17 Read of Frank Bolle's death this morning. Was much shocked. Saw him once, Dec. 1892 and liked him Something clean-cut and pleasing about him -- red hair and sandy complexion Some of his out-door sketches interest me, and some do not. He was hardly a poet, or thinker. --Write what you feel, not merely what you think. One may think anything and everything; he can only feel certain things. What he feels is vital to him. When I think I grope, and do not always know where I stand. What I feel I see, and what I see I feel. 
Clear and sharp this morning, like Nov. Ground bare; grass yet quite green. Mercury down to 24 degrees this morning. 
18 Mild with SW wind. Julian and I have our first skate on the river; ice less than 2 inches. 
19 Like an April morning, clear, still, mild; raindrops hanging to the limbs and grapevines. Objects steam in the sun like a morning in summer. Sounds very noticeable. Rumbling of wagons, barking of dogs heard from over the river. Very few birds this winter, except crows. Now and then a large flock of goldfinches. Few English sparrows. On an 
open winter like this the birds disperse over the open country. A deep snow would drive them about our habitations. 
20 A bright and beautiful day. How naked the world seems, no snow, no verdure, no clouds. A fine skate on the river; condition all perfect, a glare of ice, a medium temperature, and a still air. Not a breath of wind. I fly up and down like a bird. At night, Julian and I skate an hour by moonlight, a rare treat. How we dash off into the dimness over the black smooth surface. 
--These days I am hacking away at my Whitman matter, cutting, burning, rewriting. My matter mproves under my heroic treatment, but I doubt if I can make it worthy the subject. Health not very good past two weeks. 
21 Mild, overcast, with sprinkle of rain in P.M. Signs of fog. The steam from the passing train swells and increases and stretches far behind in a long, tapering window. 
22 Cleared off in the night as silently as usual. The weather is in a most gentle and placid frame of mind this winter. The storms sprinkle a little, or spit a little snow and then fold their tents like the Arabs and steal away.
 Fog this morning.
 P.M. Clear, warm, still like Indian summer -- insects dancing in the air -- a day to walk through the fields and stand long by the bars, or lean upon the wall and look long and long over the brown, weedy lifeless fields. Almost brings the bees out of the hive. 
24 Another attempt at a rain from the South, with only a slight sprinkle. Mercury up to near 50 degrees. 25 Cold wave last night, clear and lovely today, but sharp. Julian and I go to Black Pond skating; fly like birds over the glassy surface -- a fine time. Not a speck of snow to be seen. 
26 Mercury down to 12 degrees this morning. 
27 Winter again. The snow came like thief in the night, about 5 or 6 inches, and is still at it, from the North, which means that the storm clouds really came up the coast. 
28 Bright and lcear adn sharp. Mercury down to 10 degrees this morning. The large opening on the river in front closed up this morning. --That Death awaits you and me and all men is of little account. But that the race is to become extinct, that the earth is to grow old and die, and the sun itself wither like a leaf and be blown about the barrens of infinite space -- this strikes one dumb, and paralyzes the soul -- this is the abyss of science into whic e cannot gaze. What bow of promise spans it? That the very soil which hold out dead must become lifeless meteoric dust! Human monuments must perish, but the solar system is to be disrupted. How many times may this have happened in the past eternities! I see no reason to doubt that this game of the gods may not have been played over and over, and that even you and I may, in effect, have lived many times on other worlds, and may live again. The same results, culminations, must go on forever and ever. When great clock runs down, it will wind itself up again and strike the same hours as before. 
--Forty years ago was my last winter at the old school-house in West Settlement. Of my schoolmates at that time I recall eleven who are dead, Walter Elliott of Bovina was teacher.
 In the spring of 1854 I left home to teach school in Olive; taught there fro mApril to middle of Sept. at 10 or 12 dollars a month and boarded around. Went to Ashland to school in Nov.; lefft there in Sprinng and went to Jersey in April in search of school; failed; came home and stayed all summer, working and studying. After haying started for Jersey again; stopped in Olive to visit; was again hired to teach same school at 20 dollars a month; taught till spring. In spring (April 20) went to Cooperstown seminary. Left there in July; worked in haying and went West in Sept. Tom Kniffin with me. Stopped at Dr. Allaben's in Polo. Engaged the school there and taught till spring of 1957. Came back home in April; stayed home till June or July when I engaged to teach at High Falls in Ulster County. Was married that fall September 13. Taught till spring. In July went to Rosendale to teach. Got interested in a patent buckle; threw up the school and went to Newark, N.J. Buckle failed and engaged school in Jan. 1859 at East Orange. Taught there about 2 years. In fall of '60 took the school at Marlboro on Hudson; taught there till spring of '62. Went home in April. Stayed all summer. In fall went to Olive to study medicine with Dr. Hull; heard of a school at Buttermilk Falls, secured it, and went there to teach probably in Jan. 1863. Taught there, and began there the study of birds and flowers, stimulated to the latter by Prof. Eddy. Taught there till fall of '63 (made the Adirondack trip in August of that year) when I threw up the school and went to Washington (in October).
