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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: May 11, 1893 - January 16, 1894
Text: May 11. The delicious may days continue. Not a cloud by day or night. Sun warm melting, wooing. Cherry trees a mass of white bloom. The air fairly shaken with bird voices. The cuckoo and orchard starling here this morning. Maple leaves like tiny half open parasols. River like a mirror dotted with the shad fishers. What a racket the orioles make! The kinglets silent for two days past. White crowned sparrow in song. The song of the toad still heard. As I sit here in summer house at 8 1/2 A.M, a...
Show moreMay 11. The delicious may days continue. Not a cloud by day or night. Sun warm melting, wooing. Cherry trees a mass of white bloom. The air fairly shaken with bird voices. The cuckoo and orchard starling here this morning. Maple leaves like tiny half open parasols. River like a mirror dotted with the shad fishers. What a racket the orioles make! The kinglets silent for two days past. White crowned sparrow in song. The song of the toad still heard. As I sit here in summer house at 8 1/2 A.M, a soft moist cool haze shoots down and veils all the distant objects. Beyond the Elbow all is a white obscurity. Why do I think of father and mother so often such days? Just such days came to them. How busy and eager they were about their work! I see thecows hurried off to the pasture, the team started for the field, or to haul out manure. I see father striding across the plowed field with a bag partly filled with oats slung across his breast from which he clutches a hand full of seed and scatters it at every step. The mountains begin to show signs of foliage near their bases, but on their summits the trees are still naked, or maybe a little snow gleams out here and there amid the trees. I remember when I was a child of 3 or 4 years, the girl threw my hat off the stone work. I cried and looking up on the side hill saw father sowing oats. How vividly and lastingly his image there in the may sunshine -- the white bag, the red soil and all -- are imprinted upon my memory!Julian thought to have a field day this day with his net among the shad; he was off bright and early up the river, got fast near the island and lost part of his net. I went up to help him, but could not save it. In P.M. got the two pieces out in the river again; tide carried him into the Elbow, when I again came to his rescue. 13 fine shad in all. We rowed home in the delicious fragrant air at 6 P.M. 12. Another perfect day at hand. Tis a luxury to be alive. No cloud, the air warm, moist and sweet. This day Symond's book on Whitman came to me, and I nearly finished it at odd intervalssitting in my summer house and looking out into the lovely world. It is a strong book and will [crossed out: hav] play its part in settling W's fame. I see little in it to except to. The hearty endorsement of the sexual poems quite surprised me. Symonds acknowledges his own debt to Whitman in strong eloquent words. I suppose the very first order of men never owe so great a debt as this to a book. They get it at first hand from God, from Nature, from the soul. Men of the stamp of S and of myself get it from our masters. I could have wept over the book, thinking of Symonds justdead and his words ringing so clear and eloquent, and of Walt, whom my soul so loved. 13. The sun went down in a sea of gold last night; but thin clouds or wreaths of vapor were forming in the east. This morning it was heavily over cast, and at 8 began to rain and has kept it up nearly all day, heavy at times; heaviest in afternoon and most continuous. Wind N.E. Wilsons black capped warbler look in at my window from the branch of the apple tree as he did a year ago. 14 Bright and warm 15 Fair and warm. Poor Alice Litts died last night aftermonths of great suffering -- apparently consumption. How ugly is death in May, the orchards all bursting into bloom, and nests full of just laid eggs. Poor child; she wanted to live. She wanted to be buried near here that they might come often to her grave and look after it. She wanted flowers and flowers. A yeaer ago a bright handsome girl, married a brute, had two children and died in poverty and squalor. 16 Rain again last night and to-day, all day at intervals. Ground very wet again. Apple trees in full bloom. 17 Sunshine again and cooler. 19 Cool and clear -- after two days of heavy cold clouds. Apple blossoms falling.20. Warm and fine. Go to Cornwall to Lees, and to wild flower show. A splendid land scape view from Lees and from the Club House on Storm King. Find a whippor will's nest in Lees woods. 21 At West Point; much talk with Alden and G.E. Woodbury. Very warm. To N.Y. in P.M. 22. At Norton Weaton Seminary, reach there at 7 P.M. A lovely place. A long drive with Miss Pike and Miss Stanton in forenoon. Visit King Philips grave. Drive and walk in afternoon. 23. Talk 3/4 hour to the young women this morning in the hall. Talk about the observation of Nature. Talk well partof the time and poorly part of the time. Am too much embarrassed. Drive again with the ladies. Find the nest of the solitary vireo. To Boston in P.M. and get much needed rest. 24 To Mt Auburn Cemetery, to the graves of Lowell, Longfellow and Phillips Brooks. A lovely spot, ideal. At the foot of the grave of Brooks in one of the iron gate posts find the nest of a chickadee. To Wellesley College in P.M. A place of great natural beauty, probably the finest college grounds in the country. In Evening speak to the students, 4 or 5 hundred in the hall. Talk too long over one hour. Talk rather better than at Norton. Tell the incident of the chickadees nest at the grave of Philip Brooks. 25. A long walk early in the morning with pupils and teachers. Find nests of chickadee, king-bird, yellow warlber, and red start. Start for home in P.M. 26 Reach home this morning find Curtis and Ann Eliza here. Very glad to see them. Rain in afternoon. Grape arms about 1 foot long. Season backward. To the Greek play of Vassar girls at night. 27. Cool and overcast, light rain at night.28 Drive to Sherwoods in P.M. Curtis and I and Julian. Gleams of sunshine. 29. Curtis and Ann off for home early this morning. Bright and warm in P.M. 30. Clear and pleasant. How fresh all things look! Grape arms break a little to day in wind from South. A slow shower at 5 P.M. 31. Lovely day. Off to N.Y. to attend the Whitman birthday dinner. Dinner fairly a success. Col. Ingersoll the most distinguished person there, and of course makes the best speech. I speak, but not to my satisfaction; did not say the best things I had inmind. Dr. Brinton presided, an excellent man, with a voice like a coal scuttle. June 1st Charming day. Spend it in the city. Meet John Muir, an interesting man, with the Western look upon him. Not quite enough penetration in his eyes. 2d Traubel and his friend came to-day. 6th Days fine and warm. Start for Snyder Hollow to-day with Julian and Ben Alli Haggin. Camp on the old spot till friday the 9th Weather hot with light rain Tuesday P.M. Trout small, but plenty. Thewilderness [crossed out: ???] charming as ever. 9 Return home to-night. 10 Still hot and dry. Mercury near 90 degrees Champion grapes just beginning to bloom. 11 Hot and breezy. Saw a few Wordens in bloom to-day. Grape arms not badly broken as yet. Arms from 3 to 4 ft long. June hot like one year ago so far. 15 Start for Southamption to-day. Stay there till 21st. Pleasant time. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday very hot all over the country, 98 degrees in N.Y. Grapes seem to have fertilized well. Out of bloom by 18thNo rose-bugs yet. Weather dry. 22d Home this morning. Light rain from South, promises to be more. Much needed. 23. Fine rain yesterday and last night, 1 1/2 inches or more. Cool and rainy this morning. Grape vines running riot. Clearing in P.M. 25. Bright fine day. 26. Rain from south and cold. Currants fit to pick. 27. Cool and bright. Began the currants to-day 28. Cool and bright. Send off 2100 lbs of currants to-day. 29. Warmer, shipped 2300 lbs of currants. 30 Bright and warm, with light shower in P.M.June goes out with bright delicious days. Mrs B. left Thursday, the 29th for R. I suppose. Left Julian and me to shift for ourselves and carry on the currant campaign. Good riddance. The rats and mice can again sleep. "Better dwell on the housetop than live with a brawling woman" July 1st Cool night. Bright and clear this morning. 2d Fine day. 3d Shower in afternoon, brief, but hard. Pick currants. Cool. 4. Lovely day, neither hot nor cool .Julian and I here alone. Feel pretty well. Spend the eveningat Mrs. Frothinghams. 5th Warmer with hard brief shower. at 7 1/2 P.M. Much lightning. 6. Overcast part of the day. No heat yet this month. 7 Finish the currants to-day 5 tons 200 lbs. Never had cooler finer weather in currant time. No trying or frying heat at all. Full of lust these days, probably from the cherries, as they are said to contain much phosphorus. Not yet done girdling. Spraying for the 3d time. A little grape rot here and there and a little mildew. 8. Very muggy, with sudden heavy shower in late afternoon. Ground well. moistened up. The rye is ripe for the sickle Julian and I still alone in the house -- get along well. Canned 24 cans of cherries the last two days. -- Doubtless one reason why the great men of the past seem so great to us is becasue all other voices are silent -- theirs alone [crossed out: is] are heard. All the hum and roar and gabble and racket of those days are gone, hushed, dead, and the few voices that reach us seem to fill the world of that time9 Began the raspberries to-day. Fine day. 16. The past week has been fine July weather. Cool, with only light rain; busy with the berries The boys scissoring off the grapes. Julian and I still alone and peace prevails. Warm last night and to-day. 17 Kennedy came to-day. Glad to see him 18 A fine shower this P.M. K and I sit in the summer house and have much talk. 19 To-day we drive to Lake Mohonk, Julian, Kennedy and I. A fine drive, quite jolly we are as we go along the road. Reach there near noon. A bright day, pretty warm. We are all surprised and delighted with the beauty and grandeur of the rocks and views. A am impressed afresh each time I go to Mohonk with its unique beauty. Nothing else like it in the whole country. We eat our lunch near the summit. In the big crevice we find a dog abandoned by his master the day before. He is very much humiliated now and after a little coaxing allows me to lift him out by the nape of the neck. We loiter about till 3 o'clock when we drive home. 20 Julian leaves me to-day for Roxbury. His ma snatches him away from me just as we were getting ready for a campand tramp in the mountains. then Kennedy also leaves. I am quite disconsolate. 21 Start for Slide Mountain to-day. Pretty warm. Reach Big Indian at 3 P.M. Stay all night there and much enjoy the evening amid the mountains. 22 Tramp up Big Indian Valley to-day with my roll of blankets etc. on my back. Very hot. Lunch at Dutchers at 11, and get a few supplies there. Like Dutcher much; he knows some of my writings. This valley much finer than I had any idea of. I had quite forgotten its beauty, or else had neglected to note it on my former trips. Begin the ascent about noonReach the summit at about 2, and pass the night there. A good time, all alone with that sublime view. Porcupines very plenty and annoying at night. I make a nest under the ledge of rocks on the summit, and sleep fairly well. A grand view of a storm from 7 to 8; look straight out into its heart of fire. 23 Day clear cool and windy. I gaze and gaze upon the scene. For an hour or more I try to make out my native mountains the Old Clump -- but have to give it up. Reach Dutchers on my return at 2 P.M. Pass the night there and am fairly happy. 24 Back to Big Indian for early train and reach home at 2 P.M. I tramped 26 milesand did it more easily it seems to me than I ever did a like distance before in my life. I was not really fatigued at all. What a vivid sense of the presence of those mountains I brought back with me! 26 Very hot. 88 or 9. Rather blue and depressed; probably a reaction from the [crossed out: m] stimulus of the mountains. 27. The shower last night a failure. All sound and fury. Very dry. A cool, bright day. 28 Cool and bright and dry, dry. The nocturnal tree crickets began to purr a night or two ago, a significant sound. One the first night, and two last night. 29 Slow rain all the fore noon; relieves the drought for a moment -- need ten times as much to reach the roots of things. Clearing in afternoon and warmer. Rather blue these days; too much alone, my own housekeeper now for over a month. Quite a chorus of nocturnal tree crickets now. A letter from Julian to-night. -- "Nature makes nothing for beauty-sake, that is, simply to be beautiful. She aims not at beauty for beauty is not outside of Nature, she produces this or that; a tree, a flower, a man, a woman; there is need for the thing produced, and it is beautiful" (Mrs Ogden's journal)Aug. 1 Go out home to-day. Stay two weeks at the old place, very restful and satisfying. Weather dry. Shoot woodchucks again as one year ago. Few birds 14 Back home to-day. Fearful drought. Vineyards suffering much, but not as badly as I had feared. Mrs B. here and disposed to make peace. Julian at Roxbury. The drought affects my very blood. 17. Cloud and light rains this morning, wind south. Tries hard to rain, but cannot get going. 22 Three or four days of cloud with light rain. Releives the vineyards somewhat.24 The long drought at last broken by a warm driving rain from the North. Began in the night and now at 8 a.m. the air is white with sheets of rain. A hurricane coming up the coast. Heavy winds. Must have reached the roots of things by this time. P.M. Rain stopped bet. 10 and 11. A soacker, 2 or 3 inches of water. The first thorough wetting of the ground since spring. Very destructive along the coast. 29 A terrific wind with driving rain. Another hurricane from the South. The wind a raving maniac. Rain not heavy here. Wipes the bloom from the grapes and blows over several vines and posts. 30 Storm proved very destructive all over the country. Great loss of life along the S.C. and Ga. coasts. Grapes ripening slowly. Sept. 1st Cloud and shine; threatens rain. Cool. The river suddenly turns big mud puddle -- as red as the Mississippi. Great floods farther north. 3d Very cool; almost a frost last night clear. The grape racket wears on me more than ever before this year, tho' my work is light. Something wrong in my physical economy, or is it age? 17. Soon got over the fatigue referred to and had plenty of vigor, fought the battle determinedly [crossed out: u] till this date when the market is flat.Twenty six tons off -- and probably 10 more on the vines. A heavy rain yesterday and day before -- thunder showers. A shower one week ago caught us at 5 1/2 and drenched some of the crates. No other rains so far. Weather cool, too cool for the good of the grapes. Only one ton of Concords off so far. Prices low -- about 2/3 of last year. -- Religion in our day is an escaped garden plant. Some of the best religious books are by laymen. There is more freshmess and vigor outside the Church. In the old long cultivated enclosure the thing is feeble and seedy.Sunday 24. Bright and cool. Light rain yesterday and day before, and much cloud. Shipping about a ton of grapes daily, prics low. Myron B. came Thursday for brief visit; returned to Milton at night. Very glad to see him once more Gaertners about half off. Wrote brief essay for The Dial on Poe, yesterday fore-noon. 26. Go out home this morning. Find Curtis and Ann away to Red kill. In afternoon walk up on the hill where "By" Chase and Chant are setting up corn. Walk over by grandfathers old place and muse long and long. Curt and Ann back Wednesday night. Thursday Curt and I drive over to Edens by way of Roses Brook. See Hiram, he is at work on a barn roof. He comes downand talks a while. I give him peaches and apples. He looks older; his voice is older. Reach Edens at noon. E, not very well, is busy renewing his sawing machine. Weather raw and chilly. Friday we drive out to see Jane and Homer. Stay there all night. H. very feeble. Jane milks all the cows and works too hard. A white frost at night. Sat. morning we start for home; day bright. Encounter a drove of horses go over Jump hill; reach home before noon. Sunday return home. Oct 3d Start for Chicago at 10 to-day. Stop on the way at Rochester and Geneva etc. Reach C. Saturday night. Weather very fine all the week. Sudnay go to see Dr B's old place and get a room. Stay in C. 10 or 11 days. Not well, not much interested in fair. My appetite for seeing things about done. The fair is for young people. The buildings superb, the crowd immense. C. a great sprawling ugly place. Visit the grave of Dr B. at Rose Hill on Wednesday. Go six days to the fair. Am none the better or wiser for what I see. My seeing days about over. Weather fine. Start back Wednesday night at 4 P.M. a smash up at Hamilton, but only a few hurt. Stop at the Falls -- seem smaller and quieter than ever before. Stop at Rochester again Reach home Saturday night the 21st at 8 P.M. -- 8 hours from R. not very well. The worlds fair distemper gone deep into me. 22d Very pleasant; very glad to be home again.23d Rain all day, pretty heavy, 2 inches. 24 Warm with clouds and sunshine. Leaves about half off the maples. 29 Fine weather, warm, little frost. Rain Friday night. Vineyard half plowed. Bright and windy to-day, and cooler. Cleaned the Study yesterday. -- What do I mean by saying this essay of -- lacks style? I mean that it is not organic, vital -- an utterance from out the mans real inmost self, but from his cultivated acquired self, his reading etc. It implies nothing but his intellect. It is mechanical. There is no personality, no flavor of character, no ethical quality in it. What Renan gives us is alwaysRenan -- what any true writer gives us always is himself; what this man gives us is what he has read, or thought -- not a central original view of his own. Renan is such a delightful writer because of the vivacity and vitality of the Ego -- there are no heavy, cumbrous made sentences. He is personal. When we write letters we are personal; it is the I that speaks; so it is in all the best writing. The true literary man writes only to please himself. What does not please himself -- what is distasteful to his own literary conscience he cuts out. 31 First considerable freeze last night, made qutie a crust on the ground. Clear and still this morning, the river steaming maple leaves silently and rapidly falling.Nov 1st Nov comes in bright and mild 2d Mild bright day. Go to P. Julian goes hunting and shoots his first partridge on the wing. Very proud of the feat. 3d Rain in morning. Warm, still, overcast in P.M. Go walking through the woods, take the gun and kill a partridge over the swamp; the first for 15 years. The poor bird was walking on the ground. I felt ashamed of myself for murdering it. 4th Returning from the P.O. this morning, I paused to note two bluebirds in Van B's vineyard. As I was observing them and speculating as to where those particular birds wouldprobably spend the winter, they began to call a quit, quit sharply, and then sprang into the air. I turned and saw a shrike coming straight towards them; he gave chase, following them closely and diving after them, but they easily avoided [crossed out: them] him. He alighted in the ash tree near the church when one of the blue birds perched above him and hovered aobut him on the wing and then followed its companion. What surprised me was the quickness with which the blue birds recognized an enemy in the shrike and called out "fly fly." I saw some gold finches do the same thing the other day. The shrike has none of the skill and speed of the hawk, or true bird ofprey, on such occasions. It is the same when any bird but a true fly-catcher tries to take an insect on the wing -- it is bunglingly done. Cooler and overcast this morning. -- Just now a stick of wood on my fire warbled like a bird. What more natural than that such a phenomenon should have been attributed by the ancient observers to a spirit or fairy? This note sounds like the soliloquizing of some song bird, or an autumn private rehearsal of some young male bird. 5th Bright day and mild. Julian and I walk to the woods. Seated on a rock near the Cyripedium swamp, we saw a weasel come out of the swamp with a mouse or mole it its mouth. It disappeared for a moment a few rods above us, and then returned to the swamp. It presently came back with another mouse; we saw it bring three at intervals of 6 or 8 minutes. It evidently had a good crop of them out there in the bogs and bushes. On the third trip it was evidently disturbed by our presence and did not come out of its den again while we waited. Its hole was in the bank on the edge of the swamp -- a small hole going straight down into the ground under the leaves.6th A soft mild day. Watched again for the weasel in the wood; found him still carrying in mice. This time I was only a few feet from his hole and saw that he had a meadow mouse. I had armed myself with a mattock and proceeded to dig him out. I had a great desire to see that store of mice, and to see the interior of his house generally. I soon found I had undertaken a big job. I found the ground penetrated with holes and tunnels in all directions. I followed some of them 8 or 10 feet and then gave it up. [crossed out: The h] It was a house of many mansions, and many tortuous hall. I could not find the end of one of them. 7. Returned, armed with shovel and mattock to finish unearthing the weasel. The shovel enabled me to make more rapid progress. But the more I dug, the more hopeless the undertaking appeared. The ground for a large space was honeycombed with passages and chambers. It was like the interior of a tree trunk eaten by black ants, or of a limestone hill eaten by water. It was a tangle and labyrinth of tunnels. At last I found his next and banqueting hall, at least one of them, a cavity about the size of ones hat arched over by a mass of small roots of a little tree. It was full of leaves mixed with the hair of mice or moles, near it was a mass of fur -- the back yard where the waste was thrownIt contained the dried tail of a flying squirrel, but no feathers. There were pellets of fur like those thrown up by a hawk or an owl. From it passages lead in all direction. I could find no end no cul de sac[crossed out: k]. The weasel was not to be cornered or caught napping. I finally gave up the job. What under ground enemy has the weasel that he should provide himself with so many ways of escape? It would be impossible for a squad of his enemies to corner him. 8 To the woods again this P.M. Overcast, very mild and still. No signs of the weasel. I sat a long time on a rock-- Could hear every sound in the woods, dry leaves dropping here and there from the oaks; they rattled against the branches in their descent like brown paper. Here and there the brisk file of the red squirrel cutting into the hard shelled pig nuts. Troops of crows flying ever southward, with loud caws. Chickadees and creepers here and there. A woodpecker's sharp, metalic note rings out. Walk slowly to sun set rock to give eye and ear a wider range. The fall of an acorn makes quite a racket. Loud squawking of ducks down by Black Pond, distand human voices about the farms, the barking of a dog, the call of a jay -- on the vast silence every sound is noticeable.9. To the woods with Low and Booth and the arch-deacon; a brisk walk to the old mill, a fire, a lunch, revolver shooting etc. Back by the high rock or "Julians Rock" Day mild with dim sunshine. 10. Clear and cooler. Fine Nov. weather. 12. No rain or wind past week, Mostly bright exhilarating days; white frost at night; fog this morning, and fog clouds to-day. 13. Overcast, mild. Drive over near Black Pond for some spitz apples. The Brooks place, an English family, brother and sister living here, over 70. A bit of England 60 or 70 acres, smoothand well kept, not a stone except in the heavy walls, not a bush or weed, a long well graded and well kept lane leads up to the square stone house; heavy walls on each side; fat cattle in the fields, no litter about the buildings, all snug and thrifty. What a contrast to the adjoining farms, covered with brush, weeds and boulders! A miniature England. 15. Rain and wet sodden snow this morning, clearing off in afternoon colder. 16 Cold and windy, the coldest yet. One can hear and feel winter coming Dreamed of father and mother last night -- dreamed they had gone on a long journey and we had not heared a word from them. I grew suddenly alarmed when I recalled how long it had been and we had recd no tidings. Alas! Alas! Saw Hiram also in mydream with a trunk on a wheelbarrow, over on the hill, as if he was going away on the sly. Poor Hiram! 18 Mild day with clouds and sun. Go to West Point to witness game of foot ball 22d Rain last night, snow on the hills. My drains have not run since last spring. Now, a dry month so far. I expect a cold winter. 26. Bright, clear, cold. Julian and I go to Black Pond in P.M. to build blind for ducks. The cold is hard and cutting as we return in the gloaming. How something sucks the warmth out of ones shoulders and back! 27. Down to 20 or lower this morning. Grows warmer during the day with S.W. wind and cloud 28. Rain last night, brisk showers from S.W. Mercury up to 55 this morning almost a spasm of warmth. Bees out of the hive very lively. 30. Bright, still, mild day, typical of the fall, which has been exceptionally fine all over the country. Julian goes to Black Pond. In P.M. I join him, finish the blind and then float down the stream in the boat; the water a perfect mirror. We gaze down into that reversed forest under the water, apparently as real as the one above. It is so still that a little Canada sparrow in the weeds and dry leaves makes a big noise. Reach home at dark. At night Venus and Jupiter play at see-saw, on going down in the west as the other rises in the east. Never saw Venus more glowing -- a great silver lamp in the western sky. 3 Our first snow storm; began in the night; 6 inches this morning; turned to rain and made crust and enamelled all the trees. 4 Colder this morning; snow froze solid and pressed down to the ground so that every little depression or elevation shows beneath it as beneath a carpet -- fits the ground closer than a carpet would. Fair sleighing. 5. Much colder, down to 8 or 10; ice forming in theriver. Began snowing before noon. Three inches of light snow. Winter fairly upon us, full blown. -- Read some chapters in one or two of my books sitting here alone by the fire the other night. I could have wept over them -- they were so fresh and joyous so untouched by the fret and fever of the world. Where was the paradise I lived in when I wrote those books? Here, right here where I now live. A kind of perenial youth breathes in those books. No merit of mine. I could not help it.6th Go to N.Y to day. Snow on the ground all the way and in the streets of the city. Stay in N.Y. till Saturday night or rather Sunday morning, the 10th a fairly pleasant time nothing note-worthy. Heard Browning read for the first time (Pippa Passes) by a fairly good reader, Mrs. La Moine. B. needs a reader to fill up the gaps and breaks by voice or look or [crossed out: action] gesture. He is horribly difficult, and it is maily a mechanical difficulty -- not the difficulty of deep or [crossed out: f] subtle thought, but the difficulty of walking on one foot or of seeing around a corner. 10 Home this morning; light snow and rain yesterday. 13. A big drop in the mercury 40 yesterday, 10 this morning Much thin new ice in river Winter is advancing like a strong, steady tide, or is it the strong steady tide, or is it the strong steady ebb of Summer? 14 Down to 3 or 4 this morning. Ice fast in river, but is broken up by a steamer and set moving 15. Six inches of snow last night; hail and rain to-day, mercury going up. 16 Much warmer; snow going rapidly; fog this morning An angle worm on the snow on my way to the P.O. office. -- How much of our religion is flattery of God. We call it praise. How sick it must make him!20. Go out home this P.M. Find the ground covered with new-fallen snow, but no old snow beneath it. Walk up from the station in the moonlight. As I mount the Deacon hill the old place comes into full view, white and cold and still, as I had so often seen it in my youth. The dog barks and comes out to meet me. Find them all well. Curtis is sitting by the fire with a peddler. "By" is there. John and the girls down to John S's. I pass four days at the old place breathing a good deal of mingled tobacco and pancake griddle smoke in the old kitchen. When it gets too thick, I go out doors or up to my room where I have a fire. Weather gets warmer withrain from SW. on Saturday which takes off all the snow. I walk out in the woods and up in the sap bush. Hiram comes Friday night, well and cheerful. Seems like old itmes to see him there. Saturday Curtis and I drive down to the village. Warm and bright in P.M. On Sunday Hiram files their big saw. I leave in P.M. Johnny driving me down. Warm as Oct, and muddy. Spend Sunday night with Abbey in Kingston; reach home Monday morning. Xmas. Warm and bright, snow all gone. Bees out of the hive. Mercury at 58 degrees during the day. Is this set back to Winter fatal? We shall see. I have never knownit to recover from such a blow, usually a series of spasms after such unseasonable warmth. Pass the day quietly at home. My angle worms on the snow seem to have been a sign. 27. Cold wave, down to 18, threatens snow. 29. Another warm spell -- cloudy, misty; like April. A visit from "the Gang" yesterday, a good time. 30. Colder, Walk to P. and am better for the walk. 31. Snowing this morning. an inch or more last night. Winter trying to get a new hold. He has been fairly worsted the past week, or ten days.In the Garfield-Conklin Controversy, as related by Senator Dawes in last Century there are the elements of a great tragedy, like the Greek plays. Here was this haughty imperious eloquent Conklin refusing to take the magnanimous part, refusing to believe in it at all, refusing to credit the people with any love of magnamimity believing in nothing but party and in crushing your rival; incapable of taking a large disinterested view of the situation, full of hate, jealousy, selfishness to rule and triumph with him being more than country or duty or truth -- seeing everything through the passion of personal pride -- here was this man at last a victim of his own selfishness and conceit, crushed by the popular feeling of magnamimity, which he refused to believe in, utterly humiliated and rejected defeated by the party he had placed before country and duty. What bitterness was his! Did the Furies ever before so blind a man for his own destruction. one of the proudest men who ever walked brought to the deepest humiliation by his own deliberate folly. Every politician in this country who has presumed upon the narrowness and meanness of the people has come to grief. Conklin did, Blaine did. Hill did. No clap-trap, nothing theatrical, or that has the air of self-seeking, is a success. Honors and victory come to the disinterested man. Then out of the spirit whichConkling stirred up and of which he was the arch-fiend, came the murder of the President. Think of that long suspense and agony -- the Nation sitting by the bed side of this dying man. The elements of an immortal tragedy, unsurpassed by anything in history. Conkling was great only as a party boss and leader. Dawes says his speach before the Committee of Conciliation was the greatest of his life -- his theme was himself, and his own political grievances These inspired him, any great cause, or principle, outside of himself never so inspired him. His country never made him so eloquent. He had no self-forgetfulness -- no magnanimity -- no true greatness. --Theme for a lecture -- "The People's Rebuke to the Politicians." 1894 January 1st Lovely winter day, bright and still. No wind yet this winter. Every storm ends in a calm. Mercury down to 15 this morning. Ice in river smooth and stationary again this morning. Julian goes over to Black pond. At 11 I put up some dinner and start to join him, a fine walk through the woods, to Sunset rock. Snow about 1 1/2 inches, fox tracks everywhere. A few partridge tracks, one mink track. No rabbits. Reach J. at noon; build fire under the pines and broil our turkey and have lunch, big appetites. Still and clear. Fox tracks across black pond. We follow two tracks down the creek on the ice along the marginDid they walk to-gether? J asks. I do not know. Probably they did, tho' foxes do not seem to be very social beings. No sound of birds in the woods. Returning we saw where the mink had suddenly turned about at a rapid pace and retraced his steps for several rods. A fox track seemed to have frightened him, or did he see the fox? He makes a detour and crosses the track at another point. What a record the creatures leave upon the snow. Or the hunders track though the fields and woods. You can almost see his thoughts written upon the snow. Here he paused and listened and looked about him. Here he had an impulse to take that path, but finally changed to this. Here his dog joined him, etc.2d Bright and still again. Mercury 15 degrees this morning. Good sleep last night from my walk. 7 Still mild with a skim of snow yesterday. Mercury has not been much below freezing for several days. Ice adrift on the river. A bad cold from some unknown cause. 12 A little snow, a sprinkle of rain, [crossed out: col] clearing off colder, but without any wind. No wind at all this winter. 13. The wind got up yesterday P.M. and fairly let itself fly. at 9 P.M. it was a furious gale. No snow to drift. Quieted down in the night. Calm this morning and clear. Mercury down to 8 or 10.-- It is a curious discovery some investigator has made -- that loose, immoral women have larger hands and feet than their virtuous sisters. Is this then the secret of the pride women have in small feet and hands? But you will always find more energy and intellect in women of good sized extremities. 15 -- Still mild and little snow. 16 Mercury up to 40. Snow all goes to-day. Fog in morning. Drive to H. -- roads good.
