but chilly and frosty. Julian comes home from scool for the Easter holidays. 
April 1st April come again -- "proud pied April." My natal month. Weather continues mild and spring like. Julian and I go over to Black Creek for ducks. Overcast, with S.W. wind, much snow in the woods. We wade through water nearly knee deep to a little mound beside the creek near the outlet of black pond; screen ourselves with some boughs and await the return of the ducks that sprang up by the score as we entered their territory. I get one shot and miss. Presently more came, but to please J. I do not fire, and they go off, the chance not coming to us again. How curious they looked flying over us, like long necked bottles J. says, with little tin wings. Heard a warbler in the woods. Get our feet wet and cold, but built a fire and dried and warmed them. Altogether it was a day well-spent for both of us -- an adventurous day, a real taste of the wild. 
2d Bright and windy and cooler than yesterday. Julian takes early train for Roxbury. It is a pleasant thought that he will spend some days in the maple woods and amid the scenes where my youth was passed. I know the contenances of these old trees almost as well as I know those of the neighbors. 
1893 Around many of them cluster little memories of my boyhood. Each has an expression and an individuality of its own. The little piping frogs this afternoon in the swamp which was partly covered with ice. 
April 3d My 56th birthday. A charming spring day, wind S.W. partly overcast. A storm center passing far to the north of us. Bees working on honey. Mercury near 60 degrees. No snow visible from my window. The robin racket becoming spirited. Indoors in forenoon, reading writing, etc. Blast some rocks 
in afternoon, and poke about. Roads dry. Vineyard soon ready for the plough. Health good and mind fairly active. Every hour in the day tastes good. 
5. 
Day of great beauty and transparency, the air winnowed by the north wind of last night. Not a film in it. Yesterday the mercury reaced 70, cooler and sharper to-day 

6. 
The sharp, electric day bred a small snow storm, which whitened the ground this morning. Clear off by 10 A.M. and day becomes very bright and sharp, cuts like a knife. 

7. 
Snow storm sets in this A.M. from the south. It is now at 9 1/2 coming down very rapidly. Froze last night. Snow fell about 4 inches and ended in fine rain. 

8. 
We were woke up in the night by heavy thunder. Misty this morning with South sind. Chilly but snow melting fast. Fox-sparrows in song yesterday and to-day. A brisk thunder shower about noon. Brief thunder showers all afternoon. Winter on the ground and summer in the sky. 


Never saw anything just like it before. 
April 9 Bright lovely April day, the perfection of the spring weather. Julian came back from Roxbury Saturday night, brown and hearty, had an excellent time. How it will come back to him in future years, he and Ed sitting in big dry goods box before the camp fire, boiling sap. 
Saturday 
15. Cold slow rain from N.E. Much cloud this week and light rain. No frost and no heat. Buds large on currant bushes, but not open yet. Elm trees nearly ready to bloom. Blue jays and robins nesting. 
16 Bright and lovely; found arbutus and hepatica to-day, near the R.R. and dicentra nearly ready 
19 Lovely week so far, tho' cool, no heat yet; light frost last night. Very charming this morning. Van ploughing vineyard. The April days have the old charm. 
20 Snow, rain and hail all day a heavy storm all over the country. A cold March storm ground white with water-soaked snow all day. 
21 Clearing this morning and warmer; April repents and promises to do better. Snow all gone except in the woods Ground overflowing everywhere. 
--In writing it is so difficult to speak out of our proper selves, to let that which is vital and individual in us have sway. We speak and write so much out of the mere limbo of the mind or out of the stock ideas and feeling which we share with all. In all good writing we come face to face with the writers soul or thought, he puts his mind directly to ours. His page is like an open fire, while the page of the mere thinker is too often like the register or stove. Dr Holmes, tho' no great man, has the true literary gift; you get more than his mere thought; you get it in a lively and picturesque way; it is immanent immanent in his sentences. A lively sense of reality is produced by all sound prose. Nothing far off, or vague or vaporous. The man is not speaking through a trumpet, but it is his own natural near-by voice you hear. The page in which the man seems speaking and not writing at all -- that is the page we want -- Montaigne, Bacon, Carlyle, Emerson, Arnold, etc.
 A man's style is the inimitable part of him. His manner may be imitated but not his style, his quality, his inspiration. Inspiration is inimitable, and incalculable. 
26. 
Clear, brilliant, cold, quite a freeze last night; fear for the currants. No heat yet 

Mercury gets above 50 or 55 degrees some days. Season very back ward. Planted potatoes 25th, peas about the 19th. 