 On Jan. 4, 1864 I was appointed to a clerkship in the office of Comptroller of Currency. Continued a cleark till Jan 1, 1873 when I left W. and came to Middleton, N.Y. as Receiver of the Wallkill Nat. Bank. Wound up the affairs of the bank in 3 or 4 years. In Aug. '73 
to about '85. Built my house in '73 and '74, moved into it late in Nov. '74. -- Capt. Steven Burroughs was born in Bridgeport, Conn. in 1729. Died in 1817. A man of unusual mental endowments, ship-builer and astronomer: said to have invented the system of Federal Money. He had 4 brothers, Eden, John, Edward, and Ephraim. The latter was my great-grandfather, his son Eden was my grandfather. Ephraim died in Stamford, in April 1818, and nwas buried there in a field which is now under cultivation. He was born near Bridgeport (Conn.) about 1735. He had 
six sons and several daughters. His sons were Eden, Curtis, William, David, Daniel, and Ephraim. Eden, father's great uncle, was the father of Stephen, the notorious. Eden was a Presbyterian minister. 30 More snow, pretty heavy, about 10 inches now on the ground. Weather mild. 
31 Bright, mercury 40 degrees. Feb. 1 Showing again this morning. Storm center seems south of us. Ver deliberate, evidently means business. --Snow turned out only about an inch of hyperborean chaff. 
3 Mild, overcast, mercury 42 
--How common in literature is the sin of over-writing. It strikes one as vulgar, like over-dressing. The piece has a studied, formal, artificial air. Simple things must be simply said -- all things must be as simply said as possible. A man must work a long time to get out of the ambition of writing of inflating and bedecking what he has to say. I think this was at times or of the sins of Franis Parkman. I judge so from extracts I have seen of a sealed paper, giving an account of his life, which he left with a friend, and which was opened after his death. It is full of the balancing of period and is more like an amateur than like a master. 
5 Cold wave; down to 2 degrees above this morning, clear and still. 
6 Down to zero this morning. Bright and still all day. Had a skate on the river. --In saying that Homer and the Bible are not literary, I mean they do not savor of literary or artificial culture, or of conscious literary art. They savor more of the larger culture of life and nature. From this point of view Tennyson is more literary that Wordsworth, Longfellow that Bryant. Milton than Shakespeare, the later novelists than Scott and Fielding. There is a deeper seriousness in Wordsworth than in Tennyson, in Whittier than in Lowell, a More profound humility and religiousness. It is not mrerely the seriousness of the scholar, the poet, it is the seriousness and humility of the man. I would have the unadulterated man, or human, flavor always predominate, as it does in the greates works. The Bible was not written with a view to literary edification as The Princess was, or Maud, or the Fable for Critics were; but for moral and spiritual edification. The literary spirit must always walk behind the spirit of universal love and sympathy, the spirit of man as man and not as a literary expert. 
8 Milder, a thaw at hand. --Just finished A Window in Thrums, a delicious piece of work -- would rather have written it than all Mr. Howell's or James have written. How one loves these characters! because the author himself loved them. If Mr. Mowells only had this girft of love!
 P.M. Thermometer up to near 59 degrees. Bees out of the hive. 
9 Snowing, moist and heavy. Mercury up to 36 degrees. 
10 Deeply saddened by the death of Archdeacon Ziegenfusz, a man I had come to love. Only a few weeks ago he was here and passed the day in this room with the rest of the "Gang" as he called them -- the picture of health and good nature. His chances of long life seemed vastly better than m own. His wife died only a few weeks ago, and this calamity seemed to have broken him up and killed him. He was a man to love for his genial good-fellowship, as well as for his fine mind and character. I feel a keen sense of personal loss. 
Going over to the station last night I said to myself, Here have I lived in this place 20 years, and am not yet wonted to it. Twenty years of youth here, and these hills and valleys and river would seem like a part of myself; now I look upon them with alien, reluctant eyes. I seem only a camper for a day and a night. So much more plastic and impressionable are we in youth! As manhood is reached we begin to harden, and by and by our affections will not take on new shapes at all. 
13 The boss snow storm of the winter so far, nearly a foot of snow, much drifted. Mercury down to 18 degrees, began yesterday afternoon. --Attended the funeral of Ziegenfuss yesterday. A great crowd. Saw the body in the morning, looked like life -- never saw Death counterfeit Sleep more perfectly. No emaciation, no pain. His old mother came while I was standing near. Dear old woman! how her heart was wrung! how I wanted to comfort her! How the past must have come like a flood upon her! She remembered him as a babe in her arms, as a child by her side, as a lad 
with his books and playthings, as a youth going out into the world, as a young man entering upon his career. How pathetic, how overwhelming! Oh, the inrrevocable past! Bishop Potter spoke well -- a metropolitan man, stamped with the air of a great city. Conventional, precise, dignified, 
clean-cut. Not a large, homely, original nature, but a fine-trained talent -- an epitome of better New York. Ziegenfusz himself was a true democrat. I loved him much and shall always carry a sweet remembrance of him. How mysterious, I heard several say, that such a man should be taken; the bishop said so, too. It is mysterious when 
we Lucky if here and there on a writer's page we catch the scent of fresh new soil. Once in a while Carlyle, Goethe, Arnold, go in to the and we are exilarated, dilated; and then, again it is scratch, scratch. Rocks and stones with Carlyle and hard-pan with Goethe, or roots and weeds with Arnold. 
15 More snow, 5 or 6 inches, this morning; half leg deep now. The cloud cows have had good grazing lately; they pour down their milk like cows in June. Well, they went dry early in the fall, and it is time. As the sun comes North he drives the hot moist air of the tropics before him, and we get the benefit. --I never read a newspaper but I way, What a poor editor I shold make, according to present standards. Nine-tenths of this stuff I should leave out. It is useless for a newspaper to try to be a private correspondent of every man woman and child trying to tell them the news about the people they know, and the matters they are concerned in. It should aim only at real news, important news for all, and when there is no news, it shold print a smaller sheet, just as it prints a larger sheet when there is extra news. Printing the same number of columns daily shows the absurdity of the whole business. If there is real news one day, and noe the next, then chaf must take its place, and readers be robbed of their time. Does any same man more than glance at the editorial page? He knows before hand that he will find no honest, disinterested discussion there, but only lis and make-believe. 