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: 1906-1907 (September - June)
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: January-October 1883
Text: 1883 Jany 1st Bright mild day. A highhole to-day; a kingfisher the 23d at foot of Dry Brook. Many pine grosbeaks from the North again here; eating up all the maple buds; the snow beneath some trees covered with bud scales. The past summer has been a famous one for worms; many oak and other trees were completely denuded of their foliage. Great numbers of black and yellow hornets nests also. No severe cold yet. Days remarkably calm. A singular spectacle on the river almost daily. The great...
Show more1883 Jany 1st Bright mild day. A highhole to-day; a kingfisher the 23d at foot of Dry Brook. Many pine grosbeaks from the North again here; eating up all the maple buds; the snow beneath some trees covered with bud scales. The past summer has been a famous one for worms; many oak and other trees were completely denuded of their foliage. Great numbers of black and yellow hornets nests also. No severe cold yet. Days remarkably calm. A singular spectacle on the river almost daily. The great black pool lies still and calm, when a vast field of ice comes drifting slowly along. One day it was the shape of a half moon and it had decidedly an astronomic effect. The ice was of the same silvery whiteness as the moon, and marked with similar lines and depressions. The river was the still, dark, fathomless sky; a small bit of ice here and there shone like a star. The motion was hardly perceptable and a veritable moon, enormously magnified, seemed to be passing my window. At other times a vast field of ice will take the form of some the continents -- one day it is Africa, another North or South America that drifts into my field of vision, with bays, capes, peninsulas, rivers, mountains all clearly sketched. The absence of wind for the past ten days causes the ice to mass in this way and assume these suggestive forms. I have never seen it so before. The river has just pulled his icy coverlet over him again and is in for a nap. How I miss his bright sparkling face before my window! The white plain down there looks more like a grave than a bed. 9 Winter grows more and more severe. Yet a dozen or more bluebirds here yesterday and to-day, also a "highhole" again to-day. The pine grosbeaks in great numbers; the extremes meet. 10 Thermometer down to 4 above with driving wind and snow. 25 To N.Y. this morning, wife and J follow in the afternoon. Feb. 13 Back home again. A miserable time in N.Y. Could I ever live in and get attached to such a city? Hard, flat garish, materialistic -- no sign of heart or soul there. (1883 Feb 13) All of us sick with severe influenza; wife still very bad. Much disturbed by the doctors diagnosis of my case -- a hardening of the arteries -- means death sooner or later, I suppose. How my heart turned to Father and Mother as I walked those streets with that thought upon me. I seemed to see them afar off side by side, perhaps in a wagon or sleigh, as if on a journey, doubtless some image or impression I had got of them in youth, and now under the strain of this feeling it came to the surface again. How beautiful and pathetic their simple self-denying lives seemed to me, beside all the vanity and glitter of New York! Day after day, that image of them arose before me always the same. Oh if I could have gone to them as in youth and again claimed their care and protection! Nothing in the world can take the place of ones father and mother. 18 Today they bury poor Oscar Ames, cut off in his middle life with drink. A generous, jovial man. Many a day have we spent together fishing. once 3 days [crossed out: at] over on the head of the Rondout in June 1879. I went up this morning and looked into his open grave and thought of my own. The sexton was keeping the water out till the procession should arrive. Few of his neighbors, I imagine, will think of him oftener than I shall as I pass his last resting place. A winter of floods and destruction both in Europe and in this country. 26 The first chipmunk today. The amorous spring warble of a blue-bird yesterday. On the 19th went to Andes and to fathers at night. Father pretty well and hearty -- much better than at my last visit. Ice men finished on the river Sat. 24th. Mch 1 Cleared off about noon and became spring like: a soft white film in the air and a gentle southwest wind 2 A real spring day, slight showers in the morning, and then a warm dreaming sun; all the features of yesterday afternoon more pronounced. Snow running fast bees very lively; blue-birds warbling and calling in true spring fashion, a gentle warm south wind. If a man can live without God in this world there not the slightest doubt but that he can live without him in the next, and have just as good a time. How childish this talk is that we can be nearer God, nearer Heaven in some other world than we are here; what irreligion and atheism it is. The child in its mothers wom[b] is no nearer its mother than I and you and all men at all times are near god. Does not the Book say "In him we live, and move and have our being" This is the literal truth, whoever says it or denies it. Tht great embosoming Power and Life of the universe. Call it God or call it what you will, we can no more escape from or live independent of than we can escape from the air. Out of this mountain races and peoples and sects carve their gods and make them in their own images, and set them up on various pedestals, far or near. The God of the Christian Church is only an idol, a long way above the langerbush, but essentially the same -- a creation of man. There are gods and gods, but Nature -- the All changes not -- is not in one place and absent from another; is omnipotent and omnipresent, makes heaven everywhere and hell everywhere. I can hardly tell which is the least desirable, the Christian Hell or the Christian Heaven. I think one would be about as unendurable as the other. Would not a perpetual prayer meeting be the worst kind of hell? Oh. my brothers and sisters what a mess you have made of it! Do you really think that God is as fond of praise, as you are; that he is the vain coxcomb you make him out to be? All the great souls I most love, should according to orthodoxy, be in Hell; I think therefore I should elect to go there. I rather suspect God himself will be there. Julian is full of unanswerable questions "Where is the end of the world, Papa?" "I thought at the end of the world there would be a high wall reaching up to the clouds etc" "Do we live in the middle of the world?" "Can man make wood" [crossed out: Who] "God can make wood" "Who made God?" "I wish God would make people so that they would not begin to get old as soon as he made them!" After many awkward questions it came out that he wanted to know who fed and took care of the first pair of young birds -- the Adam and Eve of the bird tribe when they were little! A more active child, both mentally and bodily I never saw. Mch 9 Little wood pecker drumming this morning with mercury at zero. A plucky bird. Clear sky smoky horizon like Indian summer, very cold. 10 A driving snow storm It is said that one can swallow the venom of the viper without injury. The stomach digests certain poisons, others digest it. 21 Still cold and wintery. Several days of malaria Unhappy. Robins, sparrows, and blackbirds here. The bird will come no matter how Spring delays. 22 Start for homc today, via Po�keepsie, Lizzie, out Scotch lassie, with us on her way to N.Y. No longer our Lizzie. Hired her in Glasgow July 26/82. Very sorry to see her depart. An honest, comely, faithful girl, a sort of epitome of Scotland to me; delicious brogue; a silent girl. An unhappy time here, very lonely and homesick, tho' not willing to own it. Sharply and unkindly dealt with by Mrs. B. I shall see her no more. Reached home a t 8 P.M. father pretty well. In age as in youth the changes are rapid. Of a child we say "how fast he grows" and an old man seems to fail from hour to hour. At sun rise and at sun-set how fast the orb seems to travel! In the morning if he had had a good sleep, father looked quite himself, but sometimes in the afternoon he looked strange to me, blank, expressionless etc. He is beginning to stand with his mouth open in a helpless stupid kind of way. He cannot hear understandingly ordinary conversation, and is constantly asking and coaxing them to tell him what they are talking about at the table or elsewhere. He gets few kind words or attentions. All answer him grudgingly and curtly, but he regards it not. It is not pleasant to shout "Oh nothing father, only that heifer has got a bull calf," or "The old sow has just ate up one of her pigs" etc. I usually helped him off with his boots and his coat at night and tucked him up in his bed. April 3 My 46th birth day this time: passed amid the old scenes. At 8 in the evening after I had helped father to bed as usual. I stood a few moments in the darkness by his bed side while he talked of mother. (talk started by some allusion to my birthday) How vividly his loss came back to him at that moment! how all the past rushed upon him! They had been young together (what pathos in those words) They came upon the farm near 60 years ago; they had little or nothing, but he was never so rich as then, if he had only known it and now her race was run and he was alone! Early in April tapped Gillis sugar bush and tried to make some sugar for her. But little sap in the trees; in some none at all; trees standing in wet places do pretty well. The dry fall and winter, no doubt, is the cause of the short supply of sap. The first hepatica began to show its petals on the 10th. 19 A bouquet of sweet-scented hepaticas to-day, also the first claytonia in bloom. No yellow violets visible anywhere yet. I searched closely for them. Back home this afternoon. While at Roxbury I daily saw and heard the shore lark. They were in pairs and small flocks about the hill pastures. Above the house on the hill they soared and sang. The flight and manner on such occasions is like that of the sky-lark. The bird mounts up and up on ecstatic wing till it becomes a mere speck against the sky where it drifts to and fro and utters at intervals its song-- mere fraction or rudiment of the sky lark song -- a few lisping sharp, unmelodious notes -- heard a long distance but insignificant a mere germ of the larks song, as it were the first rude attempt of nature in this direction. After due trial and waiting she develops the larks song itself. 22 A great bright day. Such days seem large, ample, high-domed, the sunlight is so strong and no screen of foliage yet to shut it out. The few clouds float high, the crows fly high, the mountain wall looks high, the sail vessels going by spread all their canvass. The eye takes in a long distance; space is clear, the altitude of all things seems exalted. First swallow. 27 Drove up for Ida Terpenning; dont get her. On my way back heard ahead of me as I supposed the brown thrasher pouring out his rich strong meddley of notes from the top of a tall tree by the roadside; Am greatly astonished to find the songster a robin when I would have sworn it was a brown thrasher. The robin flies down to a low apple tree a few rods distant and preens its plumage while I stop to observe it and hear its song again. But it will not tune up again as long as I watch and wait. After I have gone on it (or she, for it looked like a female) flies back to the same perch again and tunes up as before. I stop and listen. Not a robin note in the song. Loud, varied, ejaculatory, nearly iden- ticle with that of the brown thrasher, tho' perhaps richer and more melodious. I recognize the note of the yellow bird in it and suggestions of some other bird notes. A curious instance. The bird, when young, must have heard at the right moment, the song of the thrasher, or was the impression ante natal? May 1st Bright day -- a little blurred -- with strong wind from the South making the white caps show on the river. Buds big and fat on the maples; a mist of foliage just touching the currant bushes. Wife off to R for a girl. Season slow -- no heat yet. Julian says [crossed out: that] heaven is the top world. and this is the bottom world. "How does green get into white" he asked this morning as he was drinking his milk. "The cows eat green grass and they make white milk out of it." The willows wear a thin veil of light yellow green. The soft maple below my study is covered with tufts of [crossed out: cocks ]cocks comb red as blood. Langdons woods show little puffs of incipient foliage, buds nearly ready to open. Is the soul a mode and not a something. as heat is a mode of motion, and is not itself an entity? [This page appears to be part of a later entry; See pages 74-80 and 82] Indeed C. was not a philosopher at all, a reconciler and systemizer, but [crossed out: essentially ??? ] an artist in the most deep and radical sense -- a man of action, of deeds, whose leading impulse was a sense of duty, full of prejudices, partialities, hatreds, full of passion and wrath, vehement, one-sided and unreasonable. He shows the same intensity and blindness that men of great deeds like Luther, Cromwell, etc show. Indeed, the quality of action, of concrete performance and duty that are in his books is unique. He has not as much written as spoken. Without aiming at art, he is to the last drop of his blood an artist. Duty, heroism, self sacrifice etc how he unconsciously loves the light and shade, the picturesque elements they afford. The flat, prosy, and scientific modern world, how he hated it. He did not want things explained, he wanted them done. Your thought must become a deed or a thing. May 1st/83 Tuesday What is the complexion of the day? Bright, threatening to put on a veil of thin clouds by and by. Wind in the south, blowing strong, putting white caps on the river waves. Buds plump and full on the maple in front of my window: a mist of foliage just tinging the currant bushes. The willows down by Mannings wear a thin veil of light yellow green; a soft maple here in the fence covered with tufts of cocks-comb-red as blood. Across in Langdons woods one sees little yellow puffs of incipient-foliage-buds ready to take wing and swarm. Crows, wrens, robins, and phoebe birds with building material in their beaks. Passed the vacant Frothingham house this morning; saw where a high hole had drilled into the tall wooden Grecian pillars -- (May 1, 1883) Into one he had fairly gained an entrance through the smooth band at the top, and was busy in the interior as I approached. Seeing me he hastened out and off. I never knew the like before. How he or she came to avail himself or herself of that great hollow interior for nesting is a mystery. When the bird was at work the blows could be distinctly felt by putting the hand on the base of the column. What a touchstone these early spring days are to reveal the most warm and moist, the most genial spots in the fields. How they are touched and streaked with green! The turf awakening earliest upon the most fertile places [crossed out: usually in] or near the spring runs and along the stone fences. 2nd Another fair day, slightly veiled -- like yesterday but with more heat and less wind. At sun rise this morning the river was like a mirror, duplicating the opposite shore perfectly. Presently a breeze came and tarnished it, or made it white like ground glass. The river idealizes the landscape. It multiplies and [crossed out: enhances] hightens the beauty of the day and season: a fair day it makes more fair, and a tempestuous day it makes more wild. The face of winter it makes doubly rigid and corpse-like; and to the face of spring [crossed out: and summer] it adds new youth and sparkle. 3 A delicious day from the south, borne hither on a soft gentle south wind. A day like a bride, smiling with a sweet happy pensiveness. Every bud swelled perfectly to-day; the maples just ready to shake out their tassels. The catbird here this morning, full of song. The wood-thrush due, but not yet heard by me. Last night saw the first bumble bee gathering pollen from the dicentra. She did not bite through the spurs for this but went in at the throat. She had probably gathered the honey from the spurs by slitting them in the morning. These southern days blow the shad up the rivers; they come with the same breeze that brings the birds. They are probably just as sensitive to the heat or cold of the day, as are the creatures of the air. 4th What a chorus of bird-music this morning just at day break; robins, wrens, sparrows, phoebes, and purple-finches. Birds appear to sing devote the time between their first waking and [crossed out: the] when it is light enough to see to gather food, to song. As the light gets strong and the sun is about to appear, the birds are suddenly silent. Work now begins, -- building and breakfasting. The weather waves are reversed to-day -- wind from the north -- a northern day, not so soft and wooing, but still fair with whitish sky. We seem to have entered upon one of those rare spells of weather to which Emerson refers : "The wind may alter twenty ways A tempest cannot blow." P.M steady north wind to which the southward-bound schooners open their great sails, one slanting each way like butterflies wings. A line of white foam visible along this side like a broad chalk [crossed out: line] mark nearly a mile long. Singular, why the foam should disperse itself in such a straight line, and maintain that position for hours. 5 Threatens rain which all things need. Heavy, moisture laden air from the south, with soft indistinguishable clouds. This afternoon the river a great softly crinkling lake or pool, full of soft [crossed out: li] gray light. Just one year ago to-night we left home for our Atlantic voyage. 6th Sunday Fine rain last night, a slow, dripping May rain -- an English or Scotch rain, that has imparted an English vividness of green to the grass. The season somewhat more advanced than last year at this time. Why does one always think of the cat-bird as feminine? The song of the male is like the vivacious conversation of a proud and sprightly w woman of the world. Finished Mrs. Carlyles letters last night. Have hardly skipped a page altogether. Why does one read them so entirely? Probably because there is not a dull line in them -- not a false note in the matter of style or rhetoric. A more clear, incisive, telling way of putting things would be hard to find. Yet there is nothing in the letters -- merely a record of her own ups and downs -- not a ray of light cast upon anything but her own personal matters and feelings -- very little upon Carlyle himself and none at all upon his works and thoughts and genius. It is the sprightly and charming gossip of a life long invalid, to whom the great problem is how she is going to live from day to day in this miserable world of nerves and kitchen maids, and be as a buffer between her husband and everything that might, could or would annoy him. Unless she can receive every blow upon herself, unless she can gather every shaft into her own bosom she is wretched. When she cannot aid him, she is more worried than he is. When she hears him jump out of bed at night above her head, because the demon of sleeplessness has posssed him, it brings her heart into her throat, and she agonizes until she hears him return to his couch [crossed out: again]. When he is on a journey, she is made sick by her mental wrry. Most wives of authors are probably jealous of their husbands tasks; they are kind of rivals upon which they rarely look kindly. Mrs. C. was no exception to this rule. Frederick and Cromwell were her enemies. She wanted a famous husband, but did not seem willing to pay the price. She married for ambition but was not content with its fruits. She pitched her tent upon the mountain tops and then sighed for the cozy valley. Did she expect ambition would breed love: That the Cedars of Lebanon would bear roses? Carlyle loved her, but it seems to have been a kind of neuter-gender love. He was probably deficient in a wholesome human sexuality; not a woman hater, or man-hater properly speaking, but a despiser of all human weaknesses and frailties. He wanted just that kind of charity -- and sympathy, [crossed out: which] and just that tact and divination with women, and [crossed out: which] tenderness toward men, which the alloy of a softer metal with his splendid genius, would have begotten. To the arts and instincts, and insight of the sexes, he was a stranger. Tis a pity had he had not a little more of the Burns in his composition, he was Scotch in everything but this very Scotch trait; while Mrs C seems to have been eminently Scotch in this respect, 7th The fern when it first comes up, looks like a creature just born still wrapped in the placental membranes. It looks as if it needed some maternal tongue to lick it into shape. Discovered yesterday that the hickory, with its swelling [crossed out: gummy] buds, gives out a pleasing gummy odor at a few rods distance. What a perfume a forest of them would emit! No peach [crossed out: or cherry] (yes) blossoms yet. Shad-tree in blow. Cool, good grass weather. 8 The warmest day yet, almost passes for hot with ones winter clothing on. A sky white and full of vapor like the English. Near1y all the birds here. The bobolink and king birds this morning. The woods full of warblers -- nearly all kinds. The swampy places in the woods yellow with marsh marigolds. How gay they look seen through and beneath the leafless under-brush; thick sprinkled stars of gold. I notice that our short tailed meadow and field mouse is quite at home in the water -- nearly as much the muskrat. Yesterday I saw one swimming beside the trunk of a tree that lay half submerged in a large pool; When he saw me he dived beneath the tree as if the water was his proper element. At another time one came out from under a wall on the current of a swollen spring run, and seeing me near at hand dove [crossed out: into the water and] disappeared into the water just as the muskrat would have done. Sugar maples in bloom and the honey bees busy. The soft maple blooms have turned brown. A pleasant ride to Rondout and ret. on the little boat. Also a good walk back in the woods to Martin's. Water thrush in song. Great crested flycatcher [crossed out: in blo] here in afternoon. Seven years ago and also eight years ago noted the arrival of same birds on 8th and 9th. The "punctual birds" indeed. They seldom vary but a day or two in their arrivals from year to year. 9. Bright most of the day; wind north; getting rather dry. No thoughts or impressions to-day. At work all fore-noon laying stone about the house. 10 Partly over cast, but with dry clouds. The river full of gray light, light as the sky. Each seperate tree across in Langdons woods is now fainty sketched by its opening foliage, as if a painters brush had just touched the neutral canvass with light yellow-green paint, suggesting each individual tree. Such a variety of tints too at this season of May! every species of tree showing its kind from afar, as much so as in autumn. By and by, all individuality of colors, forms etc. will be lost in the mass. The yellow fringe of the sugar maples, the brown and red of the soft, the mingled white and brown of the shad trees, the deep, pea-green of the poplars, the vague misty tops of the oaks etc. 11 A day of slight rain from the S and S.W. clearing in the if afternoon. An English or Scotch day in the forenoon; American in the afternoon; That line of blue sky in the west which increased, pushing the clouds back and defining the fair weather and the foul as sharply as land and sea, was American. I saw nothing like that abroad. Johnson and his boy came today at 2 P.M. Feel like a boy again; the face of Nature has an added charm. So much for this brief feeling of companionship 12 Brilliant day; with drifts of cherry blossoms against the fresh new green. We lounge about, listen, talk, and admire, absorbing the May beauty at every pore. J. says the sugar maple blooms [crossed out: isnt] clusters of delicate yellowish-green fringes, depending from little canopies of just hatched leaves, in some way suggest oriental decoration. There is much more grace and delicacy in the bloom of our maple than in that of the European. The soft maples were loaded with bunches of scarlet keys, a lovely mass of color against say mingled larches [crossed out: and] spruces and hard maples. The leaves but just out and not yet shining (on soft maple). Such a clear day! The masses of snow white cherry blossoms, the tender new green of the grass the pure blue of the sky, the clear sunlight flooding all. Everything in May has the freshness of a child just clad in simple new garments. The light pea green of the poplar, how pleasing. The elm and the soft maple form and mature (?) their seeds before their foliage is fully out. 13. A bright day, rather cold. A walk to the woods, all of us. Columbine nodding from the rocks. A mink fishing in the water at the middle falls. In the afternoon with J. to Milton to call on Mrs. Foote, a charming woman. 14 Frost last night. J. leaves today. Peach trees just opening. (May 1883) 15 Quite a heavy rain last night with thunder. Cool -- to day and cloudy. A rose-breasted grosbeak in song nearly all day in the fruit trees, a rich mellow warble like the robins but finer. For three successive days I have seen the grosbeak -- probably the same bird. On Sunday he snipped off the cherry blossoms and devoured the ovary, or germ of the fruit. It was a pretty sight to see him reaching for the white blossoms between snatches of his song, the blush rose upon his showy breast showing finely. 16 8 A.M. This is one of the mornings when the river seems more than usually alive -- all sparkle and animation. There is a play and shimmer of sunbeams upon its surface that is like the dancing and mingling of ten thousand silver fireflies; or is it like the incessant patter of great rain drops, each one making a little spark of silver light. Beneath all there seems an electric tremulousness and vibration in the body of the river itself -- only an illusion of the eye, I suppose. Air, water, earth -- fluid, liquid, solid -- a gas, a solvent, a salt -- of these we are made. 17 Another brilliant day. Spend it in Olive, whither I went yesterday in search of a horse. A slight frost last night at Father Norths. Up early in the morning, and after breakfast start for the mountain. Reach Winchels, the last house under the shadow of Tice Ten Yke about 8 a.m. What a view beneath me, nearly half the county of Ulster like an open map at my feet. The mountains bear and leafless yet; a mist of foliage and banks of cherry and plum blooms in the lowlands; the sky hard and brilliant. A little cemetery on a knoll, its ranks of white tombstones shine from afar; as I saw it from beneath, I thought some one had just been hanging out their washing. The most sightly place I ever saw for a graveyard. In reply to my remark about the view etc, the old farmer (born and reared on the spot) said yes, he looked off nearly every day, liked to look off and around to see what folks were doing, who was plowing, sowing, etc. Bought the little horse -- a bright bay, my third horse, and brought him home to his stall at eve, walking in all about 16 miles. What a change from his mountain perch to these low lands! From the field where he was plowing you could look right up into the rough bearded face of Tice Ten Yck, and almost count the trees and the rocks. At Father Norths found the fringed polygala in bloom on mossy knolls in the fields; also the anemone, also mitrewort. Father North well, but getting yearly more lame and used up. A great many little pewees in Olive; and Hurley, never saw so many before. Common as sparrows. One pair building a nest in an apple tree nearly above the house-roof. Birds that sing occasionally on the wing: Song sparrow (rarely) Purple finch (frequently) Oriole ( " ) Meadow-lark (rarely) Indigo-bird (not so rare) Golden crowned thrush (often) Bokolink ( " ) Shore lark (in April) Yellow bird (often) Maryland yellow throat (occasionally) On a bright day like this just one year ago, I first set eyes on Scotland a day never to be forgotten. 18 Still brilliant; no softness yet in [crossed out: nature] the air. The carpenter bees at work and climbing in mid air about their holes. Oh, for a soft wet spell. Oh, for the liquid side of May. One hates to see the ground bake or freeze this month. 19 Still bright, a little warmer, Now at 8 a.m. a soft, bluish vapor -- the vapor of morning, fills the river valley and dims the opposite shore. The Mary Powell goes by -- her first trip of the season, flags flying, smashing the glassy surface and making a big noise in the morning stillness. The trains glancing through the cool deep shadows of the opposite shore, their plume of steam, most visible are agreeable to me. [crossed out: Now at 8] 19 Now at 8.25 the morning dance and sparkle of the river has just begun to go on till the sun is an hour higher and or till the breeze becomes too strong. Indigo-bird, wren, cat-bird, oriole, and sparrow, the principal songsters this morning. One year ago this morning walked from Ayr to Alloway in Burn's country, and first heard the English song birds. What a morning! A remark of Julian: "The heaven-world owns this world," spoken as he lay meditating on the sofa. 20A quiet, overcast Sunday. A swam of Italian bees yesterday in the old apple tree. The rich waxy smell of the balm of Gilead, is now upon the air. 21Overcast -- wind in the S.W. Leaves nearly all out; the plane tree and the chestnut the most tardy. It seems there is one case in which a half is equal to the whole -- contradicting all laws of quantity. The past is an eternity; the future is an eternity; one is equal to the other, and either is equal to both. One eternity is equal to any number of eternities. This is Bacons idea. The way out of the dilemna is that time does not really exist; it is not a quantity, a thing, but a law or a mode of the mind. Space is a negation, so is time, else there is no immortality. 22. May turns her cold wet side to us this morning. Heavy rain last night with thunder and lightning; kept me from sleep. Wind north or N.E. this morning with spirts of big dropped rain; river streaked with broad chalk marks of foam. The pedals of apple blossoms lay like unmelted flakes upon the grass and gravel. 