From Jany 1st, 1903 to Aug 26, 1903 -When I [open] begin a new vol. of my journal, the thought always comes, what sad or glad events of my life will this vol. hold, Hiram's death is recorded in the last and Myron's, What death (rund) will this hold? What heart and soul experiences? yet but few of these are recorded in my journal. Jany 1st. Go to N.Y. to attend the Sorosis breakfast with Mrs. Childs, meet Miss Dascum - a handsome girl and genius I think. Stay with the Childs till the 3d. Then to N.Y. Stay with Miss Stephens at 80 W. 105th st, till Wednesday the 7th. See Many people. Go to see Mrs. Firk -(too stagey) and Julia Marlow, Julia very lovable and sweet. The most natural acting I have seen in a long time. Excellent, N.Y. free from snow 7th. Home this afternoon in a gentle snow storm - good sleighing. 8. Sharp fine winter weather. 9. Clear and cold - down to 8, Robins still here. See 4 or 5 inches on the river. 10. Clear and cold - down to 12. Health above par this winter so far, not withstanding the sour looks and brutal woods in the kitchen - no let up there .every hour of the day 11. Down to 10. Begins snowing at 9, snows gently till late p.m. when rain sets in. Clearing off at 9. 24. down to 7 this morning. Cold all day See on river 9 inches. 25. Cold snow storm from N.E, Began in the night. A winter wren this morning. This is entirely an insectivorous kind, where and what insects does it get such a morning as this. -Almost 6 inches of snow. -Why did a man like Spurgeon -A man of real power, produce no Literature? His expression says the London Academy was as direct as blow, and yet very little thus he left or said has any Literary value, H is quality - was a personal quality that you felt in his speech, but do not feel in his writing; he could not give himself through his pen. He was a coarse grained man and literature demands something fine. 26. Clear and pretty cold after the quiet snow storm, snow like features so light and dry the foot hardly puts it, 7 or 8 inches. The air this morning is full of shining slowly falling frost scales - star filings, a high note calling, and the winter wren here. See harvesters scrapping off the snow on the river. 27. Growing milder with signs of storm. 28. Raining, began in the night. -I see that Higginson, in his Lowell Institute lectures continues his efforts to belittle Whitman. I had just been looking over H's book "The New World and The New Book" and had been struck by its thinness and supe ficiality and when a friend sent me a Boston paper containing his lecture upon Lanier and Whitman, I said this is in strict keeping - the man can really see no further or deeper than that - only to surface culture and polish can he respond. There is no background to the man, no depth of native human soil. His ideas are like plants grown upon a rock or upon hardpan - shallow rooted. His style is very readable, crisp and tease and full of apt and learned illusions. -Good after dinner talk, but it does not draw as much water as a western steam boat. Thin, thin, thin and very cultured. Think of belittling Whitman because he did not enlist as a soldier and carry a musket in the ranks! could there be anything more shocking and incongruous than Whitman killing people? One would as soon expect Jesus Christ to go to war. W. was the lover, the healer, the reconciler and the only thing in character for him to do in the war was what he did do, nurse the wounded and sick soldiers - union men and rebels alike - showing no preference, he was not an athlete or a rough but a great loving, tender mother - man, to whom the martial spirit was utterly foreign. It was well enough for Higginson and Lancier to go to war - but Whitman! - he would not have been Whitman, could he have done it. Then his poetry, its elemental largeness and simplicity, the absence of all trickery craft art, elaborative artificial adornments, existing solely for the personality behind it, which it Sets off and reveals - never taking on, airs on its own account; vital, real, concrete, stimulating, formless if you pillars, as nature is formless, though abounding in exquisite form - often [a] whole pages that are like a mere bunch of herbs on wild growths, without any connecting