17 Cold, cold 8 degrees or 10 degrees below this morning, yet the air looks as innocent and genial as in summer; a soft, bluish haze veils everyting. Sun bright, sky blue, the steam whistles have that split shrill minor character of every cold weather. 
18 Rain this morning from the south, mercury 40 degrees. Truly a weather spasm. The grip of Winter is not sure when these happn.
 P.M. cleared off; mercury 50 24 Very cold. 10 degrees below this morning. Bright sunshine all day. Mercury only 2 degrees above at noon. Ice-men on the river suffer much. 
25 Still colder, 14 degrees below this morning. But now at 10 A.M. temperature recovering rapidly. A storm evidently approaching. The past week has been free from storm. Cold wave began on Wednesday, the 21st. 
26 A driving snow storm from the North -- that is from the South -- mercury about 15 degrees. Winter grown robust and desperate in his last days. --Took down Carlye's Past and Present last night and leafed it over for half an tasting it here and there. I was glad I did not feel abliged to read it again. It is hard reading. I confess I did not want to be bruised and bumped about by a ride over this rough road. Run the eye over the page and bumped about by a ride over this rought road. Run the eye over the page and see how rought and thorn it looks, and it feels no less so to the mind. The great classical turnpikes, how different! In Carlyle's prose, at its worst, as in Browning's poetry, the difficulties are mechanical; it is not in the thought; it is in the expression. There is fire and intensity about it, but a blow with a club will make you see stars, or a sudden jolt give you a vivid sense of real things. Oh, do level and roll your road a little, Mr. C or I fear travellers upon it in the future will be few. we do not want it made easier, but simply do not want to be bruised. 
Carlyle will never be forgotten; he is one of the few monumental writers but probably he will be named and referred to oftener than he is read. A book that one cannot read a second or third time -- A man's private storms and whirlpools and despairs and indigestino ought to appear in his work only as power, or light, or richness of tone. It is near 50 years since Past and Present was written, and none of its dire prophecies have yet come true. Yet I love this Scotch Jeremiah as I love few men. 
29 Four or five inches of snow yesterday. Mercury down to 8 degrees this morning. --Milton's poetry, for the most part, is to me a kind of London Tower filled with old armor, stuffed knights, wooden chargers, and the emblems and bedizzlements of the past. Interesting for a moment, but dead, hollow, moth-eaten. Not a live thing in one of his poems that I can find. Yes, there is a nightingale and a few flowers, and a human touch, here and there. But half a dozen pages would hold all that any man need read. The "Sampson" is said to be in the Greek spirit, but what business find he, a Puritan of Cromwell's time, writing in the Greek spirit? 
Why did he not write in his own spirit, or in the Puritan spirit? the 17th Century spirit? What business had he masquerading in this old armor? He put no real life under these ribs of death. His "Paradise Lost" is a huge puppet show, so grotesque and preposterous that it is quite insufferable. Milton seems to have been a real man, but he stands there in English literature like a great museum of literary archeology. He seems to have had no experiences of his own, and rarely to have seen the earth and sky, or men and women with his own natural eyes. He saw everything through the classic eyes of the dead past. Who reads him? Professors of literature, I suppose. He was a great craftsman no doubt, but he has been of no service to mankind, except a literary service; he has helped us to realize the classic spirit of letters, and the absurdity of the old theological dramaturgy. He spoke no word to any man's real moral or spiritual wants. 
March 1 Welcome, thrice welcome the first day of the almanac's spring! Bright and warm, a sap-day. May tempt the bees out by and by. Mercury down to 25 degrees last night. Snow a foot or more on the ground. Ice-men at work on the river, with 10 or 11 inch ice, half of it snow-ice. 
2 Warm with signs of rain. Light shower in P.M. Wind shifting to N.W. and cooler. 
3 Warm and clear, a day without a cloud, a real blue day. Stiffened up a little last night. but hardly touched freezing-
point. Gentle breeze from the North. No spring birds yet. River opened last ight. 4 Sunday, Still bright and sprin-like. The spring birds this morning; bluebirds before sunrise, and robins and purple finches a little later the latter singing in chorus. The perfection of sap-weather. Snow running very fast. 
5 Clear and warm, snow runs rapidly. 6 The bright spring days continue. Mud and slush very bad. But little frost at night. 
9 Fine spring days, without a break till today. Snow nearly all gone. Excellent sap-weather. Sparrows in song. Turtle.dove on the 6th. Clouds today and sprinkles of rain in P.M. Gilchrist came last night on his way to Vassar. Rather too good an opinion of himself and work. 
10 Still warm with sunshine. never remember ten days of March in succession so spring-like. Down to freezing only two or three nights. Near 60 degres some days. G's lecture at Vassar not a success, and I told him so. 
11 Sunday. Cloud and fog this morning, but no frost. Sunshine in P.M. River opened night of the second. 
12 A little frost last night, calm and cool this morning. No wind yet this spring. Only a little floating ice on the river.
 Can the spark be said to sleep in the flint or the steel? No, only the condition of the spark sleeps there. The spark, the fire, sleeps in the arm, or inthe power that brings the flint and steel in collision. The motion, the force is converted into heat. 