23 Clearing to-day, after a good rain. Weather warm and 'kind o' thundery' looking this morning. Clears off in the afternoon. 24 Cool and nearly clear, wind North. Foliage pretty well out, but very pale and tender looking yet. Leaves of the apple-blossoms drive by like snow flakes. Langdon�s woods seem in a state of ebulition. Some of the tree tops seem to boil up through the mass. "Knowtst thou what made yon wood-birds nest Of leaves and feathers from her breast." Says the Emersonian calendar of this date. Now it is not true as here implied that the wood bird or field bird either, feathers her nest from her own breast. But few birds, aside from the water fowls, feather their neat at all. The house-wren and swallow and [crossed out: occas] feather their nests [marginal note: Kinglets, Winter wren and chickadee also. Found a feather or two in phoebes nest.] but not from their own bodies; they pick up hen�s or other feathers when they can find them. The domestic g hen and goose seem to shed a few feathers from their own bodies to line their nests with. In England I noticed that the willow wren used a good many feathers from the poultry yard in its nest. Our birds make the interior of their nests soft with moss, hair, fine grass etc. Many wood birds use leaves, but not one uses feathers. But this kind of liberty with facts the poet is perhaps permitted to take? since he but uses a symbol or form of speech as old as literature itself. The bird models her nest with her breast. An old French poet, Pierre d'Auvergne, said in the 12th century: "Never was a song good or beautiful. which resembled any other." Quoted by Emerson in "Letters and Social Aims" Perceive that a handful of the wild geranium blossom has a faint odor like apple-bloom, a mere hint. A bumble-bee may be caught for a moment in a spiders web, but it will not hold him. The spider flees on beholding the big game he has caught, and from a corner watches the ruin of his fabric. 4 P.M. A strangely bright afternoon. One of those washed and c1eansed days -- the river a deep steel blue, On this day last year in Scotland the trees were heavy with foliage, except the ash, which is tardy there as here. A few apple blossoms lingered on the trees. The grass was much higher than here -- high enough to hide the corn-craik. Many birds had young nearly grown -- the Starling, the blue bonnet etc. Potatoes were several inches high, oats hid the ground etc. Young crows were nearly ready to leave the nest. 25. Bright day -- getting warm. The hot spell of last May near at hand. To Coxsackie to the bank. The sugar berry tree -- Celtis -- is one of the last to leave out, and it does so in spots and by sperts, a twig here and there in full leaf while the rest of the tree shows no sign. At first you think the tree dead or dying it acts so strangely, but by and by the branches all wake up and clothe themselves. The rain of a few days ago caused that green uncanny blossoming of the cedar-plums -- a sort of mock ugly bloom. These "plums" are a morbific growth or excrescence -- a fibrous tumor -- and a jealatinous or fungus growth springs from them like long yellow petals. They are cold and clammy and show amid the foliage like fruit or flowers. When the rain ceases, they dry up and disappear (the central neucleus or fibrous growth remains of course) and revive again the next rain 26. Go home to-day. Bright and pleasant. Walk up from the depot with a basket of shad. The boys milking, Eden and Willie just home from looking at farms. Father well; greets me without his accustomed tears, because he is so well. Says he feels nearly as well at heart as ever he did. He looks strong and more himself than a long time before. Only slight signs of buds and foliage on the tops of the mountains. 27 Sunday. To Abigails; then to the hemlocks; in the afternoon in the sapbush and above the woods with Hiram. Day bright after last night's rain. The painted trillium out in the deacon woods -- very pretty. One of the handsomest of our wild flowers. 28 To Stamford to examine the bank; then to Homer's. After supper go up in the cedar swamp. Find Labrador tea in bloom -- flower like the laurel, not white as Gray says, but purple-pink. The painted trillium everywhere in the dark, mossy spongy woods. The hermit thrush singing divinely. 29 Rain and wind in morning walk up from depot. 30 To Roses brook with Curtis fishing. Take 32 trout in the old stream of my boy hood. Bobolinks with peculiar song, two or three notes like rapid picking of guitar or violin string. Several with that peculiarity in adjoining meadows, noe like them [crossed out: at] in home meadows. Sparrow's nest with young, and one with 5 eggs. Day bright and lovely with rain at night. Painted trillium again as we cross mountain. Apple trees in bloom. 31st Rain in morning; clearing in after noon. Come back home. Domestic skies still dark and lowering, with spurts of rain and forked lightning. Life would not be worth if I was obliged to please Mrs B. June 1 A peaceful June day; perfect in temper, in mood, in everything. Foliage all out except on button balls and celtis, and with its dark green summer color. A few indolent summer clouds here and there; little breezes that hardly make the bows wag, or hardly tarnish the deep blue of the river -- clean, bright tranquil day -- the full grown rye heads nodding or gently stirring like the crowded figures at a reception. The vireos cheerful warble echoes in the leafy maples; the branches of the Norway spruces and hemlocks [crossed out: are tipped with] have got themselves new light green tips; the dandelion sphere of ethereal down rises above the grass; the first red and white clover heads are just out; the bird choir still full and animated. (Yellow rock rose in bloom down near the river). The keys of the red-maple strew the ground; the early everlasting is shedding its cotton and with the down of the dandelion, drifts on the air. 2d Another faultless June day. Solid shadows under the trees or stretching down the slopes. A day of gently rustling and curtseying leaves, when the [crossed out: ge] breezes almost seem to blow upward. The grain slowly stirs and sways like a vast assembly. How the chimney swallows chipper as they sweep past! Found two in my Study on my return, one dead, the other clinging to the wall with half outstretched wings, nearly senseless. I took it to the open door when it seemed to revive and flew slowly away. I now see the explanation of that stiff, curious, jointless flight of theirs, the forearm of the wing is so long, and the other joint: so short; apparently the wing bends only at the [crossed out: shoulder] wrist. How does this help them in their cork-skrew descent into chimneys etc? In the afternoon came Miss T. my Po'keepeie correspondent, and we had a delightful walk and saunter in the woods, ladies slipper, aplectrum and pogonia in bloom. Found the domed nest of the golden crowned thrush with 5 eggs. 3 Calm, overcast, the river a great black shadow. leaves stir, but branches do not. A cool, moist freshness in the air. Both soft maple and elm shed their seeds by 1st of June. A long walk north along the river bank, the river brimming full, the top of the tide, the water gently lapping the shore, hardly audible here and there. Can hear the bobolinks and brown thrasher sing on the other side. A phoebe-birds nest on the face of a slanting rock above the reach of the waves. Sweet viburnum and [crossed out: maple leaved] downy viburnum in bloom. 4 Rain last night from S.W. Warm, cloudy, breezy, threatening this morning. A green snake yesterday looked as if he had just sprung up like the grass, or like the new shoots of the trees, not yet hardened and browned. As he coiled mid the live-for-ever one could hardly distinguish him from the plant. A city girl in the country, on being showed a nest of young chippies recoiled from her first enthusiasms with the remark "Why, they are all moldy" mistaking the [crossed out: mould] down for mould! 5 Days of wondrous beauty. Heat at last that penetrates every nook and corner. A long walk back through Brookmans woods to near Black Creek. How unspeakably fresh and full the world looked from his hill at 9 a.m. The morning shadows yet everywhere, even in the sunshine a kind of blue coolness and freshness, the vapor of dew tinting the air, the hue of the river over all the landscape. No new thing in the woods, but medeola, Indian cucumber root. A wood thrushs nest with 4 eggs. Yellow cypripedium fading. Daisies opening in the fields. 6 Great heat, ground getting dry. Day more ruffled and rumpled than yesterday; not so matchless and pristine -- the second brewing as it were, of the same elements. Thunder showers in the distance over the Catskills. The first cup of wild strawberries to-day. Whistling quails yesterday and to-day. Heat about 88. Ended with heavy thunder-shower at 7 P.M. Big fall of water and all heavens artillery , mortars and all, in full chorus. The honey locust in bloom and its rich perfume on every breeze. No plant or tree in England or Scotland with such a perfume. 7. The day after the rain, still hot, but breezy. The sap of all vegetation reinforced. Heat and moisture, both in ample measure the father and mother of all that lives. Now let the increase come. In May, a girl in Ohio sent me a blue wild flower, fragrant, she said. It was polemorium reptans, nearly related to phlox. I had said in "Signs and Seasons" we had no blue wild flower that was fragrant, Hamersville, Ohio -- a timely blow. Early yellow flowers too I said wer not fragrant, when along comes yellow violets from California, fragrant, and yellow Jasmine from Georgia do -- all from women. Hit him again! Male wren feeds female while setting. Sings with food in his beak. Most birds chirp and call with loaded beaks. Hence the old fable that made the crow drop her [crossed out: f] morsel of food when she opened her mouth to sing does not seem well founded, though it is certain that [crossed out: some] birds usually open the beak while in song. Swarm of bees in chimney. -- unused flew. 8 More rain last night. Succulent June, indeed. S. berries blushing under the green leaves. A book to be worthy the name must do one of two things, increase our knowledge, or increase our love. The best books, books of true literature do both but a book that does neither? like most of the novels of the day. It seems to me that neither [crossed out: Howells or] James or Aldrich add one particle to our know1edge or to our love of anything [crossed out: in] under the sun. Their people -- what do we care for their people? Sweep them all into the dust bin together. Has my love for anything, for my kind, for truth, for nature etc, been stimulated or added to? The only thing admirable is the workmanship, the deft handling, like fine penmanship, but the thing penned -- What do I or you care for it? Works of science, for instance, add to our knowledge; but knowledge without love is barren. Only the literary treatment of these things can add to our love. Does the preacher, or moralist make us love virtue and truth? No, but the poet does. and Emerson and Carlyle do. Two little social sparrows (chippies) under my window; the female making , her breakfast off the seeds of a dandelion head; the male treads her 9 times in less than two minutes; but a few seconds intervene between the acts, the female keeping on with her breakfast, the male flying up to a near twig each time. The tenth time she refuses him; will not put herself in the right attitude; seems to say "dear, decency forbids" 9 The perfection of June days. The earlier grasses in bloom, the rye beginning to nod; the motionless stalks have a reflective, meditative air; the brilliant birds, like the tanager and indigo-bird sing from the tops of the trees. The foliage glistens; the white clover and blackberry in bloom -- a month earlier than in England. Last night near sundown a purple finch sang most copiously, full half a minute without a break or pause -- the longest strain of any of our birds known to me. First brood of robins, phoebes, blue-birds, nuthatches, sparrows etc out of the nest. [See also page 26 for a possible additional section of this entry] 10 Getting toward high tide of summer. The air well warmed up. Things tender and moist still; no hardening yet. The moist, hot fragrant breath of the fields, -- mingled odor of blooming grasses, clover, rye, etc. The locust blossoms dropping. What a humming about the hives, what freshness in the shade of every tree, what contentment in the flocks and herds. The springs yet full and cold; the shaded water courses or pond margins begin to draw one. Finished Carlyles "Cromwell" today in the shade of my summer-house. No such histories as this man writes. How omnipotent his eye, how keen and sure his scent! That turn for the higher mathematics which he early showed, doubtless stood him in hand in sifting such a rubbish heap and tracing [crossed out: the] and mending the threads of meaning, He could solve the problem; he could set the equation upon its feet again. The best thing about C's contempt is its perfect sincerity and inevitableness. He cannot help it. It is genuine and had a kind of felicity. Then there is no malice in it, but pity rather; and pity springs from love. His contempt is the negative pole and measure the force of the positive, strong as it is strong. Such quick love. sympathy, tenderness few men have had. He cannot be indifferent. [ See page 26 for a possible conclusion to this entry] Here I sit and see the early summer days go by, playing the old game with nature and life, and making few new points, hardly any I may say. The same old story. But the air tastes sweet and I love to be here. It is a good time to loiter and see the procession pass. Read a little every day, walk a little, work a little, doze a little and half think and half dream a good deal. Nature is in her juiciest mood now -- all sap and leaf. The days are idyllic. I lie on my back on the grass in the shade of the house and look up to the sof and slowly-moving clouds and to the swallows (chimney) disporting themselves up there in the breezy depths. Not always happy; who is? So much of life, with the best of us is mere negative happiness, a neutral ground. Only at rare intervals are we positively happy. As we grow old life becomes more and more [crossed out: a] background or middle distance; [crossed out: very] the foreground dwindles; the present moment has less and less power to absorb us and hold us. Alas! Alas! I am at a loss to know if Carlyle was really so wretched after all tried by the ordinary standard; his books abound in such felicities, such happiness of of thought and expression. He communicates no gloom to the reader, quite the reverse. Probably because no good reason is shown for his gloom or misery. The happiest minds and tempers bear no more wholesome and fortunate fruit no more inspiring and encouraging. 'Tis the most tonic despair ever printed. For one their is nothing malicious or wicked in it -- nothing satanic and destructive corrosive, as in Byron and Heine. It sprang from no personal disappointment or selfishness. It is grand and noble always. In a letter to Emerson he speaks of a "kind of imperial sorrow that is almost like felicity -- so completely and composedly wretched, one is equal to the very gods." His wretchedness was a kind of sorrow, and this is the saving feature. One's unhappiness may be selfish and ignoble, or it may be noble and inspiring. Men selfishly wretched never laugh. He was a man of sorrow, and sorrow springs from sympathy and love. A sorrowing man is a loving man. It was an old world sorrow, the inheritance of the ages. the accumulation of centuries of wrong and oppression, that became a kind of soil, a kind of mould that issues at last in positive bloom and verdure. That ever recurring mournful retrospect, that tender, wistful gaze, that burden of the inexorible conscience not happiness, but a kind of blessedness he aspires to; the satisfaction of suffering and well-doing. How he loves Cromwell and Luther and Knox, and all struggling heroic souls. It was his glory that he never flinched that his despair only nerved him to work; that the thicker the gloom, the more his light shone. Hope and heart never left him; [crossed out: he was] they were of the unquenchable kind like a torch in a tempest which the tempest cannot blow out, so tenaciously and desparately does the flame cling. 11 Warm, tempestuous, a flapping, big-winged day from the S.W. About noon a violent squall rain pours, trees wring and twist as if in mortal agony. In a few minutes the [crossed out: sto] meteor is miles away and the sun is shining; so swift it flies. At 4 P.M. a terrible blow without rain, as if a wind cloud had burst -- The leaves are torn from the trees, and in many cases the trees from the ground. 12 Bright and warm. A picnic up near Staatsburgh. 13 Still, overcast, and hot. Juno and Mercury in the woods, panting with passion, a page from one of the old Greek poets. 14 A change last night, wind blowing like great guns this morning from the north; river as rough as in the wildest March weather. P.M. A winnowed day, every film and vapor blown away. A great bright day, [crossed out: burnished] its toilet completed, washed by the rains, combed by the winds. 15 Very fair; A frost last night in some places, I reckon. The cotton of the poplars strewing the ground. 16 Cut out here and sent to the Critic a little essay on Carlyle and Emerson. Cool last night. The fields milk white with new daisies and their agreeable odor comes over the fence to me as I skirt the meadow. The wild-grape, too, perfumes the twilight air along the woods. A page from the classics again this morning under the evergreens, a blue-jay in low-voiced admiration and approval. Was it Catullus or Aspulius, or Theocritus that I read? Those lips would have satisfied either. Dr Angell and Mrs B. came last night. 17 A breezy vapory day from the S.W, Sun shining in the afternoon. The summit of the strawberry days. 'Tis singular how with fly-catchers like the phoebe the head is still while the body sways with the swaying branch. This helps the eye be sure of its aim. Is it so with all birds? Must investigate. 18 Slow rain from the south. In the morning Dr. Angel1 asked me if it would rain. I said wait till 10 o 'clock; the weather will declare itself then, as it did in rain. 19 Weather declared itself again about ten A.M. and sun came out. Hot and muggy in the afternoon. A tremendous shower came upon us in the woods -- a novel experience to the women. The lunar moth out; wild roses in bloom, honey bees upon the it gathering pollen. 20 Bright and delightful. Dr A. amd Mrs B. off to-day. A call from a young Mr. Tremper of Rhinebeck, a collector of birds, eggs, insects, etc. Wants to see the golden winged warbler. Rather an awkward youth, but singularly honest and simple and fresh. Has an eye for birds-nests; has found them nearly all. Induced a high-hole to lay 29 eggs by removing one from the nest every day; the eggs grew small by degrees and beautifully less; in fact, tapered down to the size of a chippies eggs. Kingfisher lines its nest with feathers, apparently duck 21 A day of peculiar complexion: high, heavy, slow-moving clouds, black-and-blue -- great mass and dignity, river placid -- all nature placid and full. 22d, 23d, 24th Days of wondrous beauty -- equable -- the maturity of June -- perfect as a full blown rose. 25 To N.Y. on my way to visit Gilder. 26 To Fall River last night by boat. [crossed out: Slept all] Passed the night on two chairs -- rooms all taken. The hills and shores along the bay below F.R. have quite a foreign look to me, treeless and grassy. Take train to Marion. See a purple flower in the wet places, as we whirl along, that is new to me: it is probably the arathusa -- called Indian pink, swamp pink, etc. My first view of the plant. The country about Marion low, sandy, swampy, strewn with huge gray granite boulders, with pine barrens here and there. Spend the day at Gilders. The smell of the salt sea shore in the air. Profusion of wild roses; their fragrance very obvious along the highways; more odorous than with us. We bathe, wander along the bay, then into the pine woods. Birds the same as at home, but find the Calopogen and Arathusea, both new, the latter fragrant like sweet violets -- very delicious. 27 To Boston with Gilder, then to Cambridge; hear some of the graduating class discourse their pieces not so pertinent nor alive as those I heard a few years ago at Vassar. A long walk by Longfellows house, then by Lowells. -- all stately, mellow and home-like. English elms in Lowells grounds. Caught in a shower. A long walk to the station (Porter) then take train to Concord. Some fine English views here and there. New England, truly, At Concord we wrap a t the door of an empty hotel. "Been closed for over a year" said a passing girl. She showed us a boarding house; good quarters. At Sanborns in the evening; much talk. Then to Dr Emersons; a worthy son of his father, stamped mentally and physically with the Emersonian stamp: eye, mouth, etc all Emersonian. A fine fellow. Talked well about Thoreau. Said Channing drove away away his family; then drove away his dog. This last act angered Thoreau much. 28 A pleasant breakfast at Sanborns. His new house the most courageously plain and therefore the most pleasing of any recent house in Concord. No airing of "architecture" in it. A combination of brick and wood; great success. Gilder and I walk to Walden Pond; much talk and loitering by the way. Walden a clean bright pond, not very wild. Look in vain for the cite of Thoreaus hut. Two boys in a boat row up and ask us the question we have on our tongues to ask them. Day hot. We sit in the woods and try to talk about immortality; don�t get very near together on such a theme, like ships at sea, we soon part company. Words have no meaning when we leave the solid ground of earth. The Language is for this life -- not for the next. (There! what does that next mean? It is false as it stands.) In after noon call on Mrs Emerson, and Ellen, Mrs E. a fine, stately old lady, not decrepit at all. Eye clear, face shapely, mouth good. Would have taken her for the wife of Emerson anywhere, looks distinguished and very spiritual. Talked well, no signs of age but in her snow white hair. Emersons mark was upon her too. It seemed as if she had been embalmed [crossed out: in] by his mind and influence, tho� she by no means shares his way of thinking Something fine about Ellen, a kind of Emersonian Amazon, brow classical dress loose and shapeless, form tall. Mrs Forbs, more like her brother, the Dr in look. Her children, (four of them) conduct us to the cemetery. I correct the boys ornithology in one or two points as we pass along, bright lad of 10 or 11. At Emersons grave amid the pines, we linger long. Then walk to the old Manse, etc, then to Sanborns to tea. 3 I saw nothing in Concord that recalled Thoreau except that his ripe culture, and tone might well date from such a place. On the whole Concord is the most pleasing country village I ever saw Nothing like it in England, where only the poor live in villages. It impressed me much. Its amplitude, its mellowness, its homelike air, its great trees, its broad avenues, its good houses, etc, Emerson and Hawthorne are its best expression in literature. It seems fit that they should come from this place. 29 A long drive through the country to Tukesbury with Sanborn; day hot; thence to Boston when I part with G. -- then home next day. July 1st Hot day. 2d Hot " showery. Ship currants. 3d Showers nearly every day. Aaron came today. Much pleased to see him 4th Hot, hot, and showery, 5 " " " 6 Start for Furlow lake this afternoon with A. 7 Reach Furlow to-day. Spend nearly a week there (till July 12th). have a good time; must see if I can write it up. 14 Aaron left for home to-day and left me sad and regretful. 'Tis a genuine friendship I feel for him. Mid-summer days; the rye tangled by the late storms, is ripe for the cradle. Most of the birds still in full song. Plenty of rain -- three or four heavy showers a week. A great season for white-clover -- never saw so much of it in my life. 16 First cicada to-day. Heavy rain last night. 18 The heights of mid-summer. All things green and fresh. In the morning the river surface sown with great flashing diamonds of light. The loosened bark dropping from the plane-trees, the neud limbs as clean and smooth and white as a maidens. Steeple-bush in bloom, swamp-milkweed ditto. 19 Cool and bright. Start for home today. Drive Major. People laugh and scoff at the Darwinian theory of the descent of man, but the fact that each one of us sprang from a little wriggling animalcula, a little fish that wriggled itself into a little cell and was thence developed, or evolved, is just as incredible to me as Darwins theory. No doubt at all that back in the womb of time, man was equally low and rudimental and that he has been developed through the ages, as every child is developed today from the ovum of its mother. No more did God create man than he created you and me. He created us slowly from very simple beginnings, and he created man in the same way. How absurd any other view is when one comes to think of it. He created him from the dust of the earth, truly, just as you and me are created daily. 30. At sister Abigails since the 2lst. Weather cool and rather wet. Extract from a letter to Wm G Barton, Salem, Mass: "Remember that Whitman assumes and maintains a certain typical character throughout his poems, a character whose chief traits are love, charity, acceptance, and the largest and most intense democratic comradeship towards all persons and things. [this sheet of paper may or not be from 1883. The chronology is not perfect, and the events do not line up perfectly. We believe that it was placed here by Betty Kelley whose handwriting in pencil and in black ball point pen are found in the upper left hand corner] Year? July and August 1883 29 Home to-day, light showers. Found MissT. had been here yesterday. 30 Heavy rain to-day, 3 inches of water with but little thunder. 31 Bright day, not a cloud i n the sky, but all cloud and gloom in my heart. Aug 1st Warm, partly overcast, a ray of light pierces my gloom. 2 Sunday. Lovely tranquil day. Julian [written in a different pen] and I have delicious time down [crossed out: by] on the river bank under the trees. Early grapes coloring up. 6 Warm, moist, muggy past 3 days; grape rot starting up quite alarmingly. melancholy days to me. Life is getting quite stale again. The poem that so troubles you (To a Common Prostitute) seems to me perfectly consistent with this character, and one of his most significant. I can conceive such a character as he portrays in his poems -- one embracing not only the divine, the spiritual, but in equal measured the human, the emotional, the sexual, meeting a prostitute and being kind and affectionate to her, pitying her, loving her, and buoying her up by his tremendous sympathy and brotherly love, She is not unclean to him. She is a woman, a betrayed and soiled angel; he understands her and he at least will not "exclude" her. If he had pitched his poem in the key of high conventional and ecclesiastical morality or in any other key than the one of absolute acceptance and affiliation, it would have been false and out of keeping with the rest of his book. It is just that tone of unworldly equality and comradeship in sin, backed up as it is by his enormous spiritual and redeeming power that so delights me in the poem." Perhaps no other poet of modern times, dare place himself along side of a woman of the street in that way. But when W.W. says that he is "no stander apart from men", he means it. All his poems are to be read in the light of that fact. He touches the lowest and has an actual feeling of kinship with them. Only so can he reach and lift them. This poem is the seal of his Love for woman, and gives meaning to all his eloquent boasting on behalf of the sex. Aug 6th Roxbury. Finished Darwins Decent of Man this morning. A model of patient, tireless, sincere inquiry, such candor, such love of truth; such keen insight into the methods of nature, such singleness of purpose, and such nobility of mind could not be easily matched. [crossed out: I have n] The book convinces like nature herself. I have no more doubt of its main conclusions than I have of my own existence. Following same incompetent observer, he makes a curious mistake about our native grouse, namely, that the sound it makes in drumming is produced by the bird striking its wings together above its back. If Darwin could ever have heard the sound, he would have known better than that. Darwins tone and habit of mind is always that of the master. 6th Very cold the past week and squally, so cool that one needed on a coat most of the time, and frost was threatened. The air full of yellow mid-summer butterflies. The bobolinks drifting about, their ties to the meadows at last broken, ready to depart. I hear their call notes and see them high in the air. Many or the most of them seem already to have gone. To escape danger, real or apprehended, as to avoid a stone thrown at them, bobolinks dive into the grass. You hurl a stone to start them up as they sit about on the tops of the weeds and grass, and they all dive like frogs into the water. Sitting on a tree, they dive into it in the same manner. They are probably the most successful breeders of any of our birds - nothing seems to find or rob their nests. A gold-finches nest in the maple tree near the window where I write; the female sitting on 4 pale blue eggs; the male feeds her on the nest; whenever she hears his voice, she calls incessantly, much after the manner of the young birds -- the only case known to me of the sitting bird calling while in the act of incubation. The male evidently brings the food in his crop, and not in his beak, as he is several moments in delivering it to the female, and does so by several morsels. The male when disturbed by a rival, utters the same note, as he pursues him from point to point, that the female does when calling to him. It does not sound like a note of anger, but of love and confidence. Downy wood pecker trying to break into the cocoon of some species of of butterfly, securely fastened to the limb of a wild cherry tree. Downy alights upon it and assaults it vigorously. "rattle,' 'rattle,' 'rattle' but has to give it up. If it was firmly fixed he could penetrate it, but its long pliant strap, by which it is held to the tree, makes it pendent, and it yields to every blow of the bird. The case is so tough that it requires sharp knife to open it. The butterfly it yields is dark brown with spots on its wings. The flight of a butterfly is so tortuous and zigzag, that rarely can a bird capture one; rarely do they attempt it. It is apparently impossible for a butterfly to fly in a straight line, or any species of moth, except perhaps, the humming-bird moths. A farmer, whom I know heard, a queer growling sound in the grass; on approaching the spot he saw two weasels contending over a mouse. Each had hold of the-mouse pulling in opposite directions, and were so absorbed that the farmer cautiously put his hands down and grabbed them both by the back of the neck. He put them in a cage and offered them cake, bread, etc. This they did not eat, but in a few days, one ate the other up, picking his bones clean and leaving nothing but the skeleton. 