tie save the hand that holds them - plucked herbage of his breast, as he says .every line the vehicle of will and personality which you can no more escape than you can escape gravity. It is expecting too much to expect that such a man as Higginson should see anything in all this. I pity him. 28. Clears off warm and spring like. Mercury art 48, sleighing nearly gone. 29. Foggy and warm, a little rain. A robin on the bare ground as in spring, his past cadet forms sharp against a streak of snow. 30. Raining briskly and mild as April. Health still good. Clears before ten. 31. Clear, windy, much colder. -What is more mysterious than the flight of birds. the power or effort put forth seems so inadequate for the speed. Then it is not applied in the direction of the resulted motion. The wings beat up and down and the motion is at right angles to this. See the animal run or the man walk or swim; his effort is in the line of his motion. Then behold a hawk or buzzard sail and soon with set motionless wings and attaining the speed of a train of cars!. How is it done? how in the power applied to the air. Even the awkward flight of a butterfly, with its broad stiff wings, heating the air up and down is a puzzle, how does it get ahead so fast? Feb 1st. Mild, windy, sunshine and cloud, ground bare in places. 2. Mild, cloudy, rainy in p.m. hard at times. Clears off at sundown, fog. 3. Clear, mild spring like, still. Blue-birds calling, mental skies over last. Poor steep last night. Trying to finish up the Jamaica Sketch - poor, good sap day. 4. Rain, rain and fog; began in the night. 4th. Series of thunder showers at night lasting an hour or more - blinding flashes of lightening very often. Rain continues but not heavy. 5. Clear and much colder with wind. 6. Windy and cold - March weather. 7. Clear and fine - mercury 24. John Elliott and his cousin at Slabsides. Good ice boating . -The Chickadees has a note like "sweet cicily" uttered in a shuffling gingling tone. Sleighing all gone, roads getting dry in places. 10. Mild, start for Florida. See C.B. at G. a three hours walk and a fire on the hill, very delightful. 11. To N.Y. raining, meet Miss P. stay at Mrs. S. 11. Clear and colder, Binder and I go to Floral Park in p.m. In the evening Mrs. Childs and I go to Brooklyn to hear Mr. Dowell play 12. Mild and spring like; all day at Floral Park. 13. At one p.m. start for Fla reach Washington at dark all night through Va. and N.C. 14. Daylight finds us in dense fog in S.C. a forlorn looking country - scrub oak and pine barrows, poor yellow and red soil, Georgia, flat walery, barren. Fla, not much better. Reach St. Augustine at 2 1/2 Sun shines, warm - 80 - a beautiful town, walk through the old fort and sit on the parapets. -All very interesting, spend the night. 15. Take train to Grant which we reach at 4 1/2, sail over Indian River to Oak Lodge Mrs. Latham's place. Stay here till Thursday when we start for Manatee. 20th. Reach Manatee from Tampa by steamer at 1 1/2. Old Ramus nest glad to see me - Raining. 21. Fair day, windy, cold, wear light overcoat when we drive out. 22. Fine day, write letters. 23, 24, 25. Days at Raven nest, walking, dreaming, writing letters and driving with Mrs. A. Getting hot. 26. Hot, 80. Ruth and I row up the river in p.m. begins raining at 3. warm as a rain in July. Health excellent - but Old Adam very troublesome. March 1st. Leave Manatee for Sanford, pass the night at S. 2. Monday, take steamer down the St. Johns, a gray cool The scenery repels me. Nature here is too crude and watery and harsh and she has [been torn] not been subdued and tamed, but torn and mutilated and singed by the hand of man. She is wild but not beautiful, she has not yet wholly emerged from the water, she is yet half saurien, Some of her vegetable forms suggest reptiles (the palmettos and mangroves). The sail I walk on plays an important part in my life, I strike roots in to it, I draw sustenance from it, I sympathize with it, but I never could strike root in this sand heap. My life would stagnate in this flat country, probably in any flat country. The most beautiful thing here is Live Oaks with their long gray beards of swaying mass. They suggest Wall Whitman. So poor, untidy, disshouled