18 Sunday. The end of another week of remarkable March weather, April weather, in fact. In the past twenty years I remember nothing equal to it. Sunshine most of the time, and only a little frost. Showed on Thursday about 1 1/2 inch; all gone by 3 on Friday and mercury up to 55. On Friday my four friends from Poughkeepsie came up and spent the day. A pleasant time again. 
Yesterday Julian and I spent the day over by Black Creek after ducks. Killed no ducks but had a delightful day. Many signs of life in the air and water -- two or three kinds of butterflies, weveral moths, and occasional piping frog, insects in the air, newts and water bugs in and on the water, nuthatches calling, sparrows and robins and bluebirds everywhere. Not a breee stirring. Black Creek like glass as we floated or paddled up and down its length. Only a few ducks here and there. Only a few patches of old snow in the woods. Roads getting dry and vineyard calls us to work. 
My new man, Auchmoody, moved in yesterday. Buds of the soft maples swelling perceptibly. Saw my first snake and did not harm him.
 P.M Mercury up to 64 degrees, too warm. Hazel in bloom. Bees carry in pollen. Crocuses piercing the turf. Julian and I walk along the creek and back on RR. Arbutus buds swelling.
 Phoebe bird today.
 Standing after night fall now anywhere on the lawn one hears a slow stirring or rustling in the leaves and dry grass. It 
is made by large earth worms coming up out of their burrows and ruching out over the ground, whetlere for feeding or breeding 
I know not. My boy calls them "night walkers". In summer he hunts them at night to make bobs of. They are very sly and jerk swiftly back in their holes on the slightest sound. I suppose they feed your footsteps on the ground. 
19 Warmer and warmer, up to 69 degrees. A sprinkle of rain in P.M; the fairest April weather. The little piping frongs in full chorus tonight; the whole tribe in full cry, also clucking frogs and the long-drawn Tr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r of the toad. 
20 Cooler this morning, north wind. 
22 Another big storm flashed in the pan. The fourth or fifith storm that had started from the West failed to reach us. Only a little dash of rain and mist and fog.
 Warm this morning, like lat April; grass greening and the plow at work. A cold wave said to be coming. No rain to speak of in over a month. --A passage omiited on second thought from my essay in last Critic on the Sapphic Secret. "Discursive and experimental writers like Mr. Thompson and myself - the mere nibbling mice of Criticism, shoud temper their wrath when they sit in judgement upon the great ones -- the lions who make the paths through the jungles of the world. It is no fault of theirs that they are not mice 
but is it not a fault of ours that we do not see them to be lions?" 23 Rain set in P.M. and continued all night. Julian and I spend the day at Black Pond and Creek after ducks. See a few 
but no shot. Cook and eat our dinner on the miniature island, 8 x 10, near outlet of lake. Very pleasant time. The first warbler singing in the trees near us. J. has his new canvas canoe. 25 Overcast, storm threatened. 26 A white-was of snow this morning. All gone at night but getting colder. 
27 A cold wave, down to 20 degrees this morning. Begin foundation of fruit house. A typical March day fo the chilly sort. 
28 Like yesterday, with wind shifting to southerly in P.M. A storm approaching.
 How true it is that we want something untamed and untamable in a poet -- a strain of the original savage man. It is this salt that gives the tang to his poetry and that keeps it. No matter how great his culture and refinement if he only strikes back through it to his original uneducated nature and draws from that. He must be a poet before he has ever seen or heard of poetry. No doubt we strike here on one source of weakness of much modern poetry -- it does not smack at all of the soil, or simple, unlettered, human nature. The singers are poets mainly after what books and art ahve done for them. Their works are an intellectual and not an emotional product. Even in such a poet at Lowell, the original man is deeply overlaid iwth the scholar, and with literature. Which shall lead -- the emotional and intuitive nature, or the reasoning, intellectual nature? 
31 Wonderful Aurora last night, beyond any I have ever before seen. Once while a boy I saw someting approaching it. The wonder of this display was that it made a complete circle all around the horizon. We stood in the midst of a great 
tent of streaming aurora. The ghostly flame shot up from north, east, south, west, and came to a focus just a few degrees south of our meridiam never before have I seen it rise up from the south. The apex of this tent was the scene of constantly shifting and vanishing forms of light. It was fairly apochryphal. At times it seemed as if the heavens opened at this point and troops of angels and winged horses came straight toward us. A pencil like Dore's would have caught many suggestions. Sometimes the electric clouds would gather at this point liek foam over the point of escaping fluid and whirl about. Sometimes there would be curious openings through it where the black sky and the stars would appear. A deep crimson flush would appear here and there near the horizon and spread upward to the zenith. at 8:30 the motion of the streamers was hardly perceptible, but at 8:45 they were leaping up and very rapidly, the sublty impulses traveling up precisely like flame; and such ghostly flame! Never was anything more spectral and unearthly then the whole display. It was a wild dance of many-colored sheeted ghostly forms! What an impression such a phenomenon must have made upon rude primitive man. I myself could hardly keep down an emotion of superstitous fear. 
A warm fine day with summer clouds and wind. Work all day on the new foundation walls of barn. 
April 1 Warm and breezy; mercury about 50 degrees in morning. Grass quite green and all buds swelling. The spring three weeks ahead of time. Hepatica today out probably a day or two. 