7 Very cool last night suggesting a frost. A thin film over the sky today that slightly dims the suns rays. Now at 11 a.m. a few fog clouds begin to develop themselves here and there, springing up like mushrooms, apparently stationary, but growing. A fitful breeze now and then. Does it bode rain? We shall see. My impression is that it will not rain. The boys cutting the last of the hay in the old meadow I hear the rattle and whirr of the machine. Julian and I go berrying to-day over by the woods. Julian said he had a little cloud of a headache. 8 Thermometer down to 40 last night. The film still over the sky to-day but sun a little brighter. No signs of rain, but of a drought. Birds still in song: song-sparrow, vesper-sparrow, indigo-bird, gold-finch, red-eyed vireo, scarlet tanager. The August days already whisper of autumn. Just up from the meadow where I have been cocking and pitching on hay, as in the old days. Aug 11. No sign of rain. Clear and getting warm. This morning all the valley full of fog, level and still as a lake. As the sun came up it began to stir as if to escape his beams. Presently it came surging up the hills, and then ebbed again. Then it began to disintegrate, flecks of it reached upward. Now, at [crossed out: 10] 9 a.m. the sun has licked it all up. A phoebe-bird calls out on the "new" barn, and I hear and see the swallows, in flocks about it. They are getting ready to leave. Gray bobolinks, too, in troops flying about and calling uneasily. The boys in haying down at Abigails. I hear the shuffle of the flying grasshoppers poised above the dusty road. Hens carol, crows caw, sparrows sing, the yellow butterfly dances by, the big house fly hums, the yellow bird circles and calls, the bull bellows in the pasture. A long dreamy August day is at hand. The last day at the old home. Father well but his mind slowly failing him. 12. m. We go over to the old house together, the house grand-father built. Father in a kind of dazed condition, points out to me the different rooms, and tells some incident of each. The first night he and mother passed there they slept in the entry of the west door. Hiram was born in the room on the west corner. When grand-mother was dying they sent for Father and mother in the morning, just at or before daylight. "Chancy" she said, "I have but a little while longer to stay with you" as indeed it proved, for she died in about an hour. 12 At Sister Janes; with Homer in the spruce swamp, picking huckleberries; gather a fine lot. The hermit thrush in song about 6 o'clock. The spruce swamp probably not 10 acres in extent, the site of an ancient lake, a bit of Maine, or Canada, the plants and trees nearly the same; Labrador tea, pitcher plant, spruce, and a thick carpet of moss, in places a "quaking sphagum." 13 Drive through Lexington -- mot before in 26 years; the old scenes where Olly Ann and Walker used to live; stop at Walkers grave by the road side but cant make out the house where they lived when I last visited them in 1855, and where Olly Ann died; all is changed. Through a deep defile in the mountains called the "Narrow Notch." Stay at Phoencia over night. 14 To Olive; get lost in the woods, in trying to take a short-cut. Father North pretty feeble; says his work is about done. We go blackberrying; he picks a few, but it is painful work for him, he is so lame. 15 Drive home through a purgatory of dust and stone. A young cow-bunting being fed by its foster mother, a chippie, and by a voluntary nurse, an English sparrow. The greedy creature acts as if it could swallow both of them. (noticed in July) 15 In my old shoes again: dry, cool August days. The liquid splash of the boats on the river again; the shrill note of the cicada, the trill of the song sparrow etc. Darwin says he has no proof that cultivated plants, when escaped from the garden or left to run wild, relapse to their more primitive condition. I notice that flowers that are double in cultivation, like "bouncing bet" and the roses, become single when run wild. The wild carrot has become a vile weed, and has degenerated from the cultivated species; it all runs to top and seed; so with the wild onion. Our improved fruits -- the apple, peach, etc will not commonly reproduce [crossed out:their] the like kind from the seed, but an inferior. Aug 17, '83 Probably a part of the melancholy view one is apt to take of his own death, arises from the fact that he unconsciously makes himself one of the mourners he loses his dearest friend, himself. But he is just the member of the family [crossed out: that] who will not be present at the funeral; [crossed out: that] who will never hear the sad news, who will shed no tears and heave no sighs. Grief is for the living alone. For alas, the dead do not know that they are dead. Dear friends, I could weep with the best of you, I loved life, but behold my eyes are tearless. I have dropped back into the great ocean of nature, as the wave drops back into the sea, not lost but submerged and still -- no longer a separate identity. Sunday, Aug 19 A fine shower last night; the thunder peals kept us from sleep. It breaks, for the moment, the spell of the dry parched, dusty August days, the winter of summer. The waysides are weedy, the fields and lanes are weedy; the crops are gone except the maize, and the weeds usurp the land; the grass droops, the hidden rocks parch the thin soil and verdure on their backs, as if they were concealed ovens. The shrill brassy crescendo of the cicada fills the air Darwins theory of the origin and descent of man, adds immensely to the mystery of nature, and to the glory of the race. Mans greatness then was not thrust upon him but is his own achievement. We respect him less who is set up in business with a fortune at his disposal than he who from humble beginnings, achieves his own success. Then the theory so ties man to the system of things, and makes his appearance not arbitrary or accidental, but a vital and inevitable result. Who has not felt what a mechanical, unartistic view of creation that which the churches have so long held is. But that all these vast complex results and forms of life were enfolded in the first germ -- that view makes the universe alive -- the veritable body of God, the organism of a vast, mysterious all embracing, eternal power, impersonal, unhuman in its general workings, but manifesting [crossed out: these traits and attributes] conscience and beneficence mainly through the human race. It is a new sensation to come to see man as an animal, the master animal of the world; the outcome and crown of all the rest. We have long been taught to regard ourselves as something apart and exceptional, differing not merely in degree, but in kind, from the rest of creation, in no sense a part of nature, something whose origin and destiny are peculiar and not those of the commonality of the animal kingdom, that this view shocks many. But it is full of deepest meaning to the thoughtful and impartial. The story of Adam and Eve is a beautiful myth. There is an Adam and Eve in Darwins plan too, but they were not set up in business on the home-farm, their garden ready planted, etc. They made their own garden and knew how they came by their acres. There was a long line of humble and stillmore humble progenitors back of them, toiling, sorrowing, fighting, breeding, Grandfather Adam, who ate his steak raw, and great grandfather Adam, who had a tail and lived in trees, and [crossed out: was] had a coat of hair. The fear and love and wonder and terror of God of the old Hebrews seems not misplaced when held by the modern man toward this mystery we call Nature. Science is revealing this terrible Jehovah, not afar off, but here near at hand. Beware how you offend or belie him. Verily, there is no God but God.Aug. 20 A splendid rain again yesterday afternoon. It did me as much good as it did the ground. How the river glints and sparkles this [crossed out: afternoon] morning. The air still full of vapor and haze; another shower may be expected today. August is the month of the yellow-bird. While most of the other birds have gone silent, their work done, their broods flown, the yellow-bird comes to the front and is the most musical, active, and conspicuous. It is his turn now. It is the first bird I hear in the morning, circling and swinging through the air in that peculiar undulating flight and calling out on the crest ofeach wave, "here we go, here we go." The rival males pursue each other about in the most courtly high-bred manner, uttering the most conciliatory, cheerful, even gleeful protestations possible. It has the effect of saying with pleased and happy surprise, "Why, my dear sir, this is my territory, permit me to salute you and to escort you over the line," while the other gleefully assures him that it is all right, and that he would not have any hard feeling aroused for [crossed out: nothing] anything in the world. Yet he does not always leave, and the two do not always separate amicably, occasionally they have a brief sparring match in the air, and mount up and up, beak to beakto a considerable height, but rarely ever actually coming to blows. The opinion of De Saporta (I do not know who he is) that the earth was peopled from the north, in fact that all forms of life, both animal and vegetable, radiated from a common centre in the arctic regions, is the most plausible yet expressed. It alone accounts for the wide divergence of species. They could not, man could not have crossed the primitive oceans from East to West, or vice versa, but given the region of the pole as the centre, when a warmer climate prevailed there, and species have only to move north in different directions to cover the earth. It is singular and con-firmatory, that the races of man found in the extreme southern points of the continents, are the lowest and are much alike, as if our barbarian ancestors had been crowded to these extreme points. I am glad to know that the crust of the earth throbs and palpitates like the belly of a baby. It seems that some English scientists, in trying to determine the influence of the moon upon the crust of the earth, could not find a solid or motionless place to plant their instruments. As soon as their machinery waswas sensitive enough to [crossed out: record] respond to the moons influence, etc. [crossed out: they] in came many other influences for record. There were tremblings and perturbations and oscillations everywhere. The tides depressed the crust; it was depressed on a high barometer; in fact [crossed out: seemed] the solid ground seemed in perpetual tilt and oscillated like a paper globe. There is no bird that uses its tail in flying so much as the humming bird. How flexible and alert it seems as the bird darts and hovers around the flowersIt is its rudder. By its aid it flies backward and turns this way and that. Aug 21st An oriole in a tree in front of my study, rehearsing in a low tone and as if practicing its instrument, its amorous ecstatic song, very rapid, intricate, copious and varied. Is this only a reminiscence, or is the bird really practicing? It is hidden in the leaves, and I cannot see if it be old or young. 24 A beautiful, bright cool day after yesterdays heat and shower. On the whole this has been one of the greenest seasons I remember. Just as thefour weeks drought began to pinch pretty sharply, the welcome rains returned, and all things are again fresh and green. 25 Thermometer down this morning to 55. August days of great brilliancy and composure; the reposing [crossed out: of the?] season, dreaming of fall. Yonder in the mountains my boys are cradling the oats. I see them delivering their strokes with great deliberation, their white shirt-sleeves glancing in the sun. The long fingers of the cradle seize the grain by great handsfull, the high stubble crackles under their feet. I would I was with them.30 Cool, brilliant August days. In the morning, the monotonous ticking and chirping of crickets; by and by the shrill note of the cicada is heard. As the sun goes down the katy-dids and the nocturnal tree crickets take up the strain, and the night pulses with sound. 31 Last of the August days. Wind in the north; Thermometer 78. Getting pretty dry. [Crossed out: Five] Four broods of young birds here yet from a week to 10 days old. Chippie with 3, robin with two, cedar bird three or four, gold-finch with three or four.Sept 1 Dry and bright. Peach-crop a great failure. Have written two short articles, eight pages of the Century in all, during the past two weeks: "Birds' Eggs" and "A Glance at British Wild Flowers." 6 Dry and dry and dry -- besides being cool. Two frosts this month severe enough to cut the corn in the interior. Peaches presenting old. Father North came yesterday and returned today. A good deal of pluck and vim in the old man yet, in his 83rd year.9 Still cool and dry. A goldfinch's nest with young just hatched. The old blue-bird carrying the excrement of the young (her third brood, I think) from the old apple tree. The young cedar birds left their nest yesterday, three of them, 11 Mothers birthday. Had she lived she would have been 75 today. Five years ago [crossed out: she] today she came to see me for the last time. I met her at the boat just in the dusk of the evening. I can see her now as she appeared when she stepped upon the plank to come ashore. A bright, cool day; spent it picking peaches and grapeswith many many thoughts of Mother. "And weep because thou canst not weep, And grieve that all thy briefs are o'er." 15 Warm and moist after the rain of two days ago The first autumn tints appearing -- the sumac begins to burn along the ridges; the scarlet and green purple of the wood bine creeps up the trees and along the rocks. The purple asters, too, just appearing. On the sides of the wooded slope faint dabs of color begin to show. Birds are very numerous and hilarious. Most birds seem to enjoya sort of autumn holiday. Their cares and troubles of nesting, etc. are over; food is plenty; the old birds enjoy the society of their young and all goes merry as May day. The orthodox scheme of creation and plan of salvation that is called religion, is just as artificial and arbitrary as a Sunday house, as on any social or civic ceremony. How, then can it be universal, perennial, in fact, true, and affect or concern the soul at all? Have the constellations or signs of the zodiac any foundation in nature? Mathematics are true; they are founded on the laws of the mind; they are grounded in nature, but this stuff called religion and believed in by many of the best souls living, or that have lived, has no more countenance or support in Nature and the laws of the mind, than has the latest fashion in dress, or the latest catch-word in politics. That a man must perforce believe certain arbitrary things and perform certain ceremonies, or be damned in some other world, is the climax of the absurd. Why is he not damned in this world, where he could see and feel the damnation and others could see it. Why is the punishment postponed? The civil law does not go on this plan, and for good reasons; why should the Divine law? 21st At Ocean Grove again since last Monday by the "cradle endlessly rocking." Alone, but pretty cheerful and well. Hardly speak to any one. Cannot herd promiscuously like most persons. The lady that sits beside me at table and who eats a pound of beef steak at each meal and nothing else - a consumptive recuperating on this beef-diet - why have not I spoken to her? I can hardly say. It required an effort to do so and I have not done it. Am I really unsocial, as these people probably think? No person can long more for companionship than I do, but I cannot mate right and left with this class of people. In fact, I generally separate from those of my countrymen such as I meet at summer hotels and on ocean steamers as oil separates from water. They leave me and I leave them. I am not the least bit of a cosmopolitan. I am at home no where but in my own nest and in my own thoughts. I am aware that I carry a shell; I have to, my meat is so tender. I cannot cross my thought except with a person much like myself; it must be a closely allied species. Long walks on the beach, on the embroidered marge of the sea; broad scalloped borders, vanishing and returning; frills of lace, sea-foam mantillas or shawls throw the sands perpetually at my feet, The waves are like great troughs that upset and spill as soon as they touch the sand. How they rock and ride far out but are capsized upon the beach. But few objects of interest upon the beach, or the land. No shells, no birds, except now and then a scared flock of the little beach snipe. A wild bean near the shore new to me. Note a few insects, the ticker. Tick, tick, tick, he goes, as if picking some fine string. The crickets have a little different [crossed out: chirp] voice - more silvery and free. Dug out several spiders from their deep holes in the sand; savage hairy fellows with enormous jaws, capable of drawing blood, I should think. When teased with a straw they spring upon it fiercely and fasten their fangs in it. Eight-eyed; two on the top of the head, two immediately in front, and a row of four small eyes beneath these; all round, black fierce, shining like small beads. Through my small pocket-glass the creature looks like a brown and gray hairy woodchuck. Their holes are a foot or more deep, lined with a web at the top, for an inch or two, that prevents the sand from falling in. A whistling old woman in a room near mine; the first specimen of the kind I ever saw; whistles as well as a man. A short, fat, dumpy, jolly, outspoken woman; eats like a sailor, criticizes the victuals at the table and tells the waiters she will have to go into the kitchen and show the cook how to cook, etc., but all in a way not a bit offensive. Her husband a helpless invalid, apparently a paralytic. "I do wish the good Lord would take him," I heard her say, "but yet I must do everything I can for him." She whistles but one tune so far. 23 Sunday. A walk to Elberon and back, up by the road and down by the beach, my shoes in my hand, Had a look at the house where Garfield died. Plenty of rose gerardia in bloom along the road, the prettiest of our late blooming flowers except the fringed gentian -- more beautiful than the British hair-bell. Have discovered that my ticking insect is a large green grasshopper like the katydid. Its instrument is in the same place. In making the sound it opens it wings on its back, and then slowly brings them together. 26 Finished Darwin's 'Origin of the Species' last night. A true wonder book. Few pages in modern scientific literature so noble as those few last pages of the book. Everything about Darwin indicates the master. In reading him you breath the air of the largest and most serene mind. Every naturalist before him and with him, he lays under contribution, every competent observer in any field. Only the greatest mind can do this as he does it. He furnishes the key to every mans knowledge. Those that oppose his theory unwittingly bring some fact or observation that fits into his scheme. His theory has such a range; accounts for such a multitude of facts easily underruns and outruns the views of all other naturalists. He is in his way as great and as remarkable as Shakespeare, and utilizes the knowledge of mankind in the same way. His power of organization is prodigious. He has the candor, the tranquility, the sincerity, the single [???] of purpose that go with and are a promise of the highest achievement. He is the father of a new generation of naturalists. He is the first to open the doors into Nature's secret Senate chambers. His theory confronts and even demands the incalculable geological ages. It is as ample as the earth and as deep as time. It mates with and matches and is as grand as thenebular hypothesis and is in the same line of creative energy. 27 My chubby energetic whistling woman has had her wish - the Lord has really taken her old man, the Doctor. He died this morning. It is evidently a great relief to her. She eats and gesticulates and belches wind as vigorously as ever, but I have not heard her whistle. While the Doctor lay dying a day or more, I saw and heard her showing people, who asked about him, how he lay and breathed. She would roll up her eyes, open her mouth, throw back her head, and give a sample of his attitude and breathing till one turned away in disgust. Walt Whitman came yesterday and [crossed out: the] his [crossed out: cordia] presence and companionship act like a cordial upon me thatnearly turns my head. The great bard on my right hand and the sea upon my left -- the thoughts of the one are equally grand with the suggestions and elemental heave of the other. From any point of view WW is impressive. The slope of the back of his head and shoulders and back, how suggestive! You would know that was an extraordinary man. 29 Long Autumn days by the sea with Whitman. Much and copious talk. His presence loosens any tongue, that has been so tied since I came here, in a remarkable manner. I feel as if under the effects of some rare tonic or cordial all the time. There is something grainy and saline in him as in the voice of the sea. Sometimes his talk is choppy and confused, or elliptical and unfinished, and then again there comes a longsplendid roll of thought that bathes one from head to foot, or swings you quite from your moorings. I leave him and make long loops off down the coast or back inland, while he moves slowly along the beach, or sits, often with bare head, in some nook sheltered from the wind and sun. The grainy, saline voice of the sea. Shoveller of sands, moulder and carver of coasts, grinder of shells and rocks, beating them up with a pestle and mortar; washer and screener of soils, hoarder of silt, covering the sunken floors deep with the [crossed off: polleb if soils] earth-pollen, reservoir of all rivers; fountain of rains; purifier of climes -- the everlasting, insatiable, omnivorous, remorseless sea.The crescent-shaped waves reaping and reaping only shells and sand; yet I seem to hear the hiss of steel as of some giant cradler fronting waving fields; the rustle of sheaves, the pounding of flails, or whirr of cylinders, the shoveling and screening of grain. The finest, most pleasing surf is usually upon a calm day. You walk down to the beach of a still morning and find the sea has a swing that is epic and grand. It is beating its long roll [crossed out: in rhythmic succession] the polished waves come in running parallel with the coast, and burst like huge casks hurled upon the sand.[crossed out: How the adverse cri] I see new evidence every day how Whitman's name and fame are fairly rubbed into peoples minds. The adverse criticism, the savage attacks, seem like a part of his poetry, in keeping with it, and are probably welcome to him. His poems are not merely for pleasure, to soothe and titivate but for quite other things as well. He has chafed and irritated and aroused the literary mind of this age and put it in a more healthy condition -- made strong masculine types less offensive to it. I was led to this thought by thinking of the sea with its threatening forbidden aspect, its barren sandystretches, etc. and yet its fascination and salty-tonic breath. Nearly all the people at the hotel knew of him and were eager to see and know him, while probably few of the few who had read his poetry really liked it. Yet they could not dismiss him from their minds, or ignore him. He did not represent a mere sweetness or elegance to them but a power, an elemental surge. 30 Perfect days by the sea with W.W. A sort of realization of Homer to me. No man I have ever seen cuts such a figure on the beach as W.W. He looks at home there, is ample for such a setting.Oct. 1st A last look at the sea this morning with W.W. In the early gray light we stood upon the windy verge and saw "the foamy wrack of the stranded waves cover the shore." Looking down the beach the scene recalled November frost and snows, the waves all churned into foam and spume and blown by the winds, the rime of the sea. Great fluffy masses of sea-foam blew like wool far up the sands. The swells were not large and grand, but full of fury and anger. Return home today at 2 P.M. The crinkling and dimpling river looks tame enough. The sea is the place for large types. Hence Tennyson's "and breathe the large air."Oct. 10 The third of our matchless October days -- the ripest best fruit of the weather system of our clime; the likeness of a thousand days of the kind I have seen -- the perfect equipoise of the autumn. The early frosts are over, the fall heats are past, and the day is like a full-orbed mellow apple just clinging to the bough. The great moist shadows of the opposite shore I see through the tender medium of sunlit haze. The day broods and dreams. The hills are pillowed upon the mellow air. Chestnuts drop in the woods; their fresh [crossed out: glist] glowing coats show them amidthe leaves. The birds are [crossed out: active] social, gregarious, sportful, inquisitive. One by one the leaves drop from the trees. A sloop goes drifting by part of her great sail in blue shadow. I can hear the ripple of the water about her bow. The day is retrospective and seems full of tender memories. The playful birds, the springing grass -- the falling leaf, the whispering of the coming night of things -- youth and age strangely blended. The honey bee goes forth from her hive in the true buccaneer spirit, but returns empty. But the squirrels, the jays, the crows, the grouse, find it a season of plenty.11 Nature has no voice this morning -- no motion; she sleeps in the soft haze; hardly a leaf moves. A bird calls or cheeps here and there, the infantile piping of the little frogs or newts comes up from the trees. The river slowly crawls and stirs. The ear is filled with the low purring and [crossed out: ???] pulsing sound of the crickets. Every tree has its own hue now as in spring. The glistening gossamer of the flying spiders like clouds that fly an invisible kite, drift through the air. The fluid snake, running as the brook runs. An open wood fire is a social fire; it is a companion that makes.demands upon you: you must play your part, keep the fuel supplied, the logs jostled together, the ashes brushed away. When I try to write by a wood fire I am perpetually interrupted, as by the conversation of a friend. I must add a stick, I lust nudge the burnt ends. It is the fire to sit before and muse before, and hold intercourse with. 12 Muskrats nest nearly finished; The rat must have become alarmed by the cold and frost of the 4th and 5th, and at once set to work. They probably cannot forecast the weather any more than I can, but are influenced entirely by the temperature of the fall. The fall has been cold, hence the haste of this rat.1883 Oct. 14 Moist sultry days. This morning like July in temperature. Rain last night; leaves all glistening this morning. Birds singing. Purple finch sings as in May. Song-sparrow also. Blue-birds calling high in air; little newts and pipers inflating their throats. The kinglet too in full song as in May. Temperature 80. The young bluebirds are inclined to be brown and speckled. According to Darwins rule [crossed out: ???] then some remote progenitor of the blue bird must have been speckled. Saw a couple of them today (young ones) playing in an old robins nest. They sat in it like two children and seemed to be having lots of fun.Oct 20 Those who preach the immortality of the soul, must face the past as well as the future, or perhaps must get rid of both. An immortal being can have neither beginning nor end. Where was I a century ago? Answer this question and the future is already disposed of. What begins must end. Oct 29 Go to N.Y. in the rain to meet Matthew Arnold at Gilders. Was cordially met by him; found he knew of me and was glad to see me. Liked him better than I expected to, a large tall man with nearly black hair, black close-cut side whiskers, prominent nose,large coarse (but pure) mouth and muscular neck. In fact a much coarser man than you would expect to see and stronger looking, a good specimen of the best English stock. A wholesome coarseness and open air look. They do not refine in looks as we do; they look like a bigger and more powerful race. Arnolds voice was more husky, more like a sailors, I thought, than the other voices I heard. But what is that look I see, or think I see at times, or in certain lights about his nose and upper lip? Just a faint suspicion of scorn. I was looking for this in his face; it is not in his brow; it is here if anywhere. The nose sniffs a bad smell or sniffs an affront and there hovers about it a little contempt. When he talks to youhe throws his head back (the reverse of Emerson's manner) and looks out from under his eyelids, and sights you down his big nose -- draws off, as it were and gives you his chin. It is the critical attitude -- not the sympathetic. Yet he does not impress me as cold or haughty, but quite the contrary. He is too wise not to know what cards to play. In his writing his simplicity seems a little affected, at least conscious; but he knows that there is no card like simplicity.