the land looked in S.C. - endless pine and scrub oak barrens on a yellow sandy unfertile looking soil - no country homes, no thrifty farms here and there a negro cabin raised up from the ground on piles; at long intervals a scatters ram shackle millage about a R.R. Station; here and there a measly looking cotton field dotted with stumps, a dense fog enveloped the land out of the loomed, the most hag like and weird looking dead pine trees I ever saw; such are expression of woe, almost dantesque, as if they had perished in the agony of some great cataclysm like the eruption of Mt. Pelee; yellow paths and walls liading off here and there into the scrub. From Columbia S.C, to Jacksonville It is almost an an uninhabited and an uncultivated country - torn an ruined ditch pine woods - half the trees dead or lying upon the ground; Life and there vast areas of standing water amid the trees - forbidding, unwholesome - then muddy rivers out of their banks of flooding the woods for miles. In Ga, the live oaks begin to be seen and the moose drops expresses, occasionally in the woods a low tree of delicate pink bloom, then masses of the red bloom of the swamp maple, but apparently no end to the loose and torn pine barrens, meadow larks, sparrow hawks, mocking birds, buzzards here and there, yes and turtle doves, and a few ,blue birds and other smaller birds. Dr. V and Mrs. Frank Baker announce the marriage of their daughter. Mabel Whitman to Mr. Alfred Hulse Brooks. on Monday, February the twenty-third. nineteen hundred and three. 1728 Columbia Road. Washington D.C. Mch 2d. On the St Johns - cool cypress overcast - shows of [his oak] heavily branded with moss, Edging the water a lower growth with tender green leaves, beneath them a green carpet of water hyacinth in which cattle to their sides in the water are grazing. The a fringe of palmetto then broad open savannas miles in extent - Leafless mass draped and swathed moods - here and there a tinge of green upon them live oaks? A fringe of low newly leaved trees and bushes at the waters edge. Swamp maples in full leaf White elder (?) in bloom. Can almost jump a shore in places - not 10 rods wide. Lots of fish crows - a blue heron - kingfisher, a few fishermen man making a raft of logs a shabby house now and then at the waters edge. -Some cleared land with house and orange grocers - 2 white herons. -Swarm of blackbirds, a robin cows up to their bellies in water. -Some half way up their sides - rating the water hyacinth. -3 1/2 some fishermen by a fire on shore with boats pulled with nets. One rows out with a fine display of fish in his boat, but we bred him not. day, many novel scenes along the river. 3d. Reach Jacksonville in the morning; take train for Washington at 9 am.. 4. Reach W. at 10 this morning. Bright and spring like. Spend 3 days on W. and live more in the past than in the present. All it so changed but the dome and the air and sky. 7. Raining. Leave W. for N.Y. at 10. 8. Reach home this morning at 10. Cool, rainy. 9. Wild, overcast. 10. Wild, Overcast peepers at night. 11. Robins and song sparrows - in song, crow black birds here and high holes calling. 12. Lovely spring day, mercury near 50, an ideal day. The heel of the last snow bank has disappeared. Roads drying, no frost on ground. Yesterday Julian and I went to black creek, saw many werts making their slow way from the woods to the marshes. Heard the song od the brown creeper for the first time in my life, by black creek, a bright hurried song, suggesting that of water thrush, but briefer and smaller. 13. Clear, white frost this morning. Letters about the Atlantic article keep coming all heartily approving. Mch 15. Still mild and lovely - no frost. The first toad song two nights ago. The clucking frogs in the pools about same time. Hazel met in bloom, snakes out. Many letters of congratulation and approval await the long article in Mch. Atlantic, one from Prut Roosevelt ending by asking me to go with him to the yellow stone Park in April. At Slabsides saw and heard first fox sparrows. 16. Cloudy, storm coming, cooler. 17. No storm; lovely day. 18. Cloudy, mild, still. 