2 Bright, dry, cold. A day to burn brush and rubbish. 
3 My 57th birthday. Clear, sharp, dry; mercury down to 20 degrees this morning. The sky so clear and dry that the cold air falls down upon us. House painters here this morning. Julian resumes scool. Settle up P.O matters with S. Health good, spirits ditto. 
8 Sunday. Ground white with snow this morning. We had an April March now we are having a March April. The week has been rather cold, quite a freeze two or three nights. --What a difference between the artist's interest in a picture, and the public's interest! The people are interested in the picture, in what it tells them, in the subject, in what they see in it that agrees with their experience, or their ideals. The artist is interested in the art of the picture, the drawing, the coloring, the handling -- in the form and not in the substance. Which is right? The artists do not much respect the popular verdict. An artist will greatly admire a portrait that is not a good likeness, while the first thing that the layman demands is that it be like the original. If it is not like, he has no further interest in it. It is the old story of art for art's sake, and not for what it tells.
 The professional view of a doctor whom he met rubbing his hands with delight because he had just been called to a chase of some kind or other that was "beautiful" -- just according to the books, every feature was perfect. The book or the picture that has not something besides its art to recommend it, will not carry very far. --Prof. Huxley says the ethical process and the cosmic process are at war --the former combats the latter. And yet if your ethical 
 process is not in keeping with the laws of nature, if it be not really founded upon the cosmic order, will it last? will it carry? Can the settled order of the Whole be combatted? Do we combat it in setting up the moral order? Certainly not. The conflict is not fully cleared up by Husley. Our benevolence, our humanity prompts us to interfere with the law of natural selection, the survival of the fittest in seeking to prolong the lives of the unfit. We do prolong them, but evidently to the detriment of the stock. Moral value, moral goodness -- what are they? Are they founded in the constitution of things? Self-denial, self-sacrifice, heroism, mercy, forgiveness, etc. are these things contrary to the eternal verities? Man confronts Nature and puts her under his feet, but only within certain narrow limits. He does not make the tide roll back, but he utilizes it, rides it. He cannot change the nature of lightning, but he can use it, control it, (not tame it.)
 We say Man tames the lightning, or tames the elements, but that is only a figure of speech. They are untabalbe. He measured them and adjusts his wants to them. He tames the animals; he subdues them. He tames them his own animal nature; he lets the ape and tiger ide. The cosmic process of course includes man and lass his doings, since he is part of the cosmos, and the ethical process is at war with the cosmic process only as the lever is at war with gravitation. A new element is introduced, the will of man, which sorks upon and uses the old order.
 Man uses Nature and is part of her unconsciously, while the animals do not. He is an animal plus a developed (more or less) moral consciousness. By reason he uses Nature. (The lamper-eels use Nature also when they go up stream for the stones which the current helps them float down to their nest.)
 The moral order is opposed to the animal order -- is not that about all? Must think further on this matter.
 Is the ethical process analogous to the cultivating and improving of the surface of the earth -- draining, clearing, shaping, fertilizing? Is the farmer at war with Nature? In one sense; but unless Nature favors him, where is he? 
9 Windy, chilly. Froze some last night. Sheets of snow all day yesterday and a very chilly air. --Dick Martin just dropped in to show me a handful of young 'possums, very young -- 16 of them -- likely newly-born mice. The mother was picked up dead on the RR, head and one leg cut off and these young were in her pouch each clinging to its teat dead. The connection seems almost as vital as when they --When I am flollowing my plow over a refractory piece of ground, and see it dip in here and come to the surface there, now and then the turning of the soil fairly, but as often only making a mark, I say that while that is not good plowing it is about as good as the best writing, so rarely do even the best authors more than turn up fresh soil here and there -- a steady uniform furrow, opening up virgin soil -- who turns it? We are were in the mother's womb. They are born in about two weeks after gestation begins, and placed by the mother in her pouchm where they fasten upon the teats. The teats, Dick says, are long and slender like a little skunks, 'possums, muskrats, woodchucks, and foxes. The red foxes seem to be run down by the fast night trains. 
11 Forty years ago to-day -- how appalling that sounds! -- I began my first school, Tongore, Ulster County.
 A driving snow storm from the North. Winter again in earnest. Moved the wagon-house today, and now call it the fruit house. 
12 Five or six inches of wet snow yesterday. Flurries of snow in the air this morning, with north wind still blowing very chilly. Mercyry a little above freezing. --Some natures are essentially moral, the categories to which they refer all things are those of good and evil; others are intellectual; their categories of reference are those of the true and the false; still others are esthetic; they see only the beautiful and ugly, only poetry or prose. 
15 Lovely day, the world flooded with light; warm, dry, north wind. A luxury to be out doors. Fine yesterday also, with some cloud. drive to Sherwood's in PM. 
--How curious, almost startling, the thought or discovery that there is such a thing as light or sound -- these two universal phenomena that play such a part in our lives. That they are sensations -- merely, physiological effects of vibrations in the ether. But what causes the vibratons in the ether that causes our sensations of light? some material force certainly. The same with sound; the waves are there, if the ear is not. Light effects even the rocks. So there is an influence, an emanation from the sun or the lamp which is real, and which makes the conditions for the sensation we call light. There is such thing as sweet or sour, hot or cold; these are sensations. The universe is an illusion, a creation of our own after all. 
17 The fourth of the charmed days. Bright, dry and warm. The yellow redpoll warbler today. Walk up to the creek for suckeys but get none, but how beautiful the full, clear, cold stream rushing along in the sunlight! Began plowing vineyard to-day. 