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Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: 1876-1880
Text: Vol. 1 Diary From May 13, 1876 May 13 Standing in the road over in the woods, I saw a lively little shadow, cast by some object above and behind me, on the ground in front of me. Turning I saw the source of it - the red-start performing its astonishing gymnastics in a leafless oak tree. How it darted and flashed, its tail spread, its wings drooping, and its whole form instinct with motion. Its shootings and gyrations festooned the tree with a black and orange cord. It is the quickest and...
Show moreVol. 1 Diary From May 13, 1876 May 13 Standing in the road over in the woods, I saw a lively little shadow, cast by some object above and behind me, on the ground in front of me. Turning I saw the source of it - the red-start performing its astonishing gymnastics in a leafless oak tree. How it darted and flashed, its tail spread, its wings drooping, and its whole form instinct with motion. Its shootings and gyrations festooned the tree with a black and orange cord. It is the quickest and prettiest of the flycatchers. The game it took was certainly invisible. Each species of warbler, it seems, has its own range and prey. The insects this redstart took certainly could not have been taken by any other bird. In the lower branches and bushes the black-throated blue warbler was pursuing its game very leisurely, picking it up at rest, and never taking it on the wing. About the orchards and open trees I saw the blue-yellow back probing the flowers and buds with its beak, either for honey or else a microscopical insect. The creeping warbler was scouring the trunk and branches for its food--not forcing a way to it like the woodpeckers, or probing deeply like the brown creeper, but picking it up, apparently on the surface of the bark and lichens. The ground warblers find their food on lone plants and shrubs. Each species has its own beat and range. The Kentucky warbler is often on the ground picking off worms or insects from the undersides of low, overhanging leaves.1876 May 14 Nearby all the warblers are here now feeding as they journey northward. May 15 There is always, more or less marked, a reversion to more primitive types, when a highly civilized people are transplanted to a new country. The cultivated fruit--resown on a new soil, relapses somewhat toward the crab. Culture, civilization, cannot be transplanted, except from one society to another equally refined. The European in America is a different man from what he is at home, and of the American in California the same is true. We are raw and crude, and develop and civilize just as fast as we develop and humanize our surroundings. /76 15 Subjects for essays: Association My Possessions April The Swallow Strawberries St. Pierre Notes of a Walker Roads Rain and Dew Dirt 18 Ah, me. how one changes! Once I greatly admired Higginson--when I was learning my trade as an essayist he seemed a master. Now I can't stand him at all. I have no patience with him, he is so thin and cold he does not smack at all of reality he has no hearty affiliation with anything. - Have just been looking over an old essay of his called "April Days," --a very thin [crossed out: pellical] skin of facts and observations blown up with [crossed out: a lot of] copious literary gas.It [crossed out: was an] caused a little ripple of emotion in me to see them go by with the sunken steamer. They moved slowly and solemnly. It was like a funeral procession; there were the great floats and barges and boxes with their solemn derricks--the pall-bearers--and underneath them, deep in her watery grave [crossed out: they] had the where she had been for six months, they bore the sunken steamer. May 24 A delicious bright, strong day. A frost last night in some places--foliage all out--the apple blossoms nearly all off. H's poetry is simply respectable. It has no grit or defiance or wild untamable quality that Keats or Shelley and all lasting poets have.May 28 A walk in the woods. Found the cypripedium, and a small orchis with a sweet, spicy odor like some rare perfume--sat a long time at the foot of the middle falls and read from Cowley's essays--They are capital--The one on Obscurity and on Solitude pleased me especially. A hot dry day--a fine swarm of bees at 3 o'clock. "A swam in May Worth a load of hay" says Smith. June 1 These--yesterday and today--are the shining days. How the river dances and sparkles, how the new leaves of all the trees shine under the sun. The air has a soft lustre; there is a haze, [crossed out: but] it is not blue, but kind of shining, diffused nimbus. No clouds, but the sky a bluish white, very soft and delicate.July 9 The hottest day I ever saw. The thermometer stood at 98 under the old apple tree, where there was apparently no reflected heat. Under the 1ittle plum tree it went up to 99 1/2 in the shade. 1876 June 27 A great event--father came to visit me for the first time. In the 74 year of his age and after I have been a housekeeper for nearly 20 years, father comes and sits at my table, and smokes his pipe on my porch and sleeps in chamber. I can hardly realize it. He is like a boy but remarkably well and hearty, has an enormous appetite, and it does me good t o see him eat. Father is one of the most untravelled men to be found. He went to New York once when he was a young man and saw a manhanged--then went to see the naughty girls who stole his purse containing five or six dollars, he says. He is absolutely without sentiment or self-consciousness. --is of the freckled sandy haired red-skinned kind. Cries easily, and loves a smutty joke. A man of unimpeachable veracity and in his way of strong religious feeling. He never took much stock in me--did not understand me--doubted if I would ever amount to anything (I was of the same mind myself) but now is rather proud of me. Never alludes to my literary work and apparently leaves this out in his estimate of me. We went to Po'keepsie. Father made friends with every body he saw; had an eye upon the horses andcommented upon them and knew any he had seen before as soon or sooner than he would a man. Oh. the questions he would ask people, and the remarks he would make! So untravelled! Oh! may he live to visit me many, many times! July 16 Midsummer: the heated term apparently over--the air clear and pure and looking toward August and Sept. All day the indigo bird sings in the trees about, and all day the scarlet tanager sings also, and between them the wood or bush sparrow sings. The tolling of the crickets or nocturnal insects, has just begun, to go on increasing till fall. Wife gone to Elmira to the Cure.Aug 1 If my writings have any of the freshness which many readers and critics profess to find in them, the secret is that my apprehension of the birds of a scene, of the open air, or what not, is not in the first instance a literary or scholastic one, but a real, personal one. I do not run after the birds in order to write about them, but in order to enjoy them and to satisfy a natural thirst for them, and I never know till after the fun is all over that I am "like" as the women say for an article. Aug 5 Weather hot and dry. All day indoors, reading, musing, etc. What an industrious songster is the 1ittle bush or wood sparrow, cousin to the social sparrow. Indeed, a sort of rustic [crossed out: specimen]country cousin of the latter bird--less neatly dressed and marked, but far surpassing it in musical ability. It begins early in spring--in April--and continues all summer. All through these August days I hear its plaintive trill. It is a simple, childlike strain, like a sweet and tender dirge. On hearing it, the image it calls to my mind is the wavelets of a pool from a falling stone reversed--running from the circumference to the centre. It begins s1ow but high and after a few notes runs rapidly to a point. Sometimes it varies it thus--whew, whew, whew--chee, chee, chee, whew. whew, chee, chee, etc., producing a very rich strain.Aug 7 Heard the cuckoo calling for a long time at night out back of the barn--a true night sound, more fitting than by day. 8 Rose and I went to Sutcliff's pond and spent the day -- caught a fine string of black bass and found and gathered the incomparable white water lily - a delicious day that gave me the fresh new feeling all through that a bath does the body. -- Indeed, it was a sun and air bath. My eye and ear and touch reveled in sky, air, and water. Aug. 20 Started for the woods with Aaron Johns -- Reached the head of the Rondout on Sunday. Camped there 3 days, -- then over to the Eastern Branch till Fridaymorning -- thence out to Big Indian station, 23 miles at one pull. Had a jolly, --an idyllic time. 28 Aaron left me at noon today, and left me sad. The air is loaded with smoke, the day is obscure and dreamy. Our trip seems like a beautiful dream that ended too soon. A melancholy haze envelops my mind. Sept 9 Left for Elmira to visit Wife. Stayed there till Tuesday 12th, when I left for the Centennial -- rode all the afternoon down the Susquehanna. It was new scenery to me and very beautiful -- the green water, the long still reaches alternating with broad, pebbly shallow places -- the bluff like hills, now on one side then on the other, and the long winding curves of the river. When we passed the Wyalusing I thought of father and mother, for many, manyyears ago, while on their way to Uncle Henries, in a waggon, they had to ford this stream and came near being drowned. There were no bridges on the Susquehanna till we reached the Tunkhannock -- a stream like a fair Indian maiden. Sept 17 One must clasp his subject close and warm -- must be enamored of it, must thrust his "semitic muscle" into it, and experience something like an intellectual orgasm, to do any good work. The first hard rain of the season-from the north east-today. Oct. 9 A clear, cool day. Rose and I had a big hunt -- killed a partridge, a pigeon and a gray squirrel. Rose treed them all. Smith threshed the rye on the ground near the apple tree. The mellow thud of his flail was heard all day long. A neighborpassing told him to shut some of his barn doors. 10 I think one begins to lose time after he is 35; at least it seems to me I did. The days and the years come faster than I was ready for them. It is clearly so now when I am hard on to 40. I am several years behind. I have not got through yet with '72 and 3, and 4, and here it is toward the end of the Centennial year. Not what is to be, but what has been, occupies now, alas, more than it ought. How the [crossed out: autumn] nocturnal insects fail as the heat fails. They die slow. The Katy-dids begin in August very vociferously to cry "Katy-did", or "Katy didn't". towards the latter part of Sept they go much slower and [crossed out: say] cry simply "Katy," "Katy", with frequent pauses or resting spells. In October they gasp or rasp, "Kate, Kate"or else "Katy" very low and feeble. Their cousins (what are their names) keep it up pretty well with that low under tone, a pulsing, tolling , or purring sound that fills all the air and that seems to come from no where, because it comes from every where. I notice it has a kind of rhythmic beat. It is the softest and most unobtrusive of backgrounds for the sharp rasping of the Katies to be projected upon. The Katies seem to answer each other, but these little green harpies blend their [crossed out: sounds] music so that it is a kind of pulse beat of nocturnal sound. In making it, they lift their wings [up?] and slightly cross them and rub them together.1876 Oct 24 Went home on Thursday the 19th and returned yesterday. Father and mother well and hearty, though their increasing age was shown perhaps in their lessened sensibility to its approach. Father was not so full of reminiscences as usual, and talked less of dying than ever before -- did not once, I believe, predict his speedy dissolution. Yes, he did, too. I remember him saying casually "he could not expect to live much longer." Mother I noticed sat and held her head between her hands a good deal in the evening. She and I went to Channy's grave on Saturday the 21st -- The weather was very warm and pleasant all the time and continues so yet. Father and I walked down through the meadow one day to look at the young cattle. We stood awhile by the wall where the house of Ezra Bartram, Uriah's father, used to stand. Fatherremembered the family perfectly, and the house also. Ezra died there when he was about forty of typhus fever, was sick only four days (could not have been typhus). Father told who laid him out. His [widow] worked very hard to support her family and now lies there on the hill beside her husband -- at rest for more than fifty years. Father told where the garden was and the barn and the blacksmith shop. -- Sunday evening Father was reading in his hymn-book. and said he wanted to read me a hymn. It was a comparison of Autumn and old age and was quite long and full of things that appeal strongly to people like [crossed out: father] him in whom the literary or artistic feeling or taste, does not exist, but who have strong religious feelings.and etc. [crossed out: Father] He read it with emotion in his peculiar, sing-song tone and I could see took it to himself. I shalllong remember him [crossed out: he] reading it. It was very sad to me. A few years more, at the longest, and he must indeed pass away, like an autumn leaf. My heart yearns toward him more and more as the years pass. Oct. 30 A bright glorious day, but cold in the shade. In the morning I was attracted by the birds - snowbirds, sparrows, and goldfinches back of the barn in the bushes. Presently something alarmed the goldfinches and a large flock of them started up and flew around and alighted in the top of the elm. I looked for a hawk, but thought the birds did not behave quite as they do in the presence of a hawk. In a moment I heard one cry faintly in the bushes, then I saw a large bird which I knew to be the shrike or butcher bird with something it its beak. He disappeared among the thick bushes and thenin a moment or two emerged and flew up onto the maple and followed the birds with his look, threateningly. Not getting a good chance at one, he went further off among the low trees. On going around to where I first saw him I found a dead bird, a goldfinch, in its fall plumage, carefully disposed on some twigs. It was not impaled on a thorn, but was laid upon the shelf, so to speak. It was warm, and its plumage unruffled. On examining it I found the skin broken at the back of its neck. The butcher was evidently getting ready for a hearty meal. When he heard me coming he hurried back for his game, but I was too near and he made off without it flying up out of the bushes and apparently going off. I left the bird, but an hour afterward it was still there.It was a picturesque incident to see the fish-hawk, or osprey, dive for a fish the other morning in the river near Marlborough. He went straight down feet foremost and was completely submerged in the water. I think the divided water united above him. Presently the tips of his wings emerged, then he recovered himself and got up with his fish -- a gold fish I should judge -- It was not large, but the hawk made hard work with it. I watched him for a quarter of an hour flying back and forth from one point to another, on each return getting a little higher, but taking a very easy grade; after 8 or 10 bouts he reached the highest land in the vicinity, but did not alight as I thought he would but was still on the wing. Was he waiting for the fish to die? Perhaps he could not perch and hold a kicking fish.Oct 31st The difference between a photograph and a hand picture is this - The photo falls upon a dead eye, an eye with no brain behind it, and the picture upon a living, creating eye. The living eye sees more and farther than the dead eye of the camera, tho' maybe less accurately. It sees the expression, and the camera only the lines. (I wonder if this is so, or is it all in your eye). In the depot at Poughkeepsie I saw a woman with a rabbit mouth - showing the ends of the two front teeth. 31st The last day of October, 76 � the night silvery and soft -- an indian summer night -- A moment ago a flock of fleecy clouds came rapidly out of the N.W. and obscured the moon, then passed on, leaving it all clear again. The nocturnal insects areall dead -- the severe frosts 6 or 7 of the past few nights have nipped them. Just now I hear, barely audible, the faint note of a single purring insect. Of all that multitudinous band that made the nights pulse with sound, only this one remained. These creatures evidently go as long as life remains. When they stop purring they are dead. Nov 1st Very soft and warm. In the woods back of Manning's I touched a match into the reversed top of a dead red cedar. It had broken off about half way up and hung down to the ground. As the flames began to mount, out jumped two dormice, looking so clean and innocent, their nest was in the close matted branches, composed of moss and dry stuff. They scampered away in opposite directions and disappeared under the stones.1876 Nov 2 A soft, very warm, dreamy day -- a day I shall never forget, carried deep into my heart by a rare poetic and human experience. A lady that had known and liked me when she was a maiden of nine on the prairies, and whom I had known, but had forgotten, now a grown woman of twenty-nine [crossed out: met me by appointment] revealed herself to me by letter, and then met me by appointment and passed the afternoon with me on the hills and in the woods in sweetest, closest converse. She touched me very closely, and the day passed all too quickly. She allowed me to press her sacred lips and clasp her divine form to my heart. It had been twenty years since we had met, and we may never meet again, but I shall never forget her. Nov. 8 A flock of goldfinches in their fall plumage, numbering at least a hundred, have been picnicking about my grounds for a day or two, on the ground among the rag weed, in the bushes and trees. Thisafternoon they were congregated together, and all singing with a kind of suppressed glee, much in the same manner as they do in May or June. There are but few of our common birds that engage in this congregational singing. The snow bird sometimes does -- half chattering, half singing. The robins do it in a measure in spring, but I think of none other. How well I remember this goldfinch or "yellow bird" from a boy, along the roadsides on the thistles or dandelions, or in the orchard -- its peculiar flight in the air, the male circling around and around its course a series of short arches the wings being closed as the bird rises and opened again as it falls -- with that note always repeated as if it were automatic, "Per-chick-o-pee, per-chick-o-pee." Then on alighting, the note, "paisley", "paisley. It builds a sumptuous nest.Nov 8 Wife returned from the Water Cure on the 2nd, after an absence from the 20th of July. She is in better health but still unchanged, still bent on making the kitchen rule the house; the chief end of man is to clean up his own dirt -- health, happiness, comfort, must give way before the broom and scrub brush. The election which took place yesterday concerned her far less than the washing which must be done today if the heavens fell. As a housekeeper wife has many excellent qualities, prudence, thrift, good cookery, etc. etc., but she is never master of the situation, is always mastered by it, and what makes it so [crossed out: prov] exasperating, can never be made to see it, but calls you a fault finder if you hint it. The extreme literary woman who cares nothing for the kitchen, and the extreme housekeeper who cares for nothing else -- which is the worst?9 Last fall a chipmunk had his den in the side of the bank above the garden. I used often to see him, especially in the morning, carrying in corn which he stole from Manning's field. He would spin along from his den to the big maple, then from it to the stone wall next the corn; then back again with distended cheeks. One morning I paused to watch him. He came out of his retreat and cocked himself up to see if [crossed out: do] the way was clear, standing with his forefeet pressed to his breast, precisely as a dapper little gentleman might with his hands thrust into his vest pockets. Then dashed off toward the tree. When about half way or 10 or 12 yards from his den, he suddenly turned tail rushed for cover with the greatest precipitation. As he disappeared a shrike or butcher bird brought up suddenly [crossed out: at the] in front of his door.Half a breath more and the bird would have overtaken him. What would have been the result I am curious to know. This bird has never been known to attack chipmunks to my knowledge. But the squirrel was scarred and saw the bird just in time to reach cover. The bird hovered a moment in front of the hole, as if disappointed, and then went off. Nov. 13 A perfect November morning -- clear and motionless. The air is like a great drum; sounds arise on every side and are heard afar. The blasts back in the cement quarries ten miles distant, are like the stroke of a giant drum stick on the hollow and reverberating air. Just as the sun first showed his firey brow above the horizon a gun was discharged over the river. On the instant a shrike, perched on the top-most spray of a mapleby the roadside set up a harsh kind of call or whistle, suggesting certain notes of the blue-jay, followed by a crude warble. Then he flew away toward the east. It is now 9 o'clock and beyond Crum Elbow the eye cannot reach for the haze and vapor. The crows caw and fly high above the earth. Many bird notes come down out of the air from invisible passengers, that of the purple finch, and that of the tit-lark, [crossed out: its] a band of the latter blurting out snatches of song, the first I ever heard - very pleasing. As I stood over back of the hill, a [crossed out: partridge] quick rushing sound behind me made me jump, when I turned and beheld a partridge sailing like an arrow through among the cedars into Crosby's lot. Some hunters had started her further along the ridge.Dec 5 A day of wonderful brightness and purity -- tapering off of the cold snap during which the thermometer sank to 10. The Fishkill Mts. are nearly hidden by the haze, and the river valley this side is beginning to be obscured by soft white vapor -- a day for one to take his skates and go to the ponds and still reaches in the streams and woods and let himself loose on the transparent ice. Such a day I went once with dear Channy, and about this time of year to Rock Creek. With what glee we flew up and down the winding stream. It was Dec. '71. Dec 29 December has been a rugged winter month -- steady cold and plenty of snow since the 15th -- ice on the ponds said to be 15 inches thick. When an essayist can do nothingelse, he can generalize. Woman will argue against the thermometer -- she can feel, she guesses. She will argue against the rule and square -- no need to tell her the room is so many feet this way, and so many that -- it is too small, she can see, she guesses. Is God less an artist than Shakespeare? But what [crossed out: hornet work] a mess he has made of it according to the sects and the vulgar religionists. [crossed out: he does make] Without a centre-board your sailboat slides upon the water it does not take deep hold of it -- you cannot beat up to the wind. What is the centre-board of a man's character -- will, integrity, depth of purpose. or what?1877 Jan 4 You crimson-coned, delicious strawberry, shaped after the human heart, you are the type of the true poem. Your seeds are the germs of meaning and suggestion the poem holds imbedded in the soft vascular flesh of human passion and emotion. Then your sub-acid and aromatic flavor, your tonic properties, your uncloying barbed sweetness, your keen edge, your liquid dissolving texture, your lyric something, like a piercing wild birds note, your incomparable freshness etc. make you the suggestion of the poets heart. 5 I find it quite impossible to make my pump hold water from one day to the next. I write away to-day and am very full of my theme and the stream of ideas flows freely; but if I am broken off for a few hoursor by a night's sleep, I am nearly dry again and must pump and pump next day a long time to bring the column up again and often have to prime a little by reading a page or two of some virile author. 9 Evening, Just finished Turgenieff's "On the Eve" -- Have not been deeply moved by the book -- was too much preoccupied. [crossed out: but] It is not a story woven of many colors, but of a few simple strong colors -- is elementary [crossed out: but has] quite destitute of the hair-splitting and elaboration and painting of our novels; it is in a low key, but has here and there traits of greatness. One of his characters says, speaking of beauty: "The old masters -- they never hunted after it; it comes of itself into their compositions. God knows whence, from heaven or elsewhere. The whole world belonged to them; but we are unable to clasp its broadspace; our arms are too short." Of a certain opera singer he says, She suddenly passed that limit which it is impossible to define, but beyond which is the province of the beautiful." "Death," he says, "is like a fisherman who has caught some fish in his net, but leaves it for awhile in the water; the fish still swim about and fancy themselves to be free, but the net encircles them, and the fisherman seizes hold of them whenever the fancy takes him." The current English novels are brighter and smarter etc, but this has a charm and a value which they have not. Man is less sophisticated here than in England or America. What command, what god-like symmetry and strength in those Greek faces that has never reappeared in the human countenance. The strength at the junction of thenose with the brow -- that straight high embankment -- it fills me with envy. The modern face as a rule is weak there - the arches are [crossed out: not-so-strong] crushed -- the brow does not rest upon such a pier of strength. It is the difference between the vaulted arch and the lintel. I ask for a candle to read by and they give me a Roman candle. If the moderns are not great in creative works when compared with the ancients, it is to be said that modern criticism is much more creative than was the ancient or any up to the time of the great Germans. 1877 Jan. 27 In youth how completely one is under the paternal wing and shielded from the cold, the loneliness, the desolation of the world. He has the true nest feeling; its outer rim is theboundary of the world to him. I go back home now and try to get back the old feeling -- try to settle back in the [crossed out: natle] natal spot and hide my head behind the old barriers, but no use; father and mother are still there with their whitened locks and are the same, but I am not the same. One can never go back -- that friendly wing can never cover him again. There are things that cannot be condensed much, among them water. Jany 30. An earth of mid winter and a sky of mid October -- sun bright and warm [crossed out: and] with a soft shining haze filling all the spaces. How lustily the crows caw! To the north I hear through the still dense air the whirring sound of a threshing machine suggesting a mid-summer mower. Still I am1877 oppressed with the disappointment of the Fishkill business. I am no poorer than before, but to have lost even imaginary riches -- is a loss. So my genius you and I will not part company yet--we will [crossed out: take up] and resume the old delicious tasks once more. Feb 1st The third of our warm indian summer days -- if the snow were gone it would be very warm; would it be like spring or fall? 7th The spring weather continues -- still windless days, full of a blue soft vapor. I tapped two trees on the 5th Sap runs finely and the deep snow is slinking away beneath the fervid eye of the sun. The air is full of distant sounds, as in spring or fall. Last night I sat a long time on the wall in the gloamin with my pail of sap thinking of my youth and trying to get back the boys feeling whenhe wriggled home from the woods with his pail of sap, or sat down and cried when he spilled it in the snow or at the crossing of the fence. O for some of those magic silver dimes and quarters that glowed in my pocket when the boy sold his little cakes of sugar in the spring! That was real money. It seems as if I had never seen any since those boyish days. I think father yet owes me a few dollars of that heavenly coin that I loaned him thirty years ago. But he can never pay it back in this world. Feb 11th The fair weather continues without a break -- all sun by day and all stars by night. The indian summer haze very marked -- which settles the point in my mind that this haze when it appears in the fall is in no way connected with the foliageas has been thought by some. It is likely to appear any time when the atmosphere is still and the sky clear. One of the peculiar sounds here is the croaking of the great ice-frogs on the river rip, rip, they go in the still nights, and again when the sun first strikes the ice in the morning. It is a singular sound. Thoreau calls it a "whoop", Emerson a cannonade, and, again, "the gasp and moan of the ice-imprisoned flood." Sometimes it reminds me of a huge gong, then of a giant staff beating the air. It seems always in the air and to proceed from something in swift motion -- it ricochets like a cannon shot and glances from side to side. It startssometimes from under your feet, and rips or explodes and vanishes in the distance. Then again it seems like a grunt, as if some great ice-god were turning over in his sleep. Feb 17 Returned yesterday from Phila. where I spent the night of the 15th with Walt at Mrs. Gilchrist's. Never saw Walt look so handsome -- so new and fresh. His new, light gray clothes, his white beard and hair, and his rosy, god-like, yet infantile face all combined to make a rare picture. After ten o'clock we went up to his room and sat and talked till near one o'clock. I wanted him to say how he liked my piece on him but he did not say. We talked about it, what hadbest go in, and what were best left out, but he was provoking silent about the merits of the piece. Speaking of his poems, he said it was a very [crossed out: b] audacious and risky thing he had done, and the wonder was, not that they made their way so slowly, but that they had got any foothold at all. When the conditions were all considered, and the want of anything like matured and robust esthetic perception in this country remembered, it was a great success to have effected a lodgement at all. It [crossed out: one] is a feast to me to look at Walt's face -- it is incomparably the grandest face I ever saw -- such sweetness and harmony and such strength -- strength like the Roman arches and piers. If that is not the face of a poet, then it is the face of a god. None of his pictures do it half justice.18 "Look anywhere, or at any object in nature long enough and intently enough" said Gilder the other day, in confirmation of a remark of my own, "and you are sure to see something." Coming up the hill yesterday from the river, I saw a wood pecker on one of my apple trees, when I bethought me to put Gilder's remark to the test; so I paused and looked intently at the woodpecker, and I saw what I had never noticed before, namely what a facial expression the back-head of the woodpecker has. As I fixed my eye upon him, he seemed to be looking in my direction or away from the tree, as he moved up and around searching for his food in the crevice of the bark.The two dark lines on each side of his head come to a point behind as they do in front, so that the motion in front is repeated behind. It occurred to me that this might be a provision of nature for the birds better protection -- its enemy would think the bird was looking in his direction while it was really absorbed in searching for his proper food. Mch 1st Feb. has been a remarkable winter month -- cerulean days all through -- excellent sugar weather, a Washington sky, but not the W. earth. Today is cloudless, still, and the sun is warm - the perfection of a spring day. The bluebirds have been here some days. 5 Robins here today. Wild ducks on the river some days ago.7 Crow blackbirds here today. A flock of wild geese alighted in the river in front of us, were pursued by a gunner but did not let him get near enough for a shot. A strange sadness and melancholy possesses me on account of father. I fear he is going to die. I can't keep him out of my mind at all. I see my own health is below par, which I hope accounts for my sadness. 