19. Ideal spring weather - such we can hardly hope for a month later; roads dry, grass greening birds jubilant. Elm tree buds bursting arbutus. showing the color, mercury above 60 degrees. Plant peas at Slabsides. 20. Warm moist S. W. wind. no rain yet; how happy the birds; rather gloomy those days, for all the promised trip with the president. Rather stay at Slabsides than be for two or three weeks in the storm centre of his party. Butterflies yesterday - two kinds, one in Slabsides -the Painted Lady, Mercury near 70, a day at Slabsides alone sweet and healing, hepatica blooming. 21. Light warm rain from S.W. with a little thunder about 8 1/2 grass greening rapidly. The little bush sparrow here this morning with his tender trill 10 days earlier than usual [nearly one month earlier than usual at least never heard it no march before] At sundown now the air above the marshes is punctured and torn by the multitudinous cries of the hykes. The sound almost pains the ear. 22. Pretty heavy rainfall in the night, cloudy today and much cooler. Soft maples and elms in bloom. 23d. Dark and rainy - a traditional equinoxial, cool. p.m. a powerful rain nearly all day - everything a float. 24. Warm as May, clearing, still very dark, water, water, everywhere. Grass very green, air full of happy bird voices; fog on the river. This morning the air is streaked here and there with that wild delicate pungent odor [that has] the origin of which has so often puzzled me in the spring. How delicious, almost thinking it is - the first odor of bloom. I am now convinced it comes from the elm bloom, I could trace it this morning to the elms, a soft maple here and there is opening, but the elms are greatly in the majority. Two soft maples near my study and the odor is here. 25. Clear, cooler, a frost last night. the air full of the pungent elm bloom odor this morning - never knew it so pronounced. -If one did not know from experience that the steam in iron pipes could d make sounds like this blows from hammars, how hard it would be to make him believe it. What; the soft formless vapor is a hollow. pipe imitate the sharp ringing blows of hammars? how abound 26. Leave home for N.Y. 27, 28, 29. With Dr. Johnson's family. On night of 28th attend dinner at Mr. Carnegers given in hours of Sidney Lee, not Twain, Howells, Stedman and many others. 30. Go to the Harlands at Plainfield N.J. 31. To White House for the night. April 1st. off with President Roosevelt on his trip to the Yellowstone Natt Park. With the President till April 24th, when I go to Spokan Mach, with Mr. Gilbert - Supt of N. Pacific. April 3d. Was at Madison and Milwauke, May 1st. Man Lewiston, Idaho, with the Gilbert girls. May 12. Reached Gills ranch in Northern Montana at noon today. Stay there till Friday the 15th when he drives me to the train 60 miles at Haslam. 18. Reach St. Paul. 19. In Chicago with M.M. 21. Reach home at 4.20, very hot and dry, no rain for over a month, mercury 90. 22d. Hot. 23. Cooler but no rain. 24 and 25. Cool, no rain. 26. Cool, go to Slabsides. 27. Warm, cloudy, threatens rain. Weight when I returned 168lbs. Hope to write up my trip sometimes. 28. Brief shower in morning. Heavy shower in p.m. 1 1/2 inch in 1/2 hour, another shower at 5 o'clock, not so heavy, about 1/2 hour with much thunder. Never was rain more needed; may make half a hay crop. Three birds nests yesterday with Laura and Mary, a bush sparrows on the ground a phoebes by the falls and water thrushes by the falls, the young just ready to fly. 29. Colder; bright lovely day. 30. Colder, bright lovely day. 31. An idylic day at M, walk in the fields - a meadow larks nest and a pewees nest and an hour with June in the pringer up the woods - May and June in one. June 1st. Cool, clear, wind month. 2d and 3d. Cool, clear, wind month. No signs of rain In the west floods and great loss of life and property. 