20 Two days of cloud and blue vapor -- veiled, soft, quiet, moist orodous April days. 21 Shower with thunder last night, and light rains during forenoon. Bright and warm in PM, and rain again at sundown. 22 Rain with thunder in morning and cooler. Misty all forenoon. The April drought fairly broken. 
Notes for an April poem:
 The soft maples are crimson and the buds of the elm swarm like bees in the branches,
 The bee comes home with golden thighs from the willows, and honey in her bag from the arbutus.
 School children pass with their hand full of hepaticas and arbutus.
 The newly-lpoughed fields glow like the breasts of robins.
 I walk in the new furrow in the stron sunlight till it is photographed upon my spirit.
 The farmer strides across the brown field scattering the seed oats at steps alternate.
 The sparrow, the robin, the jay, have nest-material in their beaks. 
The kinglet pipes his fine lyrical strain in the evergreens -- he flashes his ruby crown to his mate.
 The white-throat sings on his way northward.
 Long and long the highhole calls fro mthe distand field.
 The first swallow laughs down to me from the sky.
 From the marshes rise the shill, infantile chorus of the little piping frogs.
 From the trees above them comse the o-ka-lee of the red-wing.
 The song of the toad tr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r is heard in the land.
 The first dandelion lies like a gold coin upon the greening turf. 
Something delicate, prophetic, spiritual is in the air.
 The bud-scales are falling from the buds -- some are fragrant and gummy.
 The light shower fills the air with wild perfume,
 The bluebird lifts and flickers to his mate his cerulean wing,
 In the twilight the robin-racket is prolonged and intense,
 The cow bird sits beside his dusky mate on the top of the tree and pumps up his liquid, glassy notes.
 In the leafless woods the pedestrian partridge beats his drum -- his own inflated breast. 
 Amid the alders in the moist bottoms, the marsh marigold have the effect of coined sunshine. Here and there is the moist bottoms, the marsh marigolds have the effect of coined sunshine. Here and there is the tree-dotted landscape, the greening rye fields delight the eye. Ere the month is ended the shad-blow makes a white mist, here and there along the forest borders. 
27 A week of fine April weather, slowly warming up till to-day it is nearly summer heat. Again the maples have shaken out their fringelike blossoms, again the cherry trees are white. Season much earlier than last.
 A few days ago the air was filled with a dleicious wild perfume, a pungent, stimulating, bitter-sweet odor. I could not trace it to its source. It seemed to be general and to fill all the air. Was it from the just-bursting buds of the sugar maples? I know of no toher likely source. Tops of the trees over in Langdon's woods just faintly etched in opening leaf-buds. Currants blooming. 
On the night of the 24th went to Kingston to hear and see Ingersoll Much stouter and redder than when I saw him last May; much too much belly. Can drink whiskey, he says, but not wine. Wine makes him throb and throb. He ate his supper in his room after the lecture; drank iced-milk and iced-water freely.
 Lecture full of telling points, much sound argument, and many eloquent passages.
 He said, in talking with me in his room, that he was by no means sure that immortality was desirable; he would name conditions before accepting it -- unconditional immortality he would refuse. 
28 A lovely day, feminine day, veiled, tranquil, almost voluptuous. Mercury at 78. A little rain in afternoon. --Had a glimpse of father the other night in my dream; we were at the table and a plate of trout was passed around, and I was father pick out the big one, as I have so often seen him do. I smiled in my sleep. 
29 Clear and cooler, with North wind. 
30 The last of the April days, clear, warm, still, with just a tinge of vapor in the air -- the beginning of brided veil of 
Summer. Cherry and plum trees in bloom; pear trees spring and apple trees showing the pink. Carpenders began the new barn t0-day. 
May 1st May day shads in warm soft, wind southerly, wide hazy clouds in the sky. Wood thrush to-day in my grounds. The first big run of shad yesterday. 
2. Hot and dry -- 88 degrees in shade to-day. Apple trees leaping into bloom. 
3d Cooler this morning; North wind. Leaves half out; a tender mist of green over Langdens woods. Grass and grain need rain. 
-- In P. library I glance over Mr Grosses "Note on Walt Whitman" in the New Review for April. Must read it at my leisure some time. Gross is a very clever, but a very small critic and man -- has spent his days in overlading and sorting and inspecting the small potatoes of Enlish literature (and no literature has more small potatoes) How much he knows about [crossed out: English lit] said literature that is not worth knowing that it would be a mere weariness to know. He is a man of details and of deft careful workmanship, but entirely superficial. You never strike a great thought or a fresh thought in his work and his criticisms compare with Arnold's, or Scherer's as a vine compares with a tree.
 The professional critic, if he be not a large nature, can make nothing of Whitman. A man like Gosse, trained in the schools and overtrained is in literature, much like the orthodox theologian in religion. How the latter snorts at the idea that there can be any religion outside the church, the dogmas, the forms, the Bible etc. The former in the same way snorts at the idea that there can be any poetry outside of or in opposition to the rules and models and schools. He sees nothing but a barbarous, unregenerated poetic nature in W.W. Mr G. thinks the secret of W's attraction for certain minds is that they see themselves in him etc. Well, a poet in which such men as Stevenson Symonds, Emerson, Thoreau and others see themselves, must be something and somebody to be sure. In Mr Gosse's poems we see only little Mr Gosse. When we can all see ourselves in him [crossed out: we] he will have increased immeasurably in size and importance. 