15 Father better and my foreboding and presentiment gone -- so much for one's forewarnings. I notice that the male bluebirds were here this year 8 or 10 days before the females. A fine male has been lingering about my house and trees for some time, apparently waitingthe arrival of his mate. He calls and warbles as if he felt sure she was within ear shot and could be hurried up. Now he warbles half angrily or upbraidingly, then beseechingly or coaxingly, then cheerily and confidently, the next moment half plaintively. He lifts his wings and flies from point to point. This morning I saw a female here. They flew together on an old apple tree and seemed to examine a hole in its decayed trunk. I heard a fine lisping confidential, caressing warble, whether from the male or female I can't say. Then the female flew to a near tree and uttered her plaintive homesick note. The male went and got some dry grass or bark in his beak and flew toward the old tree, but the fema1e said "nay", and flew away in the distance. When he saw her goingor, rather, heard her distant note, he dropped his stuff, and crying out, "wait a minute", "hold on" "one word, please" flew swiftly in pursuit. Mch 21 A great event -- Walt came home with me from N.Y. Friday night, the 16th, and staid till 4 P.M. this afternoon. Had our second winter while he was here -- deep snow and thermometer hovering about zero for two days and nights. Harry Stafford came with Walt. They cut up like two boys and annoyed me sometimes. Great tribulation in the kitchen in the morning. Can't get them up to breakfast in time. Walt takes Harry with him as a kind of foil or refuge from the intellectual bores. Walt is mending, and said he walked better the morning he left than he had before for 5 years.1877 April 13 Went home on Saturday the 7th, returned to-day. Found mother and father well -- apparently heartier than in the fall. Father milked and done chores as usual. I thought him less childish than is his wont. I got home about 7 1/2 in the evening. Prince barked significantly, then the hound, which brought out Willy and Father: as I drew near, in the duskiness I heard Willie say, "I bet it's Unc1e John". On Sunday we gathered the sap and boiled it in the woods. I enjoyed it much. Willie took me to examine the banks -- to Hobart on Monday, then to Delhi; and thence to Andes on Tuesday, and home Wednesday by 10 A.M. The weather was fine -- a succession of clear, blue days of almost unnatural brightness, crystalline days from the norththat made the "wise ones" predict more snow. The roads were dry; and I enjoyed the ride very much through the naked, sunlit land. The mountains were yet all covered with snow, and at several places where we crossed them, we encountered huge drifts. The grass was greening a little in the spring runs, and the plow was being started here and there. Nearly every sugar camp had its smoke, and its glittering tin buckets hung to the trees. We saw a butcher bird with a sparrow which he had brained; he flew from the fence to a near apple tree with it in his beak; he thrust it in the fork of a small limb. We saw a wood-chuck also. As we crossed Palmer hill the sun was just setting and the scene before uswas memorable -- all the distant mountain peaks struck and transformed by the setting sun. We passed through the school [crossed out: house] district where dear, dead Channy taught four years ago. There is a new school house there now, and the old building he occupied is gone. How wistfully I looked upon the scene, and the brawling brook that ran before, upon which he must so often have gazed. Friday morning at 6 A.M. I left for the down train. Mother got me my breakfast. The boys and father were in the stable milking. As I turned to take a parting view of home out on the knoll, I saw father and Hiram emerging from the stable door with the pails of milk; Charly was going up the steps; the robins sang loud up in the sugar-bush where a tin bucket just smittenby the sun, sent back a tinny flash. The snow, dirty and dissheveled, belted the side of the hi1l above the house. I went down across the lots. It was a typical April morning: the sun light white, the trees nude, the fields bare and sere; How the sparrows sang, how the robins laughed; how the phoebe-birds called! April 15 This is the 10th clear, dry, crystalline day: all signs indicate a drought: the north wind is having it all its own way. 18 The yellow red-poll warbler here this morning with its lisping, shuffling warble The drought broken today by a gentle leisurely rain from the south. It is a singular fact that in the South the samebirds run more to beak and claw, and in the West to tail. The beak and claw, I take it, mean ferocity, and the tail means brag. The West is windy, the South fierce and hot. One of the most delicious April odors is the smell of the first warm rain. The cold, drenching odorless rains of late winter or of March [crossed out: have been all gone by] "are over and gone," the weather has been dry say for two or three weeks; we have had a kind of vernal drought; the roads are dusty, and the streams again shrunken; innumerable forest fires have loaded the air with smoke; the wind shifts toward the South and we have our first vernal shower, warm and gentle late in the day, and what a fresh renewing smell; ones nostrils are not half large enough to take itin; the smoke, with the poison taken out of it by the rain, is an important element. April 22 Rose and I went to the woods -- windy and warm after the rain. The frogs or toads were spawning over in Manning's swamp. We found Corydalis, Blood-root, dog tooth violet and liver-leaf in bloom. Rose found a black snake behind the wall sunning him self, and barked violently, dodging every moment as if he had always delt with snakes and knew how they strike. I killed the "sarpent" with a stone. The woods were quite birdless -- only a troop of chickadees and kinglets, yes and by the creek the first water-thrush. We sat down by the middle falls and listened to the roar. A tall crooked treeopposite attracted my eye and I remembered that last fall I had looked at it as I sat there as a likely tree for bees. I thought so now and running my eye up into the top, lo and behold! there were the bees very brisk about their entrance in its decayed top. So we found a bee tree without stirring from our tracks. Next Sept. we will see what sweet it holds. A robin has nearly completed her nest in my porch, and phoebe has built under the eaves on the gutter spout. The first swallow today, flying along northward in the most business like manner. 23 Barn swallow here today. What a flood of summer in his first twitter. 26 Chimney swallows here today. A mess of asparagus today. at sundown saw a large band of them circling about the old chimney. 27 Dog wood in bloom -- Currant and raspberry bushes quite green, the former ready to blow. The season 8 or 10 days earlier than last year, and 3 weeks earlier than 2 years ago. The finest April I have seen for years. Only 3 rainy days so far -- a succession of cerulean days, more beautiful than words can tell. In the morning the river looks like a great cool shadow. When the sun first strikes it, the burnished surface looks dusty -- fine particles of floating matter. It is the general impression that the winters are less severeand the springs earlier than they were 50 or 75 years ago; yet when I was home father told me that the year Wilson was born - 1830 I think -- the spring was very early. Grandfather and Grandmother were out to Rochester and they wrote to father to meet them at Canajoharie on the first day of May at the "Conal". Father started the last of April with his team and waggon, and when he reached the valley of the Schoharie, the apple trees were all in bloom, and when he got home, they were in bloom there. He missed Grandfather and Grandmother; they arrive there one day ahead of him and hired a man to take them to Roxbury, paying him eight dollars. Father remembered the eight dollars. Money was hard and slow those days and he doubtless thought how acceptable it would have been to him to compensate him, in a measure, for his time and expense of nearly 4 days. This was 47 years ago. Father was then [crossed out: several] ten or more years younger than I am now. 29 Sunday -- A warm day after last night's rain -- things growing on a jump; a mist of yellow-green creeping over the forest trees, cherry trees in blow -- violets, spice bush, red wake-robin or wild peony in blow and the alder swamp over by Black Creek yellow with marsh marigolds. May 10 New book came today. Like the dress much and am very well pleased with all the pieces, but the last -- the one I set my hearton. It general [crossed out: turns out] happens that the father's pride turns out the worst of all. May 15 Father North came to see us -- an old man, nearly 76, but quite chirp and not a bit childish as I see. I enjoyed his society much. 13 Foliage two-thirds out; apple trees showing the pink -- the season very dry with cold north wins all this month. A heavy frost on the 4th. Many of the warblers, the oriole, the humming bird here. The warblers as the red-start, the black-throated blue, and green, always come about this time, no matter whether the season is early or late. 17 Birds nearly all here -- the cuckoo and tanager this morning; the yellow birds holding their jubilees in the trees below the house; the orioles fill the air with their pipings; theKing birds are here, and nearly all the warblers -- saw the blackburnian and chestnut sided this morning. I have been on the lookout all spring for the white crowned sparrow, and yesterday on my way to New Paltz I suddenly saw plenty of them and today they are here. 20 No rain this month. Very dry and very hot. I notice nearly every day bands of blue jays going silently about, coming quite near the house, whether on a piratical expidition, in quest of birds eggs , or what, I cant say, but I suspect they are egging. I notice the whippoorwills keep back from the river; I have yet to hear one this side of the road, while justback of the hill in the woods, they are very noisy. Why do they shun the water ? The look of my rooster is enough to make a hen miscarry. May 27 The third anniversary of dear Channy's death. Walked to the woods in memory of him. The thought of him attended me. Found the whippoorwill's nest and the nest of the black-throated green warbler. June 1st No rain yet; things drying up. Mr. Carpenter left me today--a modest, hearty , thoughtful young Englishman. 6th A glorious rain at last -- all the afternoon and part of last night, and this forenoon. The ground must be now drenched to its marrow; the rain mainly from the north and N.E., accompanied by slow, deep toned thunder.7 The rain still pouring: the ground wil1 soon begin to run over; we are bound to have more than enough now. In respect to observers, the great mass of men are like the rank and file of an army -- they fire vaguely in the direction of the enemy, and if anything is hit, it is as much a matter of chance or of general principles; but here and there is your keen observer; he is the sharp-shooter -- his eye discriminates, picks out; he sees what he fires at, and hits what he sees; his eye and his bullet go to the same mark. To individualize is the secret of observation. In one sense the great poet and the great naturalist are the same -- thingstake definite and distinct shape to them -- they are capable of vivid impressions. The naturalist walks the real world with his eyes open. He knows a man from a stump at once; the poet walks the ideal world and his eye disintegrates in the same way. Jun 15 Went home again on the 13th to attend sale of Curtis's farm. Found father and mother pretty well. Mother has worried and grieved herself nearly sick over the failure of Curtis. "To look up at his back fields" she says, "and think they are to be his no more" Looking through the kitchen door that evening I saw her busy washing a huge pile of [crossed out: p] milk pans, standing there where she had stood and washed pans for over 50 years. Her face looked quite haggardand discouraged. It [crossed out:impressed] revealed all the care and toil and trouble she had gone through. As she came in it brightened up and she looked more like herself. Mary Jane came back with me; the first time she ever visited me; it was quite an event. Poor Mary Jane has had and still has her troubles. Father brought me down to the depot in the morning, hurrying down the hill to catch the train. Aug 5 My beloved dog, Rose Mary, Rose, died this morning from poison -- strychnine -- in less than an hour. I do not need to write it in my diary to remember it -- it is burnt into my heart. Oh, a bitter day. None may know what that dog was to me. He and Rab were mychildren, and my only comrades. I am quite desolate. Wife is away under peculiar circumstances, and the house is struck with death. We dug his grave this afternoon -- Aaron and I -- but tonight he lies in his bed at the foot of the stairs for the last time. His life was identified with mine as that of no human being ever has been or perhaps can be. He seemed more than usually affectionate and demonstrative in the morning when I got up. Did he have a presentiment of his coming fate? He came to my bed side and whined and licked my feet all the time I was dressing and came near tripping me up as [crossed out: I] we came down stairs. 6. Aaron and I returned from our Canadian trip on Saturday afternoon, the 4th of Aug. havingbeen gone since Monday, July 16th, a long hard trip of 2300 miles, and not very agreeable or satisfying, except the week spent in the woods on Jacques Cartier River, 65 miles north of Quebec. 8. Aaron left me this morning. I am sad and [crossed out: op] depressed to the very marrow of my bones. The thought of my poor dog keeps me from sleeping. 15 Got an new dog in P. with which I am trying to bridge over the chasm -- have named him Lark. 30. Went home on the 23d and stayed till 27th. Father and mother well. Went to Deposit by way of Stamford and Delhi. Sept 23 Went to Washington Thursday night, the l3th, returned Sept. 19th Herbert Gilchrist with me. Mother came down the nightof the 11th, her 69th birthday, and stayed till [Monday?] the 24th Wife is still absent, gone since July 26th. Oct. 2 Weather still dry clear and warm. Herbert G. left me today. Yesterday saw and heard chimney swallows high in the air -- today heard the white-throated sparrow. 5 A terrific rainstorm last night -- filled up my half-finished well and raised the devil. 25 Plenty of rain, too much. Only one frost yet; the Katy dids still quite vocal in the woods. The other night heard a peeping toad in the marsh back of the hill -- looks as if a certain kind of tree-toad did go into the swamp to hibernate. Noted the European maples -- all the tops brushed with gold -- deeper in the green still prevails.1877 Nov. 6 Finished the Canada piece begun three weeks ago. Our first hard freeze tonight. New girl came this afternoon, and I resign the dishcloth to her willingly -- the 12th girl since we moved here 3 1/2 years ago. and we have been whole seasons without any -- beside the precarious help picked up about here, including the girl that wet her bed and chewed tobacco. 14 New girl gone -- another takes up the task. 18 The end of a week of Indian summer. The peach trees have not shed all their leaves, nor the apple trees either. Went to Elmira the night of the 11th; returned the 16th. The 13th was bright and warm and I walked over the hills there beyond the "Cure" and through the woods, filled with long [crossed out: pensive] longthoughts. Sat on a stump on the edge of the woods a long while and sunned myself. At Walden on the 15th to examine the bank -- walked down in the evening and discovered the Walkill, and stood on the bridge half an hour listening to the roar of the water below me. How fascinating it was. It set me to spouting poetry (when no one was in sight). The roar of the water always seems to set one going. The Walkill is a very noble picturesque stream at this point. Solitude is only more and closer company than one can have elsewhere -- the company of ones self. Ones best companions are those that affect him like his own walking thoughts and sympathies -- himself seen at a little remove. The lover of solitude understands well Thoreaus dryremark that [crossed out: he] in his hut there on Walden Pond "he had a good deal of company, especially the morning, [crossed out: especially] when nobody called." Solitude is a severe test of a man, but it is no doubt necessary to ensure deep and fast colors of the spirit. Those [crossed out: that] who are most alone are most like themselves. Travel and society polish one, but then a rolling stone gathers no moss. and a little moss is a good thing on a man. It gives him a local flavor and coloring that one likes. -- Solitude makes one a shining mark for the arrows that men dread, misfortune, the loss of friends by death -- he must meet them alone, unprotected. The lover of solitude sows himself wherever he walks -- the woods and fields and hills and lanes where he strolls come to reflect himself. There is adeposit of himself all over the landscape where he has lived. He likes to go the same route each time, because he meets himself at every turn. He says to the silent trees, or gray walls, or still pool, or the waterfall: "we have met before. My spirit has worn you as a garment and [crossed out: the] you are near to me." He is such a lover of the earth that a new landscape looks alien to him; after a time, may be a long time, it becomes colored, or more properly, enriched more or less by his spirit. The mountains where one was born remind him of his father and mother and he has a filial yearning for them. When father and mother are gone I know I shall have a sad pleasure in the look of the hills where they lived and died. It often happens that I have many un-occupied hours or daysupon my hand in strange towns and cities. I walk out into the country and over the hills and along the roads with long, sad, yearning thoughts. Why sad? I don't know. I gaze longingly into the houses and upon the farms and homely country scenes and occupations. What do I want, what does my heart crave? I don't t know. But I know I leave myself all along the road and I know I send out messengers that never return. As the bird feathers her nest with down plucked from her own breast, so one's spirit must shed itself upon its environment before it can brood and be at all content.25 No frost for a week. Abigail came Tuesday and stayed till Saturday, had a good visit with her, but am distressed with her report of father's failing health. The fewest birds this fall of any fall I remember to have seen days and days pass and I scarcely see more than a sparrow or a snowbird or two. What a contrast to the English landscape at this season, when the birds and fowls are so numerous that they produce an positive effect [crossed out: to any beholder] upon the scene. Have seen but one shrike this fall, and that in Elmira. A few fox sparrows were here 8 or 10 days ago. Much of Walt Whitman's poems may be said to be negative poetry. It certainly is not prose. Neither he nor anyone else would think of putting it into a prose disser-tation. In fact it has not in the least the exact and demonstrative spirit of prose. It is the method and spirit of poetry always. Nov. 27 A moist rather warm November day. Today was buried Woolsey the blacksmith -- a sober upright hard-working man. I paused by the cemetery gate tonight as I went up on my walk and looked upon his newly made grave. His form and presence and voice came vividly before me. Peace to his soul! His tongue stammered, but his hammer never faltered till disease and death seized him. Now his anvil is cold and his fires have gone out. Today too is the 25th anniversary of the death of my little sister Evaline the youngest of the family. A quarter of a century has passed. and mother and father are still living. She would have been a woman now, doubtlesswith children of her own. I have thought of her much to-day and called up that sad far-gone time. I helped Wilson skin a fox in the morning; he had caught it in a trap in a hole in the rocks, and he too has been in his grave thirteen years. In the woods today heard everywhere the small tree-toads piping (not toads but the newt). This is proof positive to me that they do not go to the swamps to hibernate, but winter in the woods, either in hollow trees or on the ground. They seemed low down, as if on or near the ground, I can never get near one. I watched and waited long today, but they would not croak when I was about. Nature as she manifests herself in the weather, is as much a creature of habit as a man or a woman. If she miscarries once, she will miscarry again and again. When it gets to raining, it seems as if it would never stopand when the drought comes it seems as if the world would dry up. In either case, nothing less than a revolution can bring about a change. In a dry spell I often think that if things could be well shaken up by an earthquake, or some tremendous explosion the spell would be broken and the rain would come. The Elements get in a rut and can't get out. How hard it tries to rain in a dry time! If it could only begin, if it could only take the first step We talk of communing with nature, but 'tis with ourselves we commune. Nature has nothing to say. It all comes from within. The air supports combustion, but 'tis the candle that burns, not the air (?) Nature furnishes the conditions -- the solitude, and the soul furnishesthe entertainment. The "something more deeply interfused" is interfused then and there by the beholder. All lovers of nature are lovers of solitude, and hence of themselves. They muse and dream and commune with themselves. They interpret themselves, not nature. She reflects their own thoughts and moods. You find in Nature only what you bring to her. If you are joyful, she is joyful; if you are sad, she is sad. The religious soul finds Nature very religious. To the scientist she means science, and to the poet she means picture and parable. She is all things to all men. People admire my birds, but it is not the birds they see, it is me. I put myself in them. Shelley's lark is Shelley, Keat's nightingale is Keats. Who has seen or heard in Nature what Wordsworth did. She is a book printed full of his own thoughts.--nothing is hers but the paper. Nov. 29 Began my rain piece today. Dec. 1 Caught a little screech owl this morning as red as a fox. Heard the blue jays under the hill among Mannings old apple trees and on going down that way saw them one after another peeping into a large hole in one of the trees. The blue-birds also came and peeped in and said very plainly that there was something in there. The jays were quite melodramatic about the hole and advertised the lurking place of the poor owl as loudly as they could. I clambered up and peeped in and I saw something, too. On poking it with a stick I heard its bill snap. There was an opening below, and as the owl worked down, I reached inand seized him carefully. He made no struggle but clasped my finger a little too sharply. He is very red and catty. I have put him up in the wash house chamber. 5. My health is perfect these crisp December days, exquisite, keen as a razer, and out of this fine and delicious feeling I am writing my essay on rain. I write from 10 till 2 or 3 o'clock, then after dinner, which I help get, I walk 4 miles in great glee, my dog and I. Then read Boswells Johnson in the evening, or the paper. I try to keep my appetite for my work eager and fresh. (one year later -- Rain piece not so good as I had hoped) 8 A change has come over the spirit of my dreams. I am on the crest of the wave no longer, but in the hollow. Cant write a word, and have not for 3 days.It is ebb tide with me. I am not sick, but empty. My literary appetite is gone. Oh. my Rain, when will you pour down again. 8 Hiram came Thursday night. To-day -- Sunday, we had a long tramp back in the woods and up toward Black Pond. -- No snow or cold weather yet. Dec 15 "We cannot understand a great man all at once. It takes, strength, effort and perseverance; and it is singular that what pleases us at first sight seldom captivates us any length of time" From Memories, a story of German love. Chicago 1876 (a German story) 16 Dec so far has been nearly all Indian summer. To-day is clear soft and warm like October. The bees were out of the hive and humming through the air by 8 o'clock. In a spring back in the woods Hiram and I saw a frog. The river was so still this morning that as the gulls flew up and down, one could hardly tell which was the bird and which its shadow. How telling and significant the nose is! I observe that no one feature changes so much as the nose as the man develops. The childs nose is a mere shapeless lump of flesh -- it seems driven up. As he grows and develops, it comes out. At puberty there is a marked change in it. I know a womans face clear cut in all except the nose -- that is crude and unfinished, and it tells the whole truth about her. A snub or turned up nose is a terrible calamity. Avoid it as you would a pestilence. 18 In writing, I observe that it's great point to get a nest egg. When you have made a beginning -- got one good sentence, or fact, or observation you add to it with comparative ease. 'Tis the first step that costs" as the French say. I want to write an essay on "Solitude," but I have my nest egg yet to get. 25 Christmas -- Saw a phoebe bird today between here and the dock. 1878 Jany 1st Clear and sharp -- not a flake of snow anywhere. Finished my paper on Rain today, began a month ago. Have worked on it about 2 weeks in all. 26 Returned from Washington today, whither I went 2 weeks ago. 27 Soft and warm; bees out of the hive like May; the bluebirds call as in spring. 29 A clear sharp day -- Saw three eagles today. Two were sailing around and round over the river by the dock. They approached each other and appeared to clasp claws, then swung [round] and round several times like two schoolgirls hold of hands. Feb 2 Subjects for essays Solitude Home Sunday. 