4th. Cool, the opposite shores of the river hidden by smoke; the sun a copper globe. -Old Mr. P. said of the shower the other day that it was an addity - that it came from the west and that it cut right across the navigation of the air. -"We are the product of things as they are" said my neighbor the other day as we were talking about the floods and cyclones in the west and the drought in the East and the contradiction which both cases presented to the theological notions of a beneficent providence. We are the product of things as they are. No thought or account is take of us in the administering of the affairs of the cosmos. If any thought was even taken it was from the beginning. After the process of life and development has begun we take our chances and win [options] than we lose, else we would not be here The contribution of things is on our side; we came out of those conflicting forces; the delays, the failures, the loss and suffering have been unspeakable; thus was a part of the plan, but the gain has been steady. If drought and flood were the rule and not the exception, man would soon disappear from the earth. There is no providence in the old sense, only law, not one hairs weight of the universe steps in front of man to guide or shield or help him. He is a part of the system of things and goes with the current - is bitter destroyed by it or upborne by it; it regards him not any more thus the river here regards the boats upon its bosom. Drought and flood occur in obedience to natural law; They are an end to man, as the storm is an end to the tree which whips and breaks it, but the race of trees survive and man survives all the ends that have so far beset his path - plague, pestilence, war, fire and flood. There is nothing special and particular in the universe directed to man, anymore than to anything else, no providence, no god that watches over him; he is cared for, if at all, from within and from the foundation of the mould, when the life of the planet goes out his will go out. 5th. The cold and the smoky obscurity continues. 6. A little warmer, smoke unabated. 7. Cloudy; signs of rain. 8. Some rain. -Real observers are as rare as real pacts, so few people know or can tell exactly what they see; so few people can draw a right influence from an observed fact, so few people can help reading their own thoughts or preconceptions into what they see, only a trained mine can be [spotted] trusted to repeat things as they are. What did or does the Indian really know of the wild life around him - except as it related to his personal wants? What does the farmer know of the wild life around him except that the crows pull up his corn and the skunks and minks and foxes destroy his poultry. He will kill every hen hawk he can under the delusion that the hen hawk kills his poultry. He does not know from actual observation the relation, beneficial or other of the wild creatures to his agriculture. Hunters and trappers and woodsmen generally can tell you the ways and habits of the particular game they pursue, but of disinterested observation they are not as a rule capable. They see certain things accurately, what it concerns them to see and draw just conclusions along certain lines, but of the real life history of their game thus know little. The farm dog learns certain facts about woodchuck; he knows they came out of their holes to feed on grass - that at such timing they get panther and further from their dens, thus every few minutes they sit up on their [harmikes] and look out for danger and in hunting them the old dog takes advantage of all these facts. That is about all he knows about chucks and it is all it concerns him to know. The knowledge of most hunters and trappers is equally limited. -That fake Wm. J. Long has only to set his foot in the woods when all the wild creatures swarm about him eager to show off. They get up private theatricals to amuse him, dew, moose, caribon, bears, congers - animals to shy that an ordinary hunter or camper out lucky if he gets a glimpse of our once in years of wood life- all besiege him and are the most unheard of things before him. Deer have a regular inches on the buch in front of his tail, running around in small and large inches to amuse him and teach their young how to handle themselves; jays and red squirrels play at the game of following each other through the woods and stealing each others stones of nuts; mose get in the way of his camera and he fails to drive them off with shots from his rifle, bears stop in the path before him and dispute his right of way, a wild cat does a partly piece of acting on a beavers house for his amusement and C and H. 9 and 10. Cloudy - no rain. 11. Showers; rained nearly all night or about 12 hours, 2 inches or more by noon of the 12th. 12. Clearing in p.m. 13. Sunshine with showers in the distance; weather looks very unsettled. 