10 Lovely May days without a break, nearly summer tem-perature. A brief shower on Sunday the 6th getting pretty dry. Showy orchis in bloom and fringed polygala. Leaves all out. Trees clad in their under garments, tho' some of the maples look fully clad.
 Go to N.Y. to-day to attend Authors Club dinner at night. 
12. Back home to-day from N.Y. Still dry and warm. Apple bloom all gone. The last run of shad (apparently) in the river.
 Was greatly shocked on my arrival home to learn of the sudden death of my neighbor Mr Hathaway yesterday morning. While I was at the authors club, speaking or eating and making merry, he was struggling with death. He has been my neighbor there under the hill for 10 years and I shall miss him much. I could almost look down into his chimney and I shall greatly miss the smoke from his fire going up into the air on winter mornings, and his friendly voice and manner. A blameless, good natured, rather intelligent man, without children with a wife fearfully neat. A deacon in the church, a cooper by trade, and in all ways a kind and brotherly man. My last word with him or vision of him was last Friday the 4th of May. He had lived many years in Brooklyn working at his trade. Came here 10 years ago to look after the big ice house. Age, 67. To-day is his funeral day (Sunday 13th) -- The [crossed out: onl] main difference between a precious stone and a common stone is not in the substance, but in the arrangement -- the crystalization. In substance the charcoal and the diamond are one, but in form how widely they differ. This crystalization is not an easy thing. It requires almost an eternity of time. 
19 Weather the last week warm and dry till last night, when a fine shower fell, nearly one inch of water. 
19 Go home on morning train take up some shad; reach home at noon. How green and fresh the old spot looks, how the bobolinks sing. all are well. Stay home till Wednesday, the 23d Wind and light rain till last day, the bright and warm. I go fishing over in Meeker's Hollow; take 33 trout to the song of bobolinks. A hot pull home at 12. Take a few trout from West Settlement stream on Monday. Return home in afternoon. 
24. Began raining last night from a depression in Va, yesterday, and has rained steadily all day. No let-up for a moment. Easily an inch of water has fallen. Grape arms 2 feet long and begin-ning to break some. 
25 Rain continued all day and all last night, and is still at it; threatening to be a regular debauch of the rain gods 
Still my drains are not running. The earth was very thirsty. Grape arms dropping off this morning. -- Slow rain nearly all day. -- I do not seem to have made any proper record of my visit home from the 19th to the 23rd. Heavy East wind with light rain most of the time. I strolled about in the usual way, listening, looking for something I could not find. I sat for an hour or more on two occasions on the top of the hill above the house looking over in West Settlement and listening to the shore larks singing far above me. Twice after supper I walked out on the hill and looked long and long off east into Montgomery Hollow and trying to conjure up the old days I poked about the grave yard on the hill and found the grave of Obadiah Scudder, 1804, the oldest date I could find. I watched the boys draw dung and tried to get up courage to take a hand in, but could not. One afternoon I went down into the hemlocks and wandered along the little stream, all much changed since my boy hood. How green and fresh the country looked, with a sort of pathos over all, the pathos of my vanished youth. 
29. The big rain of the season thus far yesterday; began about 2 P.M. and rained nearly all night, nearly 2 inches of water in 10 hours, drains all running this morning; broke the grape arms badly. I find they break less in stony, gravelly soil; the worst breakage is in the soft sandy soil. Bright and cool to-day. 
31. Another rain set in last night from the N.E. a hell of rain seems imminent. The locusts have dropped their bloom. Daisy has come again and clover. 
June 1st June comes in like a huzzy, cold and sour-- clouds with spurts of rain. 3d A fine day at last but very cool. Dr Bucke and wife here. The 17 year locusts are coming out think in places. 4 Rain again last night and this morning. Clearing off is no good any more. Before you can turn around the rain is upon 
us again. It is "water affirmative" as Goethe says. No matter where the wind is it rains. Where two or three clouds are gathered together it rains. This is the third week of rain every day but one. 5th Threatens rain again. Cold and sour. We go to West Point. Actually clears off in P.M. and we have a fine day. 
6 Cold and sour again threatening rain. Hellish weather, worse than in England.
 Barn not yet finished. Straw-berries just ripening a little. A cold wave coming from the N.W. with frosts in its course. In P.M. walk over to the weasel swamp. Find three interesting things -- The 17 year locusts coming out all along the borders of the woods; some little bushes loaded with them. Under certain trees find their little earth mounds [crossed out: thick] many of them yet sealed up, or with only a peep hole in them.
 Saw a little moth that evidently imitates bird droppings on the leaves. When disturbed it would fly a few rods and alight on [crossed out: the] a broad green leaf, spreading itself out perfectly flat, simulating the droppings of a bird. It was yellowish with a faint dark brown etched upon its wings. It would not move till touched. I have read of a moth or butterfly found on some island of Oceanica that exactly mimmicks the excrement of a bird upon a leaf -- this of course for protection.