3 Thermometer to zero this morning. A clear sharp day -- a long walk to the woods through the knee deep snow, carried Lark on my shoulder part of the way. No one had yet been to the woods -- only a big dog whose track we saw. We started up several partridges over in the cedar lane. Coming back found where several had passed the night in the swam under the snow. No two slept together, each alone in his snowy bed, and each one defiled the sheets. Saw a robin in the cedars above the schoolhouse [crossed out: and] besides cedar birds, bluebirds, snow birds, purple finches, and Canada sparrows. Feb 16 Returned from home yesterday whither we went on the 6th. Found father and mother and all the rest of them well. Snow very deep, but weather not very cold. Had two fine hunts. Must write a piece about the last one and call it "a White Day and a Red fox." Father eats and sleeps well. Mother worked nearly all the time. Father told me about his Grandmother Every. She was a high strung ugly old dame. When Father and Mother were first married, they lived at Grand fathers. and old Granny Every [crossed out: was] lived there too. One day Mother went down to the spring to wash and took her baby (Hiram) with her and sat him on the ground by her. Grand mother came and got him and carried him to the house. This made old granny mad: "Let her take care of her own brats" said she. Grand mother said he had as good a right there as she or granny had. This made granny very mad, and she went out on the hill and hid herself in some buckwheat and had to be looked up and got back. She died while at the house of her son out in Windham or Durham, and is buried there. Homer told me this anecdote about Levi Jenkins whom we saw as we came back from Margaretville. It was many winters ago. He lived in Batavia Kill, and being short of fodder and grain for his cattle, used to poach a little upon Harve Keators oat-mow. Keator suspected some one was stealing his oats; so one cold snowy night he watched for the thief. About 10 o'clock Levi came with his oxen and sled. The barn, by the way, was remote from Keators house. Levi got up on the mow and began throwing down the sheaves of oats, counting them audibly and talking to himself the while. "There that makes [crossed out: seven] four shocks" said he: "I guess that is all will stay on." "No, I [crossed out: reckon] guess I can carry a few more. One, two, three, " until seven was reached. "There" he said, "four shocks and seven sheaves, that is all I can carry." "How many did you say, Levi" asked Keator, who knew him by his voice. "Four shocks and seven sheaves, by God" said Levi. Poor Levi, the affair cost him his yoke of oxen; he gave them to Keator ([crossed out: who] Keator was a hog) to say nothing about it. How surely a good and wise man would have said to Levi "go, and steal no more." He [crossed out: was forced to it by his poverty and his] did it for love of his cattle and team. Immortality is something to be [crossed out: argued] reasoned about and proven, is it? a question to be established by a subtle metaphysical argument? Then away with it, and away with all such questions. If they do not prove themselves, like the day or the night, or health or disease. if they are not self evident, I will have nothing to do with them. What do I care for a metaphysical hell, or a metaphysical heaven. If I have existed without my body, then I shall exist again without it. If I have not, then what can you prove by argument, or what assurance give? Where was the flame before the candle was lighted? Where will it be when the candle is fresh out? We are immortal, just as every force and atom in the universe is immortal -- this is self-evident, beyond this there is nothing to be said. No force in me was created at my birth, or in my subsequent growth, but only gathered from the out-lying universe and organized into the being I am; and no force will be lost at my death, but only scattered again, to shift and reappear in other forms. We settle back into the deep as a wave settles back, or as it breaks and is lost upon the shore. The waves run and run, the force or impulse that fills and makes them is co-equal with the universe. Feb 26 I take it a great compliment when my friends, those who have known me longest and best, say of my writings "they sound just like you; I see you in every page" as a doctor who knew me when a boy, and who knew my people, has just written me. This removes much of the Thoreau charge; if it is my flavor, then it is not his. I really see very little of Thoreau in myself. There is a whiff of him now and then, in a few of my pieces, as in "Exhilarations of the Road" I know his quality is very penetrating and contagious; reading him is like eating onions, one must look out or the flavor will reach his own page. But my current is as strong in my own channel as T's in his. He is as liable to catch it of me as I am of him. Thoreau preaches and teaches always. I never preach or teach. I simply see and describe; I must have a pure result. I paint the bird for its own sake and for the pleasure it affords me and am annoyed at any lesson or moral twist. Even the scholar in me (a very poor one he is) must not show his head when I am writing on natural themes. I would remind of books no more than the things themselves do. 1878 Feb. 26 While on a visit to Washington in January, I went on an expedition down the Potomac with a couple of friends, Peck and Eldridge, to shoot ducks. We left on the morning boat that makes daily trips to Mt. Vernon. The weather was quite chilly cold and the sky threatening. I have seldom seen such clouds as those were fail to bring rain. They were boat like and boat shaped. They had well-defined. keels, but they turned out to be only the fleet of Aeolus. The sky came through and the sun shone before noon. We saw numerous flocks of ducks on the passage down, and saw a gun (the man was concealed) shoot some from a "blind" down near Fort Washington. Opposite Mt. Vernon, on the flats, there was a large "bed" of ducks. I thought the word a good one to describe a long strip of shallow water thickly planted with ducks. One of my friends was a member of the Washington and Mt . Vernon Ducking Club that have their camp and fixtures just below the Mt. Vernon landing. Must try and finish this sketch in a short article for the Country. 26 Spring is very near. Sap runs very briskly. The male blue birds have been warbling their impatient amorous warble for several days, calling their mates. Sky clear blue, wind gusty, snow nearly gone, ice on the river getting poor. 27 A warm cloudless day; the bees humming about the hive, sap running on a jump. Found grasshoppers half an inch long hopping about on the grass. Smith and Emma started for home to day. Ice has just moved down and filled up the canal. 1878 Mch 2nd Heard song-sparrow sing today. Crow-black birds here. Blue-birds mated, apparently it is only an engagement till the female consents to enter the box or knot-hole that the male has been urging her to so long, then it is a marriage. She is his then. It takes two or three days to bring her to the point. 6 I fear the clerk of the weather has been making another wrong deal of the cards and is giving us April when the almanac calls for March. It has been an April month so far. Meadow larks, robins, blue birds, black birds here, and ducks on the river, chipmunks out of their dens 4 days ago. Today is warm and bright with a brisk southerly wind. 9 Returned from N.Y. today Gilder with me -- heard the "peeping toads" for the first. 10 Very warm. Thermometer at 73 in the shade; grass greening perceptibly. Phoebe-bird here early in the morning. In walking out at night Gilder and I found a toad fumbling along side of the road. Heard the little frogs or toads in the woods -- the same of last Dec. 15 The remarkable weather continues -- May rather than March -- no frost -- lilac buds swelling -- grass greening -- birds joyous. Only two months of winter -- Jany and Feb -- the shortest winter I ever knew anywhere. Saturday 16 No break in the astounding weather. Every one says "did you ever see such weather?" and every one answers. "No it beats all I ever saw" A frost last night, but today is just perfect. 1878 March 16 Smoke seems to be the equivalent of flame: When the fire bursts out, the smoke is gone. I think that, intellectually speaking, I have many smoky days. When a little more draught, a little excitement, a lucky hit or thought, or may be a determined effort, [crossed out: to] would cause the flame to come forth. Something like this always occurs with me when I write. I begin by smoking and feel discouraged, but by and by, if I put the screws on, the clear leaping thoughts and the glow comes. But for the past 3 or 4 days I cannot get beyond the smoke. The combustible matter in me is very soggy for some reason. Mainly, I think, because Spring is here. Mch 22 Made garden today -- the ground in fine order -- planted onions, peas, and spinach. Saw the bluebird carrying straws into her box today. I am persuaded the blue birds copulate on the wing. 23 Bees carrying in pollen to-day, dusty as millers. Warm and delicious. The clouds have a summer look. 24 Saw High hole this morning. Turtle doves in the afternoon. 25 A cold snap -- mercury down to 17 this morning. At the corner down to 10 26 In estimating a man the Romans asked, after other things had been considered, is he fortunate; has his career been marked by good fortune. Some old Roman took his name from his luck and was called Felix -- felicity, I suppose. For my part I have often thought of my good luck -- how much better things have turned out with me than I expected or had reason to expect except in the matter of the [erased word]. Could I have known 20 years ago all the good things that were in store for me, I should have been spoiled. My writing has brought me more fame and money than I ever dared hope. For the past 15 years I have had a good income -- the last five years as high as $3500 per annum -- and have been almost entirely free to follow my own tastes. If fortune had only filled the measure of my expectation I should today have been deeply in debt, if indeed I had been able to keep my place at all. But she has exceeded my expectations four-fold. and "yet I am not happy" 30 This spring has had but few reverses so far -- no snow and but one severe freeze. Smith and I are planting the peach trees and telling yarns. To-day is without a cloud or a speck. What a morning it was! So still and the bird voices so jubilant! Robins, phoebe birds, blue birds cow-birds sparrows all singing and calling, and the medley of notes now and then shot through with the [crossed out: th] smoothe strong [crossed out: ???] piercing [crossed out: note] shaft of the meadow lark. It is bliss to be alive and be out-doors. That indescribable spring air is over all -- that quality of newness and firstness. The sunlight is white, the naked branches shine, the deepening tinge of green about the yard and in the moist places in the field. 31 Sunday -- so warm that it might be the 1st of May instead of the last of March. Heard partridges drumming to-day. Caught a hyla and saw indeed that it had the toes or feet of the tree toad. [crossed out: I give it up.] April 3 My 41st birthday. Spent it in Washington on business with Mr. Royce, a warm pleasant day. Saw Walt April 1st and again the 5th. Think he is mending. 7 Home again from W. yesterday. In the woods today found arbutus and dicentra in bloom Blood root and liverleaf said to be in bloom also. 15 Returned from Elmira to-day after a week's absence -- a fearful neuralgia in my arm and shoulder, the severest pain of my life last night. 16 Am better. Cut some asparagus today. The season very advanced. A mist of green over the currant bushes. Heard the hermit thrush at Elmira in the glen above the "Cure" April 11th. 18 Saw the dog tooth-violet in bloom to-day. Took the treetoad out of the old apple tree to-day -- think he wintered there. 23 Saw and heard a lot of chimney swallows to-day high in air. I do not seem to be getting much out of the April days. I am down at the heel physically shoulder and arm give me much trouble. The peach trees are in bloom and the cherry trees, plumb trees, pear trees, and current bushes. A very remarkable month. The most noticeable bird song from passing birds, is that of one of the kinglets, in the woods and groves and orchards. All day I hear the sweet piercing note of the meadow lark -- like a light silver shaft shot from a strong bow 24 Barn swallows high in air today. 25 Cliff swallows squeaking overhead to-day Yellow-red poll warbler here also. 27 In Nature it is the middle of May, and many birds, as the wood thrush, oriole, cuckoo, king bird, tanager, and many warblers, ought to be here, but are not. They evidently go by the Almanac and will not come till the appointed day. May birds will not come in April it seems, no matter what the season may be. 29 One week of warm, steady south wind and uninterrupted cloudiness, much moisture but until yesterday and last night not much rain. Very growing weather. The apple blossoms nearly all out. The distant woods begin to look like some rare new cloth. 30 Went home to-day -- got home at one o'clock P.M. Noted a different smell in the fields as I went up across them, from these about here. -- the smell of my boyhood; it whirled me back quickly to that long gone time. The breath of the cattle was different too. and the odor of the ground. Father and mother well. They were all at dinner. Mother looks better than one year ago. Father went up through the woods after the heifers that night, and came back much tired. He had been running. May 1st Went over the mountain with H.C. fishing, caught 30 trout. Saw lots of wild flowers in bloom as we went over the mountain corydalis, claytonia, trillium, etc. Saw a snow-birds nest with eggs beside the road in the woods. 2 Today Willie started with me to examine the banks -- got back Friday night -- had a successful trip -- counted 10 woodchucks between Hobart and Delhi. 4 Willie and I went over in Meeker's Hollow fishing -- the best day I have spent for a long time, caught 10 lbs of beautiful trout -- 103 in all, three times as many as I ever caught there when a boy -- The heat and perspiration cured my arm and shoulder. A long heavy pull of three miles home over the grassy hills and through the leafy woods. 5 Last night and today a very heavy rain -- 3 inches of water -- the earth is more than full -- runs over at every outlet. A freshet in the stream and rivers. Came back home today -- foliage all out -- apple blossoms nearly all off the trees -- things look like the first of June. 7 Went to Coxsackie today -- had a nice drive over the country back of the town with the cashire. 8 Very warm and moist; things growing in a jump. All the birds here, the oriole piercing my heart with his note. The whippoorwill last night. 9 Another heavy rain. "To him that hath, more shall be given" etc. 11 Went to New Paltz today -- very cold -- Saw number of White crowned sparrows along the road as I did a year ago on the 16th -- a distinguished-looking bird. Sunday 12 Found the cypripedium in bloom today -- quite a little company of them back in the woods near the wood-road. A cool windy day -- fire in my grate in the afternoon. Thoreau was curiously attracted by the Indian, and half envied him. He went to Maine chiefly to study the Indian, I suspect. He was always looking for their relics and finding them; he had an eye for arrowheads. This is a marked point in his character. He was a sort of cross between Emerson and an Indian. Saw, heard today many brown thrashers (the mocking thrush). He says, "Croquet. croquet, "hit it, hit it" "come to me," "come to me," 'you're out" you're out, "wicket!" "wicket!" with many other cries and squea1s and calls, besides much sweet music. 13 Quite a frost last night. 14 A heavy frost last night formed ice 1/4 inch back of the hill by Crosby's barn -- much damage to crops and vegetation back from the river. In Shandaken it is said to have formed ice one half inch thick -- has probably killed all the fruit in Delaware Co. [crossed out: 15] To New York today, much troubled; saw for the first time my own 17 Vegetation all out but weather still cool. The Sycamores are not yet quite clothed. Have been hearing for several days in the trees about the song of a robin with the single note of the quail in it. For some time this note alone attracted my ear and I thought surely there was a quail crying "white" "white", without the "bob". Then I saw how it was. Did the robin learn it of a quail? It comes in every time, and is out of time and out of tune with the rest of the song. It is as if you heard the note of the quail through the song of the robin, the note of the former bird taking a piece clean out of the strain of the latter. Sunday 19 Lark and I went on a long walk through the woods -- found the nest of a robin, a King bird, a bush sparrow -- a hawk, a gray-squirrel and started a rabbit from her form. Beside Lark has a "tussel" with a mink and the mink got away. I first saw the mink coming up the creek along on the rocks and stones. I sat down and waited for him to come up, but when within a few yards of me he saw or smelt me and ran under some large stones. Then I poked him with my cane, and he came boldly out in Lark's face. Lark caught him but dropped him in a hurry, both dog and mink crying out, and then he escaped as quickly as if he had dropped into the earth. Where he went to I have no idea. He made a strong, not disagreeable smell and gave us an adventure. The sweet scented orchis in bloom. I have discovered the secret of happiness -- it is work, either with the hands or the head -- something to do. It is the only safe and sure ground of happiness. The moment I have something to do, the drafts are opened and my chimney draws, and I am happy. The trouble is generally that we do not know when we are happy. 25 A fine swarm of bees to-day. It made me prick up my ears when I saw the queen amid the mass of bees. She is a superb creature. Before you have seen the queen you wonder if this or that bee which seems to be a little larger than the rest, is not her. But when you have seen the queen you do not doubt a moment. You know it is she and can be none other. Long, elegant, shining, feminine-looking. How beautifully her body tapers. The drones are large bees too, but coarse, blunt, broad shouldered, masculine-looking. They have a strident masculine hum. The queen is not a sovereign in any strict sense, but the mother of the swarm, and they cling to her as to life. Among all those 30 or 40 thousand she is the most precious bee. 26 Another fine swarm today. Ingersoll came up last night. To the woods to-day and much loafing under the trees. 27 The fourth anniversary of dear Channies death -- a warm, cloud-flecked summer day -- and I am sitting in my room with thoughts of him-- the young Channey playing about the floor. Never help a chicken out of the shell; he will come to naught if you do. if he is a strong healthy chick, he will get out himself -- Moral easy. 28 A bowl full of straw-berries to-day. 29 Beautiful summer weather, getting rather dry. Robins chasing the cuckoo; a red eyed vireo driving a cowbird out of the tree in which I suspect its nest is. An oriole so dead-bent on having a horsehair for her nest, that not finding one on the dung heap under the shed she boldly ventured into the stable in search of one. If the horse had been there I expect she would have tweaked one out of his tail. Watched the bees in the forenoon. In the afternoon Lark and I took a long tramp, going back by Irishman Rileys shanty and then over the moun- tain by Brookmans wood. Musketoes terrible. Heard a rare thrush back here in the woods -- the grey-cheeked thrush I think. Its song reminded me of the veeries more than of any other, but it was low and slight, as if the bird were only humming the air. The first part was more broken than the veeries -- more like the syllabling of the Wood or Hermit, but low and fine, and not very effective. Saw a pewee attacking a Grey Squirrel on a tree. June 8 Cold heavy rain. S. berries ripening very slowly. Weather very cool. Father North left us this morning. In these Spring and early summer months my intellectual life is at its lowest ebb -- and I am not happy. I have no thoughts, nor any of the emotional life out of which thoughts sprout. I merely vegetate. 14 Attended the funeral of Bryant to-day with Walt and Gilder. Walt and Bryant used to be old friends, and had many long walks and talks together before [crossed out: the latter] Walt wrote poetry -- after that Bryant was cold and distant. 17 A robin has occupied an old nest in my porch -- a nest two years old, apparently without repairing it at all. It is her second brood, I suspect, and she is not particular. I observe that of the cedar birds, both sexes aid in building the nest. The large tree-toads appear to go to the marshes in May to deposit their eggs. They were very noisy in the swamp this year the last of May. In June I began to hear them in the tress again in the early evening. June 22 Wife and I went to N.Y after baby -- Baby did not come but Walt did and stayed 3 or 4 days -- have not seen him so well since his sickness. July 1st Baby came to-day -- a great event 20 Went home to-day with wife and baby. Weather very hot. Aug. Early in August (the 6th ) Aaron came and he and I began our camping out. On the 12th started with horse and wagon. Camped on High Paint Aug 13 all night. Thence to the Rondout thence to the Neversink; thence home to Roxbury, Aug 17th. Aug 21 Left home today with horse and wagon for Esopus. Father rode with me out to the Deacon Hill blackberrying. I pressed him to come and see me, but he said he could not come; he had no clothes. Those shoes he said he had worn 2 years. I can see him yet as he stooped over the blackberry bushes, as I drove on. Reached home the next day. 24 Went to N.Y. to-day, had a nice time. Wife and baby returned the 25th. 31 Father North came to-night with Lizzie to take care of baby. Sept 1st Very hot; thermometer 90 in shade. Father North brisk and well for so old a man and full of talk of his early days on the farm -- the hard work -- hard fare, good times, etc. 8 A day without a cloud, a Sunday, indeed; the air filled with a soft white vapor -- a haze not yet ripened into blueness. The leaves shine as in May. No wind stirring. -- a new clean, burnished day after a week of heavy rain. Sept 11 Mother and Willie came last night on the boat. I waited a long time on the dock for the boat to come. "Today" said Mother "is my birth day. Today I am 70 years old." Yet she is well and active. About the 12th of June noticed flocks of strange birds flying to and fro from above here towards Frothingham's. They proved to be red cross bills, a bird of the far north. What kept them here so late? I have never seen them before in these parts, or this side of the Canadian woods. Sept 22 Sunday To-day is the funeral day of Charley Caswell -- to-day they put his body in the ground -- the ground that but a few weeks ago I saw him turning with his plough. Death has seldom despoiled the race of a nobler specimen of a young man. He was a young giant in strength and robustness. With his blond hair and fair skin he was like a young Norse Viking. I had not known very much of him and yet I loved him. He was the ideal of a farm hand -- worthy the muse of a Virgil or a Theocritus. He had the virtue and quality of all sweet country and rural things. How cheerful and happy! What a worker, what strength! But yesterday Aaron and I saw him cradling on the hill -- and remarked his fine manly form and power. How he walked up to the grain and through it! It was a delight to see him pitch hay, but no fun to the one who had to mow it away. But perhaps his great mastery was best seen when he had hold of the ax. It was better than a play to see him make the white chips fly and the big logs vanish before him. They gave him a sweat one night when his disease, (typhoid fever) first began to wrench his bones. and in the morning he was missing from the house. After a while they found him up in the orchard lying on the ground. "A bad sign. A very bad sign" Mother said, and so it proved. The last day he worked he ploughed up on the side hill, but at eleven o'clock turned out and came with his team to the house -- he could plough no longer. and there his work in this world ended. My heart is full of unshed tears for the lost youth. I will go walk over the hill and consecrate this day to the memory of him. 23 Tonight Smith and Emma returned from Charlies funeral. In the morning of Friday as Charley died in the afternoon, he put his am up around his brothers neck and pulled his face down to him and kissed him. Smith said he knew then that the end was near. It seems as if the unconscious nature in him in that act bid adieu to the things of this world. [crossed out: Per] His death has weighed heavier on my heart than I expected it would. His death is no doubt upon the hands of the man that bled him. (Old Allaben -- may his liver turn to stone) Sept. 26 Today is buried in far off Ohio Mrs. Johns, the wife of my friend Aaron. Monday night at 8:20 she breathed her last. A tender, gentle, high-minded, affectionate Sept 1878 woman, whom I came to know 12 years ago in W. and at whose hands I have recd many kindnesses. She was one of the "wives" [crossed out: spoken] of referred to in my Rain piece. I saw her for the last time in the morning of April 5, 78 -- then much weakened and wasted by disease, but up and about her house. Oh. birds, find her grave for me in far off Ohio, and chant my love and my adieus night and morning upon it. Oh. grass, make it green and fresh as the memory of her in my heart! Sept 27 Mother says the first time she ever saw cars was 24 years ago when she and father and Olly Ann and Walker were going to Pa. She and Olly Ann [crossed out: were] had got tired of riding and were walking up the French town mountain when they looked away off across the country and saw a train of cars -- on the Erie road, [crossed out: perhaps] probably. ..In the evening as we sat in the kitchen mother in answer to my inquiries, told me about old Elder Jim Meade and family. I myself remember him faintly, and the house where he lived which we passed in going to Uncle Martins. He was an old school Baptist minister and very poor with a large family. His oldest son Abner froze to death and Reuben Kelly with him "on the 10th of Jinnuary, 1823" said Mother. They were hunting and on their return in the early evening, and when near a house froze to death. Rueben, it was supposed froze first. Abner stood his gun against a tree and ran around the tree till he had beaten a hard path. A woman (Mother told her name) who lived near heard some one "hallo" as she went to the door for something, and supposed it was a neighbor driving his oxen. It is believed to have been the freezing boys. Elder Jim had an appointment to preach in Dry Brook next day which he kept, though his son had not returned. The bodies were found early in the day, when George Jenkins was sent to Dry Brook after the Elder. He had just got up to [crossed out: give out] open the meeting by giving out a hymn when he saw George come in. His heart sank, for he knew there was bad news for him. He proceeded no further with the services but went home at once. The bodies were brought in a sleigh. Mother was there and saw and heard what Elder Jim said. He went out in the road and as he looked upon his son said "And this is my beloved son Abner who never gave me a cross or an unkind word, and he is frozen to death" with much more said Mother which she had forgotten. He talked a long time, and at night walked the floor and wrung his hands and cried. More than a half a century ago. The Elder lived nearly 40 years after that. 28 Mother went home this afternoon. Smith and I rowed her over to Hyde Park. A clear, cool day. Lacking 2 days she has been here 3 weeks, and seems to have been happy all the time till the last day or two, when Ursula has been possessed of one of her devils and has not spoken to Mother. 30 Went to Saugerties to day. Oct 2 The culmination of a domestic comedy to-day that has been long brewing: Mrs. B. packed her trunk to leave me, but broke down at last and said "Dear, dont you want me to go?" Sequel -- we took the baby out to ride! 1878 Oct 10 A fire in my grate to-day. Heavy, slow moving, gray clouds cover the sky. I look out of my window and note the yellow rumped warbler feeding in the little Norway Spruce in front of it. The feeling of fall comes to me very suddenly sometimes. There comes a day the latter part of Sept or early in Oct, when cold, grayish blue clouds cover the sky, the trees are shaken by a cold raw wind, the rarer birds are gone, and the more hardy are flocking, and as you walk or ride along there suddenly comes to you a vision of a fire in a grate, of nuts and books and papers, and the charm of indoors beside ones own hearth. The summer is gone, and the stearner season makes itself felt. Oct 18 The beginning of a change in the weather from very warm to cold and rain --The birds suddenly very numerous and friendly, robins all about the grounds piping and darting among the apple trees -- sparrows flitting and chippering around the house. A moment ago a sparrow came and tapped on my window and looked in roguishly upon me. Snow-birds are here too with their quick and almost spiteful ways. 19 The present is always the frontier of time -- raw, crude, unattractive; the past is the mellow land through which we have passed -- ripe, human, attractive. How wistfully we turn to it! 25 October days of wonderful clearness and beauty -- no frost yet. The trees and woods [crossed out: be] are fast being stripped of their leaves by the rude winds. Nov 6 First severe freeze last night. Clear, but sharp today. 21 Mary, the girl, left this morning. She went home weeping. I sympathized with her deeply. She was a tender, sensitive, unfortunate girl who tried her best to please Mrs. B., but could not do it. She was needy -- had a child of her own to support, and merited far better treatment than she got in this house. She came down and rapped at my library door last night to ask if she could be taken to the boat this morning. When I asked her what was the matter, she could not speak for some moments for her tears. She went back up stairs sobbing. She got the breakfast but ate nothing. As ye judge others, so shall. ye be judged. Let Mrs B. remember that. 28 Thanksgiving -- the day after a cold rain -- cloudy but mild. The ground full to overflowing with water. 29 Heard the little frogs in the woods to-day. Large flock of Red Polls feeding on the weeds out among the grape vines. The Red Polls have been here since sometime in October. On the 26th I saw and heard a solitary Pine Grosbeak. he flew above as I sat fishing in Auchmoodies pond. Weather yesterday and today clear and beautiful -- a touch of Indian summer. Dec 2 A violent storm of wind and rain from the S. east -- the most rain this fall I ever remember to have seen in one season. At 3 o'clock the rain ceased and a peculiar white fog arose; at 4 the sun came out and between 5 and 6 I returned from a walk to the P.O. in a soft moon light. It was like May. Dec 3 To-day is like a bright October day. 10 A black winter day -- two inches of sposh and snow, a thin white fog and a pouring rain. How the trees drip, how the little creeks foam and roar. Lark and I take a walk down in Frothingham's grounds and have a big chase after a rabbit, a troop of chickadees and kinglets are hopping among the apple trees as dry as if they dodged the drops of rain. There is the inevitable woodpecker, too: he is always in the rear of these birds. Evening -- The heaviest rain known in these parts for 40 years -- 4 or 5 inches of water. Great damage; could Mr. John Burroughs wrote us on December 4, "I have never before seen the muskrats build such large houses as they are building this fall. Is it a sign of an approaching winter of unusual severity? In a shallow pond which I pass nearly every afternoon in my walk to the post office, two of the 'lake dwellings' have been steadily progressing for several weeks; they are built of a species of coarse wild grass that grows everywhere in the pond. They are the shape of miniature mountains, very bold and precipitous on the south side and inclining very gently on the north. The builder evidently drags his material up this easy northern incline and thrusts it out boldly around the other side. But I notice to-night (Dec. 4) that the nests are assuming more the cone, or dome shape. One nest was abandoned and another started several rods away, I think because some Muscovy ducks were in the habit of standing upon it to preen their plumage. I have noticed also an unusual number redpolls (Aegiothus linaria). They began to be noticeable at my place in October flying about in loose flocks. They have steadily increased in number till now there is a flock of several hundred here, feeding on the seed of the courser weeds, like ragweed, pigweed, etc. Is this also a sign from the north, of coming cold? We shall know next spring what all these signs are worth." Judging from the severely cold weather which prevailed during the last half of December, we should say the muskrats and redpolls were very trustworthy prophets.hardly reach, the Post Office in my wagon -- the creeks sweeping over the road -- Kays house and buildings in danger. 