27. 
Rain from South but very chilly. --By the multiplication of numbers it does not seem that the chances of producing a man of extraordinary ability is also multiplied. It really seems lessened, as if in numbers there was something unfavorable to genius. No doubt in the stir, the excitement of great populations, in the friction, the competition, the publicity, the destruction of local atmo.


spheres and flavors the paring away of individuality, etc. etc. there is somewhat inimical to genuis. The whole spirit and atmosphere of this age is no doubt unfavorable to the production of any great literary work. There is no solitude, no privacy, no concentration upon one's self -- nothing that favors egotism, or any kind of narrowness. We are liberalized out of ourselves. There is always a certain narrowness, localness, injustice, in great passion of any kind and in great action. The world is more and more, and the man is less and less. All our greatest names and all of Englands, came out of comparatively small populations. The men born since '30, or '40, or '50 are distinctly lesser lights. There is doubtless more ability and general intelligence in the community as a whole than ever before, but it is less concentrated in single individuals. The day of the average man has come. 
28. Warm and bright, mercury gets up to 70; real vernal warmth Currants showing the fruit stems. These days the song of the toad tr-r-r-r-r-r-r, is heard in the land. At nearly all hours I hear it, and it is as welcome as any bird song. She is in the pools and puddles now depositing that long chain or ravelling of eggs. Her dapper little mate rides upon her broad back and fertilizes the eggs as they are laid.
 As I look toward the field where the first brown thrasher is singing I see emerald patches of rye. The unctuous, confident strain of the bird seems to make the field grow greener hour by hour. 
29. Still, overcast, mild; threats light rain. May Atlantic came this morning, and recalled a May Atlantic that came 32 years ago on such a morning when I was living at Marlboro. It had an essay in it by David Wasson on "Rest and Motion", and I remember well how eagerly I sat down outside the door to dip into it before school time. The hills across the river were green with the [crossed out: ???] young rye, or red with the new furrow, and life to me was full of joy and eagerness. Oh, if I could take up this Atlantic with the same zest and expectation! Yet the day is sweet to me. The call of the high hole as it comes up from a distant field, has the old suggestiveness. Even the wheezy cackle of the crow-black bird is pleasing Why do all the bird voices call up my youth and the old home? It is something of those long gone days that makes them so linger in my ear. 
I have just been out digging rocks with the boys and satisflying a sort of craving for rocks and soil that comes upon me in the spring. My father was a great rock digger and rock breaker. Every spring till he got too old, he used to build a piece of wall with stones and rocks from a meadow or pasture and thus make many spears of grass grow where none grew before. It is a keen satisfaction. In a few days now [crossed out: wh] we have made room for several more grape vines by digging out the place rock where it came to the surface. We broke the sleep of long ages of those rocks, sometimes with bare and wedges sometimes with dynamite. Where the sun had not shone in some millions of years we let it in. In seams all but invisible we find fibres of roots and now and then a lichenous growth merely discoloring the stone. How life will squeeze into the narrowest quarters. 
April 30. Sunday, Julian and I spend the last of the April days worthily by a tramp through "Bear Fly" to Sherwoods. Start about 9 A.M. Day bright and bracing, woods flooded with sun light. How good the turf feels to my feet as we pass through the Gill fields! Two children, girl an boy, playing in Gordons field, wandering about in an adventurous kind of way as children will in spring, peering into pools, throwing sticks, looking down on the R.R. track, and presently gathering trout lillies (adders tongues). We go through Brookmans road to black creek near the bridge a bittern or night herron spring out of a low hemlock and hurries off. After crossing the bridge we presently turn to the right into the bushes and begin making our way towards the Bear Fly. Sharp rocky crests alternate with deep sunken valleys. The face of the land is like a tempestuous sea suddenly congealed. Now we are in the trough of the wave, then on its sharp bristling crest. 
Now and then from some higher crest we catch a glimpse of Sherwoods hill our objective point. In one of the little valleys we come upon a black swift running creek which checks us for some time. After a while we make a passage over by the aid of large stones rolled into it from the near rocks. No large trees, but a small thick second growth. How beautiful the hepaticas, family grouped of them everywhere, blue, pink, white, purple -- like bevies of happy faced girls on their way to church or to a pic-nic. What a social flower this is! Then the dicentra too -- fairy clothes lines strung along the face of the rocks, and hung with yellow-white "breeches" or were they strung to the "hoisting-poles"?