 Found the nest of the worm-eating warbler beside the path in the edge of the woods. As I came along down the path on my return a small brown bird started up from the ground a few feet from me. From the glimpse of it I had, I took it to be the oven bird. Looking to the spot [crossed out: from] whence it started I saw another bird with a striped head standing on the edge of a nest in the side of the bank with the droppings of one of the young birds, whose heads I saw beneath her, in her beak. My appearance upon the scene was sudden and the mother bird was surprised while waiting upon her young. She stood motion-less, half turned toward me and kept the white mass in her beak, neither of us stirred for a minute or two, when I withdrew and sat down a few paces away. The male bird now became quite uneasy and flitted from bush to bush and uttered his alarm chip. The mother bird never stirred. I could see her loaded beak from where I sat. In two or three minutes she dropped or otherwise disposed of her unsavory morsel, but kept her place above her young. Then the male bird, seeing that was the game, quieted down also and dis.appeared from view. After long waiting I approached the nest and pausing 10 feet away, regarded it some moments. The bird never stirred. Then came nearer, and when I sat down within 4 or 5 feet of the nest the parent bird flew out upon the ground 3 or 4 paces from me and began trying that old confidence game of the birds upon me. She was seized with incipient paralysis, she dragged herself about in the ground, she grieved and tottered and seemed about ready to go all to pieces. [crossed out: The male now sudden] seeing this game did not work she began to use her wings and to scold sharply. The male now suddenly appeared upon the scene, and, ture to his name had a worm in his beak. Their scolding brought a 
vireo upon the scene, which they seemed to regard as an intrusion. The nest was composed mainly of dry leaves. The young were probably a week old. I shall visit them again. 
7. Cold and sour; almost a frost last night. No heat since April. We greatly overdrew our a/c in that long succession of bright mild days in March and April. 
9 Weather still fair and beginning to warm up. Nearly 80 to-day. Grape arms have broken very badly this year. 
Met poor old Mrs Green last night trudging down from Esopus to take train here to go to Newburgh to see her son fatally hurt on the R.R. Poor old mother, I could have wept with her. Son a worth-less fellow, hard drinker, better dead than alive, but his mothers heart could not give him up easily. There were tears on her brown wrinkled face as we talked. It was very hard for her she said, so old, so much trouble, so much hard work as she had seen. [???] children, a drinking husband and sons, poverty and yet the old woman tries to keep up a cheerful front, and has preserved a certain innocence and sweetness. The methodist dominie went down and prayed beside her son; went on purpose, she said. "It was showing him a good deal of respect" said she, and she was touched by it. Probably the first mark of respect the poor devil had ever seen. I have known her for 20 years and yet she cant get my name right; calls me Mr Burrell generally. As she stepped along alertly to get on the train I saw how pinched and crooked her old back looked, bet. 70 and 80 10 No clouds to-day. Summer heat over 80. A lovely June day. Walked to the woods. Found nest of water thrush, and came near another, the brood had flown. Locusts in full chorus to-day. How warm and fragrant the breath of the meadow I passed through.
 A very little grape bloom to-day under the hill. 
11. A still dim day of great heat, 90 in shade. 12 Still very hot; sky veiled with vapor or smoke till noon. Go to Vassar. A heavy shower at 6 1/2 P.M. 
13. 
Hot, with streaks of sunshine cooler in evening. 

14. 
Bright, cooler; grapes blooming. 


21. Very warm the past ten days, from 80 to 90. Light thunder showers. Grapes done blooming yesterday, except a few stragglers, about the same as last year. Currants earlier. The 17-year cicadas humming and flying everywhere. Buildings at last finished and painted. 
23. Heat continues, 92 to-day on north end of house. Began the currants. I do not remember such a hot June. 
July 1st No let-up in the heat, from 86 degrees to 91 degrees every day. Only light dashes of rain; getting dry. Finished currants yesterday, about 4 tons. Prices low. 
2d Mercury 90 degrees to-day.
 Start for Snyder Hollow, Julian and I. Reach Larkins about 10 A.M. Stay there in the camp till Friday the 6th A delicious time -- never had better, Julian a good camper out. Great pleasure in being with him in the woods and teaching him wood craft. Took [crossed out: ???] and ate about 90 trout from 5 to 10 inches. Began to get cooler on the 4th.
 Stopped at Phoececia and caught 2 fine rainbow trout.
 In the ice-cream saloon the boy asked us, "Will you have it in brick or in bulk?" "If the bricks are bulky," I said "We will have it in 'brick'"? "But what is the difference?" "In the brick it is all in a cake, and in bulk it is shovelled out." 
"'Shovelled out sounds good", we replied, "we are very hungry for cream;" we will try it both ways" which we did, and liked the shovelled out plates the best.
 Reached home Friday night. 
10. Very cool for past few days and very dry; things begin to suffer much for want of water. 
12 Start for Adirondacks to-day on invitation of Mr Chubb. Very hot. Stay at White Hall over night. Reach the Willey House in Keene Friday P.M. Stay one week. Very cool and delightful. The grandest mountain view I ever saw. 
Like the Chubbs much. Give a talk on Nature in Parlors on Saturday night, and one on Whitman on Sunday night. On Monday we climb Hurricane Mt. The view amazing for extent and sublimity.
 Meet Prof Davison and some of his philosophers; the Prof. an old time student and thinker -- lives on the past. Nothing new or vital in him. (The new is always vital, and the vital is always new). Return home Friday the 20th; heat terrible -- 94 in the cars all day, 96 in Albany and Troy stations. Very dry, -- a light rain last Sunday the 15th. 
22d Cool and cloudy, about 1/2 ich of rain last night. 
Strays the drouth, but does not cure it. Grapes and all things suffering. A summer of great heat and dryness so far. 
-- I can well understand the feelings of the old Romans that prompted them to thrash and flog their gods when things went wrong with them. I never knew of a god that did not deserve flogging every day in the year. Take the god of rain, for instance. What a mess he makes of it, always drowning some part of the country and burning up some other part. 
24. Cloudy, misty, getting hot. A hot wave near by no rain to speak of. Getting ready to go out to old home, Julian and I.