11 The river full of floating barns, fragments of houses, dead horses, chickens, hay, furniture, apples, cabbage, barrelled flour, pork, sausage, etc. etc. 12 Among the sufferers by the great flood were two families of muskrats in the pond by Kays. For two months they have been building their houses, working only at night. As I passed by day after day I saw the mounds slowly growing. They finally became very large and high by far the largest and highest nests I ever saw. Does it mean a severe winter I asked? One man said it meant high-water. At any rate the high water came and crept up till it enveloped them. Tuesday night as I drove past only a few inches of the top of one of them was visible. Next day they were both gone -- not a vestige of them anywhere to be seen. Poor rats, winter at hand, and their houses swept away. But several poor families at Eddyville are in the same fix. The river was so affected by the flood that it overcame the tide at this point and ran down steadily for 3 days. 20 Today father is 76 years old. 21 Our first genuine snow storm of the season, a white obscurity shuts down and hides all the distance. The snow is fine and deliberate and evidently means business. 23 Start for home to-day with wife and baby -- weather pretty cold. 1879 Jany 10 Returned from home to-day. Weather cold and stormy from Jany 1st but I had some big hunts and tramps over the mountains and some good sport fishing on the ice -- hooking up suckers. Father and mother keep pretty well. and mother as active as usual. Father had recovered from his severe cold and eats and sleeps well, but is quite childish at times -- cries on the slightest provocation -- the least thing that touches his feelings brings the tears and chokes his voice. I could see myself in him perpetually. As he sat reading and trying to sing from his hymn-book Sunday night, I thought I saw more dignity and strength in the lower part of his face than I had ever before seen in it. He told me this about his Uncle William or "uncle Bill" who used to live up in the orchard, and then up in the head of Moore Settlement: Uncle Bill [crossed out: cam] often came to our house when Father first moved on the farm to stay Saturday night and go to meeting on Sunday. (He was a devout Old School Baptist) One night Mother heard him singing a hymn in his sleep; in the morning she told him of it. "By night or day", replied he, At home or abroad, I am surrounded by my god." He seems to have been a serious religious man who had little of this world's goods -- he was always poor. Mary Jane said that Mr. Smith told her that when they first came to this country (from Scotland) they came through what we call "the long woods" (not much woods there now) As they were riding along David, a boy of 4 or 5 years, [crossed out: looke] after gazing on the wild desolate scene looked up to his mother and asked with great concern "Mother is there a God here?" To Any one who has seen that barren wild rocky gorge, the question seems very pertinent. Mother told me this about Tom Keator (he was a prominent merchant in the village when I was a boy). When he was a boy of 7 or 8 years he was always threatening when he got mad to run away. and as he got mad pretty often his mother got tired of hearing the threat. So one day she told him he should go off; she would hear that threat no longer; he should pack up and leave. She made him up a budget of his clothes and put them into his hand and sent him forth. He cried piteously, but she made him go: he turned in a ploughed field and stumbled and fell many times, but she was inexorable, till after she had punished him long enough, when she sent for him to come back; he never threatened to go off again. Feb.7 It is a suggestive fact that growing plants -- wheat, corn, grass, etc., etc. draw more than nine tenths of their material from the atmosphere; sometimes, indeed, no more than one per cent 1879 from the soil, but how indispensable that one per cent is! All the efforts of agriculture are to supply [crossed out: th] it. Without that grain of earth or mineral substance, your great melon or squash, or nourishing grain could never be. An ounce of lime or magnesia or phosphorus balances a ton of the fluid gases. So does man in his life draw enormously upon the ideal yet how important that he have a grain or two of grit and draw something from the soil to give contour and firmness to his ideality. Feb. 14 A clear cold day. One year ago Eden and I had our White Day and Red Fox hunt. 15 Clear and cold -- very cold. To day comes the sad sad news of the death of Walker Deyoe. But little over a week ago he was here apparently well, but I thought less talkative than usual. Now he is gone and will come no more. it seems as if he was sad and oppressed when here. The last words I remember of his were his saying as we parted in the morning were that he supposed I would never come and see him. Smith and I and Emma happened to be standing in front of the. stable door that evening when he came. He looked tired and pale. Last October he was here and we had a gleeful walk off over the fields and hills after chestnuts. How many times as a boy of 14 or 15 I have been out to "Walkers" How many times I have seen him and Olly Ann coming along the road to our house! Now Walker and Olly Ann and Channy B. are all gone. Emma alone remains. 17 Today they put Walker in the ground -- by this hour the earth has closed over him and he has forever gone from the light of day and from the eye of man. When an old and dear friend dies, one cannot realize it for a long time; it is like the amputation of an arm or a leg -- the severed member still seems to be in its place and we feel the hand or the foot as before. Walker was not especially near to me these late years, but he was the father of dear dead Channy, and once the husband of dear departed Olly Ann, and the past. Oh, the past has such a hold upon one! 19 Cold snowy winter weather and dull times with me -- no thoughts, no joy, no appetite for my favorite pursuits. 1879 March 3 The sun is getting strong, but winter still holds his own No hint of spring yet; no sparrows or sparrow songs yet. 5 Warm and melting. The first blue-bird note this morning How sweetly it dropped down from the blue overhead The first spring sound of the season. Took Julian out on the hand sled how he did enjoy it! He is now nearly 11 months old. a remarkably bright and beautiful boy. 10 The first real spring day, and a rouser. Thermometer between 50 and 60 in the coolest spots; bees very lively about the hives, and working in the saw dust in the wood pile. How they paw and claw and apparently squeeze the woody meal; saw one bee enter the hive with pollen in his basket which he must have gotten from some open green-house (got it from the saw dust.) And then the blue birds! It seemed as if they must have been waiting somewhere close by for the first warm day, [crossed out: for] like actors behind the scene, for they were here in numbers early in the morning; they rushed upon the stage very promptly when their parts were called. No robins yet. Last night (Sunday) came Hiram also. To-day we have stood about in the genial warmth and had much talk. Sap ran, but not briskly it was too warm and still: it wants a brisk day for sap: frost and Snow with the warmth are not enough: there must be a certain crispness and tension also: there must be no doubt about the course of the wind which must be W.S.W. 1879 Mch 11 No frost last night; the morning damp and warm and still. The birds have come pell mell on the heels of the st warm wave. It seems as if some barrier had suddenly given way and let them loose. Song sparrows, cow black birds, blue-birds, and meadow larks here and hark what gleeful sound is that? The robins, hurrah, the robins [crossed out: are here] have come. A large troop of them following up the river valley stop in the trees near and it is like a summer pic-nick of children suddenly landed from a steam boat in the woods. -- they sing, shout, whistle, squeal, call etc. in the most blithesome strains. The cedar birds too are here in the apple trees pecking the frozen apples. 12 A change to more crispness and coolness, but a delicious spring [crossed out: weather] morning. Hundreds of snow birds with a sprinkling of song, and Canada sparrows are all about the house, cheeping and lisping and chattering and squeaking in a very animated manner. The air is full of bird voices; through this maze of fine sound comes the stronger note and warble of the robin and the soft warble of blue-bird. Whatever else they may have in Europe I doubt if they can ever have such a morning as this. A few days ago, not a bird, not a sound; everything rigid and severe then in a day the barriers of winter give way and spring comes like an inundation and the birds keep even pace with the flood. In a twinkling all is changed. 1879 Mch 12 It is a wise remark that I read yesterday in the London Spectator, vis: If it is the manner that makes the literary artist, it is the matter that makes the poet, as this generation understands poetry, -- new and ample thinking as opposed to mere verbal finish and polish. 15 Phoebe-bird here to-day. 16 Good sap day -- Hiram and I had a walk back in the woods; worked an hour or more trying to [crossed out: tumble] detach a huge rock from the ledge and see it tumble down; but were obliged to leave it; it hangs only by its eye-lids. 17 A deep snow -- 8 inches. 19 Nearly clear -- a good sap day. Hiram left this morning. I crossed with him on the ice; he was pretty skittish. April 1st At Fredericksburg, Va. Ingersoll with me -- a bright spring day. We walked over the battlefield and through the Cemetery where 15000 of our soldiers lie 2d At Leesburg, Va. the day bright and windy. Examined the bank there. 3 My 42d birth day -- all day in Washington -- bright but windy with increasing cold. Started for home at night. 6 Froze hard last night, but increasing warmth during the day. Snow still deep in the shaded hollows in the woods. Heard the first peeping frogs to-day, with ice yet on some of the pools. One of the little pipers was in the fields some yards from the swamp. 9 Two swallows flying north to-day, hurrying as if to keep an appointment. A warm delicious day. Spent much of the day in the open air with baby Julian. Ploughed the garden and Occasionally he comes out and strolls about, or sits on the wall on the brink of the hill and looks out upon the scene. Presently I join him and we have much talk. To day the bees began working on the soft maple blossoms, but they have been carrying in pollen several days. 29 The yellow red-poll appeared to day. I see this bird for one day each year just before the buds burst into leaves, and that is all. Apparently it passes in one day or night. Heard tree-toad to-day in the apple tree. The Wood thrush to-day also and several other birds. 30 A most delicious April day -- the flower of the whole month. Walt and I drove over in the Russell woods and visited the falls. W. was much impressed with the scene, and made some notes. [Note: the entries from May 8 - June 6 were out of order in the original journal] 1879 May 1st Pretty cool after the thunder of last night. The season about two weeks later than last year. 3 Walt left to-day. The weather during his stay has been nearly perfect and his visit has been a great treat to me -- April days with Homer and Socrates [crossed out: adde] for company. 4 Found a partridge's nest to-day with 4 eggs. Father North came last night. He is now 78 and but little changed since last year. 6 Oriole came this morning; I heard him whistle before I was up. Cat-bird this morning also. The bobolink came yesterday. 8 To New Paltz to-day -- a delicious ride through the fresh, budding country. Saw again my old love the white-crowned sparrow; his clear ashen gray suit distinguishes [Note: the entries from May 8 - June 6 were out of order in the original journal] It adds to the charm of the return of the birds that the new arrivals always first announce themselves in the morning. We do not see or hear them [crossed out: first] in the afternoon, but early in the day. The explanation is that they travel at night and stop to feed by day: hence they are always first seen in the morning. May 10 Went home to-day. Father and Willy met me at the depot at noon. Mother and the rest of them all well. The season nearly two weeks later than at home. Snow banks yet lingering up on the side hill. Sunday 11 Hiram and I went up on the Old Clump -- warm and dry. Father and mother went down to meeting. 12 Went fishing in Meeker [Note: the entries from May 8 - June 6 were out of order in the original journal] Hollow. Frank with me -- caught 55 nice trout. Very warm. May 13 Started on my trip to the banks, very hot, thermometer 86 in the shade, a hot dusty drive to Hobart and Delhi. To Andes on the 14. and home at night. 15 Came back home to-day. 19 A warm, slow, delicious rain -- much needed. Atmosphere loaded with moisture. Oh. so dank and muggy. Foliage all out except on the sycamores. Oh! what a growing time -- Nature all dew and rain and cloud and tenderness -- liquid May days at last 27 The 5th anniversary of dear Channies death -- I go to N.Y. on business, -- all day amid the lawyers, plotting and scheming with them. Saw Walt in the evening. [Note: the entries from May 8 - June 6 were out of order in the original journal] him from all other sparrows. In the others the brown tints are more marked. A yellow mist of foliage on the trees, the sugar maples loaded with their fringe-like bloom, which exhales a rich perfume. May 9 To Coxsackie to-day - a bright warm day. The cows1ip and wild peony in bloom. New book came last night -- like it better than I thought I should --The late pieces are richer in tone and color than the other books. June 6 A walk in the woods: climbed a pine tree to examine a nest: it proved to be have been a crows nest, which the next year the red squirrel had made over into a nest and which was now occupied by a solitary bumble bee -- a queen bee just setting up her household. She had one cell or sack built and a large loaf of bread or a lump of pollen half as large as a chestnut. First a crow, then a squirrel, then a bumble-bee. 7 Went to the head of the Rondout with Ames; a good time; plenty of trout and almost a surfeit of rocks and waterfalls. The scenery of the head of the R. I am convinced, is unequalled by any thing in the State. 9 Came out of the woods to-day. Father joined us at Shokan and came home with me. It is his second visit to me now in his 77th year. He is well and has a good, yea, a strong appetite. But such irrelevant and disconnected questions as he puts! and, being a little hard of hearing, he worries one sometimes. He thinks as he has always thought that he cannot live much longer, but speaks of his approaching dissolution [crossed out: with] in a matter of fact way. I called attention to his new boots. "Yes" he said, "they will outlast me." I spoke of his new coat, "I shall never wear another" he said with evident relief. "Where is your baggage" I inquired as when we left the train. "All I've got is on my back" said father. He is quite boyish and matters sit much more lightly upon him than they used to. 18 Father left for home to-day. I walked down to the dock with him after dinner. He was in a great hurry lest he be left. 24 Went home this - afternoon to begin my voyage down the Delaware. Stayed home parts of two days waiting for my boat. Father and Mother well, but Abigail in a bad way. I am much alarmed about her. 26 Set out on my voyage this morning. 30 Reached Hancock this 10. a.m. and my voyage is over. Must try and write it up. July 3 Back home to-day, having spent the 1st and 2nd of July with the Knapps and their friends at Oquaga lake. 13 Sunday -- Finished my account of my voyage to-day at noon, began last Monday. 22 A cool summer so far and an abundance of rain. A great deal of lightning and thunder. A heavy shower with incessant flashes and reports to-night, still raging this 9 p.m. 31 Start for home to-day with wife and baby Julian and black Mary. August Home all this month. Wrote my paper on Nature and the Poets. Sept. 6 Mother had a stroke of paralysis (on the left side) this morning at 5 1/2 o'clock. 14 Stayed home on account of Mother till to day. Her case seems all but hopeless yet. Father is greatly cast down. Oct 19 The end of a most remarkable period of weather -- three weeks without rain, and of most intense heat -- hardly a let up in all that time, thermometer ranging from 80 to 83 in the shade day after day -- Hunted bees nearly all the time -- found 5 bee tress and enjoyed it much. Went over to Bentons the 8th. Julian began to walk freely on the l4th, when he was l8 months old. 23 At Saugerties to-day. 24 A fire in my grate to-day. Snow flakes in the air this forenoon. A great change in the weather. Hiram writes that Mother is out in the kitchen. 27 Went home today. Found Mother improved. When I came in the room she said "Oh John," and wept for some moments, I was deeply moved. In a broken and disconnected way she told me how she heard the train, then thought of me, then all still, then in about half an hour the door opened suddenly and in I came! Poor Mother! her mind is in fragments, like a shattered vase, and she can only fit a few pieces together as yet, but she is improving and may be quite herself again by spring. Father well and glad to see me. 29 Back from home to-day. Nov 3 Our first snow last night. Cold and raw. 9 Warm and moist. Father North here again. In the woods to-day (Sunday), caught six or seven small peeping frogs. They were hopping about on the leaves all through the woods. Of course they do not go to the [crossed out: s] marsh to hibernate but burrow in the ground. Caught also a large black and white newt or triton -- an odd looking creature -- night spotted with moonlight. 10 To-day Smith and I found a bee-tree well down the Black Pond mountain: three feet of a hollow hemlock filled with white clover honey -- a most pleasing spectacle -- 24 pounds. 12 Warm and rainy part of the day. At night saw a tree-frog sitting on the stone work by the kitchen door. Caught him. Of course also they do not go to the swamps to winter. 14 Warm and windy. Went to Auchmoody's pond with Ames. Driving back just at dusk I heard a toad singing his long breathed tr-r-r-r-r, as in spring. 1879 Dec lst Start for Boston this morning to attend the Holmes reception and breakfast. 2 In B. to-day with Ingersoll. 3 A good time at the reception, the Holmes festivities. Saw and spoke with Emerson -- he is the most divine looking man I ever saw; does not look like a saint, but like a god. 5 Home again to-night. 7 Sunday -- warm and pleasant after last night's heavy rain. Heard a small frog to-day in a bushy field. 13 Went home to-day. Eden was down in the village. Found Mother a little better. She can help herself more, but her mind is still in fragments and it gives her much trouble at times to get the pieces together so as to be intelligible. But she realizes that her mind is not right. "All kind of crazy" she says, and "can't think." She says if she could only get her mind again and be able to [crossed out: w] go about the house it is all she would ask. Father was quite well. As we sat in mother's room Sunday night, I was telling Abigail something about the Holmes's breakfast, and reception. Father, who had been listening, said he had rather go and hear old Elder Jim Meade preach two hours if he was living, than attend all the fancy parties in the world. He said he had heard him preach some of his deep sermons when he did not know whether he was in the body or out the body. No doubt the old preacher had a strong natural eloquence. I have a dim remembrance of him. He was poor, had a small farm and a large family. His sermons were two hours or more long. 1879 Dec 19 Lena left to-day -- a german girl of rare virtues and excellencies. came back again Dec 23rd [erased words] 21 Thermometer down to 7 this morning. The river steaming in the piercing north wing. 1880 Jany 1st The winter still mild, sleighing good -- saw a large flock of robins to-day, hear of their being seen elsewhere in this county. The river still open. 10 A still warm morning, blue-birds calling from the blue sky above. Bees out of the hive and working upon some honey I gave them. Sunday 11 Homer Lynch leaves for home to-day. He came on Thursday. 18 Still very mild and the river open. The south and south west winds are having it all their own way this winter so far. Found a frog to-day back of the hill in a little spring run. I saw him by his efforts to conceal himself. A winter frog is much more rare than a winter fog. 19 A mild, soft, April like day -- blue birds calling and bees out of the hive. 23 Returned from Middletown and Walden to-day. Warm and bright like April. No snow and but little frost in the ground. 28 Still warm and spring like, caterpillars and ants creeping about. 30 How true it is that every person has his or her [crossed out: water] permanent water-level like a mountain lake. We can hold only just so much happiness. A streak of great good fortune raises one for a short time, but we surely settle back again to the old water line; so ill luck, sorrow, the loss of friends and kindred etc. lowers one for a season; but we recover and come back to the old measure, be it little or big. How much I love Julian and [crossed out: yet] what a god-send he is to me, and yet is not my water line permanently raised. 3 Myron came to-day and this afternoon and evening we have sat in a "tumultuous privacy of storm" and talked the old, old talks. 6 Drove to P. with Myron to-day in the cutter. The time draws nigh when Smith and Emma are to leave. The thought oppresses me. 1880 Monday Feb 9 A clear bright rather cold winter day and a sad one to me, for this morning Smith and Emma left me to come back no more. For five years have they been here, and much have they helped to fill up the chasm of time. Going up there in the evening and sitting in their little kitchen, was like going home; it was a touch of the old times. Smith has been much company for me at all times. He has written himself -- his honest silent, continent, manly self -- all over my little farm. His work here will abide long after we are both in the dust. Little Channy too, my heart clings to him. But they are gone, and another chapter in my life is closed. 1880 Feb 11 "Better to dwell in the corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house." "Better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and angry woman." "A continual dropping in a very rainy day, and a contentious woman are alike." 16 A clear, still, mild April-like day; no snow and not much frost in the ground. 27 Warm as May -- thermometer 60 in the shade. A gentle southerly wind, much fog in the forenoon; the afternoon clear and soft. A day when the crows fly high and seem bent on distant journeys. They caw and caw all round the horizon. Heard a little frog back in Mannings swamp; on the pond saw two of those iron clad beetles darting about; Saw a spirited and protracted fight between two female blue-birds; they would fall to the ground and continue to fight there. They were apparently rivals for the favor of a male. The male followed the infuriated females about and warbled and called but whether protesting or encouraging, I could not tell; sometimes he would interfere, but whether to [crossed out: help] separate them, or to help the weaker side was also a mystery. I do not know how the matter came out. Lark had a big chase after a rabbit. I saw the rabbit sitting in her old place under a little cedar, and gave Lark the hint. 28 The first sparrow song this morning. The snow-birds also cheeping and chattering in true Spring fashion. No ice, no snow, no frost in the ground. In the wood the hepatica has pushed its buds up very perceptibly. Sunday 29 Very warm, overcast, still. Sat a long time on the fence back of the hill listening to the first spring sounds: shouts of laughter of the robins borne to me from a distant field, sparrow songs -- song sparrow, Canada sparrow, and white throat -- the note of the jack-snipe -- the ever-welcome call of the high-hole, blue-birds everywhere, black-birds flying over, jays crying, meadow-larks on the wing, little frogs piping in the marshes and in the edge of the woods, crows cawing, a hawk screaming, a red squirrel chattering. The after-noon clear and windy. Mch 4 Very warm. thermometer near 70. Heard and saw the mourning dove to-day. 5 Thermometer at 70. Bees carrying in pollen (white), probably from Frothinghams greenhouse. Wind blowing a perfect gale; cold wave coming, I think. Grass beginning to start. The baby better to-day. 8 Sleepless nights and anxious days on account of Julian. Am much alarmed about him. 10 Winter again; snow and cold. baby better. 14 Still wintry. Baby Julian nearly well. Saturday 20 Home this afternoon. Walked up from the depot in a driving snow squall, 8 o'clock at night. Found Mother a little better than 3 months ago. She realizes more keenly her condition and longs to have her right mind again. Father was quite poorly but picked up amazingly during my two days stay, and was quite smart when I left on Monday night. He says they will not have him around much longer. 23 At Homer Lynch's to-day -- boiled sap in the woods. 24 Back home -- to night. Julian quite well again. The weather cold and windy, with snow. 29 March grows rugged towards the end. April 2 Never saw an April come in more sweetly, yet never came an April to me more sadly. Two cloudless warm, still, dry April days. Heard the clucking frogs yesterday. 3d My 43d birthday -- a still damp smoky heavily overcast day with light rains in forenoon. home, saw a toad in the woods, a new spawn in the waters since yesterday --probably that of the common water newts. 10 First arbutus and first dicentra in bloom to-day. Hepaticas quite abundant. 12 Went home this afternoon, pretty cold. They were all at supper when I arrived. Father looking well. Mother about the same as at my last visit. 13 Warm, clear, windy. Father and I go down to Abigails. Father on old Tom, I on foot. Father pointed out to me as we went slowly along where his father used to make sugar -- (now Chase's field), grand mother helping him, also where he had a great wheat crop in 1815, which he sold for $2.50 a bushel. In the afternoon I helped Hiram boil sap in the sugar bush. 14 Warm, clear, smoky with west wind. Go down to Dry Brook with Hi Corbin and Abigail. Very warm, caught a few trout. Found the coltsfoot in bloom. 15 Still warm clear and windy, quite dry. Went early up to the woods and started a fire under the pans; boiled sap all the fore-noon, while the boys gathered it, How delightful it was, dry, warm, breezy. The songs of the "well contented" birds came from all about, the field sparrows being most numerous. Father came up and we sat on the wood-pile and talked, and I told him about Julian. Willie brought me a jumping mouse that he found drowned in a sap-bucket. He finds them nearly every day. Father was full of stories and reminiscences of the past. In the after noon came down to Olive. 17 Plenty of blood root in bloom to-day. Found sweet-scented hepaticas -- large, white, odor suggested violets. 18 To R to-day for the new girl, Lizzie. First swallow to-day. 19 First blue violet to-day. 20 A long walk through the fields and woods. Saw lots of honey-bees working on arbutus and I have said in the Pastoral Bees, that arbutus yielded no honey and did not attract the bees. The bees refused the honey I offered them and turned to the arbutus eagerly, drinking long, and apparently deep. Saw first bumblebee to-day also, on arbutus. 21 Shad trees in bloom to-day and apricot trees. 22 A long wa1k -- found the trillium in bloom, and the [crossed out: great] long spurred violet in bloom also a rock covered with a rank growth of the walking-fern. Heard the water thrush. 23 The red-poll warbler and the white crowned sparrow today, also the first dandelions. 25 Saw honey-bees working on dicentra to-day. They reach the honey by piercing the long spurs of the flower. I wonder they do not serve the columbine the same. 30 Found the downy violet. V. pubescens in bloom to day. Gray says June. Also the V. cannis. (?) The long-spurred. V. rostrata in bloom some days. Gray says June. 1880 May 1st Cold. Peach and cherry trees in bloom, apples showing the pink, currants in bloom, maples in bloom. 2d Wood thrush to-day. 4 Very warm. 80 Oriole and bobolink to-day and orchard starling. White violets just appearing. 5 [entry is erased] 9 Birds all here -- the cuckoo early in the week -- first heard him at night, leaves nearly all out: apple trees dropping their blossoms. Spurred violet very common. On the 7th heard and saw an English sky lark in full song up and up toward the clouds back of the hill over Hibbards meadow. Must write it up. The bird was trying to mate with the field or vesper sparrow. 10 Found the fringed polygala and the orchis spectabilis in bloom. The sweet white violets at their height. Hot. 86 July weather 86 and 87 in shade.
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