14. Clifton Johnson came last night Rain nearly all day from N.E. 15. Rained all night, and is still raining, ground full of water, cool. -Rained slowly all day. 16. Cold and cloudy. 17 and 18. Cloudy with some rain. 19. Some sunshine 20. [Began] Rained nearly all night. Began again at noon slowly. 21. Rained all night hard and has rained nearly all day hard. 22d. Rained in the night. Sunshine an hour or two this morning, then clouds. 23. Began raining again at 10 a.m. slow rain all day from N.E. and cold. The ground is overflowing everywhere am paths in the woods are all the beds of little streams - noon saw more water. 25. First clear warm June day. 26. Ideal June day - boat races. 27. Lovely day. 28. Warm and fine. 29. Began raining early in morning, a steady heavy rain for 8 hours. Cold a fire in my chimney. 30. Clearing, shower in p.m. hot. July 1st. Rained in early morning. Clearing in fore noon. Very hot and humid, mercury 86. 4. Getting warm, ... 7. M.M and Mary Newton today 9. Very hot day 10. Still hotter, President and Mrs. R. come today, a great day. Wrote it up for Dr. Barrus. 11. Cooler. 12 and 13. Cool. 14. Go to Mohonk, a shower in p.m. 15. Cool. 16. Cool back home today. 17. Fair and a little warmer. 18. Start for Twilight Park, rain in p.m. and evening, cool. 19. Rainy cool day. 20. To top of High Peak with Miss H. Hermit thrushes, winter wrens, olive backed thrush in song, also Golden Crowned Knight - a fine insect like song, hardly noticeable; first thought it was the Black poll warbler but even more mincer than this. The brown creeper there, but not singing. Dense fog most of the time. Returned at 3 just a down pour set in - a tremendous shower. 21. Light showers here and there. Come to Roxbury in p.m. 22 and 23d. Rainy. 24. Lovely clear warm day, ideal. 25. Lovely clear warm day, ideal. 26. Warm and mostly clear. -In some cases nature is not a bit adaptive - certain currents of life flow in very narrow channels. When the lady bug had destroyed the scale insect in Cal. it died. It could not feed upon anything else. 24. Superb day after much rain. 25. Ideal day; excellent hay weather. 26. Fine warm day. 27. Still fine but cool. 28. Still fine but cool. 29. Shower in p.m. much thunder. 30. Rainy, showery, warm 31. Clearing and very cool -In June clearing and after the heavy continued rains, the "pupers" appeared in the pools and marshes again and made them vocal for a few days. The drought of May must have destroyed their eggs or young and they knew it and came back tot try again? How else can one explain their 2nd appearance? they usually have the marshes in April. Aug 1st. Clear, cool - a perfect day; the Hermit thrush this morning. - I am beginning to see things as in a dream - Is this really so? - I am the least cosmopolitan of men. - I am as local as a turtle, I am at home in only one spot - here. In all other places I simply pitch my tent for the night. - I see Johnny mowing below the new [barel] barn - gone now, alas! - Curtis is there with his fork pulling back the grass, Ed and Chant and Frank are moving [with their] by hand. I hear the distant cowing of crows and the baying of old spott. The fog of the valley of the early morning is now slowly moving across the sky in ragged white and dim colored clouds. Aug 6. Stay at old home till today, much rain during the time. Go to Twilight Park to sit to Mr. Rowland for my portrait. Rain in p.m. and evening. 7. Wet and cold. 8. Fair day but cold, Stay at the Park till Saturday the 15th. 15th. Fair and warm; reach home at noon. 16. Rain all day 17. Fair and mild, at S.S. again writing. 18. Fair 19. Showery in p.m. and warm 20. Dark, misty, rainy; rained in the night, and again in p.m. Clearing at sundown, warm. 21st and 22d. Fair warm days. 23. Warm fair day. Rowland here. 24. Fine day. 25. Rain with thunder this morning. Sun shines at 10 a.m. -Michelet says that birds float, and that they can make themselves lighter than the air by swelling themselves at null!! 25. Two heavy showers in p.m. 26. Cloudy and cool.