 After much wandering we come out upon a small abandoned farm -- the walls of the house of stone still intact. Here we prowl about for some time. All the wood work rotted away. What a curious interest about an old house, it appeals so to the imagination! Will my house be thus some day? Then we press on along a wood road, toward Sherwoods hill; we have an adventure with a black snake that escapes us, then flush a grouse, then strike the Bear Fly swamp, through which we make our way with difficulty, nearly dry-shod. Then we wind in and out of the bushes till fnally we begin to mount S's hill, at last we are on the top and look down into S's chimney on the other side. We shout to him and tell him we have scaled his works from the rear and demand his instant surrender. He calls to his wife; they wave to us and laugh, and presently we go down a winding stairway of rock. He calls the sheep; and ewes and lambs are all about us bleating and making a music welcome to my ears. We spend a delightful day; the place is like a bit of poetry, and S. is a poet at heart, and often in speech. The lake draws J. and he rows on it and is loth to leave it. On our return, S. shows us a new way through the woods; we find some very fine arbutus and have an interesting walk. S. shows us a peach tree 40 years old in an old stone heap in an abandoned field. A day long to be remembered. 
May 1st Cloudy, chilly; no sun during the day. Rained last night; with thunder; heavy shower. Wood-thrush this morning in Gordons grounds. House wren also. A chilly May day. 
2d Rain again in the night and thunder. Clears off by 10 A.M., and becomes much warmer. Maple buds just bursting; cherry buds look very full. Currant stems out of the bud, but very short yet. Vineyards ploughed up to the garden. First herring for Julian last night. 
3 Cloudy, chilly, with slow drizzling rain from East 
4 the storm coming up the coast yesterday developed into a hell of rain; poured down all night and most of the day. 5 or 6 inches of water; no such rain since the deluge of June 3d, '91. Every creek a torrent, every spring run a brawling brook. Some damage to my vineyard, worst in peach orchard. [crossed out: Rain] Wind in North and N.E. How human the weather is! Excess breed excess till a very frenzy of rain [crossed out: follows] succeeds. The limit of moderation is passed and all reserve broken through, a very riot and debauch of the elements is pretty sure to follow. If it once gets too dry in nine cases out of ten, it will get terribly dry. If it once gets too wet it is bound to get wetter and wetter, till Nature fairly exhausts herself. 
5. Cooler, partly cloudy. The earth like an over saturated sponge. A sweet pungent odor this morning on the west wind; 
the first breath of May. Warbler-time is at hand. Saw the blue-winged yellow warbler just now by the study. Never identified him before. 
8 Very cool May so far. A light frost last night. No fruit blossoms yet, except currants. 
Much cloud. North and East winds. Maples in bloom. Ground very wet. --The greater man is, the more distasteful is praise and flattery to him. If there were such a being as men call God, how sick and disgusted he must have got long ago, by the cringing and abject attitude of mankind before him, [crossed out: fla] fullsome flattery and insincere praise, and all for selfish purposes. As if I were to praise the President because I wanted an office of him. The attitude of the Greeks toward their gods was far better. God must love those who defy him. 
--I find that when I speak in a certain key, the sheet iron hood to my open fireplace responds or echoes. To all other tones it is silent. How true it is that to awaken an echo in men's hearts and minds you must speak in their key. You may speak too high or too low for [crossed out: them] you public. In Mammoth Cave I noted the same thing. How the walls at a certain point resounded like great musical chords when you spoke in [crossed out: the] a certain pitch of voice. Only this one tone awoke a response. This analogy is stricly true. The same law in both cases. 
10 Rare May days, perfect. Every hour a new delight; a tender green awakening over all the greens. How the river sparkles in the soft morning light. Nearly all the birds here except cuckoo. The white crowned sparrows, sing Oh, feu.fee-u, fee, fee, with indescribable plaintiveness and sweetness. Promises of a tremendous currant crop.
 Such days in my youth on the old farm I would be spreading dung, or knocking "tirds" and looking wistfully towards the horizon. Oh, that I could go back into that enchanted land! But we never know it is enchanted when we are in it. Over those hills now the plough is turning the furrow as I saw it in my youth; the woods and fields look the same. Yet how all is changed because the eye that sees it is changed; is getting old and sated. Bobolinks yesterday and to-day in song as they pass overhead.